Emergency, USA

Hopefully you have already seen this and sent it to your friends.  If not, please read and react.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.


I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.


Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5.. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!!

Betting man?

We have spent the summer researching 100's of sports betting and "how-to bet" sites.  We think we have found a mixture of safe sites that you can comfortably visit.  The football season can become a little more interesting by playing the odds and winning.  It's all about winning when my cash is at risk, right.  It is certainly more exciting.  Take a look at the possibilities.  Charlie Sports Betting

SEC Media Days

SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said recent headlines across the country have laid bare the darker side of major college sports so much that they have "lost the benefit of the doubt." Read more:


Slive manages a conference that most agree is the strongest in the country. Most of the nation's highest paid coaches do battle here. The SEC teams play in the largest, most glamorous stadiums in the country. The SEC champion has been the National Champion for the past five years. I guess one could say the league "knows football". It has the largest TV football contract (see below) of any conference. Money is rolling in from everywhere. But the SEC schools can't stay totally within NCAA rules. Currently LSU was just slapped with a one-year probation for recruiting violations. Tennessee and Auburn are awaiting verdicts from the NCAA for the same reasons.

It seems that the only private university in the conference, Vanderbilt, is also the only squeaky clean school as per the NCAA. Vanderbilt also has the poorest won-lost record ever. Wonder why? Well, Vandy admits real students. Those students take real courses and they all graduate, unlike the situation at other schools. Isn't this the way it should at all colleges?

Some coaches disagree with Slive's suggestion that the score on the required sixteen high school core courses be raised from 2.0 to 2.5. Come on, man. Who needs to be able to read as long as he can catch a pass or sack a quarterback. Those academically challenged kids put fans in the stadiums and a check mark on the left of the won/loss column.

The bottom line is that college was never meant to be for everyone. The opportunity to attend should be there for everyone who works and maintains a high school average that warrants college admission. Athletes should meet the same admissions standards as every other applicant.

College should be for learning and preparation for life and a career. A college's name and its facilities (Sports Palaces) should not be used to promote or perpetuate professional sports teams. The only difference between SEC football and the NFL is that SEC players aren't paid obscene salaries. The obscene salaries in the SEC are paid to the coaches.

Does anyone recall an Ivy league school being sanctioned by the NCAA? How many FCS schools have been put on NCAA probation? Big money brings big pressures and big temptations.

And, Folks, money is what it is all about.

Things that piss me off

1. The NFL lockout. On one side there are multimillionaire owners who seek more millions. I guess that is a reasonable goal for a successful business person.
On the other sideline are the players who want more of everything. “Hey look at me and my gold chains” attitudes. Guys, some of who do not even have a college degree, making salaries of $20+ millions. There are presently 25 players making over $12 million. The average salary of a roster player ranges from $1,177,280 if you are a SF 49er to $560,000 as a Kansas City Chief. Hey most of us could live pretty well on half-a-mil.

It is true that the average career as an NFL player is not one that extends to normal retirement age of the rest of the working society. So get it while you can is a reasonable attitude. Let’s assume you are quarterback Philip Rivers of San Diego. Rivers’ annual salary in 2009-10 was $25,556,630. If his career lasts another five years, that’s $127,783,150. How can a man spend $127,000,000?

The owners have and are taking business risks as any business owner does. They make it possible for the players to command the kind of obscene salaries they are paid. Without the owners, the players have no stage on which to perform. Yet the owners are crazy as bedbugs. St. Louis made a deal with first round draft pick Sam Bradford paying him $78 million over six years, with $50 million guaranteed. If his career ends because of an injury in year 2 of his contract, he still gets $50 million. It sounds like a dumb deal to me.

Of course both sides are bickering over some $9 BILLION in cash that is on the table. People murder for that kind of money. Divide the money equally among the 32 NFL cities for the purpose of improving education in those cities. Heaven knows American education could stand some improving.

Salary data from http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/football/nfl/salaries/player/top-25

2. Politicians in general. The founding fathers never intended for members of Congress to be or become professional politicians. Their idea was of citizen senators and representatives. They never envisioned “pork barreling” as a tool of negotiation. They never dreamed of a Supreme Court that attempts to take God out of everything. We know this is true, because they had the early builders put In God We Trust on all our currency, and all public buildings in Washington, including the Supreme Court Building. Yeah I know, they also never dreamed of cars, planes or rockets either. Yet they were bargained that if this country stayed faithful to God, God would truly bless us. Right now, if you were God would you remain faithful to America? A country that has made it unlawful to display His Ten Commandments in/on public buildings. A country that has sunken to the depths of such indecent language in public,in print and in movies and television. A country that constantly tells our young people that having sex is ok if it makes you feel good.

