Dear Dick,
On one of my infrequent Xanga visits, I saw the title to this post, so I decided to check out any entries I never read on your site. You don't post that often, so they were all  on the front page to your blog. I went back to November 11th.
Nov. 11th: First thing that comes to mind when you write about credit card debt is that my latest "five year plan" (two years in) seems to be working really well. (That is unless I have any more unexpected repairs on my paid off 11 year old car, which will facilitate me using credit again.) In late 2008, when I wrangled with BofA and got a 5.09% APR on my consolidation loan (down from a whopping 17.99%) I owed 32 grand. On my last bill (which I'm paying at $620.00 a month) I owe slightly over 23 grand. I turn 60 in May of 2013. On that magic date, I should not only have most of the consolidation loan paid off, but the 401k loan I took out to buy my house will be paid off, as will the mortgage for the mobile home itself. Hopefully my car won't fall apart until then! (I needed motor mounts and a water pump this year, and am hoping I get some kind of Christmas bonus cause I need brakes next.) The key of course to paying off debt isn't to borrow any more. I played the credit card game for over a decade, always thinking I would eventually get out of the hole, if only I borrowed a few more dollars at a lower APR. I didn't see the debt start to disapper until I tightened my belt and stopped spending money I didn't have, and used what money I do have to pay off the debt.
I have no idea why so many people seem to be against raising taxes. These days it seems as if "tax cut" is still the plan of action to get people to spend more, when sometime in the near future the tipping point will occur and the government's many loans will come due. I certainly hope I don't see the U.S. go bankrupt during my lifetime, but it very well could happen soon.
Nov. 22: Nobody is going to stand for any type of "profiling" in the U.S. I predicted after 9/11 that we would soon have checkpoints on the entrances to our interstates, and thankfully this hasn't happened yet. Perhaps because it was jetliners which were used as the weapons on 9/11 most of the anti terrorist ploys have been in airports. I also think it is useless to declare wars on ideologies. But come to think of it, the U.S. has mostly been doing this during my lifetime. Both the Korean and the Vietnam conflicts involved the "threat of communism" and now it's terrorism in the Mideast. I'm with you. The terrorists seem to have won this "war".
Dec. 5th. Harding is thought of as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Wall Street crashed about two years after Hoover took office. Return to normalcy, eh? Hmmm. Well, you wrote this a couple of weeks ago, and as I comment, the House still hasn't approved Obama's latest "compromise" bill which will let the rich slide for another few years. I think the reason common sense won't triumph is because it's always been the monied and powerful who in essence "run" the U.S. and they won't BE taxed. I've always blamed Reaganomics for our country's woes. Money never seemed to "trickle down" to me, that's for sure.
Your solutions seem to be based on taxes, and while I agree, a lot of the Republican voters (and those they voted into congress) seem to disagree. On a different subject, I even think we should have socialized medicine, like they do in Canada, but again that entails more taxation, and Americans seem to be against it.)
The wars in far off places are at least good for the military. They're generating jobs, and those cities which sport military bases seem to be better off financially than those without. (generally speaking.) War is always good for the economy. Personally, I thought we'd be in fear of a national draft again when the Mideast conflict took longer than Vietnam, but not only has this not happened, the recruitment in all branches of the military seems to be at an all time high!
I can't disagree with you on any of your points. But I'm probably a commie.
Dec. 14th. I'm not really blogging at this point in time. Occasionally I'll write an entry letting people know I'm still healthy and alive, but just not feeling too creative. So I hardly ever visit anyone. Except for rare occasions with my longtime friends on Xanga like right now.
I have no comments or suggestions about your relative's divorce, except to say that divorce is always a sad affair. My parents died young (and were still married to each other at the time) and I'm single and childless.
I will offer you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, however. And thank you for being such a great reader and friend over the years. I'll probably get an itch to come back to Xanga sometime in the near future, but since I got both Netflix streaming movies and TV over the internet to my 60" HDTV and On Demand DirecTV as well, it seems there's almost too much entertainment for me and I never seem to catch up! I'm only on the internet to read the newspaper these days. (And the L.A. Times offers more online (for free) than they do for a subscription to the actual paper.)
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool