College football provides a little bit of something for everyone in the bowl games for the 2010 – 2011 season, and I mean everyone: especially those who want to cash in on audiences of various size. College football, like everything else in America is all about money.

It’s not Lingerie Football, but it should still provide some interesting matchups to conclude a wild 2010 college football season. Gone are the days of the Big Four Bowls that glued everyone to their television sets on January 1.

The SEC-West has been a dominant story in 2010 and, as of Thanksgiving Day, 5 of its 6 teams were still ranked in the Top 25 of the BCS Rankings. Yet, Jeff Sagarin as of 11/21 ranks the PAC-10 as the toughest conference. Now, other than undefeated Oregon and 1-loss Stanford, there’s 3-loss Arizona that hasn’t yet played Oregon, 4-loss USC that beat Arizona but lost to 6-loss Washington, and six teams with 5 or more losses. The SEC-West as of Sagarin’s date had undefeated Auburn, 1-loss LSU, 2-loss Alabama and Arkansas, 4-loss Mississippi State and 7 loss Mississippi. Just goes to show you that everybody can have an opinion. Now, here’s my take on Thanksgiving weekend in the SEC-West: Alabama over Auburn and Arkansas over LSU.

The list of all 2010 – 2011 Bowl Games is below. BCS Games are bold.

Dress UP and PARTY! ! ! Click Here

Bowl Games in 2010 -2011

So, there’s a whole lot of opportunity to Party Your, uh, Head Off. Grab a significant (or insignificant) other and have a good time as college football shines. Guys, maximize your chances to score with the winners by grabbing some of that clothing mentioned above in my own advertising. Don’t blame me, I’d like to make a little money off the bowl games, too. And you’ll like what I’m promoting a whole lot better, especially when victory is yours.

We need another Rally to Restore Sanity. This one, though, might need to be held at an airport security screening station where a portion of the general public seems to have lost their *^&%$# minds!

Surely there cannot be that many prudes in America. Or, was this 15% of America paying too much attention to Stephen trying to restore fear? He did sing pretty good, though.

I read a comment posted on an article about the new (well, two year old) screening machines known affectionately in pornographic circles as full body scanners. (Imagine me drooling over that hot photo.) The commenter guy said he didn’t want nobody looking at his wife’s image. Now, I fully understand guys with ugly wives not wanting them seen much out in public. However, I began flying shortly after Wilbur and Orville landed, and I ain’t seen that many ugly women in airports.

Guys with trophy wives, and that’s most of us, should be proud. You know, if you got it – flaunt it. But, then there was another article published on the USA Today website where a Mr. Geoff Freeman, the executive vice resident (their word, not mine) of the U. S. Travel Association, said, "Travelers are saying: ‘What’s next? What’s the vision, and when does it get better?’" Mr. Freeman, I expect it will get better when no one on earth wants to blow our planes out of the sky.

Asking silly questions like that might be why his title is vice resident. And then there are the two pilots who have filed suit claiming being more secure is a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure. What’s so unreasonable about looking for bombs?

And then there was that lady on some MSNBC show who said she would prefer dogs to scanners. I can see it now. "Step up folks. Get in line so our dog can sniff your crotch."

Fake That Fooled America

To complicate matters, some guy downloaded nude photos and photoshopped them to make them look like they were a body scan. Then he talked about an inversion process that would add real flesh to an xray image. Of course, most folks don’t know diddly about technology and bought his lie hook, line and sinker. Numerous, and by that I mean lots, of other websites have taken to spreading his lie.

Kudos to a reformed liar. One guy who was spreading the lie discovered the truth and actually changed his website to tell the truth. Holy gumballs, mama grizzly – his sanity was restored!

I have blurred this image to avoid bad stuff. They came from a royalty-free CD. Here’s what the reformed guy said. "God dammit! I hate being duped by disinformation. Ok so there’s this image making its rounds across the internet that has been presented as an actual scan from one of the airport body scanners now cropping up all over the globe in light of the recent staged terrorist incident. People in the truth and patriot communities have been using it as evidence that the scanners are more revealing than the mainstream media is telling us. While I have no doubt that the scanners are indeed more revealing than what the media is telling us, I’ve just learned this image is disinformation." he further stated, "It would appear as though someone has just taken those two photos, photoshopped them to invert the colours and add weapons and claimed them to be body scanner images. I kind of wish I hadn’t shown it to all my friends and said ‘See, the media is lying to you!’ now. Grrr."

The LimbaughBeckinizing of America

Jon and Stephen, please excuse me for a moment. Hey Mr. Webster – I’ve got a new word for you. I don’t think I can spell it again but the definition is this: blatant, flagrant duping of people. It’s been going on for quite awhile. There was the single bullet Kennedy assassination, the Gulf of Tonkin, weapons of mass destruction, Irag building "nucular" weapons and, now, we can lower the deficit by lowering revenue that would generated by an additional 3% tax on the wealthiest Americans.

For those who haven’t paid attention in a number of years, that 3% reduction in taxes happened early in the Bush Administration and hasn’t lowered the deficit or done much of a job creating jobs since then. But I digress, sort of.

