Todd’s Life

Well, today was another great day with my new friend, Karla.  I thought that we wouldn’t be getting together until Saturday, but she surprised me and asked me what I was doing after work.  I told her that I had no plans, but that I really just wanted to relax in my house.  Well, she joined me and we talked for hours and just had an enjoyable time.  It is obvious to me and to her that we like each other.  I don’t know where this will go, but right now I don’t really care.  It is nice and yet strange for me to be dating someone.  Who would have thought that this would happen in Chile.  Like I told her, I wasn’t expecting this.  I thought that she was a good looking woman, but the more I find out about her, the more I like her.  She is a beautiful, charming, and mysterious woman.  I look forward to pursuing her and seeing what good comes of it.  Unfortunately, this means for a time that I’ll need to retire from my biting commentary on our stupid government back in the United States.  I saw how Obama said he was going to save $2 or $3 trillion dollars in the budget, but when you read the fine print, it was a savings over 10 years.  On a politician pulls that crap.  If he were honest, he would say $300 billion this year, but in reality what is happening this year is that  budget is increasing once again, the government is growing, and our freedom is shrinking.  But hey, you get what you vote for.  Sure he sounded nice and looked nice, but he always spoke of big government and socialism, which is change in America… Ha.Ha.  What fools we are for giving the Democrats, or the socialist party of America, the party most responsible for our big government mess that we currently have, control of both the executive and legislative branch.  What do you think they will do?  Tax and spend and gro government.  Is that anyway to fix and economy?    Ok, maybe I do have a little time to rip our government, in between a little love.  Ha.Ha.  I am what I am folks.  That won’t change no matter how much in love I become.

I am tired today, really tired.  I haven’t been getting good sleep for several days now for many reasons, work and a new woman in my life.  I forgot how crazy it was during the first little bit of getting to know someone.  There are just so many worries, such as will it work out, etc.  Noone knows.  I’m not good with this stuff anyway.

I did notice in the news today that Obama wants to rebuild our economy, but anyone that believes that a bureaucrat deciding the best way to allocate resources in a resource restricted world is absolutely nuts and is basically saying that they trust a few men of questionable character to make decisions that are made much better by those who directly pay for them, you and I.  In other words, the same morons that got us into this mess think that they have the genius ability to get us out of it.  Oh, that is just too, too funny.  And with that little soapbox, koolaid moment, I’m going to go to bed.

First some introduction.  One of the ways that those who want to control people use to gain this advantage is to demonize terms or phrases or ideas that directly oppose their designs to control through big government what you and I do.  One of those words that they have effectively demonized is capitalism.  What is capitalism?  Capitalism is really nothing more than economic freedom.  In effect, the socialists have done an admirable job demonizing freedom.  That being said, I read this on www.dailyreckoning.com the other day.  It is such a lucent argument and definition of capitalism that I needed to share it with you.  Pass it on off course, if you wish.

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From the article “A Broken Down Stock Market” taken from www.dailyreckoning.com

What is capitalism, after all? It is not a system…not a plan…not a program. It was not decreed by any half-wit tyrant…nor written into law by any earnest assembly. It has no constitution…and no boundaries. It is merely a recognition of basic principles. ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ it says in the Bible. Capitalism recognizes other peoples’ property. The baker has a right to his oven. The farmer has a right to his land. The capitalist has a right to his money. What they do with these things is up to them.

Will they make mistakes? Of course they will. Will they do evil and obnoxious things? No doubt about it. Will they occasionally lose their heads and overprice their assets…or run the whole economy into too much debt…or blow themselves up in a bubble? You bet.

As Adam Smith described, they will also bumble along to create the wealth of nations.

But larceny wasn’t invented in the 21st century either. Naturally, people want what the capitalists have. Everywhere and always, the thieves will find reasons why they should be able to take it from them. They will respect the environment better, they say. They will invest in ’socially responsible’ projects, they claim. They will heal the lame and make the blind see. If only they get their hands on your money!

