It's My Blog

Even though he undoubtedly has a much, much higher IQ than you do, Joe Biden wants to hear your ideas on how to strengthen the Middle Class in America. I encourage everyone to go submit your plans. I already submitted mine, so we'll see what they say!

Labels: politics

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Posted by Tom on 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Every once in a while on their quest to do no evil Google runs into a "bump" in the road. (click the picture to zoom)

Go to this Google Maps Link, and you'll see this:


Next, click the forward arrow:


Next, click the forward arrow again:


Pan the camera to the left:


Poor little guy.

Labels: funny, google

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Posted by Tom on 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

The stimulus bill passed the house of representatives yesterday and is now off to the senate. We are dangerously close to enacting a reckless spending bill that is fully constructed of payoffs to special interests and pork barrel spending on levels that we've never seen before. If you think the "Bridge to Nowhere" was bad, then you should think of this stimulus as the "Bridge to Bankruptcy."

All I'm asking is that people read the stimulus bill and find out exactly what the money is being spent on. If you don't have time to read the entire thing, then just go and look through this online database of the projects included in the bill. American's are woefully uninformed when it comes to this stimulus and the President is using that to sneak it past us while we're all in panic mode over the economy. You know how a lot of people said George W. Bush used 9/11 to push us into Iraq without good reason? Well Obama is using the financial crisis to push us into spending $1.1 trillion that we don't have without good reason. Please educate yourselves about this bill and then contact your representatives to let them know what you think about it.

Also, consider this: $1.1 trillion is about the same amount of money that the federal government collects each year in personal income tax. Instead of spending $1.1 trillion, what if the government simply didn't collect that $1.1 trillion from us by giving us a year of no personal income tax? Can you imagine how much that would help out the average middle class American family?

Labels: politics

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Posted by Tom on 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Well, of course he is, I mean anybody with a brain knows that government projects don't create jobs, tax cuts create jobs. Anyway, Obama recently said "There is no disagreement that government action is necessarry... (blah blah)" when referring to his proposed stimulus package. That is an outright lie. Courageously, a bunch of economics professors from around the country have teamed up with the Cato institute and put a full page ad in the NY Times calling out this lie. Check it out.

Labels: politics

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Posted by Tom on 9:48 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

There's been a lot of complaining about the Obama-Pelosi Liberal Agenda Bill (Stimulus Package) and so this had led some to question: "Something needs to be done, so what would be so much better than this stimulus?"

That's an easy one. This is how I would fix the economy, for good:

1. Repeal the 16th Amendment
2. Remove all forms of federal taxation that weren't wiped out in step one, including estate tax, social security tax, payroll tax, corporate income tax, etc
3. Employ a national sales tax of 20% on sales of finished goods and services (or adopt the Fair Tax.)
4. Repeal the Community Reinvestment Act
5. Dissolve Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac
6. Stop all bailouts

In 6 months to a year, our economy would be an absolute rock-star, and we'd be rushing in immigrants to fill all the vacant jobs.

Labels: life, politics

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Posted by Tom on 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

On my drive to North Carolina today I was listening to the Michael Savage show and I just couldn't get over the dichotomy and the inconsistency of his message. Now, I have to preface this by saying that I really like Dr. Savage and I respect his opinions, but today after announcing his victory in a lawsuit against C.A.I.R. during the first hour of his show, he started going off on the makers of horror films such as "Saw" and "Hostel" saying that they should be thrown in jail during hour two.

This "conservative" talk show host, who is always talking about how we need to get the government out of our society when it comes to health care, economics, affirmative action, etc, etc, has the court uphold his right to free speech and then turns around and says that the government needs to ban films and arrest those responsible for making them. This is absolutely ridiculous, and this is why the conservative movement and the Republican party have lost so much favor in recent years. We simply do not have a consistent message.

Look I don't like "snuff" films or horror movies for that matter but they're just make believe, they're just sick, twisted fantasy. I don't like them, so I don't buy tickets to go see them in the theaters. If I felt as strongly about it as Dr. Savage, I could take my feelings further and start an organization that would protest the movies and urge citizens to boycott the films. I could start a website that would educate people as to the dangers of such violent fantasy movies. I could do many things that would have a positive impact on society.

Unfortunately, Dr. Savage elects to advocate the same exact strategy that the Democrats would employ when their emotions run high: to use the government to force everyone to comply with what they think. This is simply wrong. This is simply anti-liberty. This is simply anti-republican.

