In case anyone was wondering just how bad the economy is right now...Goodwill is advertising coupons...You know the economy is bad when you need a coupon to buy used goods...of course...if everyone was making lots of money they might need coupons to persuade people to buy used instead of new...but that's clearly not the case.

RE: Blogger website address...somehow I got to that address...it seemed everything else was taken...its a nice thought though

Where has time gone??? The last time I posted I was awaiting the birth of my son...Hoping everything would go as planned, perfectly. After many hours of labor my tired, but still beautiful wife delivered our healthy baby boy. Now he's 8 months old, what happened to the past 8 months? Being with him everyday I don't even realize how much he has grown and changed until I look at pictures that were taken several months ago. It's a scary thing being a dad...this little person has the ability to be anyone or do anything and it's up to his mother and I to mold him into someone that will in someway affect the world. It makes you reflect upon yourself and wonder who you could have been or if you could have been anyone different, but yet you don't want to give up what you have because it's a good life...yet you always want more...you want perfection but its not possible, while still wanting to help mold a growing child into the perfect citizen of the world...Someone that will make a change for the better. The thought just occurred...are we actually, presently living in the perfect HUMAN world?

Gov't waste: The following was copied from CBSNews.com

CBS) Politicians have made careers out of pledging to cut waste, but in 2007 it was clear the mind may be willing but the body politic is weak, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

CBS News' "Follow the Money" reports looked at billions of dollars in waste and earmarks from Congress. Earmarks are grants of money without the normal public review.

There was $146 million wasted by federal workers who broke the rules and upgraded themselves on flights, $22 million dollars in missing equipment at the CDC. And the Capitol Visitors Center, $400 million bucks over budget.

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones got touchy when we asked about her $1 million earmark to Sherwin Williams - a paint company in her home district.

Attkisson approached her on the Hill, saying: “I've been asking for an interview.”

“Don't play me like that,” Tubbs Jones said, grabbing Attkisson’s wrist.

“Please take your hands off me,” Attkisson said.

“I'm not gonna take, I didn't mean any offense,” Tubbs Jones said. “OK?”

Rep. Ralph Regula, D-Ohio, ducked questions about his earmarks for his wife's library, where his daughter is a paid director.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., wouldn't talk about his $2 million earmark for a library and center named after himself.

“Was it his requirement that his name be on the center?” Attkisson asked Mary Lou Edmondson, of the City College of New York.

“I don’t think we would ever think of not having his name on the center if we had his papers,” Edmondson said.

So he wanted his name on the center?

“I, uh…ha,” Edmondson said.

The USDA spent your tax dollars sending agents on repeated trips to Key West - to protect Ernest Hemingway's cats, which frankly don't seem to need protection.

And it's Christmas all year at NASA where CBS News discovered they spend $4 million annually on fancy four-day parties to honor employees and contractors.

The year could be summed up by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., who defended spending $11 million on a state-of-the-art building solely to benefit the grape and wine industry calling it a "research" earmark - a practice that's grown very popular in Congress.

“Do you have any idea what the total number of research earmarks was last year?”Attkisson asked him.

“Offhand, I don’t know what the total number is,” he said.

It’s $2.6 billion.

“Research earmarks?” Hinchey said. “Two-point-six billion is not nearly enough.”

In the end, what was the final damage? In 2007, we examined more than $2.5 billion in earmarks, on top of more than $21 billion dollars in other spending and waste.

It's a good thing Congress is out on holiday - they must be tired after spending so much of your money.

A New Start

I've started this several times in the past...the whole blogger thing I mean. I do it once and don't come back for months...I guess it feels like it is just going to be something else I have to do. Don't I have enough of those things already? Maybe a new approach and a new start in the new year. I'll post when I feel like it, but it's nothing, I have to do.

To pick up where I left off many months ago...It really is time for a change. Not only in the world, but it has to start with us, one person at a time...aren't we part of the world. If no one of us is willing to step up and start, who will. I almost feel like we've become part of that world that existed at the end of The Matrix. We've all just become another cog in the machine, even if we don't realize it yet. For the most part, the cogs never get any of the benefits, not truly, we're only led to believe we do. Of course, I realize I'm neither the first person to feel like this nor will I be the last. Everything seems to have more consequence now...I'll be responsible for my son in about a month or so when he's born.