Here at The Daily Reckoning, we don’t particularly like capitalism or capitalists. We just don’t like anyone telling us what to do. So, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, we make no effort to tell others what to do with their money. If they want to give it to Bernie Madoff or to Barack Obama, so be it - just count us out. If they want to invest in CDOs and MBDs…well, good luck to them; but don’t look to us to bail them out.

Well, today was spent working at home.  But more importantly, I got to spend some time with Karla.  What a beautiful woman she is.  She has strong values and heart of golf and she is so pretty.  And we have many of the same life experiences.  It is interesting.  Plus she speaks Spanish to me all the time.  I am grateful to God that I have had the chance to get to know her.  It has been a long time since anything like this has happened.  I cooked her a little dinner tonight and we just sat around and talked for a couple of hours.  Que bueno para mi.   What this means is that I don’t have tons of time right now to keep up my detestable hatred of the federal government.  I guess that would be good for them.  Ha.Ha.  Anyway, I want to go to sleep.  Right now I’m watching the Vina del Mar music festival.  It is very popular and I believe is broadcast in 37 countries.  Juanes, Marc Anthony, Luis Fonsi, and Santana are among the artists that sing at this festival.  They have 2 or 3 performers every night for 6 days.  It is fun to watch.  I look forward to Luis Fonsi.

I have a felt a little out of control lately.  I think that is what happens when you start liking someone.  It’s been a while, but that is how I feel.  I don’t like this feeling once bit, but it seems to be part of the process.  The scary part is that she is very much like me in the way we think and how we are.  But I will just try and relax and not think too much.  She thinks as much as I do.  I don’t know what will happen and I sure hope I don’t screw this one up, but if I do, then it just wasn’t meant to be.  What happens when two thinkers get together?   Anyway, we had a couple of nice chats at work today.  I need to start focusing on work again.  You know that feeling you get when you can’t get someone out of your mind and it distracts you from everything else.  Ohhh, that is an unpleasant feeling.  I’m sure it will pass, but for now it is irritating.  Ha.Ha.  Then we caught the bus from work today.  She is such a cute woman and so very nice.  Why this happens now, I don’t know?  Then later at night, we ended up chatting again over the IM for a while and it got to be late, then we needed to part ways and go to sleep.  I think that we are supposed to get together again today and then she wants to take me to the gay district here in town sometime this week because she says it is very pretty, etc.  Anyway, I think that I’m falling for her, but in some ways I don’t want to because I don’t want to surrender my freedom to feel what I want to feel when I want to feel it and when you fall for someone you surrender some things.

On a less personal note, Jack Bauer was pretty awesome last night.  I love that show.  I had a few American friends over last night to eat tacos and watch 24.  It’s become a tradition like the Sunday night dinners.  I also found out yesterday that I’ll be spending a week of July in LA with my nieces and nephews and some of my family.  Then it will be off to Hawaii for 2 weeks to work from home there, then back to Chile.  It sure will feel good to miss 3 weeks of winter here.  The only sucky part about it is that I’ve heard that August is the coldest month of the year here.  Anyway, wish me all the best of luck with this woman.  Like I said before, it sure would be nice to have the tender touch of a woman in my life for a while.  It’s been a while as my dating life has been rather comical for many years.  Timing is ultimately everything when it comes to dating, etc.  But in the end, whatever God wants is what I want in regards to this whole thing.  Cheers everyone.

Well, if I were to honestly admit it, I am scared a little bit because I’m starting to fall for a woman and that means that I will question everything and hate losing control of my emotions and feelings and for me oftentimes I often wish that it wouldn’t happen, but then when it, it sure is nice.  I think that she reciprocates, but only time will tell exactly what she is thinking.  We have a good time together and she funny and pretty and nice.   I always am amazed at how quickly these kinds of things happen and often when you aren’t looking for them at all.  I was asking God the other day to give me a girlfriend that speaks Spanish and that would help me to improve my Spanish.  Now I’m not saying that it is even close to being that with her, but she is more than willing to help me speak Spanish.  It is rather amazing to me.  Anyway, it was nice to hang out with her, Jerome, and Ingrid tonight.  We’ll see where this thing goes with Karla in the next few weeks.  To be honest, I do hope it goes to something like girlfriend/boyfriend.  It would be nice to have a little warmth that only a woman can provide and that only love provides as well.  But man is that scary.  I have lived so many years just relying on myself that it is scary.  I wonder what she is thinking:)  Who knows?  I just wish I could stop thinking, but that is my cross to bear in life.  I am always thinking.

