Top 5 Life Changing Mistakes Teenagers Make

For better or for worse, nearly all of us determine how our lives are going to turn out in the fullness of time by decisions we make when we are teenagers.  These life altering decisions are almost never influenced for the positive by adults, since nearly all teenagers are convinced that all the adults they know are dumber than a bag of hammers.  Some teenagers listen to their dumb ol' parents and thrive, but many don't.

Since teenagers know it all by the time they reach 15 or so, input into their decision process is never sought, nor appreciated from us grown up dullards who went through the same processes that these braniac teenagers did.  Accordingly, many of their decisions are unforgiving and irrevocable in the long run, and formulate who these kids turn out to be in their later years.  The TOP FIVE mistakes that these brilliants kids of ours make have to be the following:

5.  Start smoking cigarettes as a teenager.  Back in the day, it was exceptionally cool to be seen with a fag in your mouth (yes, they used to call cigarettes 'fags'  back before the term took on a different meaning.  Look it up).  "Rebel Without a Cause" star James Dean was almost never seen without a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and what self respecting teen didn't want to emulate James Dean?  Fast forward many decades and see what that nasty habit got you: stained teeth, a several hundred dollar a month expense, smelly clothes and apartments/houses, and bad health.  Once you decide to quit (and cigarette smokers all do at some point in their lives, voluntarily or involuntarily), since smoking is primarily an oral habit, a massive weight gain is in store for that 'cool' teen as they substitute banana cream pies for cigarettes.  This mistake is a bad one, one that nearly nobody recovers from in the long run.

4.  Drop out of high school/college.  After 10 long years in elementary, middle and high school, many teenagers figure that they know plenty enough to get by in the world, since they are already smarter that their knuckle dragging parents.  And in the short run, these drop outs will find jobs in automotive garages, assembly plants and other endeavors where an education is not really a prerequisite for employment.  Once their paychecks start rolling in, they will be flush with dough that their studious peers who stayed in school will be lacking.  These big rollers will be the ones with the cars, the rad digs and big roll of cash in their pockets (mostly one's, with a $20 note on the outside, that little trick fools everybody, trust these teens when they say this).  As time marches on, these under educated 'high rollers' will be left behind their more studious peers in the earnings department, never to catch up.  Sure, you can point to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as dropping out of college as your examples as to why an education does not matter.  But for each Jobs or Gates, there are about a million other not so talented teens that end up on the wrong side of the tracks as a result of this terrible mistake.

3.  Alter your long term plans to chase after a teen girl/boyfriend.   This mistake is a hard one not to make.  Usually your first 'love' happens in high school, and many of us marry our high school sweethearts, and believe that we will live happily ever after.  Not so much.  This almost is NEVER the case, although it does happen on rare occasion.  The first guy/gal we have feelings for is almost never a viable long term partner, since we as teenagers are far from developed in our personalities, and what seems like a good idea at the time is almost never a good idea in the long run.  Way more often than not, however, when little Johnnie chases cute little prom date Joanie from hometown of Dubuque, Iowa  across the country to the UCLA campus just to be with her, bad things are in store for naive but love stricken little Johnnie.  Cute little Joanie will be the one enrolled and taking classes with COLLEGE boys, while little Johnnie will be waiting outside of Calculus class for Joanie to finish up, and soon little Johnie will see Joanie hanging off of Biff the stud halfback's arm, leaving little Johnnie feeling like a stupid schmuck, which he was (is).  And there sits Johnnie, 1500 miles from Dubuque, heart broke and penniless.  Affairs of the teenage heart are the stuff that no amount of logic or reasoning can affect.  Still, a pretty bad mistake to make as a teenager.