Freedom isn't easy. It requires responsibility, assertiveness, advocacy, defense, and many other difficult efforts to sustain. The reason the Republicans are in such bad shape is that we always advocate freedom for business and other people (Iraqi's) but then we turn around and try to stifle freedom for individuals in America. That's just not the way it works. We need to send a clear message to the country: Republicans want the government OUT of society in all forms. We want the government to simply defend our rights from international enemies and from citizens who wish to do us harm. We want the government to assist commerce through infrastructure and security for assets but not by nationalizing industries. We want the government as small as possible and to interfere as little as possible.

Unfortunately, as long as we conservatives try to use the government to force our ways on other people, we have no right to criticize Obama and his cronies for using the government to force his ways on us.

Labels: life, politics

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Posted by Tom on 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Having recently appointed long-time tax cheat Timothy Geithner as the Treasury Secretary, I thought it would be pertinent to take a look at some of Obama's other picks in his first week:

Head of the DEA:

Tony Montana

Steroids Czar:

Ivan Drago

Minister of Immigration:

This Guy

Head of the ATF:

Rack'em Willie

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Posted by Tom on 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

If our Government keeps printing money to "bail us out" as Obama and pals are suggesting, it won't be long before you'll be using these to buy a Coke:


You see, when the government prints massive amounts of money out of thin air they cause the value of our current money to decrease. Since October, the government has increased the supply of money by 70%. This may not seem like that big of a deal, they haven't even doubled the amount. Also, because everyone else in the world is struggling, the dollar is still relatively strong in the currency market.

Well guess what, that won't last. Already, several European and Asian countries are meeting to discuss the formation of a new currency, or a new gold standard. Guess what will happen if that becomes the new world standard instead of the Dollar?

Hyperinflation. It's coming.

Labels: life

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Posted by Tom on 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Although I disagree with many of the things George W. Bush did in office, I do think he did an outstanding job of protecting this country from terrorist actions after the tragedy of September 11th, 2001. That day made it painfully clear that the Clinton mantra of dissolving military and intelligence left our country vulnerable to barbaric attack, and George W. Bush remedied the situation. We may disagree on his methods, but the results are clear.

If you would like to express your thanks to President Bush for his eight years of service, click on the photo below. Responses will be collected and presented to President Bush on 9/11/11.

Labels: politics

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Posted by Tom on 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Yesterday marks the largest inauguration day stock market plunge in history.

Have no fear though, from now on the media will be full of all the glee and sunshine that we witnessed over the duration of the inauguration festivities and they won't dare publish a negative word about the economy now that the One is steering the ship. Pretty soon we'll be riding the wave of economic prosperity again. Hopefully during this time the government won't institute too much socialism or else we'll be right back where we started a few years from now.

PS - hilariously, there are already a plethora of articles like this one explaining how the markets "always" plunge on inauguration day, so it's really not news. Propaganda sure is funny (if you like gallows humor.)

Labels: politics

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Posted by Tom on 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I've never believed in the myth of global warming, and I've never joined the modern day church of environmentalism. As I've shown many times before, global warming has been dispelled by science time and time again. However, the final nail in the coffin was driven over the past few days and it was ironically by the myth's biggest proponents.

Over the past few days, for the social celebration of the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama, at least 600 private jets were flown into Washington DC, carrying high dollar Democrats and celebrities. The very same people who tell us we need to ride our bikes instead of drive our cars; we need to use more blankets instead of our heaters; we need to give billions of dollars to useless windmill farms; we need to sacrifice and be responsible members of the global ecosystem.

I shouldn't have to explain why this is so ridiculous that it completely exposes the fallacy of global warming but just in case let me put this in perspective: As example, a Gulfstream G-II traveling 1,000 miles consumes some 1,220 gallons of fuel and emits 12.8 tons of CO2. This amount of C02 is over half the amount the average American produces in an entire year! So, while you take 7 or 8 months to generate the same amount of "pollution" as these elitist greenies produce in one single flight, they're all meeting in Washington to put laws in place mandating that we all cut back.

There is an exception though, and this is the funny/sinister part: carbon credits. You see, if you are simply too important to sit idle and you must egregiously pollute the earth then you can get out of the legal ramifications and morally cleanse yourself by simply buying some carbon credits! How convenient!

What does that leave us with? Businesses being stifled, average Americans sacrificing and being oppressed, jobs evaporating, and the rich elitists flying around polluting as much as they can. All in the name of Environmentalism.