Well, I’ve some real crap to deal with this week at work.  Some of our internal folks are really pissing me off because they are trying to pull a fast one to cover their own butts.  I hate that crap and so I think I’ll be fighting a bit this week.  Oh, that should be so much fun.  Anyway, good night all.  I hope the koolaid quits flowing so freely in the land of the free or should we say the once free and the home of the brave.

Today was a beautiful day because I had the opportunity to hang out with a beautiful woman.  We clicked.  That’s the best way I put it.  Most of the day was spent speaking Spanish with her.  We probably would have been fine spending more time together, but I’m a little afraid of where it might go.  To be honest, I’m not really ready for anything, but when you meet women that you click with, I think that you would be dumb as a box of bricks to run.  Anyway, we had a great time today.  She’s young, only 23, yet serious, funny, and wise due to some life experiences, etc.  It was just fun.  We laughed a lot.  Anyway, we’ll see where it goes.  She’s coming over tomorrow night for my weekly (most of the time Sunday dinner) where I feed a bunch of mooching Chileans.  She kept saying to me today that I had deceived her because she thought I couldn’t speak any Spanish, but the whole day was spent in Spanish and then she didn’t realize that I was so funny.  I try to get them to bring stuff, but to no avail usually.  They have a good time though.  I did go running this morning for almost 3 hours.  I’m going to run the marathon this year on April 5 and so I needed to start putting in some long runs.  I ran with a friend for the last part of it, just to give me motivation to do so.  Today was indeed a very interesting day.  It was a day that was spent in part with two of the women that I was interested in.  The other one, I couldn’t make it in time to meet her and she wasn’t able to meet with me either, but to be honest, I really didn’t care because I was enjoying myself so much with this other women.  I think, at least for now, there is one woman that is way ahead of the pack on this one, but often times the race doesn’t go to the swiftest.  We shall see though.  Finally, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Spanish songs by Natalino, a group from Chile, called Desde que te vi, which translated since I saw you.  Watch it here on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5pR-ZChOKQ.

And finally, the most interesting thing to me about life is that somedays, very rarely, life blesses you with a touch of grace, just a beautiful day, but it rarely happens.  To me it is amazing that anyone makes it through this life sane, because it is full of so many things that are ugly and challenging, but sometimes the sun shines through and the warmth feels pretty darn good.  Well that’s it for the day, I have to prepare for a Sunday School lesson.  Oh, one more thing, I usually check the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper sight just to see what is going on in Hawaii and today this story just cracked me up.  You know the economy sucks when they call in ninjas to fix it.  Enjoy this story.  It made me laugh. 

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090221/BUSINESS02/902210305

Today was a typical Friday.  I worked from home, went to lunch, and worked some more.  I stayed in tonight because I don’t like to go out too much.  Tomorrow will be a busy day.  I’ll be doing something with each of the woman that I am somewhat attracted to for different reasons.  I don’t know how that happened exactly, but it just did.  So it should be an interesting and busy day tomorrow.  I’ll just leave it at that and have a little more to post later tomorrow.

