The Daily Dose/February 14, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
America’s national debt passed the $22 trillion mark this week. Now, this is may not be as momentous a number as $20 trillion or $25 trillion, but it’s still pretty impressive. A stack of 22 trillion one dollar bills would be a bit less than 1.5 million miles high and a carpet of one trillion one dollar bills would be large to cover the state of Minnesota with a bit left over.
It’s a figure as impressive as it is dangerous. Both our annual deficit – the amount we spend minus the amount we take in – and our national debt – the accumulation of our annual deficits since 1836, the last time America was debt free – are things we as concerned citizens should be worried about. Eventually, our debt will be so crushing the results will be nothing less than catastrophic. No nation has survived fiscal insanity of this magnitude and America will not be the exception to that.
Some history: America’s national debt passed the $1 trillion mark in 1982 and by 2004 had increased to $7 trillion. That wasn’t too bad, $6 trillion in twelve years, but then we completely lost our minds, allowing the debt to increase by $13 trillion since then. Our national debt increases by $100,000 every few seconds.
The deficit for this fiscal year is $897 billion and will soon go over the $1 trillion mark and long-term government estimates do now show it coming below the $1 trillion mark in the next ten years.
Friends, if you believe America can sustain this fiscal insanity with impunity, you are high, legally in more and more states. We can’t. Eventually, perhaps before this half-century is out, our fiscal insanity, in tandem with our perpetual wars, will mean the end of the United States. Our country will collapse, tossed aside the scrap heap of history along with, among others, the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union.
Friends, the best indicator of future performance is past performance, and if we think those we keep reelecting to Congress will do anything about this we are deluding ourselves. They won’t. If they were going to do something about it they would have done so already.
It is not too late to do something about this, but continuing to reelect the same partisan, fractured and bickering government will only result in the same fiscal insanity. Only you and me – we the people – demanding citizens demanding better at the ballot box will result in any changes.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow makes some scratch paper at work, buys some new pants – in a smaller size – and the pretty girl at the Mexican joint appears to have left. Today’s Diary.
The news from the Mexican joint was about as bad as it could get, short of closing or missing a chorizo shipment: the pretty senorita that had been taking my order the past few months is gone!!!…I am not making that up!!!…Replacing her is some lumbering, not-too-bright vato who doesn’t know my order by heart…It was funny, tho, because the cook knows it, of course, and he actually told the kid what to punch in and then supervised his refunding me a couple of bucks when he overcharged me.
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On This Date
In 1912 -The United States Navy commissions its first diesel-powered submarines. Known as the E class, the E-1 and E-2 were used for coastal and harbor defense prior to World War I when they were primarily used as training boats and they remained in service until 1922. Previously, submarine engines were powered by gasoline, and diesel submarine warships would serve the United States until the USS Blueback (SS-581) was decommissioned in 1990.
In 1966 – Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia 76ers establishes a new NBA record for Most Points in a Career, scoring 41 points in a 149-123 win over the Detroit Pistons in a game played in Charleston, West Virginia. Chamberlain finished the game with a career total of 20,884 points, breaking Bob Petit’s record of 20,880. Chamberlain would retire with 31,419 points, still good for sixth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list and the record is now held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with 38,387.
In 1976 – Paul Simon is at #1 for the second of three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 with 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. The song also went to #1 in Canada and was Billboard’s eighth biggest song of the year. Though Simon hit #1 three times with Art Garfunkel, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover remains his only #1 song as a solo act.
Quotebook
The difference between success and failure in this life is mostly hard work, so you must constantly work to try and improve yourself.
Chesty Puller
Lieutenant General, United States Marine Corps
Letter to daughter
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The first player to score 100 points in an NCAA game was Clarence “Bevo” Francis, who scored 113 points for Rio Grande against Hillsdale College on February 2, 1954. Though divisions in the NCAA did not appear until 1956, this is considered to be a Division II game in the NCAA all-division record book.
Today’s Stumper
What were Simon and Garfunkel’s three #1 songs? –Answer next time!
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