Jon and Stephen, how do we get back to truth-telling in America? After all, we are a Christian nation, aren’t we? Aren’t we? Oh, wait, I wrote about that yesterday. (See Religious Knowledge Survey.) Stephen, I also taught people how to say your name in this article: E T Goes Home.

I don’t understand people. They don’t want to lower the military budget or even cut out useless weapon systems the military doesn’t want but are upset about walking through an xray machine in an airport. You know, if we didn’t spend the money on useless weapon systems we might be able to design an even newer scan technology. Oh, wait, I got it. We could develop a robot who could look at the images rather than a real human. If the robot detected bomb-making materials, it would walk over to the scanner and shoot the person or, better yet, zap them with a laser embedded in the scanner.

Gotta close now. I’ve got to get down to the Small Business Administration office and apply for a laser-scanner-device building loan. Laser-Scanner-Device. I like the sound of that. We’ll call it LSD for short.

Uncle Brice Supporters

Say Hey to the Good Folks that make this blog possible:

Online Little Rock.com is where Uncle Brice got his start. There’s a ton of information on this site about Arkansas, Little Rock, dining, dancing, shopping (and shopping online). It’s also a high-trafficked Civil War information site. You can even find out stuff about all the colleges and universities of Arkansas.

Home Business Opportunities is a site that has never been more in demand. You can find legitimate ways to earn money from home as well as a lot of information about Internet marketing, writing, building traffic for your website, and more.

The owners of Online Little Rock have a mission in life to teach everyone about brain injury. They have two websites that have hundreds of pages of information, including visitor-submitted Brain Injury Stories. The sites are Brain Injury Online and Brain Injury Guide.

Beth’s Brain Injury Blog is a favorite in the brain injury community. She writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of brain injury and how you must maintain a sense of humor to live successfully whether you are the victim or a caregiver.

A religious knowledge survey conducted in the United States by the Pew Research Center was released September 28, 2010. While the survey reveals an almost-expected lack of knowledge about other religions of the world, it also shows that Americans don’t know much about their own, personally professed religion, either!

Thirty-two questions were asked in the phone survey. There is a fifteen-question online survey for curious people like me, which I took. I scored 100% – 15 correct answers on 15 questions. The average score for those surveyed was 50%. The fact that I scored 100% compared to professing observers scoring only 50%, to me, is a very telling one because I don’t attend church or Bible study. Yes, I have studied the Bible in the past and, on occasion in recent history, have read through sections searching for proof of certain claims being spouted by others.

My comparison, though, was not totally out of line. A number of questions were asked to identify the resopndent’s religious group, if any. That allowed the folks at Pew Research to break down survey results by "religiosity," if you’ll pardon me creating a word.

Correct Answers by Group

Atheists and Agnostics answered more questions correctly than people who profess religious affiliation. Can you name one of the most popular Christmas songs? How about O Little Town of Bethlehem? Yet, only 71% of those surveyed knew that Jesus, the central figure of Christianity, was born in Bethlehem. Every year, several times a year, a movie called The Ten Commandments is shown on television. The movie is based on the second Book of the Bible, Exodus. Yet only 72% of respondents knew who led the exodus out of Egypt. But that may not be suprising in light of the fact that only 63% knew what the first Book of the Bible is.

Thirty-seven percent read the Bible or other Holy Scriptures at least once a week. That might explain who it was that knew the first Book of the Bible is Genesis but, think about this; 63% of those surveyed do not read the Holy Scriptures of their own religion! Thirty percent of white evangelicals and twenty-nine percent of black protestants reported that they read books or went online weekly to learn more about their own religion. That low number is sad enough but when it comes to reading books or going online to learn about other religions, the national average is 7% with no group scoring higher than 8%.

Do you know who Joseph Smith is? 51% of those surveyed correctly identified him. Only 44% knew that the Mormon religion was founded in the 1800s and only 40% knew that the Book of Mormon tells the story of Jesus appearing to people in the Americas. For more information about Mormons, you might want to read, Mitt Romney Believes What?.

A Disturbing Religious and Political Reality

The Pew Report states, "Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations. Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is ‘very important’ in their lives, and roughly four-in-ten say they attend worship services at least once a week. But the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions — including their own."

Furthermore, the report states, "More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish."

The Religious Right wields a strong influence on the Republican Party and, thus, on politics and government in the United States. Their primary goals, it appears, are lifestyle in nature. They are behind the Pro Life (anti-abortion) movement, and gun ownership, among others. Politically, they speak of lassiez-faire capitalism, gun ownership and government support of non-public schools.

They sometimes claim elitism as Pat Buchanan did in a speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, "Our culture is superior to other cultures, superior because our religion is Christianity." And, they preach fear. "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different…It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-biased media and the homosexuals who want to destroy all Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination are the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in our history." – Pat Robertson

"… those of the humanistic stripe want to see all Bibles banned in America." – Jimmy Swaggert

I mentioned Mr. Robertson and Mr. Buchanan because they have run for President of the United States. Mormon Mitt Romney and Baptist Mike Huckabee are considered to be presidential contenders for the future, as they were in 2008. Both Romney and Huckabee would like to see Roe vs. Wade repealed, and Huckabee would sponsor a Constitution Amendment to outlaw abortion in the United States.