I did see a poll today that said that 60 percent of the people in the US thought the economic stimulus bill was a good idea, while at the same time 67 percent of the people thought that they wouldn’t benefit from it.  That either goes to show you how stupid Americans are or that you can prove anything you want with a poll.  I also read a little bit about the troubles in China with layoffs and the one person they interviewed was someone who said that they wished the government would help them.   I am tired of that attitude, because where does the government get its money.  It gets it from other people or it prints it out of nowhere.  So quit acting like the government spending money doesn’t hurt other people.  All the government is is a pass through, except while it passes through it takes a certain percentage of the money like the Mafia, and then it passes onto people that most likely will not make the best use of the money, but most likely will vote for the politician.  And people wonder why our economy is so screwed up and why we are in so much debt.  It is because the government has been funneling money to people who don’t do good things with it.  Sure they consume, but they don’t produce and if you funnel too much away from the people who produce and innovate and create, then eventually you kill the productive part of the economy.  Obama is a fool for signing that stimulus bill.  Sure it scores him some political points, but in the end, too much borrowed money is funneled to things that are not productive economically or to things that don’t produce at the expense to people that do and in the end this will kill the economy more until we become like Zimbabwe, people with lots and lots of cash but nothing to buy.  My only hope is that when it gets bad, people wise up and rise up like our founding fathers did and once again take back their God-given rights that the federal government and most governments have taken away in their pursuit of some kind of socialist heaven on Earth.  What a bunch of fools they are and what a bunch of fools we are for voting for them and buying the underlying principle that they are selling which is that liberty and freedom are inferior to government intervention and security, a security that we all see is a false security now.  If only we had listened to Benjamin Franklin when he said that those who choose security over liberty will end up with neither.  I only hope it is not too late to take back what we have lost by the mindless do-gooders that inhabit the halls of our government, you know the folks, the ones who babble and babble about wanting to fix things, save the children, save education and on and on while at the same time enriching themselves and their families.  Probably the best thing the voters of this country would do is repeal the 16th amendment and get rid of the Federal Reserve and then freedom would once again exist in this country.  It’s not like this government intervention and socialism that we have been experiencing for the last 100 years has done wonders, improved our standard of living, solved the problem of poverty, made us any smarter.  We are worse off as a nation because of it.  We are debtors.  We are not producers.  Come on people, wake up to the lies.  Wake up to the truth that the government is the enemy, just like our founding fathers taught us over 200 years ago.

And now I will step off my soapbox for the night.  I just had to get that off my chest.   I’m just tired of listening to mindless drivel and watching people buy it hook, line and sinker.  Cheers all!!!

I sure have some interesting conversations sometimes, but before I get to that, let me just say that I sure love going into work at noon or basically whenever I want to.  I get my work done and that seems to be primarily what matters.  Let’s hope it stays that way.  So I went for a nice long run this morning at about 8 or so, then got home and worked for a couple of hours.  I finally went into work and worked for a few  hours and then had a Spanish lesson for 1.5 hours.  We talked politics, freedom, economics, liberty, etc.  It is so much more difficult to explain what I think in Spanish, so she kind of worked me over, but I always come back to the same to points.  Liberty is better than supposed security that the government always promises and never delivers.  Just ask anyone if they feel secure with their measly social security check.  Give me liberty or give me death.  Perhaps someday we will all have to make that choice.  The second point I always fall back on is that centralized power that forces people to do things or that redistributes income via force is always, always evil.  Force is not good.  Liberty is good.  And finally, why would anyone think that a government bureaucrat would know how to do anything well other than tell someone what to do, but heck, I don’t have to be a bureaucrat to tell someone what to do.  I am always shocked how people who live in relative freedom are so willing to defend socialism, the antithesis of freedom because they feel like every person must have the same things as everyone else and noone should be left behind.  Well sure, those are great and grand ideas but if you give all the power to one entity you are only asking for tyranny and all of you will lose your freedoms and everyone will have nothing except for the politically powerful and connected. 

Today at work, I had this interesting chat with this really nice woman.  We have this internal chat within the office and for some reason, I can’t remember, we chatted for a couple of hours between work, etc. about lots of different things.  She isn’t a member of my church, but she seems nice and doesn’t smoke and drinks socially.  She’s good looking and so for a date I think it would be fun to go out with her.  I’m in no rush to give up my freedom to just any woman right now, but I would be very amendable to having a nice lunch or dinner with her and maybe going salsa dancing or something.  Anyway, she gave me her phone number and we’re most likely going to do something on Saturday.  I’m thinking lunch would be a nice start.  So that was a pleasant surprise, a woman that seems remotely interested in me.  I really don’t believe in love that much anymore.  I guess that is what happens if you get rejected so many times in a row, but to be honest, there are much worse things in life than not believing in love or that love can happen to oneself.  I’m not too worried about my attitude and don’t think it needs to be changed too much.

