Take a hike!

For we’re on strike.

Don’t ride a bike.

Don’t build a dike.

Don’t even click to like.

Don’t put a steak on a pike.

Don’t be mean to a tyke.

Just go take a hike.

We’ll still be on strike.

Is that getting old?

Should it be price and sold?

Would you be so bold?

Would you bring it in from the cold?

Would it grow mold?

How many times will it fold?

Would you please hold?

Would you trade it for gold?

I guess all has been told.

You know, if Britain ever did get rid of its monarchy and make the “royal” family have to go out and get real jobs, maybe they could start a landscaping company.

They could call it “The Royal Weeding Company.”

That’d be fun.

They could really play it up too. You know, wear crowns and stuff while doing yard work.

The former Prince Charles could be mowing the lawn with a little crown on his head. Probably be his only chance to wear one.

Oh, but he’d have to use one of those old-fashioned reel mowers that don’t use electricity or gas.

Then again, he’d have to pay his own way through life, so maybe he’d use a gas mower, knowing he’d get more work done.

Heck, he’d probably get a riding lawn mower with a zero turn radius so he could just about fly through lawns and quickly go from one job to the next.

He might not be able to feed all his horses if he just uses the old-fashioned reel mower. He probably wouldn’t be able to mow enough lawns in the day.

Will probably never happen.

Would be cool though.

I even have a slogan for them!

Okay, gang…

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We’ll (probably) talk about all sorts of website marketing, from driving traffic to your website, monetizing your website with advertising, and even selling products.

So, whatever you’re into, we’ll probably be talking about it.

There’s already a good group of people in there, so we’re just waiting on you to hop on in and join.

Mind you, this is a Skype chat, so you’ll need to have Skype installed in order to participate.

Click here to join my Website Marketing chat.

EDIT: If the above link doesn’t work, just contact me on Skype (dcrinnert) and I can add you to the chatroom.

Great Britain is reviewing their policy of royal succession, and considering changing them so that the first-born, whether girl or boy, can assume the throne instead of just the first-born boy.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that the current rule “would strike most people as a little old-fashioned.”

You know what would strike most people as a little old-fashioned?

How about the fact that they still have a monarchy.

Why not get rid of that?

Story here: “Britain mulling changes to royal succession rule so first-born girl could take throne“

So, this morning I received an eMail from one of those “freebie” sites where you can publish a very focused webpage.

They’ve taken down my page due to a terms of service violation.

Of course, they don’t tell me what’s in violation.

(I’ve had the page up for like two years and it has thousands of views and no prior complaints.)

Instead, they give a list of things that it could be. (You know, if you can take the time to take down a page, maybe you could identify why it was taken down instead of providing a list of what it could be.)

So, here’s the list…

Unoriginal content - Well, since I wrote it myself and didn’t plagiarize it, that can’t be it.

Duplicate content - Well, since I wrote it for that site and didn’t copy anything, including my own work, that can’t be it.

Prohibited topic - I checked their list and it’s not one of their prohibited topics, so that can’t be it either.

Overly promotional - I didn’t have it stuffed with affiliate links or anything. I compared the page against their definition of “overly promotional” and didn’t see where that fit.

So, I can’t figure it out.

Now, they’ve “unpublished” my page so I can correct the violation or move my content elsewhere.

Well, how can I correct the violation when I have absolutely no idea what the violation is?

On top of that, if you visit the page, it has a big notice that the page has been taken down because it violated their terms of service and then, in parentheses, put “no spam, no plagiarism, no evildoing, among other things”, which kind of makes it look like I was a spammer, a plagiarist or an evil doer of some sort.

I didn’t spam, plagiarize or do evil. Heck, I don’t even know what I did that violated their terms of service! They won’t tell me and I cannot see anything in violation.

So, I guess my only option is to move my content elsewhere.

And, while I’m doing that, I might as well move all of my content elsewhere, because who knows how long it will be before some other page of mine gets taken down for some unknowable violation and then I get labeled as a spammer, plagiarizer or evil doer because of it?

You know, I don’t want this to be a political blog. I never meant this as a political blog. A lot of people stray away from political blogs and I do too. Like many people, I’d just like to read blogs that aren’t about politics. Blogs where you can just have normal discussions. Okay, occasionally politics may be discussed, but, generally, you just avoid it.

But, you know, it’s frustrating right now, because things are so bad.

And, in Washington D.C., we do not have leadership and we do not have representatives.

Those politicians… They don’t lead. They also don’t represent us, which is supposed to be their job.

So many of them are clueless. How many have held real jobs outside of politics? How many of them make incomes comparable to the average American? Few, I bet.

They just go there and pursue their own agendas. They pander to us for votes and then forget about us when they get there, except when they need to rile us up for something or other to pursue their agenda.