So, What is Smaller government?

The Religious Right and ideas espoused by their political leaders shout for smaller government – in some instances. Huckabee had advocated doing away with the Internal Revenue Service. Others want to get rid of the Department of Education. Okay, that’s smaller in size. What about smaller in scope?

Should abortion, gay rights, legalization of marijuana, and other such issues be left to the states to determine, or should the federal government enforce a rule on the states? Currently there is such a federal law against marijuana use that will trump the state laws if the matter goes to court. When it comes to abortion, Huckabee wants a Constitutional Amendment that would take the issue out of state control. When governor of Arkansas, Huckabee signed into law a prohibition of same-sex marriage and stated his opposition to legal civil unions for gays and lesbians.

Having the federal government in the bedroom or den or listening on your cell phone or monitoring your computer usage is BIG government – in scope. In a land known for freedom, intervention by the government to limit freedom is BIG government – in scope.

I agree that the Second Amendment guarantees much to gun owners. But, shouldn’t government be big enough to outlaw guns and ammunition designed to be used against law enforcement officers and, yes, political officials?

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution greatly increased the Scope of Government. It states, in part, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…" In other words, if federal law grants a privilege or immunity to its citizens, no state can do otherwise. If the scope is limited on a federal level, then the states would be free to restrict privileges or immunities.

Religious Power in America

The question becomes this: Should power to influence both the size and scope of government be given to religious groups who know very little about their own religion and virtually nothing about the many other religions practicing in the United States?

It should be a rule (Bill Maher, take note) that you should, at the very least, know why you believe what you believe before forcing that belief on others. With 63% of you not even reading the Holy Scriptures you believe others should live by, well, it’s a little difficult to take you seriously.

You can correct that. And, in a way, I think the founder of your religion would really want you to know more about it. How can you evangelize or recruit others when you don’t know what it is or why you’re doing it? And, how do you know what you are supposed to be doing?

The survey shows that while American citizens claim we live in a Christian nation, we may not. Saying you are a Christian is not the same as being one.

For more information about the U. S. Religious Knowledge Survey, click this link.

Uncle Brice Supporters

Say Hey to the Good Folks that make this blog possible:

Online Little Rock.com is where Uncle Brice got his start. There’s a ton of information on this site about Arkansas, Little Rock, dining, dancing, shopping (and shopping online). It’s also a high-trafficked Civil War information site. You can even find out stuff about all the colleges and universities of Arkansas.

Home Business Opportunities is a site that has never been more in demand. You can find legitimate ways to earn money from home as well as a lot of information about Internet marketing, writing, building traffic for your website, and more.

The owners of Online Little Rock have a mission in life to teach everyone about brain injury. They have two websites that have hundreds of pages of information, including visitor-submitted Brain Injury Stories. The sites are Brain Injury Online and Brain Injury Guide.

Beth’s Brain Injury Blog is a favorite in the brain injury community. She writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of brain injury and how you must maintain a sense of humor to live successfully whether you are the victim or a caregiver.

Dear Washington D. C.:

America getting back to you again. Perhaps you’ve noticed a lot of new faces moving toward town, and a lot of them are coming courtesy of our country’s Tea Party movement.

Here’s something you need to know. Yes, there are a number of evil people who have tried to co-op this movement, and there are a few wild ideas floated by uninformed supporters of this movement. However, look around you. Congress is inundated with wild ideas and uninformed people already. This is nothing new. The "need to know" part of this is that it is a people movement that should not be identified with radio or television talk shows or Dick Armey, Michelle Bachmann or anyone else who says they speak for the people.

It’s the Stupid Economy

You must admit that Capitalism has a black-eye at the moment. Supply-side economics is not supplying the number of jobs needed by our country’s citizens – and that is the key to just about everything else you’re hearing.

Why is there such an uproar over ILLEGAL immigration? Because jobs are being lost. Why is there such an uproar over NAFTA and other trade agreements? Because jobs are being lost. Why is there such an uproar over Congressional legislation that rewards companies who ship jobs off our shores? Well, that’s simple – because jobs are being lost.

Why is there such an uproar over the Wall Street bailout? Because you chose to provide a benefit to people who create nothing but financial chaos and get rewarded with uproarious salaries. Wall Street’s analysts have corporations running scared. They must continually improve their bottom line by laying off workers or shipping jobs overseas in order to please the analysts. You bailed out one of our biggest problems, and we’re pissed about it. (Read Karl Marx, Socialism and the Tea Party Movement).

Now, however, we need to talk about government spending.

Debt, Deficits and Decisions

Fact – the United States government has a huge debt. Fact – the debt is caused by deficit spending. Fact – Deficit spending is caused by stupid decisions. We’ve all done it. We all do it. Keeping up with the Joneses as a life goal has been around longer than I have, and I’ve been here a long time.

