Cash for Clunkers, Cash for Appliances, Cash for Nancy?

Well, I struck out again. I am ineligible for cash for clunkers because I have an energy efficient car. Can you imagine that? I bought one without being forced to. I just thought I would do my small part in reducing my carbon footprint by getting rid of my 14mpg fun-mobile. Bummer. No cash for Nancy here. That's Ok though.

I can't afford to replace my appliances just yet, because I stupidly replaced them without any incentive. You know, they were getting a little old and inefficient, so once again I thought I'd be responsible, save a little energy, and help out my pocketbook while I was at it. I wish someone had given me a heads up about all these nifty programs in the works. No cash for Nancy here either, but I guess I can live with that.

I pay my mortgage on time because I decided I'd better keep it within my budget. I wish I could have afforded that nice mansion down the street, but retirement was on my horizon, and I thought I should think a little ahead. What an idiot I am. I could have had the rest of you guys help me out. Thanks to a lot of underachievers and overzealous bankers however, the value of my home has taken a nose dive, and pretty soon I'll probably owe more than it's worth. No break for Nancy on her mortgage, but I never expected one. I understand though. I wouldn't expect the people down the street to move into anything they might actually be able to afford.

I missed the boost in my paycheck a while back because I'm retired. I don't collect social security, being a government retiree, so that was a bust too. I thought I'd buy a few extra bucks worth of life insurance with any windfall, you know, to help my family from going into bankruptcy from all these programs, but turns out I don't have to. I hope they'll be some programs left to help them out should they need it.

Those death panels are sounding a little more reasonable now. Oops, I mean advisory panels. I could get some terminal illness and agree to pop a few Percocet rather than life prolonging procedures. Then my life insurance would go to my family and they could afford to stay current with all the taxes imposed, and keep the house...maybe. I don't think I'd be eligible to get a thumbs up though, because I actually have my own insurance, and I don't think my people are allowed to do that on purpose...are they?

I'm also a little upset that we wasted all that time and energy on trying to instill decent values and the importance of self-sufficiency in the kids. It seems kind of counter-productive now. They need to learn how to search out and qualify for all these programs they're going to be paying for over their entire lives and those of their children. They can't afford to be working. They need to be boning up on how to get the most out of what we couldn't afford to pay for but needed yesterday.

I'm wondering if I wrote a letter if I could ask for just a tiny bit of that two billion bucks going south for offshore oil drilling. I could pay off a little bit of that supplemental college loan the niece was embarrassed to ask for. In the grand scheme of things, who would really miss a measly couple of thousand dollars? We could tell Brazil it was lost in the currency conversion.

Does any of this make any sense? I don't imagine it does. That's my point.

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