Some people think the idea of smaller government is silly or unrealistic.

But, you know, the less power government has, the less damage it can do.

Look at the size of government now. Are we really better off by having it so large?

People like to blame big corporations, but they are not fully to blame. When you have a government that can make laws or regulations that could hurt or help your business, wouldn’t you lobby politicians to vote your way? Much easier to convince a couple hundred politicians to take your side then it is to convince hundreds of thousands of people to buy your product, right?

If you knew politicians were going to pass some regulations, wouldn’t you push for regulations that hurt your competitors more than you? Certainly, convincing a couple hundred politicians to side with you is easier than convincing hundreds of thousands of people to buy your stuff, right?

And, that’s what we have. We have big corporations battling each other not in the free marketplace but in the world of government lobbyists and politicians. And, in the middle of it, small and medium businesses often come out the losers because they typically don’t have the money to send lobbyists.

Of course, there are those that want to restrict or do away with lobbyists, but they’re not the problem. The problem is government having too much power.

Standard Oil was broken up by the government in 1911 because it was considered a monopoly. However, by the time it was broken up, it had already lost a significant amount of marketshare to competitors. So, the argument that it was stifling competition has no merit.

On the flip side, AT&T became a monopoly in part due to agreements with the government and a protected status until the government later decided it was a monopoly and had to be broken up.

So, the government can say this monopoly is good and protect that company and this monopoly is bad and break that company up. In that environment, is it any wonder that companies lobby the government for their own benefit?

When the government has that kind of power, people and businesses will push to have that power benefit them. Fairness and equality and all that get lost in the me, me, me…

But, take away that power, and those businesses have to win customers and compete in the free marketplace, rather than convince a couple hundred politicians to view things their way.

People like to blame the free marketplace and capitalism for a lot of ills, but the thing is that we haven’t really had a free marketplace and true capitalism in a long, long time. Government has its meddling fingers in every where, and what you may see as “free” likely has some level of government meddling involved. So, to say that a free marketplace doesn’t really work cannot truly be said if you haven’t had a free marketplace to begin with.

It’s an argument often argued by people opposed to deregulation in various industries. The thing is that deregulation is often a misnomer. Often, the industries aren’t being deregulated so much as they are having reduced regulations. Now, if it’s not truly deregulated, if it’s not really participating in a free and open market, how can you claim it was deregulation that didn’t work? It could very well be, and very likely is, that it was the government’s remaining intervention that made things not work out.

The American dream was that anyone, from any ethnic, religious, financial or other background, could succeed and prosper.

The American dream was never that anyone could succeed and prosper and then have a large chunk of their fortune taken away because they succeeded and prospered more than their neighbors.

I don’t think politicians want the American dream to be viable anymore. I think they would rather have a society with different classes so they can more easily manipulate one class against the other.

They do that quite successfully now. They pit the poor against the rich.

When the American dream was more attainable, there was little class warfare between the poor and the rich, because anyone that was poor could succeed and prosper and join the rich. Anyone. American history is full of people that came from poor backgrounds and succeeded and prospered.

But, if you’re a politician, if you want to incite class warfare, if you want to pit one group against the other, it really doesn’t behoove you to pursue policies that enable the American dream because doing so would undermine your own methods of getting power and control.

So, despite whatever rhetoric may come out of their mouths, most politicians are simply not interested in making the American dream achievable.

So, it’s up to us. And the first thing we can do is reject all politicians that seek to divide us, that seek to put the rich and the poor at odds against each other. Reject them, for they reject the American dream.

You know, the politicians shift things around and call them cuts.

And then, because they didn’t actually make any real cuts, they want to increase the debt so they can spend more money, as if spending tons of money on bailout after bailout has worked so far.

They try to get us into thinking that it’s Republicans versus Democrats.

But, you know what, the party not in charge blames the party in charge for everything and then, when the roles get flipped, they continue to do the same kinds of things their opposition did.

When the Republicans were not in control of the House, they opposed the Democrats raising the debt limit.

Now, that they have control, somehow they just might go along with raising the debt limit.

Republicans gained control in the House and gained seats in the Senate in the last election because they weren’t the party in control and people were fed up with the way things were and Republicans were the choice to change them.

But, now, they get back in power and they completely forget about the people that elected them.

They say they have to work alongside and get along with their peers and work for the common good and all that.

The only ones the politicians–Democrats and Republicans alike–are working for the common good of is themselves.

We don’t send them to Congress to throw little fun parties and play nice and sing “Kumbaya” at the end of the day.

We send them there to represent us.

We said, “This is what we want. Go do this.” And, then they promise they will, and then they get in Congress and they just forget all about us.

