Wow. WOW.

A-FREAKING-men.

Forget Obama and McCain. We need to elect that guy as president.

This Web site has some frightening issues they address in regards to the direction of our country. I'm not an alarmist, nor do I promote conspiracy theories; but I do think the media are controlled by people delivering unreliable, completely biased information and sometimes you have to look elsewhere for a deeper look at what is really going on. I encourage everyone to move beyond the traditional media outlets every now and then to provoke thought and recognize the possibility that there is more going on than the Old Media will ever tell us.

Ironically, often there is probably also less going on than the Old Media will ever admit.

With that in mind, never in the history of the United States have we seen such a radical, far-left, unknown candidate as Obama on the ticket to be leader of the free world. I fear that many people who support him do so blindly without a real handle on the issues he wants to turn upside-down: gun control, abortion, welfare, SPREADING THE WEALTH, and a host of other issues. Does ANYONE think about what changing those issues will look like in the end, and what that means for the health of our American society? Most of the arguments I hear in favor of his "change" when it comes to specific issues are naive and shallow at best, backed up with nothing but personal opinion and popular ideology. With the help of the Hollywood elite, Obama has painted a pretty picture for everyone under the facade of eloquence and Messiah-esque appeal and, unfortunately, more Americans are falling for it than not.

There are plenty of people out there who want "change" and would stop at nothing to destroy McCain's chances and discredit Governor Palin. To those people, I say this: If Obama wins, fine. It will be no surprise to little ol' me if that is the outcome of this election. So we'll try it your way for a while, and we'll see what this "change" he touts really means. Socialism? Marxism? I believe we're in for a rude awakening, because an Obama administration is only the beginning of what I'm sure will be a very unwelcome change by even the people who voted him into office.

On the flipside, McCain is simply the lesser of two evils. He's not perfect, but at least he's not a socialist. After all, he hasn't the media friends to ask to seek out and destroy guys like Joe the Plumber when they question his tax plan:

Congratulations, Team Obama, we've still got two-plus weeks until Election Day and you're already destroying jobs. After last week's now-notorious encounter with Joe the Plumber, Obama's media foot soldiers were dispatched with a simple mission: destroy Joe. On Sunday's Fox and Friends, Joe announced their success; his business has been shut down.

Thanks to the intrepid reporting of journalists who've obviously lost all sense of perspective, it turns out Joe has been fixing Ohioans' plumbing without a government-issued license. Talk about irony. Joe came under fire for humiliating Obama by noting his tax plans interfere with Joe's American Dream. He wanted to buy his plumbing company and expand it, but higher taxes on small businesses threaten to turn that dream into a nightmare. The left, in other words, used Big Government to silence Joe Citizen for speaking ill of Big Government.

In turn, Americans have offered financial support to Joe - offers he's politely declined.

Americans have taken to Joe for his willingness to go where the media refuses - that is, for actually speaking truth to power. Nothing's more infuriating than reporters allowing themselves to be used by politicians, yet that's exactly what's being done on a daily basis at CBS, NBC, CNN, etc. Joe got the opportunity to tell Obama directly that his tax plans - which penalize hard work while claiming to further America's best interests - were an insult to his intelligence.

Thank you, Laura Ingraham, for that witty little sentiment on how truly brave an American citizen you have to be to speak up against a media darling like Barack Obama.

Finally, don't discredit Obama's relationships with domestic terrorists, radical preachers, criminals, and genocidal control freaks, either. He'll dismiss them as passing acquaintances, but the video that could cost Obama the election shows yet ANOTHER tie that has me just a tad bit concerned that we're handing the reigns over to someone who believes big government is the answer to everyone's problems, who may eventually reveal himself as a leader who silences opposition because he has given himself the power to do so.

Tax cut analogy

Not sure who wrote this, but it makes sense to me...

Let's put tax cuts in terms that everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh $7.

The eighth $12.

The ninth $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."

So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free.
But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?

The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being 'PAID' to eat their meal. So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).

The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (29% savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $50 instead of $59 (15% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $9!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar too.
It's unfair that he got nine times more than me!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man.

"Why should he get $9 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.

They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.

There are lots of good restaurants in Europe and the Caribbean.

Proverbs 22:7

Monday night, I got real mad. Cody and I have been attending Financial Peace University at Mountain Valley Church and man, did I get pissed off. I was already mad to begin with because the wonderful paralegal department at Phoenix College wouldn't lift a finger to help me get into the classes I need this summer so I can graduate in the fall instead of next spring, but I digress. This particular session was called Dumping Debt, and it was simply infuriating. And all you have to really do to get pissed off about having debt is to read Proverbs 22:7:

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Let the truth of that one smack some sense into your silly little head for a second. This version is the NIV. It reads pretty much exactly the same in every other translation. I guess there's not much left to the imagination in a statement as plain as that. The only major difference I found is that some translations replace servant with slave.

...SLAVE!

Leave it to God to be that profound and blunt.

Cody and I are slaves. We are tied down completely by our debt. Don't get me wrong- we are able to pay our bills, and we are by no means in dire straits. It's just that our money comes in, and it doesn't have our names on it. It has other people's names on it- FIA Card Services. TruWest. Desert Schools. Honda Finance Corporation. Nordstrom. Direct Loans Student Services. We work hard 40 hours a week to give these people our hard-earned money, with interest. And for what?!!! A new car? A new dress? The latest craze? Fancy gifts for other people? A bunch of crap we don't need, that we probably don't have anymore, but that we have the potential to be paying off for decades to come?

