Ever wonder what they are thinking?

https://youtu.be/Zu1tAz5gyS0?si=7Ouf8caeF8gvXjLr 

I have heard it said many times, "What makes them think this is okay?" This goes beyond supercillious! 

There was a commercial back in 1970s about a kid singing that one kid's dog was better than the other kid's dog. The reasoning was the dog food, Ken-L-Ration.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DQ5x5HlFfmC0&ved=2ahUKEwiF94fD54yLAxXKvokEHTyYOu4QwqsBegQIChAF&sqi=2&usg=AOvVaw0SnkptU2AN6V3s9if3x09N

Amazingly enough, there are people "deep" in the scenes that believe that their dog is better and will use the illegally-gotten power to prove it. Amazing!

End of the American Dream?

 

44 Statistics From 2024 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

 BY MICHAEL SNYDER/END OF THE AMERICAN DREAM JANUARY 02, 2025

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2024 was definitely one of the wildest years that any of us have ever experienced.  During the past 12 months, Donald Trump was convicted by a New York jury, he was almost assassinated, he won the presidential election, and he was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.  Nobody has ever had a year quite like that.  

Of course 2024 was also a year of war.  Israel battled Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, the government of Syria was overthrown by radical Islamists, long-range missiles provided by NATO started raining down on targets deep inside Russia, and Russian forces stormed even deeper into eastern Ukraine.  

2024 also brought us Hurricane Helene, a “Great American eclipse”, and “the comet of the century”.  Now here we are at the end of the year, and we are being told to brace ourselves for a bird flu pandemic.  

I have a feeling that the year ahead is going to be absolutely nuts, but for a moment I wanted to look back at the crazy year that we just went through.  

The following are 44  statistics from 2024 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 Over 155 million votes were cast in the 2024 presidential election.  Donald Trump’s win in that election capped what many consider to be the greatest political comeback in U.S. history.

#2 Nearly 11 billion dollars was spent during the 2024 election cycle.  That is the most money ever spent on an election by a very wide margin.

#3 1.2 billion dollars was spent on political ads in the state of Pennsylvania alone.

#4 Prior to the election, one survey found that 79 percent of Americans believed that the nation was on the wrong track.

#5 The U.S. government is currently $36,144,183,375,647.43 in debt.

 #6 If our politicians keep spending money at the current rate, the U.S. government will be 51 trillion dollars in debt four years from now.

 #7 Total U.S. household debt is nearing 18 trillion dollars.

 #8 The number of shoplifting incidents per year in the United States is up 93 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels

 #9 On a single day in December, Joe Biden announced that he was commuting the prison sentences of nearly 1,500 criminals and he issued full pardons to 39 others.

 #10 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 37 percent of Americans are having trouble even paying their most basic bills.

 #11 According to Bank of America, almost a third of all households “spend more than 95% of their disposable income on necessities such as housing costs, groceries and utility bills”.

 #12 The price of orange juice is up 327 percent over the last 3 years.

 #13 The average household in Miami spends 327 dollars during a single trip to the grocery store.

 #14 It now takes more than $100,000 a year for a typical U.S. household to live “the American Dream” in all 50 states, and in 29 U.S. states it takes more than $150,000 a year.

 #15 For the average person, it now costs 4.4 million dollars to live “the American Dream” over the course of a lifetime.

 #16 Thanks to rampant inflation, the average American now believes that it takes an income of $270,000 a year in order to be “financially successful”.

 #17 Overall, U.S. home prices are up more than 1,000 percent since 1974.

#18 Only 10 percent of Americans believe that becoming a homeowner is “easy or somewhat easy”.

 #19 37 percent of U.S. cardholders have already maxed out at least one credit card.

 #20 The amount of money that Americans owe on their credit cards is twice as large as the GDP of the 100 poorest nations on the entire planet combined.

 #21 30 percent of all student loan borrowers have “gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills”.

 #22 At one food bank in New Jersey, demand has actually quadrupled since the peak of the pandemic.

 #23 An all-time record high 770,000 people are homeless in the United States, and that number grew by 18 percent in just one year which is also an all-time record high.

 #24 We are being told that more than 3 million Americans are now living in their vehicles.

 #25 The number of job openings in the United States has fallen by about 4 million since 2021.

 #26 U.S. retailers have announced 7,100 store closures in 2024.

 #27 For the 12 months ending June 30th, the number of business bankruptcy filings was up more than 40 percent compared to the previous 12 months.

 #28 An office building in Manhattan that sold for $332 million dollars in 2006 sold for just $8.5 million dollars in 2024.

 #29 Half of all workers in the U.S. make less than $43,222.81 a year.