If Global Warming were real, this would absolutely enrage everyone. When you witness the very people who are preaching global warming flaunt their mega-polluting lifestyles and telling us to be responsible, you simply have to realize that you are being played as a fool. Global Warming is a total farce and has been adopted by politicians as a means of oppression. Please wake up to that fact.

Labels: life, politics

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Posted by Tom on 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

All week, and ever since the election really, we've heard from the media and from Democratic leaders that we should put the past behind us and come together as one nation to move this country forward. We should abandon the politics of fear and the politics of hate and move into a post-partisan era of prosperity.

I was almost ready to give that a shot. I used to be a Republican, now I'm an independent, an Anti-Federalist, without a party, but I was going to try and be optimistic and supportive of the new President. Starting today, on Obama's first day in office, I was going to turn over a new leaf.

That lasted all of 5 minutes. As George W Bush was leaving office, the crowd held signs saying "Arrest Bush" and chanted "hey hey hey, goodbye."



So much for unity.

Labels: politics

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Posted by Tom on 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

In case you haven't noticed during this week of sheer idol worship by the media of President Obama and his inauguration, it turns out his trillion dollar stimulus package isn't really that much of a stimulus after all, it's just a massive spending bill doling out money to particular groups of people as promised during the campaign. Rather than proposing these projects on their merits in a time of rational thought (if such a time exists in Washington,) he's decided to make his first major move as President under the false appearance of economic stimulus. Excuse me for not being surprised.

So what would be a better idea? Well, it's very simple actually. In FY 2007, the US government collected $2.4 Trillion in taxes. Barack Obama wants to invent $1 Trillion in his stimulus package which we will pay back at some undetermined later date. Instead of using this debt to spend on government jobs like digging ditches and filling them back up again, why don't we just cut taxes in 2009? Let's be generous and say that the government will collect $3 Trillion in taxes this year. If we're going to invent $1 Trillion, then instead of wasting it on government projects why don't we just not collect it in taxes? Just give every single person in this country, no matter what income level, a 33% tax break!

Just keep the tax brackets as they are, with no permanent changes. Simply take the amount of taxes a person would pay in 2009 and subtract 33% of that. So if you currently pay a 20% tax rate, your taxes for 2009 would be 20% * 2/3, or 13.33%. If you currently pay a 36% tax rate, your taxes for 2009 would be 36% * 2/3, or 24%.

This tax rate would apply to businesses and individuals, and would give economic growth a HUGE boost. People would have more money to spend, businesses would have more money to use to hire workers, the economy would be genuinely stimulated. We'll never see Obama do this, and especially not Pelosi or Reid in the Congress. It's unfortunate really, because it just might work. Obama's stimulus, as it stands now, is sure to fail.

Labels: life, politics

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Posted by Tom on 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

In case you haven't had the misfortune of accidentally tuning across CNN on your television this weekend, you might be interested to know that they are running an eight hour special "Obama Express" show following along his train ride to Washington DC. The amount of bias shown here is simply phenomenal. I've never seen anything like this. Take one look around the web today and you'll see similar "rah rah" stories about Obama, enough to make you sick.

Look, I'm all for the news covering politics, but what happened to the tough journalism that we saw for 8 years under Bush? What happened to the carbon footprint of Bush's inauguration? What happened to the "exorbitant" costs of Bush's inauguration in a time of "recession and war?" Why is CNN riding along with Obama on a train ride in the middle of the coldest weather on record as if they were a part of his campaign team? What the heck is going on?

Seriously this is like watching ESPN go on a recruiting visit to Notre Dame and telling us constantly about how they were going to turn things around and all the great stuff about Notre Dame. That level of bias simply would never fly in the sports world, and it didn't used to work in the news media, but now apparently the major mainstream media outlets are lining up to be Obama propaganda machines. This is unbelievable.

PS - Think it's a coincidence that the Obama Express is 8 hours and the maximum presidential term is 8 years? I don't.

Labels: life, politics

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Posted by Tom on 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Clemson Head Coach Dabo Swinney today announced the full coaching staff for his first full season. As you may have guessed, I'm less than thrilled.