2.  Start drinking/doing drugs.  Really bad mistake here.  Once a teenager starts down that path, it is one that is almost guaranteed to end up badly.  Needless to say, a drunk kid never finishes high school or college (see #4 above), which is not good.  And a primary reason for avoiding this behavior is due to one fact: teenagers can't wait to get their hands on a set of car keys.  Cars allow for freedom that they have never had before, and once they get used to it, things will never be the same.  Now as the old adage goes: mix teenagers, car keys and bottles of whiskey, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster, namely in the form of dead and broken teenagers.  Kids, listen to dumb ol' grown up Fredd when he tells you to stay away from these things.  But they won't.  Fredd is dumber than a crowbar, you know.  Just ask any teenager.

1.  Having children as a teenager.  Primarily owing to unprotected sex, this one is bad for everybody involved, to include the mother, father, child, and at times grand parents.   Either out of wedlock or married, this one is a game changer.  You now have a little crumb cruncher to deal with in raising, nurturing and protecting.  Something that the average teenager is completely ill equipped to do.  This will interrupt any schooling the teenager had in mind, as it is now time to hit the streets and get a job to support the family.  If things don't work out, then moving in with the parents or grand parents is a fall back position that changes the lives of everyone involved.  This now fairly common mistake is one of the worst that a teenager can make, since it not only affects their own lives, but lots of lives around them. 

Now that I have warned all teenagers everywhere not to make these FIVE HUGE MISTAKES, the world will be a better place, right?  Nope, since nobody who is between the ages of 13 and 19 believes a word that us idiot grown ups have to say, since we are out of it and don't even know the words to any popular songs.  If we don't know the lyrics of the latest Taylor Swift tune,  how could we know anything? 

Newtown monster's mom was a 'prepper'

As will be the case with ALL 'preppers', Nancy Lanza's assault rifle which she purchased to insure her chances of survival after society collapsed for whatever reason, was used by others, not her. 

Preppers, those who are arduously preparing for the end of days with stocked bomb shelters, loads of ammo and guns, gas masks, Geiger counters, and a whole array of 'day after' supplies, are fooling themselves if they think that going through all of these motions will increase their chances of survival after the apocalypse wipes out our civilization.  If they give just a moment's thought as to what they are trying to do, they will realize the foolishness of their endeavors.

The irony of the whole 'prepper' mentality is that all of the things they think will assist THEM in the post apocalypse will most assuredly be used by people OTHER THAN THEM.  Virtually Guaranteed.

Think about it, you preppers: you buy up as much ammunition and guns as your budget allows, and truly think that this will enable you to protect your assets from marauding desperate mobs fleeing the urban areas seeking food, guns, water, etc.  All of these things will soon disappear from the cities once trade halts, electricity stops flowing, gasoline and diesel fuel disappear, and people are left to their own devices to survive.

Imagine now, you well armed preppers, that these formerly urban folks will not accept their fate and sit where they are and simply fade away.  This is not what people do.  They will do whatever is necessary to survive.  When their current situation becomes unsustainable, they will move on to take up residence in greener pastures.  And when those greener pastures happen to be YOURS, you can't do anything about it.  Sure, you can pick off an invader, two, ten, twenty or more, fine.  What about the countless others surely to come your way?

Defending your property against marauders is a noisy business.  Shouting threats, posting signs warning people to keep off your property, even gunfire will attract attention from the mobs heading your way.  You preppers are well stocked, well armed and prepared, and the mobs KNOW THIS.  Accordingly, you make yourself a TARGET! 

When mobs are in search of goodies to take, they will certainly notice resistance to their approach in the form of barbed wire, gunfire, warning signs, etc.  Mobs are not entirely stupid, you preppers.  All of that points to the sure thing that you are protecting something that is worthy of protection.  Namely, food stocks, water, gasoline, weapons, ammunition, generators, all good stuff that any self respecting mob covets.

You can't go forever without sleep, you preppers.  You must maintain a constant vigil against mobs who want to seize your assets, and if you are at the front door, who is watching the back door?  If Uncle Moe is watching the back door, who is watching the side windows?  OK, let's say you have your entire clan watching all egress points.  How long do you think it will be before your security is breached by a few hundred, or maybe five hundred hungry people? Or more?