On the way home from work today, these two music performers get on the bus and start beating this drum and doing some kind of Spanish rap.  Why somebody would think that I would give them money for making noise in my ear is beyond me.  I just laughed to myself.  Noise deserves no money, even if you are an artist.

I am now watching Manchester United play Derby in the English Premier League and Manchester is loaded.  They are such a good team.  It is so nice to watch great soccer in action.   Well, I’m going to go to sleep soon cause I am dog tired.  I’m going to work slowly from home tomorrow.  I’ve got some things that need to be followed up on and cleaned up, so it should be a nice slow day.

A couple great, educational articles from my favorite financial website (www.dailyreckoning.com):

• http://www.dailyreckoning.com/chinese-fiat-coupons/
• http://www.dailyreckoning.com/the-united-states-the-largest-ponzi-scheme-in-the-world/

Hmmm… What was different today about yesterday or the rest of this week.  Not a whole lot.  I did talk to this really cute girl at work today.  She’s the receptionist and has a really nice personality, great English, and well, she’s good looking:)  Anyway, we chatted for a while.  She seems to like music a lot and so perhaps we will go to a concert one of these days.  I left it in her court, because I always find office dating to be a little tricky.  We’ll see if she follows up on my offer in the next few days.  Work was work.  It has its irritations, but in the larger scheme of things, for jobs, it definitely is one of the better ones.  I go into work when I want to  as long as the work gets done.  I work weird hours, but that is ok for now.  I hope to be starting working from different countries for a week here or there, just to get a different flavor of what those countries are like.  I believe that I’ll be afforded that opportunity in the months to come.

After work, I had my Spanish lesson.  I’ve got another one tomorrow.  What I really need a Spanish speaking girlfriend that doesn’t speak English.  I don’t know if that will happen, but one never knows.  After the lesson, I met up with my black friend, Jerome.  Just kidding Jerome.  That’s an inside joke with us.  We went to this nice popular restaurant, kind of hip, and the way you can tell if a restaurant is hip is by looking at the clientele.  There were a bunch of younger folks and better looking women.  That is how you know something is hip.  Anyway, the food was good, a little pricey for Chile, but it was good.  While eating dinner, Jerome mentioned something about inflation and deflation, about how inflation is good and deflation is bad.  This is a bunch of poppycock that the government puts out there as some kind of truth.  It is a tautology, which is a ceaseless repitition of ideas or propaganda.  The only entity that benefits from inflation is the government which benefits because its debts today are worth less tomorrow with a growing money supply, workers whose salaries are automatically inflation adjusted which tends to be government employees and union employees, and banks and finance companies who benefit from the increase in money supply and more dollars flowing through the system thus making them richer as they charge fees for transactions, and also the government because they borrow all that extra, printed up money to spend it.  So as far as I can gather, those who benefit from inflation are those are tied directly or indirectly to the government, those people that the government wants to benefit.  Those who don’t benefit from inflation are the rest of us schmucks who believe the government is good or that the government cares.  What a bunch of fools we are or they are.  Deflation benefits the majority of people, because that means you get can buy more with the same amount of money.  A fall in prices comes about because people don’t want something or because it has become cheaper to produce something due to some productivity gain.  Deflation only hurts the government because their debts get more expensive and their tax revenues decrease and an ever hungry government couldn’t have that, now could they.  Instead they spread the lie that inflation is good and deflation is bad, as if falling prices is a bad thing.  What kind of crazy, screwed up thinking is that?  It’s the same kind of crazy screwed up thinking that believes capitalism, or economic freedom, is inferior to socialism, or economic control by bureaucrats.  It’s the kind of thinking that can only exist after years and years, decades and decades of successful propaganda.  It’s the kind of thinking that happens through ceaseless repetition of ideas so that people no longer question the veracity of a statement.  They just incorporate it as truth.  Oh and Jerome, I still think you are a smart guy and didn’t mean anything bad by using your name in this, although it really isn’t your name:)  I’ll talk to you later.