Clemson Football Staff Assignments for 2009 Season

Head Coach: Dabo Swinney

Offensive Assistants
Billy Napier - Offensive Coordinator, Quarterbacks
Danny Pearman - Assistant Head Coach, Tackles, Tight Ends
Andre' Powell - Running Backs, Special Teams Coordinator
Brad Scott - Associate Head Coach, Offensive Guards and Centers
Jeff Scott - Wide Receivers

Defensive Assistants
David Blackwell - Defensive Tackles
Charlie Harbison - Co-Defensive Coordinator, Defensive Backs
Chris Rumph - Defensive Ends
Kevin Steele - Defensive Coordinator, Inside Linebackers

In all honesty the defensive staff looks pretty solid. No complaints from me there. I thought Blackwell did an outstanding job in the Gator bowl against a great offense with absolutely zero assistance from our own offense. Everything I've seen about Steele is that he's a great coordinator and we should expect a hard-nosed, dominating defense out of him, so I'm really looking forward to that.

However, that's where the positives stop. First of all, do you notice something missing from that list? Here's a clue, it's something other than offense that we've sucked at for the last two decades... Special Teams. That's right, we still don't have a dedicated special teams coordinator. Instead we have a running backs coach who also, in his spare time, coaches special teams. That's not a good start.

The next obvious characteristic of the list is the lack of experience or success on the offensive side of the ball. We went with a gamble, an unknown, a risky choice for head coach and so rather than go out and hire an experienced veteran of an offensive coordinator, he decided to go with a gamble, an unknown, a risky Billy Napier. The same guy that called the plays for the last seven games, where our offense completely crumbled when faced with a halfway decent defense. Look at the Georgia Tech game, the Florida State game, the Virginia game, and finally the Nebraska game: what stood out as absolutely pathetic? Our offensive playcalling. Who was responsible? Napier. So he gets the job as Offensive Coordinator... excuse me for not pumping sunshine on this one, but I'm simply not buying the "but it was Bowden's offense" excuse. Napier had plenty of time to install new plays and formations and he just didn't get it done.

To be fair, we did see glimmers of hope with Napier at the head of the offense. The first half of the South Carolina game was filled with things we never saw from Bowden: power running with fullback lead-blocking, passing upfield on first and second down, quick hitting vertical pass plays like slants and posts, etc. Those things played to our offense's strengths (speed, runningbacks) and compensated for our weaknesses (linemen, quarterbacks.) For a minute there it looked like we were in for a complete offensive turnaround. Unfortunately, Napier didn't seem to learn the lesson of how effective those things were and they disappeared just as quickly as they had arrived. By the second half of the South Carolina game, we were back to our tunnel screen and double reverse loving ways, and that carried on to our Gator Bowl debacle against Nebraska. The Fun 'n Punt® offense was alive and well, with expected results.

Now, I should mention here that Swinney did mention in the press conference that there were going to be some offensive strategy changes in the off-season:

“Billy and I have worked together for four of the last five years,” said Swinney. “We have a good working relationship and the same philosophy, the same approach. We will have some changes next year. We will basically be a spread formation team. What will be different next year is that we will use the quarterback more in the running game. Billy is one of the fine young coaches in the nation. He will be a head coach some day.”

Call me a pessimist, but I just don't see much promise in this statement. I just don't see us coming out next year and running an Urban Meyer style shotgun option/veer and devastating the ACC. I wish we would, but something tells me it'll just be more of the same, except next year on third and long we'll have a scrambling quarterback who won't get sacked, but will run for 8 yards when we need 15. Yay.

Finally, it looks as if Swinney has caved to fan pressure about Brad Scott and taken the full responsibility of the offensive line away from him. Now he is only coaching guards and centers but as a consolation prize his son gets to move up to the big times in college football and coach the Wide Receivers. Hey, who knows, in just a few years he could be a head coach.

Labels: Clemson, coaches, football

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Posted by Tom on 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

A new auction site has started heavily advertising around the internets called Swoopo and I'm here to tell you that it's not as great of a deal as it seems. The site promises auctions on electronics that end in amazingly low prices, the only twist being that you have to pay not only the final price, but you have to pay a dollar for each time you bid.

This may seem innocent enough, but there are a few caveats that make this an extremely expensive scam at worst, and just a really bad deal at best. First of all you have to pay $1 every time you bid, no matter the outcome of the auction. You don't get your money back for bidding if you lose, and if you win you pay the price of all the bids plus the final auction price. Plus each bid is set at a $0.15 increase on the current price, and with the prices starting at ridiculously low levels (like $1.40 for a 40" LCD HDTV) you can imagine that there will be a huge amount of bidding before that auction ends. Also, every time anyone bids they add 20 seconds to the auction clock. So in effect, each auction is perpetual, meaning that they can continue to gouge you $1 each time you bid and never give you a set limit to when that bidding may end.

