Shame.

I entitle today's blog post with a simple word I'm sure, or hope that, everyone is thinking right now; shame. You are ashamed. Even I am ashamed. There are very few of you who have the right to say you are not ashamed, and to those who do, I thank you for being a part of life. For the rest of us, we have a different story.

I left school at 3:40 PM on Thursday afternoon to a four day weekend. My first thought was "Yes! Four day weekend!" I should have known better. I didn't even know Memorial Day was today until yesterday. How dare I ignore the issue I press the most? I press that fighting for freedom is right, but I don't even respect the people fighting for what I believe in.

Shame.

Memorial Day isn't about getting a day off of work and playing video games or going to parties or going to a concert. There is no "Happy Memorial Day." It's about remembering those, both living or dead, who have served the United States of America's armed forces who protect our rights every day, whether or not they're serving at the time.

Shame.

Although my childhood innocence is fleeting, that is no excuse to enjoy the day today. It is no excuse to play Command And Conquer 3 non-stop for the entire morning and to surf the internet in the afternoon. It is no excuse to completely ignore Memorial Day. The fact that I'm writing this article so late in the day defines the title.

Shame.

The people who plan to serve, are serving, and have served are, most likely, the only reason you're alive right now. The families and friends who kept the soldiers going are the ones the armed forces thank for making every day a gift to them. The people who support the armed forces do not compare. They do not compare. They do not compare to those who know what it's like to be on the frontline, in the Middle East or at home.

I am ashamed to call myself an American and act the way I have described. It even shames me to write a blog like this. It's time to turn around.

H.R. 254 or Freedom

H.R. 254 is a bill before the House at the present time called "The David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act," which was created by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX). Now, this may sound like a great bill to have; less hate crimes? I'd do a lot for that! However, it is not as nice as it seems on the surface. In fact, it's ugly and wrong.

H.R. 254 would require every state in America to suddenly have laws that assault your freedom of speech. It makes it a federal crime to judge against a federally protected group. In some ways, this could mean that if you were interpreting things from the Bible (and some passages from the Bible come on airplane meals, might I add), you would be preaching "hate" and could be arrested. That's how some of the other hate laws have turned out.

It doesn't matter who wants this the most (Anti-Defamation League) or who wants this the least (you); all that matters is that you contact your congressman, right now, and tell him or her to stand by the first amendment. Against all things like this.

"Best Blog Post In The Universe"

This is a thing I wish to spread. I know some people reading this blog believe this conspiracy, so I'd like to point out why the entire conspiracy is completely and utterly a fabrication, designed to fool the people into being even more hateful toward our present government. I learned this from the site entitled "The Best Page In The Universe," written under the alias of Maddox. It's not safe to view that site at work, by the way. However, the post he wrote was so true that I must carry it on.

Here is a summary: Several years ago, Dylan Avery, as well as a group of his friends, created a documentary called "Loose Change" which told the story of how the government orchestrated 9/11 and killed thousands of Americans for the benefit of the Bush Administration. (This is already sounding ludicrous for some of us.) Avery argues that the government had absolutely no problem with this, so if they had no problem with killing those 3,000 innocent people in 9/11 and his conspiracy is true, then why isn't he dead yet? Wouldn't the government assassinate Avery and his friends to make sure no one knew this was correct?

And why is Loose Change still on the internet? If the government could bring down the World Trade Center with "military precision," then they have the power to bring down that movie as soon as possible.

I believe the conspiracy of 9/11 ends...now.

How to fix illegal immigration

Lars Larson, as usual, says it best. Essentially, he said the two following things to prevent illegal immigration:

"1) Make it so you are unable to obtain a driver's license if your name and Social Security number don't match up.

2) Make it so businesses are unable to deduct the wages of employees who have no matching name and Social Security number."

Like Lars, I know that this will make illegal immigration drop so fast, because the only reason the United States welcomes them with open arms is because of cheap labor. If they were unable to deduct wages from illegal immigrants, the businesses could say bye-bye to that. If they can't use a car, and lack an American ID, what are they going to do? If they can't get Medicare benefits, what are they going to do?

"But Ticker, yada yada, cheap labor helps the economy, blah blah." Think about it; Medicare and Social Security already have problems. Right now, sure, it provides cheapened work efforts...but in twenty years, it will come crashing back down, when Social Security AND Medicare hit their debts. It will result in an additional TWO AND A HALF TRILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT. Right now, in a war time, we are closing on five trillion. Illegal immigration is as dangerous as war is to our economy.

And guess what the government is doing instead of realizing this? They're putting through a half-written bill (which has only been read by a few of the members passing it) to make all illegal immigrants LEGAL IMMEDIATELY.

I'm tired of the government trying to put things in place instead of these two things. Let's NOT make every single illegal immigrant legal all of a sudden, like we're doing AGAIN, shall we? That's a slap in the face to every person who goes through the trouble of coming legally. They're thinking "Just have to wait 20 years before I'll be legal...I won't have to go through all that crap in legal immigration!"

That's what we're saying to them. That's the message we're sending. If we're not going to do those TWO EASY STEPS, at least make the border impossible to cross. Period. It's that or making illegal immigration climb higher with that kind of message we've been conveying since the 1980s.

Illegal immigration is not a double-edged sword; it's an evil that must be dealt with. Let's not perpetuate it.

Item Today

I can see it everywhere; the bias in all the educational plans, the one-sided news reports, and my generation being democrats. It's a scary thought, seeing that kids today are less and less confident in freedom and liberty and what was stated in the Constitution.

