I’ve assembled some videos for context.

1.  Here’s my special message to Morgan Freeman.  Please pass it onto him if you see him.

2.  Here’s the interview where Freeman (repeatedly) says that the Tea Party is “racist”.

3.  This video shows an energized, conservative crowd cheering for Herman Cain’s victory.

4.  And this is Morgan Freeman on 60 Minutes, where he seems to not want to focus on the discussion of skin color so much.

In case it’s not entirely obvious, I mixed the first video together from components of the following three and posted them all so no one can say I didn’t provide context.  Please have Morgan tweet me.

Sleepless in New York (iPhone Version)

Anyway…. I’m going to “mash up” some of this week’s more popular stories and try to find a way to tie them into an old blog I wrote.  (a little rehash with your mashup)  And on that note, I’ll be referencing a blogger that I’ve referenced before, so it’s pretty much like that week of meals after Thanksgiving, where you’re basically scarfing the same food for five days.  Let’s begin.

Today’s theme will be money.

I really wanted to start out with the cluster truck that has been Solyndra, but Jimmie Bise Jr. has pointed out that there are much bigger fish to fry right now.  It’s recently been unearthed that over $18 Billion in unemployment benefits have been mistakenly paid out over a course of three years.  This amounts to about ten percent of the unemployment benefits budget.  Jimmie quipped on it in this piece here.

Ten percent of our total budget is about $380 billion. In the grand scheme of things — when we’re talking about a $14 trillion to $16 trillion dollar debt — it’s not very large at all. But let’s not move so quickly here.

While ten percent seems like small potatoes, none of us would shrug if we ran a company that frittered away ten percent of its revenues every month. If we found that we lost ten percent of our household budgets to theft and frivolities we knew nothing about and didn’t approve, we would be livid, and rightly so.  -Jimmie Bise Jr.

I’d like to add my two cents to what Jimmie is saying.  Something that I’ve known for a long time is that a lot of businesses that you would consider to be successful make it on a profit margin of 10% or LESS.  In other words, if Exxon Mobil frittered away 10% of their earnings, they would cease to exist.  Now chew on that.

How can we be so callous as to let tens of billions of dollars be squandered every year?  Well, I have a few theories.  The most obvious is that it’s “other people’s money”.  The most damning is that most of us don’t know how to manage our own resources, let alone the largest economy the world has seen.  The truth hurts, but it’s still the truth.

If you haven’t read Jimmie’s piece, I really implore you to go ahead and do so, but he goes onto say that Medicare and Medicaid also waste about ten percent of their budgets too.  That’s about $60 Billion each year.  Now why do I bring that up?

In the first piece I ever wrote that I was really proud of, I discussed how Republicans were stupid in thinking that foreign aid was a good place to cut our budget.  You see, we get to put our shiny aircraft carriers in several strategic ports around the world, because we dish out a little pocket money each year to various countries.  The total spent on Foreign Aid is about $30 Billion a year.  And “aid” does not always mean that we just give countries money.  That also counts the loans that we give them too.

Anyway, if you’re going to cut the Foreign Aid budget, AKA a huge diplomatic asset, without trimming the $60 Billion in waste that we have in Medicare, then you are by far one of the biggest idiots in the history of all idiots.  That idiocy is further made evident when you consider that China is ramping up the amount of money they invest in other nations.  So while our politicians have proposed that we be less influential around the world, China has been getting chummy with several nations, themselves.  It is estimated that they have over 900 projects in Africa alone.  What does that mean?  It means that they can start parking their shiny hardware in more spots than they currently do.  It also means that they have been gaining favors from countries that are rich in natural resources.  This fact alone should scare you off of going back to the gold standard.  Trust me, at this rate, China is going to have its hands on more gold than we will.  So as much as Glenn Beck would like to see us trading on bullion, I think we would regret it if we did.

And what about Solyndra?  Well, in light of how much money we waste in the programs mentioned above, $500 Million doesn’t sound like that much dough, now does it?  And that brings us back to the callousness.  It is insane how much money our country hemorrhages, and we don’t even try to keep track anymore.

I will say this much, even if you don’t believe in the existence of a divine being (see religion), you have to admit that the timing of this Solyndra discovery could not have been better.  It’s basically 500 million reasons to say “no” to our president’s 17 requests that we “pass this jobs” bill.

