April 20th is a karma day. On these type of days, lingering effects of positive and negative actions are amplified. Behavior and attitude patterns are more easily re-enforced. I know it sounds a little “hippie-ish”, but the basic concept is true. To paraphrase Morpheus, truth is not dependent upon your belief. An example of lingering effects is physical exercise. Every action today will have an impact tomorrow and the following days with diminishing effects as time progresses. Studying and learning is another aspect of the same concept. Coaches mention that winning (and losing) is a habit. It is only when we start applying the mental or non-material point-of-view that most people start scoffing. New age mysticism, mystery religions, and even your everyday true southern baptist believes in the power of prayer, positive thinking, and good karma. They all attempt to describe the same truth. But even if you are not into the church, or hocus-pocus voodoo, or anything close to anything spiritual, you still have to acknowledge the obvious effects of the proper mind-set and goal-setting. Sports is the most obvious area where this becomes evident. Even if you never reach your goal of winning gold in the Olympics, there will be a measurable effect of getting faster as a result of the proper mind-set combined with a specific goal. Everyone who has played golf understands how important it is to envision your shot before you set up to swing.

Too many times, we get caught up in trying to prove why everyone else is wrong and lose sight of the basic truth. It doesn’t matter if you call it karma, the power of prayer, life-coaching, or kittens; in the end, it is. And that is what defines a truth. Does it really matter why you or I believe in the truth? I guess it does to some people. Not to me. It doesn’t make a difference why you believe, or if you even do believe. If you ask a truth. “Who are You?” The truth would respond, “I am.” Sound familiar?

With just a basic inspection of a basic Federal budget analysis from National Priorities Project, we can see that 14.5% of the federal budget goes to cover the interest alone for our national debt. And even though the chart linked above does not include FICA revenue for Social Security and Medicare, we spend an additional 21.4% of our Federal budget on Medicare and healthcare costs, which is only surpassed by the military budget. When we include the FICA revenue, healthcare costs skyrocket past even our excessive military budget.

Before you start thinking that this situation is unsustainable, you should know that we haven’t slowed down our spending at all. In fact, we are borrowing more to cover expenses than we have ever before. Now you should know for sure that this is unsustainable. So, now what?

We have the same choice to make now as we have in the past. We can either stop spending money now that we don’t have and start saving as a country, OR, we can keep printing money as fast as possible to prop up a bubble economy. If we decide to stop printing and spending money now, the effect will be horrible. The stock market will reset, losing a lot of money for a lot of people, real estate will amazingly drop even lower, and unemployment and inflation will be rampant. In fact, there will be major repercussions worldwide as a result. Sounds bad, I know. But at least it’s not as bad as the other option. I’m talking about the ability to entirely destroy the United States as a country or at least as a dominant super power. It happened in Russia, remember?

Why am I obligated to pay taxes? Should I support a government acting like drunk college kid with daddy’s credit card? The General Services Administration is trying to explain almost a million dollars for a conference held in Las Vegas on the tax payers dime. And although I do not believe every government official is a complete douche bag like Jeff Neely (is there something about that name?), I do believe there are enough just by considering the size of the government and the probability of human nature to be greedy and selfish.

Should I be obligated to support a broken and corrupted system with my tax dollar? Or should I take a stand and save the country from the assholes currently running it? I know what the Founding Fathers did. They told King George to sit on his taxes and spin. I believe Thomas Jefferson was right. The country should have a revolution every generation to remind us the cost and the value of freedom and individual liberty.

Let’s look at things and see what the facts tell us.

America is broke. Trust me, there is no such thing as “too big to fail”. It’s almost frightening to me that people forget recent modern history so easily. It wasn’t that long ago that one of the top super powerful countries in the world went broke financially, splintered into multiple disparate nations, and ended the Capitalist vs. Communist showdown. Forget banks being too big to fail, we’re talking about the only country in the history of the world that could even threaten going toe-to-toe with the USA, going bankrupt and falling apart. It happened once and it could happen again.

Many people recognize that our current system is unsustainable. Unsustainable means something is going to change. Either willingly or not, something will change when an unsustainable system reaches zero. Or the maximum, depending upon your point of view. It is interesting to note that our current financial system is based on an infinite supply of nothing. Deep down inside, people know that as we continue to print money to bail asshole corporations out of debt and prop up the “borrow and spend” economy we rely on in America, inflation becomes a problem.