It’s like Credit Card Debt. Credit cards, as a method of payment, is not a bad thing. They make life a lot simpler. However, when a credit card is used to buy something that is not needed or that cannot really be afforded, it becomes a bad thing. A balance is carried forward and, in many cases, an exhorbitant interest rate comes into play. Then you must devote a part of your income to paying the interest on your debt and a part of your income to paying the debt. In other words, you lost purchasing power because of not managing your desires for something you really couldn’t afford.

I keep reading about you folks spending money for a weapon that the military doesn’t want. I’m talking millions and millions of dollars you’re spending for something that is not needed – and that our country cannot afford. Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that you’re doing it to keep jobs in the military complex. And, that’s stupid. It would be less stupid if you used those millions and millions of dollars to have people make windshield wipers; at least that’s a needed product and you’d still have the jobs. But the truth is – we cannot afford either!

Be a Decider

You know, they say a stupid person is one who does something that fails and then does it again expecting a different result. Several years ago you gave a huge tax cut that helped America’s richest people and told us that those people would use that money to create jobs. Okay, we lost 8 or so millions jobs since then – and now you’re thinking about doing it again. Back up two sentences and read what I said.

Supply-side economics requires that money be in the hands of demanders. You know, it’s that old demand creates supply sort of thing. Without demand, the economy falters. You put money in the hands of people who are simply going to put it in the bank or stock market and you get one result. You put it in the hands of hungry people, and they will spend it quickly, creating demand. Is that so difficult to understand?

On November 2, 2010 a lot of decisions were made. Many of those decisions resulted in a whole bunch of new deciders who will be moving to Washington. Someone is going to be a decider. You can do it to benefit the country or voters will do it to replace you with a different decider.

Deficit Deciders Needed

Nobody said your job was supposed to be easy. You see, along the way folks there in your fair city forgot all about us having a government "of the people, by the people and for the people." November 2 should be a reminder that the voters didn’t forget. There are a lot of special interests people all up in arms about decisions that need to be made. No one wants deficit reduction to happen in their back yard. Well, it’s got to happen in everyone’s backyard in order for it to work.

What’s up with this XOS Wearable Exoskeleton suit developed by Defense Contractor Raytheon? The promo material says it will allow a soldier to pick up 200 pounds of stuff hundreds of times without getting fatigued. How much does it cost? How many times is it necessary to pick up 200 pounds at once? Could the stuff be boxed in fifty-pound boxes? Could four guys pick it up if it stayed in a 200-pound box? Why are you spending money on this? Money we don’t have, by the way. Not only that, but why is Defense Contractor Lockheed Martin building a similar suit called the Human Universal Load Carrier?

Did you pay both of these companies to develop the same thing when, in reality, it isn’t needed at a time we cannot afford it?

Military spending must be on the cutting block.

For the People

Don’t forget those words. Your decisions should be based on what’s best for the people. Sure, it would be nice to have a bike trail running through the middle of my hometown. But I can give up that bike trail so an elderly person can afford health care. Are you willing to take any degree of health care away from your grandmother so millionaires can continue receive a tax cut they don’t really need?

Are you willing to deprive a child of health care or a hot meal so you can build more unneeded weapons? Yes, I understand you cannot reduce the debt until you have a budget surplus rather than a budget deficit. This is what you should be thinking about. How will you decrease spending and, possibly, increase revenue on a yearly basis.

Forget Social Security for the moment. It does not contribute one penny to the deficit nor to the national debt. There is plenty of time to deal with that. Let’s do what’s needed now to confront the problems we have now.

What Others Are Saying:

About Social Security – "The system has been running a substantial surplus for a generation because the Baby Boom has been working and paying payroll taxes, and the Baby Boom dwarfs the generation now receiving benefits. The surplus has gone into the Trust Fund, which now stands at about $2.6 trillion (That’s trillion with a “T.”) As the Baby Boom retires, the system will stop running a surplus later this decade. Then the system will pay full benefits, including cost-of-living adjustments, from payroll taxes and the interest from the Trust Fund. About a decade after that, payroll taxes and interest on the Trust Fund will not be enough to pay full benefits, including cost of living adjustments. Then the system will pay full benefits, including cost of living adjustments, from payroll taxes, interest and the principal of the Trust Fund." – Huffington Post

Defense Spending – "The scale of defense spending in the USA, as Chalmers Johnson has repeatedly pointed out, is beyond what any other citizen base in the world shoulders as a percent of GDP and adds up to approximately the defense spending of the rest of the world combined. So a little nip and tuck here is considered significant. Why do these commissions never ask what it is that all of this defense spending does for America?" –

Rob Johnson, Director of Economic Policy, Roosevelt Institute

More Independent’s Day Articles

Independent’s Day
Independent’s Day – Social Security
Independent’s Day – Second Amendment
Independent’s Day – Deficit Reduction (this article)

FYI – here’s information you can use.

Online Little Rock.com is where Uncle Brice got his start. There’s a ton of information on this site about Arkansas, Little Rock, dining, dancing, shopping (and shopping online). It’s also a high-trafficked Civil War information site. You can even find out stuff about all the colleges and universities of Arkansas.

