The official poverty level for a single person in the U.S. is $9800 per year. After taxes, that would leave you with a weekly check of around $161. One-hundred and sixty-one dollars a week in the U.S. would get you a nice box on the street, near a storm sewer grate for heat, with maybe enough left over for one cheap, fat laden meal per day. I would challenge any politician in America, or anyone else, for that matter, to live on $161 dollars a week, and survive for more than one year. Now I wouldn't say just anyone couldn't do it, because I know people that do. But I'm betting the ranch no politician could.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF US. We did it! We're all Time Magazines "Persons of the Year."And our accomplishments: We Blog. And we deserve it. So here's to Prank, and Whit, and Gina2, and SixxRoxx, and The Valkyrie, and Coloconnect, and kktaylorcc, and Pilar, and Lucy, and all of you. I'll see you at the party.

P.S. I hope they rented a really big place. There seems to be quite a few of us.

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE BUSH A BLOW-JOB SO WE CAN IMPEACH HIM?

* Do you realize that only 1 in 4 Americans is really an American?
* Can you believe there are more attorneys than there are proctologists?
* Four in five Americans are overweight. The fifth is standing in line at McDonald's.
* In a recent survey, no one knew the capital of Rhode Island. In fact, 78% of the people surveyed thought Rhode Island was an island in the Caribbean.
* In the New England Journal of Medicine, it was recently reported that everyone has something.
* I never heard this before, but apparently if all of us each drank one gallon of nuclear waste per year, we would get rid of the surplus waste in five years. There apparently would also be no further need for light bulbs, thus saving an enormous amount of energy.
* In New Zealand, 40 karate members were hired to protect 140 vintage cars from being pecked by parrots. Apparently pecking cars is a parrot phenomenon only karate experts can overcome.
* Bush continues to claim the war is going well, in spite of evidence to the contrary. Now he wants to send in more troops, which the new Democratic leader of the Senate agrees with. Here we go again.
* Trade deficit at record high. Debt at record high. How about that?
* Tiger Woods wins again. Two more wins and he can pay off the debt.

I SWEAR, I MADE MORE MONEY BEFORE I WENT TO COLLEGE WORKING FOR MY PARENTS FULL-TIME AS THEIR SON.