You can't stay awake forever, you know.  The mobs will get your stuff that you thought would see your through difficult times.  All of that survival equipment that you bought for you and yours will almost certainly and ironically be guaranteed to be consumed by people you do not know.

Also, you preppers, please note that the probability that a mob of perhaps 7,000 desperate people will very, very likely be packing more firepower than you have.  As a prepper, you just may as well put up a sign that says, "WELCOME ALL MOBS!  I HAVE STOCKPILES OF FOOD AND GUNS.  HELP YOURSELVES TO IT ALL."

The stuff you buy for 'the day after' will be used by everybody else except you.  Just like Nancy Lanza's Bushmaster .223 AR15 assault rifle.  And all of her other guns. 

She never got to fire a shot.

Monsters in our midst

There is no argument anywhere that suggests that Newtown, CT mass murderer Adam Lanza was anything other than a monster.  A monster that was raised among the peaceful population of a pretty normal American small town.

But to say that we had no idea that this horrible massacre was possible, that nobody could have predicted that such a disaster could have occurred given everything we knew, I am not so sure that argument is a solid one.

Adam Lanza, as unpopular and politically incorrect as it may now seem, was what kids once called a 'sped', or special education student.  He was an 'MR', or mental retarded kid.  Or the short version, what Rahm Emanuel now knows as a 'retard.'

Back in the day, speds, MR's, retards, whatever we called them, were not integrated into our public and private classrooms like they are today.  They were segregated for very good reasons.  One very good reason for segregating kids like Adam Lanza from the normal kids was that retards like Adam Lanza would require lots and lots of special attention from the teacher, thus taking away attention from the rest of the class.  Back in the day, kids like Adam Lanza were removed from the general classroom environment, and put into special education classes, or simply kept at home.

Back in the day, if retards or speds were even temporarily introduced to a 'normal' classroom environment, the normal kids would ascertain immediately the status of the retard, and almost simultaneously pronounce the kid a sped or retard.  And then the feeding frenzy would begin, and the retard such as Adam Lanza would be ridiculed, made fun of, beat up, and subjected to every other form of bullying that 7 year old kids are known to do.

Little kids are mean.  Sometimes they are as mean and nasty as snakes to other little kids that are different. They always have been, and always will be, and accordingly we used to segregate these speds from the normal kids to limit this kind of behavior.

But unfortunately, we don't segregate the speds and retards anymore, thanks to the progressive thinking of our public school phD chancellors and top tier educators.  These over-educated braniacs have determined that society will be better off if we dump these retards into the general classroom environment, and hope for the best.  And guess what happened to the retard Adam Lanza when he was at age 6 or 7 let loose into the general population of classroom kids?  He of course was labeled a dope, a retard, a sped, and so it went for the rest of Adam Lanza's educational experience.

But add to this unfortunate miscalculation by our all-knowing public education system, a mother who teaches her retard, sped MR son how to lock and load, aim and fire a deadly military style assault rifle.  Talk about a recipe for "instant monster", I can't tell you what kind of thinking was going on in that house, but it was not optimal.

The mother had been led to believe that her son was just another boy in town, since he attended public school along with everybody else, and was subjected to some bullying, no big deal.  She'll teach him how to load 30 round banana clips, show him where she keeps her Bush Master .223 AR-15 assault rifle, and things will be just fine. 

The sped, retard, MR or whatever you want to label Adam Lanza, remembers the taunting and bullying from the normal kids back in Sandy Hook, and now is armed to the teeth and ready to take revenge. 

But nobody saw this coming? 

The Fairy Tale economy of America

Since 51% of the voting public does not understand the first thing about how our nation's economy functions based on the results of the past election, I would like the other 49% who actually understand how things work to know how these 51% low information voters view life in America.