I mean isn’t this the same guy who asked for $800 Billion in stimulus money the last time and then laughed about the shovel-ready-jobs not being “shovel ready”?

Yep… I thought so.  But like I said, this is what happens when you spend “other people’s money”.  Of course, the problem is, we’re not even spending other American’s money anymore.  We actually ran out of that, so now we’re spending China’s money.  And guess what, the Chinese like to get paid.  They also have over 1.3 billion potential repo men that they can send over to collect that debt.  I’d really hate to see the Washington Monument get turned into Buddha’s tooth pick, but at this rate, it could happen.

And so far, the greatest idea our president can come up with is some gimmick based on an op-ed that Warren Buffet supposedly wrote about how millionaires should be taxed at a higher rate than their secretaries.  That whole sentiment is highly bogus, by the way.  It doesn’t even begin to explain the difference between income tax and capital gains tax, but since this post is already over 1000 words, I’m not even going to indulge that digression.  Instead, I’ll quote one of the smartest men on Twitter and show you this:

So go ahead, Mr. President.  Tax “the millionaires” as much as you want.  Take their whole fortunes while you’re at it, but you won’t even be able to pay the interest on the debt that you owe various other nations.  Whoever said you were “the smartest guy in the room” must have been working the night shift in a mortuary, because I have seen nothing that looks like a good idea come from you.  Your campaign can’t even run a good website this election cycle, and that was your big bag of tricks last time.  But again… I digress.  Oh, wait…  I did remember your one good idea.  You hired Hillary Clinton into your administration, so that at least some semblance of professionalism exists.  So you have had one good idea… of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rahm Emanuel made you do it, but I’ll give you credit for that one anyway.

So there you have it, folks.  That’s the big mashup for this week.  We’ve got money spraying out of our coffers like a mountain sized jar of jelly beans with a giant gash in it, and nobody is even counting the jelly beans as they spew out, because no one gives a rat’s <behind> about how much we spend or where it goes.  We’re in shambles, folks.  When you aggregate all of our money problems and really look at them, you start to realize that we are hosed in a special kind of way of being hosed.  It’s enough to make you think about watching TV and not pay attention to it.  Oh… crap.  That’s what 80% of us have been doing this whole time, isn’t it?

It’s not all doom and gloom though.  If we do start paying attention, and we do start tracking our jelly beans, and cutting spending, and coming up with ways to make money again, then we can pull out of this.  It’ll take some doing, but it can be done.  Of course, we’ll have to pay attention first.  And if you read Jimmie’s piece, you’d know that we could even buy a few football teams while we’re at it.  Finally… something to show for our money.  Good night.

With that disclaimer out of the way, you are not going to believe the zaniness of this video below.  And by “zany”, I mean “awesome”.  Behold, beholders.

Attack Watch: 100,000 Snitches (iPhone Version)

P.S.  Stop talking about Solyndra.  Al Gore thought it was a good idea, and he won an Oscar.  What have you won?

Obama’s Diary: AttackWatch (iPhone Version)

For more information on AttackWatch.com, click here.

Purpose 1:  Dispel the “lies” that Republicans tell on President Obama.  (okay, that sounds normal)
Purpose 2:  Tell on people who talk badly about the president, even if it’s a coworker.  (wait, what???)

Here’s how it works.  You go the website’s snitch page, and you tell them what the “attack is”, where you heard it, and provide a link to it if possible.  I suppose since this website is highlighting their practices, we could qualify as an example.  Here’s what it looks like:

I have two thoughts on this, myself.

One:  Imagine the howling you would hear from every outlet of the media, if George W. Bush’s campaign had done this.  Could you imagine what they would say about Dick Cheney and Karl Rove?  Also… I wonder what the New York Times headline would look like.  For that matter, what would Paul Krugman say?

Two:  This could be a very scary thing.  Didn’t Woodrow Wilson ask people to tell on each other during WWI?  But I digress….  Instead of this being as scary of a thing as it could have been, a groundswell of citizens have come out of the woodwork to mock, undermine, and expose AttackWatch.com.  And that, folks, is the 1st Amendment at work.  Check out this video from a group that calls themselves MisfitPolitics.  They cranked out an amazing video within less than 24 hours of this snitch site coming to light.  Someone should report THAT to AttackWatch.com.  And then someone should report it to the Jobs Czar.