 #30 According to Bank of America, from 2019 to 2024 there was a 10 percent jump in those that are living paycheck to paycheck.

 #31 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 29 percent of all U.S. households were one person households in 2024.

 #32 40 percent of Americans report feeling lonely at least some of the time.

 #33 30 percent of Americans have been clinically diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives.

 #34 The market capitalization of Fartcoin is currently 973 million dollars.  Meanwhile, the market capitalization of Office Depot is just 680 million dollars.

 #35 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million people that were not born in the United States are now living here.

 #36 The federal government has admitted that there are approximately “425,000 convicted criminals living in the U.S. illegally”.

 #37 According to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, the total damage caused by Hurricane Helene in his state exceeds 50 billion dollars.

 #38 According to the official website of the GAO, Congress had appropriated a total of 174 billion dollars for the war in Ukraine as of April.

 #39 According to the Institute for Economics & Peace, there are 56 active military conflicts raging around the world right now.  That is the highest number that we have seen since World War II.

 #40 According to the United Nations, there are over 2 billion people that eat insects as part of their normal diets right now.

 #41 It is being projected that the market for insect protein in the United States will be valued at 274 billion dollars in 2031.

 #42 Sperm counts have fallen by more than 50 percent since 1973.  If this trend continues, soon we will not be able to produce enough viable offspring and the human population of this planet will plummet dramatically.

 #43 Our brains are slowly but surely filling up with plastic.  One team of scientists discovered that human brain samples from 2024 had concentrations of microplastics that were 50 percent higher than human brain samples from 2016.

 #44 If the amount of plastic in our brains continues to rise at a rate of 50 percent every 8 years, 28 percent of our brains will be plastic 80 years from now and everyone will be dead.

 

Originally published at End Of The American Dream

When I was a youngster, the American dream consisited of buying a home, owning a car, job security, food on the table, and being able to walk down the streets any time of the day or night and feeling safe and being safe. 

My family consisted of a mom, dad, 3 children, and my faternal grandmother. My mom and dad bought their first house in 1968. They had 3 children and my grandmother and had been married for 13 years at this time.  (Mom was 17 and Dad was 16 when they were married in 1953.) They struggled, but were very frugal about their spending and careful with their financial obligations. Vacations in the summer were local day trips  to the swim park, the amusement park (Idora Park), and visits to my grandparents, which had an orchard of apples, grapes, currants, berry bushes, rhubarb, veges, and a large field for playing kickball with our cousins, who also visited. We did not take vacations to other parts of the country, although we did visit Niagara Falls one year, otherwise, we stayed local. 

In good weather, we were outside. We made up games to play, forts in our backyards from snow in winter or blankets in summer. We played with other kids, rode bicycles, walked everywhere we went if we did not want to ride our bikes, which incidentally, were hand-me-down bikes. 

There were 6 of us aroung the supper table every night and after dinner, my siblings and I took turns doing dishes. Dad refused to buy a dishwasher replying, "Why should I buy a dishwasher, I have three of them." And, it was done, no questions asked. We would bicker with one another about whose turn it really was, but those dishes were washed, dried, and put away. And, we had other chores to do to help out around the house before any playtime was granted. Playtime, in any form, was a priveledge, not a right. And, homework was always done before any other activity took place. 

We never got an allowance. As my dad stated, "I put a roof over your head, clothes on your back, food in your belly, and provide transportation to places that are needed to go. If anything, you need to pay me for these Amenities. And there was no arguing about it. But, Mom would slip us some change once in a while for some penny candy bought down at the local corner store.  

My point, it has been said that things were simpler then. And in some ways they were. But, families, those that staedy together for the long haul--a rarity these days--also used their imagainations to fulfill the American Dream. The, "I want it now" was not possible in the 50s-90s unless you were willing to gamble on losing everything. You patiently or impatiently, depending on your persaonality type, waited for the things you wanted or believed to be wanted or was of the utmost importance.

The meaning of priveledge and rights have become misconstrued and entitlement has taken a forefront to wants and not necessarily needs. But, that is another story. Right now, getting back to basics is what I am trying to say. I am not saying vacations, caviar, new cars, houses are not to be obtained, but living above your means should never be the result of the actions taken. The consequesnces are much too damaging and a rough road to travel. 

Change your ways and you can change the ways of the world. Wake up, take action, remember why you are here, speak your mind in such a way that your are really being listened to--contacting and petitioning those who can and will listen and have the electoral power to begin the change (not violently)--become a part of the solution. Champ on a cause you believe in. It does require time, commitment, and a backbone, but isn't that what Americans have? And, if not, make time, commit, and keep your wits about you and use your God-given rights to make changes. It's not too late.