Basically, we are on the fast track to the shitter, and more people are realizing that sad reality as every day passes. But for some reason, that I fail to understand, people are reluctant to vote for the only candidate who is willing to accept the hard truth and do what is necessary to get America back on the right track. None of the other candidates or the incumbent have the ability or the desire to do the right thing and QUIT SPENDING MONEY! NOW!

Wealth can only be created through production and savings. I won’t cover all of Dr. Paul’s financial policies, but it is easy to understand and makes a whole lot of sense: When you’re broke, quit spending money. The philosophy that Dave Ramsey espouses through his multimedia empire holds the same water here. Sacrifice now, get out of debt, save for later, and begin immediately.

But instead of supporting Ron Paul, people are reluctant to vote for him because they want to continue “the way business has always been done.” The people may be fed up with the wasteful spending and the ginormous debt that keeps growing, but they aren’t willing to change. At least not yet. I guess we have to really test that infinite supply of nothing and see just long we can continue printing money. We may survive, but I remember how it didn’t work out so well for the USSR.

Spring break has been over for a week and a half now and even though the charges are still pending, statements have been released that claim, the unauthorized use charges are big misunderstanding and the card”s” belong to former and current TTU athletes. Attorneys for each of the accused have already released statements on behalf of their clients claiming their innocence and looking forward to being exonerated during the investigation. It’s not quite complete, but I can see where this story is heading.

Best case scenario for TTU and the players: The owners of the cards retract their initial statement to the police and release a new statement giving the accused permission to use the cards.  The felony crime goes away and the remaining items can be easily dealt with through community service, tickets, and/or probation. In the end, no harm, no foul. The athletes remain on the team, Tubberville improves his chances for a winning season, and the owners of the cards receive compensation for their time and trouble. Which must be handled very delicately since they are subject to NCAA rules. It is interesting that the felony charges have not been dropped yet. I would think that a simple misunderstanding wouldn’t take very long to clear up by an official statement. But here we are still waiting.

It wouldn’t be enough if I stopped there.

In comparison, Mike Leach (the former head coach of TTU) dismissed two of his top defensive players after arrests for misdemeanor charges. They were dismissed from the team immediately and permanently. No waiting for the investigation, no political maneuvering or back door exits from the jail. As I said, earlier, it seems to be a question of character.

But again, that doesn’t make me unlucky.

Nope, the bad luck is because I can cause a Spurs loss just by showing up to a game in person at home or on the road. OK, I realize that it has to happen three consecutive times before it actually becomes fact instead of just superstition, but it ain’t looking good if you know what I mean.

Christie and I went to the game between the Spurs and the Mavericks on St. Patricks Day at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. I really expected the Spurs to continue playing solid basketball that has them second in the western conference standings. And with Ginobili returning from injury, the game should have been a win, even if would be a tough win. But really I was hoping for revenge for the first Spurs game I saw in person which was a loss to these same Mavericks. And now, I am almost resigned to the “fact” that I am a bad luck fan.

Maybe I should be more selective with my next Spurs game opponent. Perhaps the Wizards or the Bobcats. Anyone but the Mavericks. Because not only would another loss to the Mavs make me a bad luck Spurs fan, it would also make me a Maverick good luck charm.

Eewwww! That’s not much better than being a Laker fan in my opinion. And nobody would wish that on anyone. Even their own worst enemy.

So,….. what is this blog about? Everything, nothing, something specific, and nothing in general. Or the honest answer: I don’t know yet and I may never know. But does it matter? When everything is said and done and everything I consider special to me is gone, does it make a difference? Even though I am not a novice about blogging (despite my obvious first post on this iteration), I believe I have much more to learn. Including the purpose of this blog. And that is what makes it so exciting. Life is a wonder. I don’t mean it is beautiful, or grand, or any of the poetic expressions, I mean that it is a mystery. Some people may confuse mystery with a lack of purpose or design, but that is not the case. We are always ignorant before enlightenment. And that’s OK. Being unaware of our ignorance can be dangerous, but experience and wisdom makes us aware of our ignorance. And that’s the first step in the right direction.

I hope.