Coffee Klatch

For what it’s worth, here are the rules that Mexico has regarding immigration.

1. If you migrate to this county, you must speak the native language.

2. You have to be a professional or an investor. No unskilled workers allowed.

3. There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools, no special ballots for elections, all government business will be conducted in our language.

4. Foreigners will NOT have the right to vote no matter how long they are here.

5 Foreigners will NEVER be able to hold political office.

6. Foreigners will not be a burden to the taxpayers. No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, or other government assistance programs.

7. Foreigners can invest in this country, but it must be an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage.

8. If foreigners do come and want to buy land that will be okay, BUT options will be restricted. You are not allowed waterfront property. That is reserved for citizens naturally born into this country.

9. Foreigners may not protest; no demonstrations, no waving a foreign flag, no political organizing, no badmouthing our president or his policies, if you do you will be sent home.

10. If you do come to this country illegally, you will be hunted down and sent straight to jail.

I’ve been seeing these commercials for Domino’s and how they’ve reformulated their pizzas based on all the customer reviews criticizing their crust, sauce, etc. Their commercials are advertising two-topping medium pizzas for $5.99. I decided to test them out, so we bought two pizzas for our family of five. One was pepperoni and onion, the other was sausage and green pepper. They were both EXCELLENT! The taste was different, of course, but everyone agreed that they were really good. Camber (who’s 8 years old) has declared that Domino’s is his new favorite! And, you know, that special garlic sauce that they brush on the crust is excellent too!

If you’ve always been anti-Domino’s, I suggest you give them another try. They have some new fans in our house!

I just read this and thought I’d pass it on. Here’s what you find out when you crunch the numbers:

A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.

A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year.

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year (a very generous calculation, and far greater than the program requires).

They claim 700,000 vehicles so that’s 224 million gallons saved per year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.

5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.

More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars.

So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.

We spent $8.57 for every dollar saved over one year.

If we look at a five year life, we save $1.75 billion.

It takes over 8.5 years to break even, not considering opportunity or interest costs.

How good a deal was that???

Here’s a link to the text of the speech that President Obama made to schoolchildren today: http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

Main topics included: set your own goals for your own education, don’t quit, keep trying even if you fail, ask for help when you need it, don’t ever give up on yourself, and you are ultimately responsible for yourself.

Political statements were blessedly absent.

Here is a quote from Pope John Paul II, which is quite relevant today and which can’t help but color my voting decisions:

“Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.”

(Christifideles Laici, no. 38)

Given that so much discussion is going on about the presidential candidates, and given that we’re having another presidential election in just a couple of months, you may be interested in a website that gives you the candidates’ perspectives on tons of issues. Unless you’re a one-issue voter (which I think is a pretty inefficient way to properly evaluate our potential national leaders), you will probably benefit from a resource that gives you all the details. ProCon.org is a site that does that. They have a 1-minute overview that tells you what their site is all about.

Before you get into comparing the various candidates, you seriously may want to take their survey that compares your positions on 65 different issues with the positions of all the candidates. Go to http://www.2008electionprocon.org/candidatesurvey.htm and download the Excel spreadsheet and take the survey. When you’re done you’ll see at the bottom what percentage of your views is shared by each of the candidates.

After you’re done with the survey, you can visit http://www.2008electionprocon.org/ for tons of information about the candidates and even pick particular issues and see how everyone stands. Or you can scan their Summary Chart. Candidate positions are backed up by quotes.

Today President Bush said that the U.S. economy is still strong and growing. What the heck? Is he living in the same country I’M living in?

[This morning President Bush] attempted to calm jittery economic markets and anxious Americans at a morning press conference, insisting that the U.S. economy is still growing despite its problems, even as new reports showed inflation rising at the fastest pace in more than a quarter-century, and the prospect of more bank failures loomed.

If consumer confidence is any indicator of the strength of the economy, it’s far from strong. Many other indicators say the same thing. Yet Mr. Bush chose to point out that:

“our economy’s continued growing, consumers are spending, businesses are investing, exports continue increasing, and American productivity remains strong.”

Food and gasoline costs are the highest they’ve ever been, there have been runs on several banks (some actually folded), the housing market is still going down, foreclosures are STILL going up, job losses are still going up, the stock market is still going down, and the U.S. dollar is weak all over the world (including at home). That sure doesn’t sound to me like a strong economy.

Somebody is seriously deluded.

He’d be better off explaining what’s truly going on and suggesting ideas to make it through the tough times he acknowledges we’re in. Instead, all I hear is “We’re doing fine. We’re doing fine!” That’s no help. It’s delusion.

The founder of the Weather Channel is saying he will sue Al Gore (among others) for fraud. He feels that the media is only presenting one side of the global warming issue and that the whole issue is nonexistent. But since he can’t get anyone to dialog seriously about it, he figures maybe the courtroom will get the issue discussed.

“As you look at the atmosphere over the last 25 years, there’s been perhaps a degree of warming, perhaps probably a whole lot less than that, and the last year has been so cold that that’s been erased,” he said.

“I think if we continue the cooling trend a couple of more years, the general public will at last begin to realize that they’ve been scammed on this global-warming thing.”

You can read more about this news story here.

The British Medical Journal published an article yesterday written by two U.S. researchers who examined the evidence for seven “medical myths.” Here’s what they found out. (Click the link to read the full article and get the explanations.)

1. Drinking eight glasses of water a day to stay healthy has so scientific basis.
2. Reading in dim light will not ruin your eyesight.
3. Shaving your hair does not make it grow back faster or coarser.
4. Eating turkey does NOT make you drowsy (any more than chicken or other foods).
5. We do use more than 10% of our brains.
6. Hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death.
7. Mobile phones are not dangerous in hospitals.