Home Business Opportunities is a site that has never been more in demand. You can find legitimate ways to earn money from home as well as a lot of information about Internet marketing, writing, building traffic for your website, and more.

The owners of Online Little Rock have a mission in life to teach everyone about brain injury. They have two websites that have hundreds of pages of information, including visitor-submitted Brain Injury Stories. The sites are Brain Injury Online and Brain Injury Guide.

Beth’s Brain Injury Blog is a favorite in the brain injury community. She writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of brain injury and how you must maintain a sense of humor to live successfully whether you are the victim or a caregiver.

For days following the mysterious contrail in the sky over California we were told the military says it was not caused by them. The Pentagon immediately shoved its way into the story, as the Pentagon has done for decades.

News organizations kept asking questions. Why did no one know what caused the mysterious contrail? It was a simple question. Did anyone have something in the sky that could have left such a trail?

It’s not a missile. The United States is not in danger, we kept hearing time and again. In other words, we were being told, "We don’t know what it is, but it’s not going to hurt us."

It’s not the first time the military and the Pentagon have offered such a story.

The Roswell Daily Record reported on July 8, 1947 that a flying saucer had been captured by the Air Force. Notice the sub headline, "No Details of Flying Disk Are Revealed." The story mentions a husband and wife who own a hardware store in town that reported seeing a flying disk.

In case you didn’t already know it, RAAF stands for Roswell Army Air Field. In fact, it was a press release from their public information office that got the ball rolling. The press release stated that personnel from the 509th Bomb Group had recovered a crashed "flying disk" from a ranch near Roswell.

Immediately the Pentagon jumped in. ‘Wait, we can’t tell the people that. It will scare them.’ So, the next day, General Ramey, the commanding general of the Eighth Air Force, told America that it was simply the remains of a radar tracking balloon.

For thirty years the military version of the story remained unchallenged. In 1978, Major Jesse Marcel, who was involved in the original recovery of the debris, said the military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft.

Deja Vu, All Over Again – Not This Time!

Here’s what I think really happened. Ever since the movie, E T, we have known that aliens have lived among us. If you need more proof, there’s a TV show called The Event that further explains. Please notice we’re talking a Hollywood movie and a Hollywood TV show. Where is Hollywood? It’s in California. Where was the mysterious contrail. California!!!

It’s a proven fact that Californians are far smarter than people who live in the lesser states of Mr. Lincoln’s Union. That has come into question recently since they voted down the legalization of marijuana and the resulting tax revenues it would have brought to their Republican-Governor-led budget deficit and subsequent problems. But I digress.

Californians knew Extra Terrestrials lived among us, and they tried to tell us by showing movies and TV shows. That seems to be the way most Americans learn stuff. I mean, there’s the Right-Wing Fox News and the Left-Wing MSNBC, and there’s the main stream television media like Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report. (Pay attention that you don’t pronounce Stephen’s last name as COL-BERT. Bert is on another main stream media outlet, Sesame Street, I believe. Colbert – well, imagine you’re sitting around a campfire for several hours imbibing adult beverages. And you slur, "Hey, hand me another col bare." That’s how you pronouce his name.) But I digress.

Recent Political Events That Mattered

October 30, 2010 – The Rally to Restore Sanity was held on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D. C. Attended by a lot of smart people, the basic premise of the rally was simple, "Can’t we all just get along?" Can we not set aside special interests and work together to better America? After all, that’s the only way problems will be solved. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert led the rally.

November 2, 2010 – Americans participate in a General Election and show they did not pay any attention whatsoever to the part about Restoring Sanity.

November 10, 2010 – President Barack Obama’s National Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform CoChair’s Proposal is released to the public. Every special interest group in the whole United States found something wrong with it. Well, maybe not the richest 2% of Americans since the top tax rate in the proposal is a HUGE discount from what it now is and, oh yeah, middle income people will pay more. Kevin Drum, writing for Mother Jones, said, "And their tax proposal? As part of a deficit reduction plan they want to cut taxes on the rich and make the federal tax system more regressive? That’s not serious either."

The Day Before the CoChair’s proposal, a mysterious contrail appeared near California. The far-more-intelligent-than-us aliens had witnessed the recent events and knew what the Commission was doing. They (the aliens) made a decision. Not being able to stomach any more of this silly foolishness among Earth People, ET went home!

Be sure to check out the Independent’s Day series of articles.

Uncle Brice Supporters

Say Hey to the Good Folks that make this blog possible:

Online Little Rock.com is where Uncle Brice got his start. There’s a ton of information on this site about Arkansas, Little Rock, dining, dancing, shopping (and shopping online). It’s also a high-trafficked Civil War information site. You can even find out stuff about all the colleges and universities of Arkansas.

Home Business Opportunities is a site that has never been more in demand. You can find legitimate ways to earn money from home as well as a lot of information about Internet marketing, writing, building traffic for your website, and more.

The owners of Online Little Rock have a mission in life to teach everyone about brain injury. They have two websites that have hundreds of pages of information, including visitor-submitted Brain Injury Stories. The sites are Brain Injury Online and Brain Injury Guide.

