In talking, reading and writing- do opposites attract ?

     I generally laugh at horoscopes if my eyes happen to land on them any time I'm reading the paper. The advice can often be unclear and quirky, to say the least, but yesterday I found a rare pearl in the following sentence. It is so apt and relevant to my life right now.

Someone in your daily life means well and can inspire you

but

at the same time can make goulash out of

the most precise communication and situations.

- from the Denver Post horoscope for Virgo 9/8/11

by Jacqueline Bigar

     Keeping a good attitude often involves ignoring someone else's bad attitude. If you don't believe me, try telling someone exactly what you think when they make you angry. Just remember that you alone are responsible for your words, action and character. Responding out of emotion is never exactly clear and often conveys intentions and definitions that are opposite to what you wanted to communicate. Before you say that sentence, do this: Ask yourself, "Is this true ? Is this harmless ? Is it necessary? If it isn't don't bother to say it. 
   

     Understanding people well involves more work than most of us are willing to exert. It is for this reason that I am more inclined to write my communications than say them verbally. I have found that unless the distractions around me are deafening, no one can mess up a clearly written and ruminated sentence. Through my writing I can convey my intentions much more clearly than when someone is forced to actually listen well to what I am saying. If someone misses the details from my writing it becomes their own problem rather than a failure on my part. This is what it means to be a good writer. An excellent writer is a diplomat and is well on his way to mastering his thought life.

Just The Castle Lady...

reading you loud and clear !  

Debt Deal Sounds Like Let's Make a Deal

     Have you ever watched Let's Make a Deal on TV? The show is still on the air, believe it or not, and the deals can still be quite sour if you happen to pick the wrong curtain in lieu of a few hundred dollars in cash. Something about those clunker deals reminds me of the Debt Deal which is going down in Congressional meetings these days. Their compromise is as bad as any ideas they have come up with in most recent years. In the hands of Congress they never get any better- they always get worse.    

     Are you more than a little upset about the debt deal struck by Congress? This deal calls for a Super Committee to recommend spending cuts with a ceiling in the vicinity of $1.5 trillion ! If it seems a little fishy to you it's not without good reason. I'll bet you're wondering where the cuts are going to come in and who they're going to affect. Thanks to our Presidents input and compassion (among other politicians and advocates for saving Social Security) the elderly beneficiaries will continue to get their checks at least until the end of this year. Thanks to those who care about the elderly in this country who live from one social security check to the next we are only reassured for a limited time and the spending cuts loom in the minds of those who haven't any other source of income.

     All the faces you see above are what Congress is calling a Super Committee and they're out to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in ways that are totally unacceptable for anyone who has to live off the money they paid into Social Security alone. These short term cuts could be devastating. Believe me when I say that no one could possibly ever get rich by having to live on Social Security and those senior citizens who shrug it off never had to worry about actually having to live only on these entitlement payments.

     The truth is that Super Committee has only one agenda. They want to plunder the funds which remain in Social Security to cover a debt they incurred and we are not responsible for- and we never were. Social Security is a wonderful program that was instituted by FDR- the greatest President we ever had- and is being attacked by the very politicos that didn't want the program instituted at all from it's very inception. There is no other government fund gathered as taxes from the people that is more efficiently run than the United States Social Security Administration and I would challenge those people who want to take an axe to it to prove that the problem is not a problem at all but a large sum of money they want to practically rob from us.

     This Super Committee's ideas are to raise the retirement age, slash benefits to new lows or completely destroy the program by privatizing it. I'm sure you won't mind having to work at your backbreaking job until you have to do it on crutches, start eating Alpo and Mighty Dog instead of Hamburger Helper or trying to figure out how to get a stockbroker to make $5 out of 2 pennies for you, will you ? All kidding aside, it is time to tell the congressional looters of our government mad money to keep their filthy hands off the only back up we have when this economy finally tanks. If you don't believe me, take a look at what is actually in that fund and tell me they're allowed to take anything out of it at all. They stole our payroll tax surplus to the tune of $2.6 trillion and left a bunch of IOUs in its place. Does it sound like they have your best interests at heart?

     My suggestion is this: if you're smart enough to be outraged, call someone on the committee- or everyone of them if you have the time- and tell them to fix it this way:

     "Admit that you have stolen money from the people to pay off debts they never agreed to pay, restore the system's backup for fiscal soundness by locking the trust fund amount, fully apply the payroll tax on your rich buddies and make the increase in payments like it was promised to us when you started applying the increase in 1984. It sure as heck wasn't so you can go flying around in jets everywhere."

The Castle Lady

laughing with and not at you !