This new CNN opinion poll reveals,

“Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

A comment by Jake on the View from the Porch Blog stated,

“What boggles my mind is that they couldn’t even slant it to get away from the .gov being an immediate threat. Not a ‘potential’ threat, or even a ‘growing’ threat, but an immediate threat.”

I honestly agree and consider myself part of the majority in this case. Read the CNN article here.

About two years ago I started writing a short story about a battle between humans and aliens that takes place in the streets of a medium sized mid-western city. I thought it would be awesome to have house-to-house, street-level combat, similar to the combat that our forces encountered in WWII when fighting in Europe. However, several months after I began my story, as I was still developing the plot and characters, I read an article about a new movie that was being scripted that involved my basic premise. I was bummed. Well, that movie has finished some of its principle photography, which was being filmed in Louisiana. I just found a YouTube video of a guy that drives through part of the town as it’s being cleaned-up by a construction crew after the film crew had left. I love it when the cop tells him to put the camera away.

The photo above was taken a few days ago during the first series of storms that Ohio received. I’ve just learned that my county is under another Winter Storm Watch (I think it’s the third or fourth one in two weeks). The average snowfall amount for my area in February is less than an inch. So far this year we’ve had about four or five snow events, with at least two of them happening this month. Each snow event brought several inches of snow. The first big storm brought about ten inches, then we had snow and flurries for a few days that added about another three or four inches. Although there’s been some settling of the snow and, despite the sub-freezing temperatures, there has been some melting, the current standing snow outside my front door measures about 8 inches . The weather report this morning is predicting another three to five inches of new snow by tomorrow night. As if that news wasn’t bad enough, this morning the temperature is six degrees. Six! I am very eager for Spring to arrive!
UPDATE: As if it matters to you, the weather service is now calling for seven to nine inches of new snow over the next 12 hours. Oh, goodie.

I was asked by several people, friends and family alike, to reduce the number of economic and political posts on my Blog because they just weren’t fun. And, I’ve done that. I’ve tried to shy away from those topics. However, it’s extremely important that we don’t forget how our choices, or lack of them, will affect us as we age and drastically affect the prosperity and happiness of our children. This Newsweek article honestly and truthfully discusses the dangerous state of our nation’s economy, and it places a call-to-action on the current administration to be honest and open about this situation to the public. If you want to pretend that things aren’t going to get worse and that the prosperity of the past will soon return, then you are setting yourself and your family up for a very uncomfortable and perhaps dangerously rude awakening. To quote President Obama, “We have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election … All the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time or some other day. Well, that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.” But, as the Newsweek article states, politicians don’t want to ask voters for sacrifices in order to correct economic troubles. It’s political suicide to ask voters to accept tax increases or cuts to public aid. So, politicians hide the truth. Obama talks a good game, but he’s failing to act. He’s failing to speak the truth and time is very quickly running out. We only have a few years left before the choices disappear and we are left with nothing but grief and a very large bill with “balance due” printed across the top. The article discusses how the government is working to postpone the inevitable. But, reminds us that there is no free lunch. Here’s a quote from the Newsweek article: “But what happens when the time really does come? When the debt is piled too high, when the economy threatens to sink under the weight of accumulated obligations that have been put off too long? There are more than a few signs that those times are not so far away for the federal government, and that in some big (and big-spending) states, the day of reckoning is now.”