3. Political Correctness. I in no way advocate embarrassing or demeaning another person by verbal cruelty. But I do believe that a “Rose is a Rose by any other name” (William Shakespeare, I think). One cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. One does not make a school better by simply calling it an Academy. One does not make homosexuality more acceptable by calling it a Gay lifestyle.  America is obsessed with sex and all perverted forms of it.  So were the last Romans.

"Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this." - Doris Lessing, 2007 Nobel Prize for literature.

July 4: Why Blondie Loves America

This article was published by my friend Bob Lee of bobleesays.com fame.

"Blondie wrote this piece back in 2007 for our pal Toronto talk show host Jerry Agar. It has held up well in the ensuing years. I’d like to say I helped her craft these powerful words but I didn’t. I was probably writing some dumb sports column while she was actually “saving Western Civilization”. Bless her heart!" - BobLee
Click for full article.  It will make your day.

Thanks, BobLee

Back when I was a boy, part 3

Public school back when I was a boy was totally different than today’s embarrassment. In the early grades, we learned the basics of the Three R’s – reading, riting and rethmatic. We also were subject to paddling if we acted up. My third grade teacher was good at palm paddling. Proper palm padding technique was as follows: 1. Palm up, 2. Grab the fingers and arch the palm upward, 3. Smack that palm several times with a wood ruler. Such always got my attention. It altered my unacceptable behavior and certainly did not warp my id. My parents were ok with Mrs. Cooper’s behavior towards my sometimes bad attitude. Instead of threatening to sue the school board and have dear Mrs. Cooper fired, they asked her to do whatever she deemed necessary to keep my attention. Whatever I got at school, I got more at home that night.


Schools back then were neighborhood schools. They served a certain area of the city. One could easily walk to and from school. In the metropolitan cities, there were no school buses because there was no forced desegregation. One attended his or her neighborhood school. From first grade through high school, I never had a Black schoolmate. The South was segregated which meant “separate but equal”. Separate they were, equal they were not.

I was never a star student. I would say I was average. I loved lunch, recess and math. I learned some things out of fear. I feared my teacher. I feared my Dad and my Mom taught me that I had better fear God and that God definitely did not like slackers. That was fine. Learning by fear is better than not at all, right?

In junior high school, I became aware of girls. I was shy and the prettier they were, the more intimidated I was. I always thought girls, especially the pretty ones, were perfect. They would never use four-letter words and certainly never give anyone the ‘bird”. Well I learned I was wrong on both counts.

One started to attend parties in junior high school. The one's where for the first hour the girls were on one side of the room and us guys on the other side. There was always one particular one who got my eye. I wanted to dance with her. I desperately wanted to hold her hand. But the coward I was came through and I acted as though I was not at all interested in girls.

I had a friend, Thomas, who was just the opposite. He was aggressive with the ladies. He even kissed at least one of them before the night was over. He was not at all shy or intimidated by girls and they seemed to be more interested in him than certainly me. The seventh grade was definitely frustrating when it came to girls.

I loved sports and the seventh grade was my introduction to real football. In the earlier years, we played sandlot football in a field behind our house. No protective gear but tackle football. Lots of cuts and bruises in those days. Thes were scares that made is proud though.

My mother almost messed me up though. When I was in the fifth grade, she decided I needed some culture. Music lessons were in my future. She let me choose what instrument I would play. I chose the trumpet because it looked far more macho to me than the piano or violin. I took lessons all one summer. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. After six weeks my instructor informed me that he had several other students and he had planned a recital for all of us in two weeks. I was to pick a tune I thought I could easily play in front of all the parents. How could I get sick in two weeks. The week before the recital I asked one of my friends to sock me in the mouth hard enough to put my lips out of commition for at least a week. He refused because my mom had invited him to attend the recital. He was my only friend who even knew I was taking lessons and he would be there to giggle at my attempt to get through my part.

Back when I was a boy, part 2

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's or even the early 80's, probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we
took hitchhiking.)

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose. Horrors! We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of wood scraps fruit crates and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us by cell phone. Unthinkable! We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, no video games at all,no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones,personal computers, or Internet chat rooms. We had neighborhood friends! We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt. We played other games such as Kick the Can and Capture the Flag. We fell out of trees, got cut, and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us.

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. We were still friends. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in. Few worried about locking the doors.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with it. And there were no trophies for everybody at the end of the season.  We played because we wanted to be with our friends and it was fun.  There were no 8-,12-,or 15 year old all-star teams.  If parents attended games, they behaved.

Some of us weren't as smart as others, so we failed a grade and were held back. Horrors! Tests were not adjusted for any reason. There was no such thing as a retest. Our actions were our own. Failure was a possibility, no one to hide behind. If I got paddled at school - yep, paddling was used and the experience did not warp anyone's ID. And I got another one when I got home. You see, like parents, teachers were always right!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and innovators, ever.  We even put men on the moon.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. If you're one of us, Congratulations!