Beth’s Brain Injury Blog is a favorite in the brain injury community. She writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of brain injury and how you must maintain a sense of humor to live successfully whether you are the victim or a caregiver.

Dear Washington D. C.:

It’s America again. The Second Amendment seems to be a matter of concern for an awful lot of folks, so why don’t we consider a common-sense approach to answer this once and for all. The Supreme Court has made a couple recent votes about this, 2008 and 2010, that should have cleared up a thing or two.

In case you don’t remember it, the Second Amendment states, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." This is the wording and punctuation used when passed by Congress. It changed a little when it was sent to the States for ratification. That stated, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The Bill of Rights

Please notice that the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to give Power to the People. Think for a moment about the Tenth Amendment, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

So, let’s agree that it’s okay for CITIZENS of the United States to own guns.

The Common Sense Approach

You and I run into trouble coming up with a common-sense approach to gun ownership because there are an awful lot of idiots in the United States that don’t know how to get along. I read recently that folks ought not to pick a fight with an old man because that old man knows he can’t fight. His only recourse is to shoot his attacker.

Some of my fondest memories are of my Dad taking me hunting and teaching me to shoot and about gun safety. My grandson went hunting with his Dad just this past weekend. No one argues that being able to hunt with a gun is bad. Well, on second thought, there probably are some people who might make that argument. But I can clear this up pretty easily: those people are wrong.

In our society there are a lot of people who use guns to harm other people. Some of those people use weapons with lots of rounds in them, and then there are things called cop-killer bullets. And there are automatic weapons and the like. No one needs any of those guns for hunting … BUT!

The Second Amendment does not say anything about hunting. It doesn’t say anything about target shooting. And then there’s the Fourteenth Amendment that states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…"

I have long been an advocate of Gun Control because of all the horrible goings-on in our country. I was wrong.

Ban People, Not Guns

There are a lot of laws on the books about illegal use of a fiream. My new common-sense way of thinking is this: American CITIZENS have the right to own and use firearms within the law. Those who choose to use one illegally should be banned from society. Non-CITIZENS who own a gun do not own it under the provisions of the United States Constitution. Likewise, those people should be banned from society.

Yes, I understand you must first catch them, and I further understand that far too many of our law enforcement agencies concentrate on "other things" that don’t have the same societal implication as a wild person running around shooting people.

I would imagine that legalizing marijuana and prostitution would free up a lot of officers who could chase after illegal gun users. And that doesn’t even touch on the tax revenue enhancement by those two legalizations. Nor does it address how much healthier (or less dangerous) both would be with regulation.

So, Washington – what you must figure out is how to get rid of those who use firearms illegally, and not spend time trying to get rid of firearms.

More Independent’s Day Articles

Independent’s Day
Independent’s Day – Social Security
Independent’s Day – Second Amendment (this article)

FYI – here’s information you can use.

Online Little Rock.com is where Uncle Brice got his start. There’s a ton of information on this site about Arkansas, Little Rock, dining, dancing, shopping (and shopping online). It’s also a high-trafficked Civil War information site. You can even find out stuff about all the colleges and universities of Arkansas.

Home Business Opportunities is a site that has never been more in demand. You can find legitimate ways to earn money from home as well as a lot of information about Internet marketing, writing, building traffic for your website, and more.

The owners of Online Little Rock have a mission in life to teach everyone about brain injury. They have two websites that have hundreds of pages of information, including visitor-submitted Brain Injury Stories. The sites are Brain Injury Online and Brain Injury Guide.

Beth’s Brain Injury Blog is a favorite in the brain injury community. She writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of brain injury and how you must maintain a sense of humor to live successfully whether you are the victim or a caregiver.

Dear Washington D. C.:

America here again. Let’s talk Social Security.

And let’s be frank about it. The Social Security program is a much needed program to help seniors who can no longer work to help themselves.

There are a number of reasons these seniors can no longer work. Probably the most contentious and least obvious is that employers do not want to hire older workers. Then, of course, there’s the fact that many are physically or mentally unable to work. With fewer and fewer jobs available in the United States, it’s not unreasonable for older workers to move out of the work force and allow younger ones to move in.

What About Privitization?

This is probably the silliest idea that has ever come along. Younger workers already have the means to open individual retirement accounts and participate in 401K accounts. These have not always been available to those who are already retired or those nearing retirement age. And, those who did try to supplement Social Security with smallish privitized retirement accounts saw those accounts tank in the last few years. Throw in 8,000,000 job losses and a bursting housing bubble and many people had to cash in those retirement accounts to pay mortgages and living costs.

Saving for a rainy day is pretty damn stupid when there’s a hurricane in your back yard. It’s time to act. It’s time to protect yourself and your family, and that’s what a lot of people did. IRAs and 401Ks flooded Wall Street with new money. You, my Washington friends, deregulated those folks and allowed them to create derivatives – essentially a piece of paper with writing on it. And those wise folks began selling worthless paper to one another. It was sort of a "I’ll buy yours if you’ll buy mine" sort of thing. In their wisdom, they tied the worthless paper to worthless mortgages, also a product of your creative legislating.