These simple folk look at America like children view fairy tales. These fairy tales that their mommies and daddies read to them when they were little tykes, they all have a similar theme: everything works out in the end, the good king or queen who ruled in a mean and evil manner would in time see the errors of their ways and change their wicked ways and become benevolent and generous with the royal treasury.  Everybody in these fairy tales lived happily ever after.

In fairy tales, nobody is expected to toil and sweat producing anything that people need.  This is all done with fairy dust, you see.  Money comes from simply asking fairies for a handout.  And the fairies always come through in fairy tales, everyone knows this.  Where do these low information voters think that wealth and prosperity comes from?

They are so low on information, they don't even know how to formulate an answer for that one.  Like the ignorant woman in line in Detroit several years ago waiting to fill out a form to receive some Obama money was asked where it came from, she replied "Obama's stash." 

She and the 51% of the voting public are truly unaware of how wealth is created, and in fact are actually suspicious of wealthy people.  They think these rich guys stole their money from them.  Of course they never take a moment to think about where this money was that was taken from them by these rich SOB's, since they were broke before, are broke now and will forever be broke. 

Recent polls suggest a majority of low information voters fear one thing above all others: that their entitlements will be reduced.  The fact that we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar the U.S. spends and accordingly wracking up and crushing national debt to fund their entitlement checks does not concern them in the least.

Like children who believe in fairy tales, they just know that their check is in the mail box every other Friday, and do not think about the future when it just might not be there.  Where does this money come from?  They do not believe that it comes from their neighbors' taxes.  They believe it comes from a never ending pile of money in Obama's stash.  When a grown up tries to explain that Obama's stash was taken from their neighbors via taxes, they cover their ears, shut their eyes and refuse to listen or understand this concept.

It doesn't fit into the fairy tale that they truly believe is reality. 

Obama is right on one thing: insurance companies are rotten

Insurance companies are rotten to the bone.  Obama has based his entire health plan on this basic premise, and I wholeheartedly agree with him on this: insurance companies are not on your side or mine, they are out for themselves.  It's not even arguable.

Now, Obama's remedy to temper abuses by insurance companies is not one I agree with, but that's an argument for another day.

The fact that we have over time allowed insurance companies to dictate how we manage our own health care is lamentable.  These companies don't give a whit as to what is best for your health care or mine.  Their primary and overriding concern is to their bottom line, and this concern is at odds with your health care interests. 

Insurance companies got their foot in the health care door when during World War II, prices and wages were frozen to aid in the war effort at the time.  In order to do an end around on these restrictions, companies rather than offer higher wages to attract workers, offered non-monetary benefits in the form of health care insurance.  The Jeanie was let out of the bottle, and we have not been the same since, where prior to the insurance beast that was unleashed to ravage us, we simply paid for medical services as we received them. 

Ah, the good ol' days.....

No use in pining away for them anymore, they are probably gone forever, payment for services rendered.  But insurance company abuses may be the stuff of days gone by as well, now that a single payer system controlled by the government is on the rise.

Are we going to miss those rotten insurance companies when they are gone from our health care system?  That depends, and we will see how things go.

Insurance companies are simply a mob of greedy lawyers, who write up an agreement with their prey, uh, er, I mean customers (called a policy).  In this agreement, the customer agrees to give money in the form of premiums to the insurance company in exchange for coverage upon occurrence of an insured episode that might be covered within the policy.

Sounds good on the surface, right?  No so fast, there, Kimosabe.  Remember, these policies were written by lawyers employed by the insurance company, not by you.  Who do you think these policies favor when a claim is filed? 

Not you, buddy. Just a quick look at the process tells you that you are probably on the losing end in the event that you ever have to file a claim with these rotten sum bitches.  If something happens to you, the first thing the policy holder does is file a 'claim.'  This is not a withdrawal slip.  Not even close.  The claim is simply a request from you to the rotten insurance company that they owe you.