Hmmm. Seems our judgment was lacking a bit.

With the arrival of my first credit card offer from Discover at the ripe old age of 20, the words "buy now, pay later" rang in my head like a schizophrenic, impulsive gong with every trip I took to the mall. I wanted to look cool. I wanted to look like a somebody. I wanted people to think better of me because of what I had.

Looking back, if I could have strapped myself up in a straitjacket at even the mere thought of a new pair of jeans or a sequined top, I would have done it in a heartbeat. I'm sure there was some part of my soul watching from the outside screaming at the top of her lungs, "LISTEN TO YOUR DAD! HE'S TRYING TO SAVE YOU FROM YOUR UNAPOLOGETIC IDIOCY!"

I grew up in a family who was comfortable but never rich. My parents made sure that we had everything we needed but not necessarily everything we wanted. My dad is a financial genius and I didn't listen to a word he ever said to me about money- and although he knew what was best, he let me make my own choices, probably because he knew I would have to deal with the consequences and it would teach me a lesson. My parents even bailed me out in tremendous ways when I was in college, and even after. There are no words to describe my gratefulness for their generosity.

A few years ago, it occurred to me that, gee, Dad really did know best all along, and I couldn't continue on that way if I wanted to have a future. I was able to pay off a lot of the debt I owed and I was on my way. So this whole concept of debt begetting slavery is not new to me. It's just that we still have a long way to go. Eighteen months seems like an eternity when you are in a buyers' housing market and your hands are tied because you have a negative net worth and no 20% down payment (yes, I know a mortgage is debt, but it's the only one that appreciates in value, generally speaking). Fortunately we both have excellent credit because in spite of the irresponsibility of having any debt in the first place, we have been responsible with the payments. As much as it kills me to look at the homes on the market that are affordable knowing that we can't buy right now, we both know that we can't take on more debt while we are still in debt. So we're plugging away to get out. Getting Gazelle Intense to out-run the Cheetahs that are after our money and our future every day.



We learned that 70% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. And only 55% are worried about it (nobody knows what the other 15% are doing). But that means that it is "normal" to live paycheck-to-paycheck, and it is also "normal" to think that it is a normal thing to do! What are these people going to do when retirement hits and Social Security has run out?! Is this why most Americans these days seem to favor a large government- so that they will be taken care of when they can't work anymore?!! Because they don't want to do the hard work themselves?!!!

OK... I'm going on a crazy tangent here. I've just been mad. I've been mad at myself. Mad because it's somehow been accepted as normal to be in debt. Mad that credit card marketing has worked so well. Mad that I fell for it; mad that my husband fell for it. Mad that high schoolers are being taught that when they get to college, they "need" a credit card to establish credit and have a "future" (true story). Mad that I have dear friends who make outrageously unnecessary purchases and justify it by saying that they can "afford the payments." Mad because I used to do the same thing. Mad that I knew better and didn't listen. Mad that we live in a country where slavery is, indeed, alive and well.

If you take anything away from this blog, let it be this: Everyone thinks car payments are a fact of life (I guess these are the same 70% who live paycheck-to-paycheck... no?). The average car payment is $464 per month. If you instead bought a used car and paid cash for it, and made what would have been your "fact-of-life" car payments to yourself in a money market account, you would be a multi-millionaire by the time you reached retirement. If you choose the car... I hope the car will still be worth that choice when you retire.

Money isn't everything. Wealth isn't everything. But you have the choice to be smart or be stupid (i.e. "normal") with your hard-earned money. You can choose to put your name on your money or put someone else's name on your money. You can choose to be a good steward of all that God gives you so that you can give it back to Him. I'm so excited to be learning this stuff now and hope that even if it's not through me that someday you'll get excited- or even mad!- about it too.

Stay tuned.

The LOVE of money is the root of all evil...

"As a Christian, I am amazed how certain political and religious groups have decided that wealth is evil. Many of the heroes of biblical faith, of world history, and of our nation were very wealthy, including Kind David, Solomon, Job, and most of our Founding Fathers. There is a negative mind-set justifying money mediocrity that is maddening. Wealth is not evil, and people who possess it aren't evil by virtue of the wealth. There are rich jerks and poor jerks. Dallas Willard, in his book Spirit of the Disciplines, says to use riches is to cause them to be consumed, to trust in riches is to count upon them for things they cannot provide, but to possess riches is to have the right to say how they will or will not be used.

If you are a good person, it is your spiritual duty to possess riches for the good of mankind. If you are a Christian like me, it is your spiritual duty to possess riches so that you can do with them things that bring glory to God. The bottom line is, if you take the stand that managing wealth is evil or carnal, then by default you leave all the wealth to the evil, carnal people. If wealth is spiritually bad, then good people can't have it, so all the bad people get it. It is the duty of the good people to get wealth to keep it from the bad people, because the good people will do good with it. If we all abandon money because some misguided souls view it as evil, then the only ones with money will be the pornographer, the drug dealer, or the pimp. Simple enough?"

Just a thoughtful snippet from Dave Ramsey in Total Money Makeover. Sure gets me thinking about how I'd rather have the opportunity to get on my feet financially so I can give generously, of my own volition, than have my paychecks taxed away to go to government-run programs that exist but do very little to alleviate real problems, or that simply go against my value system by the essence of their existence. More thoughts on that later... maybe. Right now it's bedtime.