And now you’re thinking about taking the security out of Social Security and giving it to Wall Street? How #@^&*%$ stupid do you think we are? Okay, good point. We did elect the fools who did this to us. But that era is over.

Raising the Retirement Age

Okay, if you will stop talking about privitization, I’ll talk to you about raising the retirement age. Go ahead and raise it to 70 for people currently under age 50. This will give those younger folks who probably already have other retirement accounts plenty of time to make any necessary changes to their retirement strategies – and it won’t mess with the folks who don’t have time to make any changes.

The Need for Social Security

Long ago we moved away from the agrarian society in which each family took care of itself. You talk about the federal deficit putting a burden on future generations of our children, but don’t put a lot of thought into dropping the aging generation directly onto the backs of their children. Again, we no longer live in that world.

Social Security, modest though it may be, still allows a person to have a little bit of respect. In many cases, a large portion of the Social Security check is paid to Medicare for health insurance. And, in some instances, the Social Security recipient qualifies for Medicaid to pay the coinsurance portion of Medicare.

We are not a society who casts the elderly aside. Families cannot fill the gap. Churches cannot fill the gap. Meals-on-Wheels cannot feed everyone every meal.

Yes, everyone gets a kick out of calling these Entitlement Programs. The connotation is that people feel they’re entitled to these benefits. Well, they are! Because they are American citizens. We are supposed to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We are supposed to have a government that provides for the common welfare of its citizens. Those aren’t my words. They were written by our Founding Fathers.

One last thing. You’re really not thinking about giving a tax break to the wealthiest 2% of Americans and take the money away from the elderly – are you? I mean, really, are you?

Franklin Roosevelt said it this way:

What Others Are Saying:

"Social Security is not in need of saving. It is the most fiscally responsible part of the entire federal budget. Its benefits are modest, averaging less than the minimum wage. It is extremely efficient, returning in benefits more than 99 cents of every dollar spent. At its most expensive, when the Baby Boom generation is fully retired, Social Security will cost half as much, in terms of percentage of GDP, that France, Germany and many other countries are paying for their counterpart programs right now, today. Its projected deficit, still decades away, is manageable in size – just 0.7 percent of GDP, about the same amount as extending the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent of Americans." – Nancy Altman on Huffington Post

"Social Security benefits play a vital role in reducing poverty. Without Social Security, according to the latest available Census data (for 2008), 19.8 million more Americans would be poor. Although most of those kept out of poverty by Social Security are elderly, nearly a third are under age 65, including 1.1 million children." – Paul N. Van de Water and Arloc Sherman

More Independent’s Day Articles

Independent’s Day
Independent’s Day – Social Security (this article)

FYI – here’s information you can use.

Online Little Rock.com is where Uncle Brice got his start. There’s a ton of information on this site about Arkansas, Little Rock, dining, dancing, shopping (and shopping online). It’s also a high-trafficked Civil War information site. You can even find out stuff about all the colleges and universities of Arkansas.

Home Business Opportunities is a site that has never been more in demand. You can find legitimate ways to earn money from home as well as a lot of information about Internet marketing, writing, building traffic for your website, and more.

The owners of Online Little Rock have a mission in life to teach everyone about brain injury. They have two websites that have hundreds of pages of information, including visitor-submitted Brain Injury Stories. The sites are Brain Injury Online and Brain Injury Guide.

Beth’s Brain Injury Blog is a favorite in the brain injury community. She writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of brain injury and how you must maintain a sense of humor to live successfully whether you are the victim or a caregiver.

Dear Washington D. C.:

Let me introduce myself. I am America. That being said, I think you should also know that I am your employer, and I can give you a lengthy list of names that understand that more today than they did prior to November 2, 2010. Just in case you need references.

I also know you folks tend to pay attention to your own press that comes from the right at Fox News or the left at MSNBC, or any of the wild-eyed thoughts of anyone who is familiar with a keyboard and the Internet. Let’s not forget Talk Radio – but I think you should know this: it’s just talk! A lot of these folks get paid really well to keep people uninformed and clinging to their words of supposed wisdom. In reality, though, it’s sort of like Saturday morning cartoons for adults. (Except for Phineas & Ferb – that’s a dang good program, and you might ought to be taking a look at it instead of listening to plump pontificators.)

I Am Not a Color

I am not red, nor am I blue. America is brown, black, yellow, white, and millions of shades within and among those colors, none of which is red nor blue. Sure, out on the edge, along the fringe you might find a red tint or a blue tint. We all have those embarrassing moments when we blush, and we certainly get banged up and bruise from time to time.

I Do Not Give Mandates

Some of you are already thnking you received a mandate November 2. Not so! Anyway, you just go on thinking that way and in two to six years you can add your name to that list of folks moving home in January. You see, or maybe you don’t, I and my millions of cohorts don’t want government run by red policies or blue policies cooked up in some backroom somewhere. We want effective government.

