Sveedish fish

I have recently rediscovered my love for Swedish Fish. I'm not really the kind of person that eats a lot of candy, I cant tell you the last time that I actually ate a whole chocolate bar. Usually, if there is a bag of salty chips, or hershey's kisses in front of me, by default I'm "goin' for the chips."

But last week we were grocery shopping and Marci and I walked past the swedish fish in the candy aisle. I started drooling, and walked away with a 7.9lb bag.

I just love something about this food!! Best of all its fat free, and Marci hates them. More for me!

What is your favorite candy?

Sean.

Mad

Ok, I need a quick rant to get this out of my system before I head out today.

I am furious over the $800 billion dollars it is going to take to bail Wall Street out of the hole THEY have put themselves in. FURIOUS!!

These are the same people that drove the price of oil up to $147.00 a barrel, raking in huge profits while we were paying $4 bucks at the pump. The same people, who had CEO's making in some cases, over 1 billion dollars a years in annual bonus. The same people that made completely irresponsible, unsound financial decisions based purely on nothing but greed and frankly a lust for money.

I realize that the alternative of a completely collapsed financial market would not have been a good path to take - but while the fat cats at wall street now look to the government with that guilty child look on their faces, let us not forget who put them there, and how this all happened.

My opinon? The CEO's of Bear Stearns, the now broke Lehman Bros, Merril Lynch, and Goldman Sachs need to appear on national TV and explain to the American people how they allowed this to happen - since we are now the ones who now have to pay for their sins.

Every dime of their annual bonuses from the past 4 years needs to be returned and placed in a fund for inner city schools. Could you imagine what we could do for a few poor communities with 1 Billion dollars?

Ridiculous.

Please feel free to post your comments. I am anxious to know how you feel about this!

Sean.

Fixing Things

About 10 minutes ago I heard some noises coming from the garage. I opened the back door to find Sean, just having returned from the car wash with my car, putting on the finishing touches. Then I noticed that our year old, smooth driveway now has a gouge taken out of it. Hmm? So I ask, "Sean, why is there a hole in our driveway?" Sheepishly he looks at me and says, "Oh, I tried to jack up the car in the driveway. It's not bad, is it?" I remarked on Sean's tendency to not think things through before acting, shook my head in wonderment and came back inside. About 5 minutes ago, I went outside to see this . . .


This would be Sean fixing the hole. A hammer, aim 'n flame, and a little bit of stone and tar should do the trick, don't you think?

There's no such thing as a free lunch

My Dad told me that one day, "There's no such thing as a free lunch."
In essence, what he was trying to teach me is that every action in life has its consequences.
No action is performed without a re-action. This theory came home to roost today, as one of Wall Street's oldest and most respected financial firms collapsed under a cloud of bad debt.
In a matter of months, the value of Lehman Brother's stock crashed over 95 percent.
To put that in perspective, in January 2008 a single share was valued at a little over $60. Today, it was valued at 21 cents. Yes, you read that correctly.
Why did this happen? Billions of dollars invested in mortgage debt. As the value of assets owned through debt by Lehman plummeted, all their invested fortunes simply vanished into thin air. Gone. Money on paper simply erased. The years of lending gobs of cheap money to people who could not afford it in the first place had finally caught up. As the whole mortgage industry, stitched up with yards of ARM's and bad debt has tumbled, Lehman Brothers was dragged along into the pit.
Its total outstanding debts are a total of $786 Billion, and the value of its assets are: $639 billion.
That is a gap of $147 Billion.
The math is quite simple. They now owe a lot more money than they are worth. Usually when one finds yourself in this situation, you get a loan to make up the difference until you can put yourself into positive territory. Herein lies the problem. No one is willing to fork out $147 billion dollars in loans. Not any banks, and this time not the government.