And who do you think verifies whether they owe you anything or not?  THEY DO.  Of course, their knee jerk reaction to any claim whatsoever is to deny it, without even looking into the claim.  They let YOU do all of the work in verifying its validity.  So off you go, writing letters, getting affidavits, gathering evidence and documents, and so it goes.  You submit your findings to back up your 'claim.'

And who is the arbiter of determining whether your back up information has merit?  THEY DO.  Are we all starting to get the picture here?

The fact that Obama hates insurance companies because of this has been the underlying motivation for him to change all of that.  I agree that insurance companies are not the solution to our health care system.  Both Barack Obama and I are in complete and joyous agreement on that.

But Obama's solution to put government in charge of our health care in place of insurance companies is akin to putting sumo wrestlers in charge of Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig: we will go from an unpalatable system to one that is absolutely and totally miserable.

What happens after the US economy crashes and burns?

We've just voted ourselves another four years of wild and crazy drunken sailor deficit spending with the re-election of this spendthrift president.

The federal government is already spending a TRILLION dollars PER YEAR more than the U.S. treasury receives in taxes. A trillion dollars.  That's $1,000,000,000,000.00 -  that's a thousand billion for you Obama voters out there, a number almost too big to comprehend, or at least as far as you are concerned.  Of course, this can be financed in the short term by borrowing and the most common form of this method of beggaring our grandchildren is by issuing debt in the form of U.S. treasury bonds.  And of course, this short term economy can only sustain itself if we have willing purchasers of these bonds.  China and Japan are our largest customers for these bonds, and they are starting to indicate that they are not inclined to purchase these bonds in perpetuity (that means forever, for you Obama voters out there).

In other words (meaning, in simpler terms for you Obama voters out there), our current economy based on annual borrowing patterns is unsustainable.  It can't go on.  An economist in the Nixon administration (a time long, long ago for you Obama voters out there) Herbert Stein once quipped, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop," or put in a way that Obama voters might understand (but I am not guaranteeing that), a trend that can't continue, won't continue.  "Stein's Law."

And once our economy collapses (when, not if, if the Obama voters keep cretins like Barack Obama in power), how will things look?  You know, when a hundred dollar bill can't buy a loaf of bread?  Don't laugh or scoff, this wild economic collapse occurred in recent history, with the government in Germany during post World War I Europe (the Wiemar Republic) experiencing 1000% inflation, to the point that it took one million Deutsch Marks to purchase a gallon of kerosene.  The government just started printing money with absolutely no faith that any of these bills in 100,000 DM denominations were worth anything.

As soon as our government can no longer borrow (or issue bonds) to finance their deficit spending, will they stop sending checks to welfare recipients?  No.  There would be riots.  Will they stop paying the military, or sending checks to Social Security recipients?  No, there would be a coup by the military, and the geezers would rise up into some sort of ugly mob of one form or another.

No, none of these things will be how the hapless spendthrift federal government will handle things.  They will just fire up the printing presses and start printing U.S. dollars as fast as they can run the printing presses.  Which will cause much more paper dollars chasing the same available products, making the prices rise dramatically. 

In short order, nobody will be accepting the U.S. dollar as a medium of exchange.  Then the U.S. government will break open Fort Knox and start paying the most angry of federal workers in gold, right?  And the military would likely be first in line, if I may be so bold as to guess who would be the biggest angry threat to our liberal government.  No, payment will not be made in Fort Knox gold.  There is a high likelihood that there is not a gram of gold in Fort Knox as we speak, as it was sold off to finance the government's malfeasance probably decades ago.  There is only myth remaining in the Fort Knox vaults. 

So what happens when nobody is getting paid?  Obama will at the moment tell those who are starting to get a little anxious, 'let them eat Twinkies.'  Of course Obama (or his successor, or his successor's successor) is so out of touch with reality that he doesn't even know that Twinkies are a thing of the past.  In any event, visions of the French Revolution come to mind once the American public, to include the average obtuse Obama voter (or the average Obama successor voter), realizes that they have been sold a bill of goods, and the cupboards are bare.