Good news and bad news

The hood ornament - click

   To say Michael Dingman is an automobile collector is an understatement.  The Ford Company Director has been collecting Fords and Ford neon signs for years and years.  Only cars with the old flathead V8 engines are in the "priceless collection".
  The oldest car in the collection is joining others in an auction, it's a blue 1934 Ford Deluxe Phaeton.
It has been used all these years at the family's vacation spot in the Bahamas.
  I bought a Megabucks ticket this week the $5,275,000.00 prize when you take the cash option (I'm old, remember?) leaves you with about $1,535,000.00 after the prize is cut in half and taxes are taken out.  I will not be able to afford to bid on this car even if I win.

Just look at the magnificent condition!

  And now, the bad news.  The bad news begins because I read the news online, I read several sites every day and a few newspaper sites too.  As a result learning this stuff, on occasion, really ticks me off.  REALLY!
  Yesterday I learned of the millions of dollars being spent to upgrade Gitmo.  Yes the very prison for foreign combatants, the one that want us dead.  Improvements are a top grade soccer field, fenced and guarded, cable TV with 21 channels and dining facilities.
  It now costs the taxpayers $800,000.00 (eight hundred thousand dollars) to house a resident of Gitmo for one year!  The State of Maine only spends $41,000 (Forty-one thousand dollars) a year.
  The thing that ticks me off now:  The Federal Government in its infinite wisdom has decided that a citizen must earn less than (are you ready?) $11,170.00 to be in poverty.  Eleven thousand One Hundred Seventy dollars!!).  So......to be considered in poverty you must earn about 71.6 times less than it takes to keep one Gitmo prisoner for a year!
  Now that's bad news!

An Osprey going fishing.