Sure, they’ll come visit us, pet us on the head and throw us an occasional bone, but, other than that, they don’t care. We don’t understand. We don’t know what it’s like. Those are the lines they’ll feed us.

When voters said they wanted government spending reduced, and voted for people who pledged to reduce government spending, I don’t think what voters really wanted was for them to increase government spending.

They’ll say, oh, but you don’t mean that you want to cut spending. You don’t want to cut this or that.

And so on.

What about stupid projects? There are a lot of those. Oh, but the politicians will argue those don’t amount to much. So what? Cut them. Seriously, if someone wants funding to study belching cows, don’t give them the money. If someone wants funding to urinate in a jar and call it art, don’t give them the money. If someone wants funding to study why the sky and the ocean look like different shades of blue, just say no.

You know, people these days are cutting every expense they can. That includes the little things. We cut that out. Even if it’s not much money, we don’t buy it because we have more important things to worry about.

Oh, but no, not Congress. No, they aren’t going to worry about the small stuff. They’ll just worry about the big stuff. Only they won’t worry too much about that either, because they’ll just vote to spend more money and let some future Congress worry about it.

Which is what they’ve done for a number of years now. They keep pushing off the big decisions.

They seem indifferent to the people they are supposed to represent. Heck, Nancy Pelosi even said she wished that elections didn’t matter so much. That just shows the mentality of those in Congress. Elections are just sort of a little speed bump in the way of their agendas.

You know, you can’t get out of debt by digging your hole even deeper. At some point, you actually have to make cuts in what you spend.

Families do this all the time. The kids may get mad when the cable or satellite TV is no more, but they’ll get over it. At least they maybe will have food on the table. Parents make those tough decisions.

Voters make those tough decisions.

Politicians want to leave those decisions for their successors.

Maybe it’s time we replace both political parties.

The way it is, it just seems both parties are just different branches of the same tax and spend party. The only thing they seem to differ on is how much.

The U.S. has a debt limit. It’s just above $14 trillion dollars.

With the latest agreement in Congress on “cutting” the budget, they need to raise the debt limit in order to be able to pay that.

And, apparently, House Republicans that once opposed raising the debt limit, may go along with raising it.

So, let’s see…

We haven’t lowered the debt.

The current “cuts” will, instead of lowering debt, actually raise it.

So, they want to raise the debt limit.

Makes sense, right? We’ve spent all this money to save the economy, which still hasn’t saved the economy, and now they want to dig us further into debt to… get… us… out… of… debt?

Um, okay.

So, if you have a credit card you cannot afford to pay off, call up your credit card company and ask them to raise your limit.

So you can spend more money.

Try to convince them that, somehow, that’s going to help you pay off your credit card debt.

See if they go along with that.

Try that on your mortgage too.

Maybe you have a car loan you haven’t been able to pay off. See if you can trade in your car for a more expensive one, and get a bigger car loan, so that, you know, you’ll be able to pay off your car loan faster.

You’ll stop spending money… someday.

Don’t know when. But, at some point in the future, yes, you’ll make some tough decisions and cut some spending.

Just not today. Or anytime soon, probably.

But, someday.

You just need more money today.

Leave the tough decisions to your future self.

Or your replacement.

Either way, today it’s time to party!

Fantasy is big right now, from the Harry Potter series to Lonewolf Diaries and Vampire Lovers and Glee and whatever fantasy shows are big on TV these days.

I think it’s all because we live in a fantasy world.

Just look at Congress.

They just agreed to make a bunch of cuts in the budget.

You know what? They have unspent money left over from the census. Since it hasn’t been spent, they are counting that amongst the so-called “cuts” they made.

Seriously.

There were other Federal monies that went unspent for various projects. They “cut” those too.

Obama had some “czars” that have been gone. Those are counted among the “cuts.”

Better watch out. Because, with that type of mentality, if you have twenty bucks in your pocket, they’ll count that as extra income because you haven’t spent it yet. So, you know, they can tax you (again) on your earnings.

In other words, you’ll get taxed when you get your paycheck, and then you’ll be taxed again if you have any unspent money left over.

Of course, these days, not so many people have money left over, so that might not be a big deal.

Oh, so they made all these so-called “cuts” and there are still those who want to raise taxes.

You know, probably because we’re all awash in unspent money.

Oh, and they want to raise the debt ceiling so they can spend more money and accumulate more debt.

So, yeah, that explains the popularity of fantasy, because if you think you can spend your way out of debt, you’re living in a fantasy world.

Maybe we need to reduce Senate terms to 3 years instead of six and limit them to two terms. That way, some of these clowns won’t spend their lifetimes in office and lose complete touch with the people they are supposed to represent as well as reality in general.

At any rate, it’s no wonder people aren’t watching the evening news on TV as much anymore.

They’d rather be reading Harry Potter.