Can’t pass a bill the first time? No problem. Nothing makes congressmen forget their principles like riders. Add an unrelated solar energy subsidy here (Sounds like something we should do in an energy bill.) a unrelated tax break there (I’m all for lower taxes, but doesn’t that belong in a tax bill?) and viola, most congress men and woman are completely blinded by the unrelated treats to notice that the bill they are passing tramples many if not all of their core beliefs (or at least what they claim are their core beliefs while campaigning).

The house of representatives have voted against the massive banker well-fair package. I’m proud to say that my representative, Democrat Nick Lampson, along with many many Texas Democrats and Republicans voted against this in accordance with their constituents wishes. If you are happy or mad, let them know! Thank your representative if they voted in accordance with your wishes. Tell them you are disappointed if they voted against your wishes.

Some in congress think we are just to dumb to understand. We need papa congress to protect us from ourselves. Does anyone else think that is fundamentally un-American? Does that make anyone else furious. 99.5% of people contacting both houses of congress are screaming not to do this bailout, yet congress is going to vote to give all the money to the bankers.

The news is full of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the economy. I don’t doubt things will be bad, but the way the banking industry, including Paulson and Bernanke is selling it, each of our first born will be killed. This is a pattern in the executive branch during the Bush administration. That is the first thing to realize. Bush has used this same tactic to scare the American people into surrendering rights and granting powers over and over again. This is just another example.

A friend recently gave me an interesting way to fight back at the credit card companies. We all get them, those pre-approved, zero interest, you’ve won scams. It is almost impossible to avoid. You can file a fraud alert on yourself which helps, but that is only temporary. Trying to remove yourself is useless.

As some of you may know, I’m a bit of a crazy cat person. This is just more evidence.

On January 15th, 2007 I officially started “my diet” for real. It isn’t even clear to me what finally pushed me over the top and caused me succeed. God knows I’ve tried before. Whatever it was, a year ago on the 15th, I weighed 318lb and as of this morning I weigh 233lb. I’ve lose 85lb in the last year (more if you consider that my weight fluctuated from 315 to around 330 regularly since college).

Sometime after I found out that I had (all be it superficial) melanoma, sometime after the initial shock of being told I had one of the most aggressive forms of cancer humans get had started to wear off, after the 2.5 inch disk of skin had been removed from the side of my head, sometime after that, I joked with my dermatologist that my goal was to get back to a situation where my weight was once again the most serious threat to my health. In reality, I was never out of that situation.

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