Long story short, Swoopo is a money drain. You may luck up and get a great deal and not have to pay for many bids, but the probability of that happening is very low. What's much more likely to happen is that you'll see something on there that should cost $500 and you'll bid on it 200 times and not win it, so you just lost $200. If gambling is your thing then this may be for you, but I suggest you steer clear.

Labels: life, technology

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Posted by Tom on 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Tim Tebow announced today that he will be returning to finish out his career at the University of Florida next season instead of declaring for the NFL Draft. As you may have heard, there has been a lot of discussion about Tebow's ability to play Quarterback at the next level with most of the talking heads leaning towards him transitioning to Tight End instead. They use words like "system quarterback" to demean his play at Florida where his rushing ability is utilized in the Urban Meyer shotgun veer/option. They say he just can't read defenses, doesn't have great arm strength or accuracy, and then they point to statistics to illustrate their point. I even saw a Georgia fan say "he had 65% accuracy, which is not significantly better than Stafford's 62%."

Well, I'm no Florida fan but I am a fan of football, and I can tell you that Tim Tebow would make a great NFL quarterback. The guy is a tremendous athlete and has the size, strength, and intelligence to play quarterback at the next level. He's also a great leader who has shown the ability time and again, both on the field and off, that he comes through when it matters. Finally, and most importantly: statistics are meaningless in football. Tebow does not have stellar passing numbers at Florida. Well guess what? Florida doesn't run a pass heavy offense. They use Tebow to make decisions in their tricky, complicated system and he does a great job at it. He is a team player first and foremost and so he could care less about his passing statistics, he just wants to win games, which obviously has turned out for the best for the Gators.

Tim Tebow might not be able to jump into the NFL and be a starting franchise quarterback in his Rookie season, simply because he hasn't run an NFL type offense while in college. However, given one or two years with NFL quarterbacks coaches and offensive coordinators he will turn out to be a very good NFL QB. I only hope he gets the chance.

Labels: football

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Posted by Tom on 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

After watching our pitiful offensive performance in person at the Gator Bowl a few days ago, the only emotion I could feel was disappointment. I thought we had gotten rid of Tommy Bowden but the playcalling during that game made me feel like we just had a new, slightly improved Tommy Bowden with all the screen plays and reverses but without the last name. In fact, I hadn't seen such a pathetic effort by an offense since the Georgia Tech game of '07. It was just an extremely depressing game to watch, especially with the amazing effort our defense put forth.

The problem was clear: our offensive playcalling was simply braindead. What happened to the playcalling from the South Carolina game? Why had we reverted to the predictability of the Bowden era? We seemed to be following the same formula on every drive: Dive, screen or reverse, third and long pass attempt (sack,) punt. It was the Fun 'n punt of old.

Where was the passing on first down? Where were the quick hitting pass plays like slants and outs that had worked so well against South Carolina? Why did we run so many damn screens and east/west plays? As you can tell, it was an extremely frustrating debacle to witness.

What's even more frustrating is how the Clemson faithful have responded to the game in the same ol' typical way that absolves the coaches of any wrongdoing whatsoever. "Cullen Harper sucks" and "our offensive line is pathetic" are the main excuses. If our QB can't make decisions and our OL can't hold blocks, why then did we not run more "no brainer" pass plays like those I already mentioned? It doesn't take a great QB to run a TE pop pass, and it definitely doesn't take a great line, but it does gain yardage. If our line was so bad, why did we run so many plays that required such precise, excellent blocking as reverses and tunnel screens? The fans just don't seem to get those points. They just fall into their comfort zone of blaming certain players and absolving the coaches of any responsibility.

This brings me to my overall point: if Clemson wants to compete for the ACC title, Dabo Swinney needs to realize that his current offensive staff just can't get the job done. More specifically, he needs to hire an offensive coordinator that has a demonstrated record of success and knows how to put together a gameplan that uses the strengths of his team against the weaknesses of the opponent. Even more than that: we need an offensive coordinator with his own philosophy that is a complete departure from the failure of an offense that we couldn't seem to discard after Bowden's firing. If Napier remains at OC and our offense is not completely redesigned, we will see another frustrating year of what if's and could have been's in 2009.

Labels: Clemson, coaches, football

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Posted by Tom on 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post