But I'm not worried about that very much.

You'd think I would be. They're everywhere to me, and people would assume that means most of them will be running our lives in a few decades. I feel that too, but I know that the people who are more careful about their beliefs will be the only ones smart enough to see the truth in everything.

I know I'm asking for a lot of hate, but honestly, I'm going to be the first to say that the only reason people are democrats today is because they don't know what is TRUE and what is FALSE. The conservatives I know posses this deductive reasoning, which is so very necessary in this day and age and really, in life in general.

What does this have to do our lives being controlled? A lot, really. You have to RUN for government office. In order to even get that far, you have to be smart and plan arguments and the like. You have to have the ability to see the side of every issue. This is a quality most people have but choose to ignore.

Yet, the people who truly care and truly think they can go this far will be in our offices in the future. These people are usually conservative. And when modern life is becoming more and more based on counting on gullible people, the skeptics will start to come out of every corner and every hiding place to change our world and to see to America being saved.

That, my friends, is why I'm not worried.

I found my missing link

I had a debate at my school today about how the U.S. economy is going downhill. Trillions of dollars of debt, lots of missing jobs, illegal immigration, the usual wash. People whine and cry about it to me all the time, and I was angry because I couldn't really prove them wrong. So, here's the proof I needed when that was happening.

To get you an idea of the document we're looking at, we're looking at Ted Kulongoski (D-OR) and the Office of Economic Analysis' Oregon Economic and Revenue Forecast. You must be thinking "Ticker, you've got problems if you think the OREGON Forecast release is going to have U.S. economy data!" Well, you thought wrong. Government releases like this aim to compare with other states, and that means the U.S. too.

In Recent Developments and Outlook for Oregon Export Markets, it sums it up. Let me remind you, one of the people who dislikes Bush as much as you probably do, approved this and helped release it.

"The U.S. economy, the biggest engine of growth for the world economy, has been expanding near its potential for quite some time. Capacity utilization is high and the labor market is tight. Still, the inflation rate is only a touch above the Fed tolerance level." In other words, the United States' economy is doing just fine. We're in a war, which explains the inflation rate, but even after sending more troops we're still in a good position. Let me put quite some time on the table, which may mean since 2000 for all you naysayers.

And guess what? We're still trillions of dollars in debt. But apparently, to Kulongoski, we're doing fine. And he dislikes this war too.

Let's see where the economy is failing. "The U.S. economy is slowing a bit due to slowing housing and housing-related sectors and the struggling domestic auto industry." I don't even need to read the next part of the paragraph. It's not only the war. It's the residential and automotive industries. Learn to look at all your evidence, kids.

"Ticker, what about the future?" Our merchandise export rate increased 14.7 percent in 2005 and 2006, and the forecast predicts that it will continue at the same rate.

So, conformists, this is what it's like when you go along with the crowd in politics; your opinion becomes wrong.

The root of political problems

My beloved reader, there is a term I'd like you to be familiar with before I begin to write more articles. It is a word that is philosophical. For some, it is difficult to understand. To some it is real, and to some it is fake. I, however, would like to change this, by telling you that this is the way the world works, and this is why we have many of our problems that aren't just political, but everywhere in the world. Are you ready?

The word is existentialism.

Existentialism is, by the www.dictionary.com definition, "a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts. " In other words, it means that you see life differently than everybody else. You basically create your own reality through your knowledge and experiences.

Why is this philosophy so true? Well, let's look at the technology of cloning; for decades, man has desired to make a carbon copy of his or herself. To talk to someone, to be with someone who is exactly like them in every way. This is impossible. As soon as the clone becomes living, it has experienced something different than you, and is therefore a different person because it reflects on life differently.

Do you see what I mean? His life is seen differently. Existentialism forms what we call "opinions." Opinions can be based on facts and experience, making them unique to each person. It's what makes us individuals. Without existentialism, the world would be, as some readers have argued, "very boring." A boring world is the least of their worries. It would be a communist big brother society.

Like most things, existentialism is not without its faults. Although it blesses us with life and meaning, it also gives us the curse of disagreeing with one another on different topics. We argue because of our opinions through this philosophy and fact of life.

Now put two and two together and see this: the reason politics are so heavily debated is because existentialism makes us believe different things.

Is this a good or bad thing? That's a question that is also subject to opinion.

So, once one figures this out, they may begin to think about how existentialism affects their life, and how it affects the life of others around them. In this blog, I will be talking about existentialism in relation to politics. Because without that lovely word, we wouldn't have Republicans and Democrats of liberals and conservatives; we'd have a single soul put into several billion different bodies.

First impressions suck

Those who believe in The Timeless Ticker are those who believe in values of freedom, liberty, and agree that the Founding Fathers were correct in keeping the government at bay. They agree that sometimes war is necessary, as is having a strong military to support our values. They agree that realism is better than conservatism and liberalism.

Those who think like The Timeless Ticker think in terms of states and not at a national level in most subjects. They think that reality is based on perspective and so is how to run the United States of America. They think that many, if not all, nations would love to be like our country.

Those who argue with The Timeless Ticker are those who believe in nationalist policies. They believe that going to war to create another free nation like ours is wrong. They argue that global warming is a reality, when it is a government scam. They think conspiracies are the answers to all of our questions, especially about terrorism.

Let me tell the believers and thinkers that this is the place for you. Let me tell the people who argue with me that it's time to start seeing another side to issues.

It's time to start The Timeless Ticker.