So do I feel sorry for them? No.
Wall Street has been treated like a casino the past few years. You can only engage in risky, unsound, business practice for so long until it catches up to you. When may I ask did someone in upper managment raise the red flag? This is a company that has been in existence for over 100 years. Would the founders Emanuel and Mayer Lehman have approved of this? Thankfully, the american taxpayer will not have to pay in to bail them out. Enough is enough. Enough of the greed. Enough of the credit card mentality.

As I read online today from one financial advisor - "goodbye Lehman, it was nice knowing you"

Looks like lunch time is over.

Sean.

Dust and Diesel

My face is very sunburned right now...

Why?

I spent the day with some folks from work at the Diesel National's in Englishtown, NJ.

They have a 1/4 mile drag strip there, and the basic idea is that if it runs on diesel you can race it.

This is one of the things I love about this country. Americans have a need to race each other. It could be a lawnmower, a wheelchair or a golf cart, no matter. If it has wheels on it, someone is getting challenged to a duel. This was evidence by the fact that I witnessed 2 dump trucks race each other today. One of the highlights was the "R.V" class race - there was only one participant and yes he did proceed to race his very large pink motorhome down the track. The garbage truck race event regretfully had no participants this year.

We had a tent set up with all sorts of parts, filters a few display engines and I spent most of the morning answering questions, shaking hands and giving out free stuff. (People love free stuff)

One thing I learned about truckers today is that they are a proud group. They love their trucks.

I spent some time walking though the parking lot (which was a sea of all kinds of beautiful trucks) It didn't take long for them to recognize the "Cummins" logo on my shirt.

"You work with Cummins?"

"Sure"

"You gotta see my truck...."

I had a great time talking with these guys. If you think waxing a car is tough - try a whole truck.

Anyway, I took some pics

Here is the link

Trucks

Go Sarah go.....

This morning we assembled the Matt Goss Band back together, and were given the opportunity to play for the McCain, Palin rally at F&M University in Lancaster.

What a fun day. Besides getting to hang out again with old friends, the rally was a lot of fun.

How did we get this gig you ask? Well, due to some contacts made during President Bush's campaign in 2004 we were asked to play at all three of his rally's here in P.A. The same folks who were organizing the McCain rally called our buddy Matt up and asked if we could do it again for John McCain. So we accepted.

The place was packed. It took much of the day to get set up. We had to load in at 9am, get set up and then leave so the whole building could be swept for security reasons. Not quite as stringent as when we met the President in 2004, but not too far off either.

One thing I do know is that people really like Senator McCain, but they love Sarah Palin.

As soon as she walked into the hall, the place went nuts. People were chanting "Saaarah, Saaarah." It is obvious that this lady handles herself with incredible poise and has a down to earth charm about her that people really relate to. Her smile, and demeanor are somehow familiar. She doesn't carry the stuffy, jaded, Washingtonesque aura around her. What really impressed me were the amount of women that were cheering for her.

After McCain left the building she spent another 20 minutes shaking hands, smiling, holding babies and taking pictures with people. The crowd just did not seem to want to let her go.

So this is just what I saw folks, you judge for yourself.

As a republican I am glad to see how this has energized the GOP. Its good to feel like there is some hope for the party, and for this election.

As usual during the elections I have been receiving lots of "forwarded" email smearing Obama, calling him everything from a communist to a terrorist to the antichrist. The watercooler talk at work resounds the same (on both sides). Some of us in the church have latched on to Sarah Palin like she is the God sent messenger here to fix everything wrong with the country. Its amazing how everyone else has decided on her behalf that she is now an evangelical christian. Funny, she actually has not come out publicly with her faith since she was asked to accept the nomination for VP.

My point? There seems to be a lot of hype, and lack of informed people willing to throw their vote to a candidate based purely on emotion. The freedom, and power of a democracy is only effective when you make an informed decision, and use your vote based on the facts. What will a candidate do when in office? How will they vote on any particular issue?