Also… for taste of just how awesome their citizen journalism has been, check this out… Their mockery of AttackWatch.com is on the first page of Google search results multiple times.  Good work, guys!

Note: Their video is in the “Blaze” and “Washington Post” results, among others.

We always tease our current president for leading from behind, but if that’s the case, then what is Sarah doing?  Leading from an underground bunker?  Because that’s what I see…  She’s like the sitcom neighbor standing outside of somebody’s house, looking in the kitchen window and watching the person inside doing all the work.  Right now, she’s having it both ways.  She gets to stick her head in the kitchen and give her two cents about what to cook, but she doesn’t have to sweat like the rest of the people.

At this rate, Tim Pawlenty has put in more work than she has, and he quit the race weeks ago.  She shows up at the same events that actual candidates are at, she speaks on the same issues (from friendly bunkers like Hannity’s show), but she never has to take the fire that “real” candidates do.  I don’t see her trading jabs with Mitt Romney or Rick Perry.  I don’t see her standing under the hot lights being asked questions by Brian Williams.  If she wants to be the president, then where is she?  To continue the kitchen metaphor, it’s almost as if she’s going to come in with a store bought side dish after everyone else has cooked up most of the Christmas dinner.

Now, I didn’t say I don’t like Sarah Palin, because I do.  But if she really is going to run for the presidency of the greatest nation on earth, I’d like to see a little more work out of her.  I’d like to see her engage a news outlet that doesn’t rhyme with “clocks snooze”, for starters.  I’d also like to see her show up for some of these debates and not just come in after the “weak” candidates have been picked off.  And I definitely want to see her make a case for herself to the near majority of Americans that don’t like her.  As things stand, her support is narrow, but deep.  She needs to broaden it up, and if she wants to sit in the Oval Office, she should have started doing that over a year ago.

I think Sarah Palin can be qualified to be president, but I don’t think that she’s taken the steps that are necessary to get her to the White House.  Here’s probably my biggest pet peeve…  She had almost three years to work on an image make over, and she pretty much squandered them.  She made sure to please her base, AKA the people who will buy her books, but she never tried to undo the (unfair) demonization she suffered back in 2008.

Here’s what she’s done…  Imagine there’s a fire in your back yard.  But the truth is, you don’t care for your back yard anyway.  You don’t really go there.  So you let it burn down and then never try to rehab it at all.  You just work on your front yard.  But even then, you don’t keep up the whole thing.  You just focus on some bushes that you really love.  Then one day, you realize that you might want to sell the property.  But even then, you’re not sure.  You advertise on television that you might be selling it, but you never put it up for sale.  Well, for whatever reason, there’s a deadline to sell it, so you put in on the market in hopes of making  a good sale.  The problem is, you never really prepared the property, and while prospective buyers see potential in it, they’re not sure that they’re sold.

And there you have it.  Sarah has pruned the hell out her Tea Party bushes, but the rest of the yard has been somewhat neglected.  And if she plans to sell the joint, she’s going to need to make some corrections pretty soon.

I like Sarah Palin, I really do.  I’ve wanted her to vindicate herself in the eyes of Americans since day one.  She has been demonized and persecuted unfairly.  She’s been picked over with a finer comb than most candidates who are actually running.  And through it all, I’ve always wanted her to make the media look like fools for the abuse they’ve shown her.  I’ve wanted Katie Couric to have to drink a two liter of Diet Pepsi to wash down the crow that Sarah would feed her.  But it hasn’t happened.  Over two years later, we still have a woman who hides in her bunker.  She only goes on Fox News, and she mainly stays on the programs that let her talk without being challenged.  I’m sorry, but our president needs to be tougher than that.  Rick Perry might have a lot of explaining to do about Gardasil, but at least he stands under the hot lights and does it.

I’ll say it one last time… I like Sarah Palin, but as things stand, she hasn’t given me much of reason to respect her as a potential candidate for the highest office in this land.  I want her to step her game up, but even then, that would require she takes the field.