What can I say, running for president is serious business. Apparently, all’s fair.

2. Some of those conservative ideas actually make a lot of sense.

3. Nicknames include the Hermanator and the Dark Horse.

4. He beat stage 4 colon cancer.

5. His mother was a  cleaning woman, father a barber, janitor, and chauffeur.

 6. He was chairman of a federal reserve bank.

Don't hate. Congratulate.

7. He can play the piano and sing well.

8. He’s a Morehouse Man, class of 1967 with a master in computer science as well.

He could...go...all...the...way!

9. The number 45 has proved fortuitous for him throughout life. He was born in 1945. 2012 will be his 45th college reunion, he would be the 45th president and inauguraed in 2013, the same year he’ll celebate his 45th wedding anniversary.

10. His book is entitled “This is Herman Cain: My Journey to the White House.” Hate it or love it, the man has balls.

I’m working on thinking positive and staying attentive to the present moment. That’s where the miracles are.

Philippians 4:4 “Finally, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whtever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.

Why are we doing this again?

The only thing we know for sure about the people in the tents downtown is that they don’t know what they want, but they’ll know it it when we get it. What do we the 99% really want? Student loan forgiveness comes to the top of my list–just wipe them clean off the books. But in reality, that would be one of the worst things that could happen to the future hopes of the American economy.

I had a bachelor degree, and I decided I wanted to get a master. I sent off to the school for information, they sent me back a nifty catalog. Towards the back, they told me it was going to cost well over $50,000 to get through the 3 years of study. I said, “ok, no problem,” applied, got accepted, matriculated, and graduated. Six months after graduation, that bill they told me about came due.

Now, it’s true that a lot of companies got bailouts; they swindled and evicted and laid off countless hardworking people. Yes, the credit card companies employ the type of people the Bible warns us about. All that is true–so if they voluntarily decide to forgive the $829.785 billion in federal and private students loans Americans owe, I’ll let them.

But I don’t expect that to happen.

The way I see it, all of us bright educated folks need to use the degrees we begged, borrowed, and stole to obtain. We should be the ones inventing, writing, selling, and making new stuff.  All our new, must-have gadgets and books and services will stimulate the economy. Also, we’ll have enough money to pay back the loans once we put ourselves to work.

Sallie Mae and Pell already made the education possible, thank you very much. Now, I don’t intend to wait for a jobs bill to employ me or Obamacare to cure me, or the Occupy Movement to get my debts cancelled.

I for one, plan to use this fabulous education of mine to make a real difference for myself and the world.

I try not to do it, but chalk it up to me just being too nice.

The thing is, if I do that to other people, someone is invariably doing the same to me.

“Really powerful sermon, pastor. I felt like the Spirit was talking directly to me.”

Call it vain, but that’s nice to hear. Also important to remember that there will always be people who are exaggerating the compliments for whatever reason. Compliments are the best, but they’re not meant to be taken literally.

I’m eternally grateful for the impact I make and the support I receive. But it’s important not to let the compliments inflate you too much.

The criticisms shouldn’t deflate you too much, either.

What can you do except root for the 99% to win?

What do we win when we win, anyway? I say for starters, everyone’s loans and credit card debt get wiped clean up to $100,000. That would be swell. In 15 years, plenty of people would work their way back into desperate conditions, but many of us would use a mulligan like that to get over the hump and supercharge our quest for the American Dream.

It’s a nice brainstorm, but in order for those types of revolutionary concessions to be granted, many people are going to have to freeze, get beat up by cops, be separated from family, and then they can get ready to endure the real hardships.

Say I have a friend who is up to his eyeballs in debt and really hemorrhaging cash. He tells me that he’s found the answer to his financial woes. There’s a new company that will allow him to increase his credit limit so he can afford to maintain his lifestyle! I just might slap him.

Congress is currently voting to raise our debt limit, and we the people are telling Washington to quit bickering and just and raise it already. But aren’t they just finding a way to raise the nation’s credit limit so that we can continue to live the way we think we ought to?

On a monthly basis, the U.S. Treasury spends well over twice what it collects from tax revunue. By the time they write all those Social Security checks, pay the medicare and medicaid bills that come in, and give out tax refund checks, there’s only $17 left to make it to the end of the month even though there are hundreds of billions more dollars of bills to pay every month.

They (we) borrow the rest of the money we need to run the government by selling treasury securities–paper that says “we’re the U.S. of A and we guarantee we’ll pay you back.” But when it’s time for us to pay those loans back, the only way we can meet the obligation is to borrow more money.

Soon enough, the creditors catch on and cut you off because of your crackhead tendencies.

We’re calling this current recession an economic crisis–I guess we’ve been in a recession for the last 3 years. But I think the real crisis hasn’t hit yet. The real cisis will be when we can’t borrow our way out any more, and we have no choice but to live precisely within our means. The real crisis will be when we owe China and Saudi Arabia a trillion dollars with interest and when we can’t pay, they gang up and invade us or set up military bases on our soil. Why wouldn’t they try it? They already know they have way more money than us.

There’s no easy way out. Living within our means would be less like Sex in the City and more like Book of Eli if we’re really honest. If we dare scale back social security, unemployment insurance, garbage pickup, defense spending, libraries, road repair, Pell Grants, and 20 other things, life would be a lot different.

We will have no choice but to make those kinds of drastic cuts soon.

Answer these questions for yourself–here are my answers:

What would you say to the person you were five years ago?

“No matter how audacious the 5 year plan you come up with, you’ll pretty much achieve it. And if you have little or no plan, you’ll achieve little or nothing. Either way, there’s no telling how hard it will be.”

What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

“You are the man in your own little world and all of that, but PLEASE be extra-vigilant about the traps of money, power and sex.”

#trust30

BALLIN'!!!

 2. With the extended daylight in the spring, cabbages the size of basketballs are common.

3. The distances from Alaska to Tokyo and Alaska and New York are about the same.

4. The flag is elegant.

5. The shoreline of Alaska, stretched out, could wrap all the way around the earth’s equator.

6. Alaska has vast reserves of gold, oil, and jade. There’s even an entire mountain made of jade.

7. When the U.S. bought it from Russian for 7.2 million dollars in 1868, they paid with a check.

8. The longest River in the U.S. is the Yukon, not the Mississippi.

9. The aurora borealis.

I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska. Just one of those things. Need to put that in a 5-year plan for real.