I asked someone the other day who they would vote for. The answer, "Oh for Obama, because I just hate all republicans" Great. I have no problem with someone voting for Obama, that is their right as an american. But surely there has to be a better, more informed reason than that?

So, know the facts.

For your convenience, here is a link to each candidates website. Check them out, get rid of the spin, and you decide.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/

School

School is back in session. All 25 of my kiddos arrived on Tuesday morning. Some looked scared. Some looked lost. Some looked tired. And then there were the few who came barreling into the room and haven't stopped since. I've received the usual question of "how did your first week go?" To be honest, it was one of the better first weeks that I've had in a few years. As I said, there are the few little stinkers who never stop talking or moving. I do have an aide in my classroom this year. She is assigned to a student who has some behavior needs. He's not a screamer (like one I had 2 years ago) or a true ADHD child (I have 4 last year). At this point, he's been fine. We're still figuring out what his exact needs are. My aide is fabulous. Very calm and unobtrusive. Sometimes I forget she's in the room. But overall I don't have the major overt behavior problems that I've had for the past 2 years. I think most of the issues this year will be more along the academic lines. I have a few children who are quite low in their reading and math abilities. But with the help of quite a few support staff, I think we can move them along. The first week sped by and I came away with a sore throat from talking all day and sore feet from standing all day, but I felt good. So, let's hope and pray that this is a sign for a good year.

There's no such thing as an atheist

I used to have a teacher in Bible school. He had a long, crazy history as an evangelist.

One of those people that is passionate about spreading the gospel, and lived his life with no apparent fear. Anytime he approached an atheist he would tell them - "thats impossible, there's no such thing as an atheist." His reasoning was that an atheist believes that there is no god, no anything. That, in and of itself is a belief. Therefore you believe in something, and thus - you cant be an atheist.

Hard to argue with, and very clever. I can just see an atheist who hears this turning their eyes into a stare while they process.

I found a video blog on youtube this week by a guy named Pat. He is an atheist. He really made me think about things. Pat is anti-religion. He believes that all organized religion is nothing but a system of devised values used to entrench people with fear and create a stranglehold of power for the select clergy. Truthfully, its hard to argue with that. Pat has become one of my favorite video blogs to watch because he speaks the truth. I have heard more sense from him recently than I have heard from a lot of Christians.

"But from the mouth of an atheist?"

Yes.

"Are you becoming an atheist Sean?"

Hmmm..

Just kidding, of course not.

In fact, my faith in God is stronger now than ever before. His views seem to re-affirm my faith. The sad thing is that I agree with many of the things he says. He stated quite clearly during one of his very entertaining monologues that "If Jesus really was real, and was as compassionate and caring as he was shown to be like in the bible, if he returned tomorrow he may just be ashamed at the way his followers have acted on his behalf"

If this is not the crying out of a world in desperate pain, I don't know what is.

Of course, many "christians" who watched the blog, responded that week to him with death threats, curse words, threatening scripture verses, fire and brimstone. In fact one guy taped himself on youtube praying for Pat.

Nice.

Do we respond that way because the truth hurts? Why are we so offended if he doesn't believe in God anyway?

I am not by any means remotely close to being a perfect christian - and can someone define what that is anyway? Marci is always telling me I need more compassion and this is true.

I feel compassion for Pat. I feel he is lost. I emailed him and told him I enjoy his blog and that I would really like to have a beer with him one day. He seems like a fun guy, and I'm sure we'd have a great time. I'd like Pat to know who the real Jesus is one day. Not what our "religions" have made him out to be. Jesus simply came to earth and just walked. People were drawn to him, all he ever asked any of his disciples to do is follow and learn. Why can't we as a church be more like that? Where did we lose this along the way? I know some of you may respond that we need to "fight for our rights as believers, defend our faith" and this is all true. But all the "religion" in the world never won a sole except though love, peace and compassion.

If you would like to view Pat's blog, let me know in the comments field, and I will email you the link.

Sean.