Let’s Agree on This

A government of the people, by the people and for the people is just that. I think you seem to pass by that for the people part. Your job is to make my life better, and you have failed miserably. You are building military aircraft the military doesn’t want. What’s up with that? You are fighting wars in foreign lands against our wishes. You are building schools in foreign lands and letting ours fall and fail.

For the people – those are pretty powerful words. It’s certainly true that America was begun by a group of rich men wanting to get richer. That’s why King James got the ball rolling in Virginia way back when. It took about 170 years for my ancestors to say, "Wait just a damn minute!" And they sat down and wrote what’s called the Declaration of Independence.

In case you’re not too familiar with that document I’ll paraphrase it for you. When in the course of human events a government tries to screw over the people, the people will rise up and screw over the government. Take November 2 for instance. It was a beginning. Just a beginning.

Note: This is simply the first of what will be a great number of messages for you folks. I figure I will have to tell you time and again, lest ye forget. You might want to become a follower of this blog so you don’t go feeling all high and mighty.

What Others Are Saying:

"Not only are Tuesday’s results unexceptional, they actually represent a return to normalcy. Despite all the revolutionary chest pounding, mixed party control of Congress is the norm for America – single party rule was the oddity." – Rachel Maddow Blog

"Because this Congress allowed so much unfinished business to pile up before the elections, there’ll be no shortage of things to do should they actually decide to tackle some of the people’s business." – Cafferty File

More Independent’s Day Articles

Independent’s Day (this article)
Independent’s Day – Social Security
Independent’s Day – Second Amendment

FYI – here’s information you can use.

Online Little Rock.com is where Uncle Brice got his start. There’s a ton of information on this site about Arkansas, Little Rock, dining, dancing, shopping (and shopping online). It’s also a high-trafficked Civil War information site. You can even find out stuff about all the colleges and universities of Arkansas.

Home Business Opportunities is a site that has never been more in demand. You can find legitimate ways to earn money from home as well as a lot of information about Internet marketing, writing, building traffic for your website, and more.

The owners of Online Little Rock have a mission in life to teach everyone about brain injury. They have two websites that have hundreds of pages of information, including visitor-submitted Brain Injury Stories. The sites are Brain Injury Online and Brain Injury Guide.

Beth’s Brain Injury Blog is a favorite in the brain injury community. She writes about the good, the bad and the ugly of brain injury and how you must maintain a sense of humor to live successfully whether you are the victim or a caregiver.

College football BCS rankings for Week 10 saw Oregon move past Auburn for the top spot. So I decided to figure out how the BCS works.

The basics for BCS rankings are that they are a melding of the AP Poll, the USA Today Poll and six computers that use strength of schedule as part of the mix.

I chose to look at five teams that should have the best shot at playing in the National Title game: Oregon, Auburn, Boise State, TCU and Alabama.

Looking at the Week 10 BCS rankings I find that Oregon’s schedule includes ONE team in the Top 25, Number 15 Arizona. Auburn’s schedule includes Mississippi State – Number 20, South Carolina – Number 19, Arkansas – Number 18, LSU – Number 10 and Alabama – Number 6. Boise State’s schedule has Number 22 Virginia Tech and Nevada at Number 23 while TCU has Number 21 Baylor and Utah at Number 5.

Alabama has Arkansas at 18, South Carolina at 19, LSU at 10, Mississippi State at 20 and Auburn at 2. Strength of schedule looks like it favors Auburn and Alabama since both have FIVE currently ranked BCS teams on their schedule. And let’s not forget that Penn State was ranked #18 when the Crimson Tide beat them and Florida was #7 when Alabama whipped them.

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BCS Breakdown

Computer Rankings for Oregon

Oregon at Number One this week is purely based on the coach’s poll and the AP poll. Not one computer put the Ducks in that position and, as you can see, a couple of them had ‘em at Number 7. They have yet to play a BCS ranked team and have only one on their schedule if Arizona can hang on for a couple more weeks. And Auburn has already beaten FOUR BCS ranked teams. Go figure.

Computer Rankings for Auburn

The computers – all of them – love Auburn. But it’s probably going to come down to the last game of the regular season against Alabama. And, then, they might play South Carolina again in the SEC Championship Game.

Computer Rankings for Boise State

The computers don’t like Boise State nearly as much as the coaches and the AP poll. Any respect I might have had for the Broncos flew out the window when they turned down the opportunity to play Nebraska, a team that certainly would have improved the strength of their schedule. Oh, but they might have lost that game!!!

Computer Rankings for TCU

There is no rhyme nor reason for TCU’s computer rankings. Two computers ranking them number 2 and two ranking them number three when their opponents have a combined record of 48 – 52, with an 8 – 0 and a 6 – 2 that they haven’t played yet. Take away the records of the three teams yet to be played and the opponent’s record is 34 – 44.

Computer Rankings for Alabama

Alabama is poised to move up in the computer rankings because two of their final three opponents have good records, Mississippi State and Auburn. Of course, Alabama would have to win all of its remaining games, certainly a possibility.

I spend so much time on the Internet that I do my best to clean my computer once a week and never more than 10 days between cleanings. Here’s a special you might want to know about: