Hard Times....

Let's see.....

In 2009 your net income was about $5.5 million dollars. That's on top of spending the majority of that year living free in a 132-room mansion with a staff of servants and chefs that bring you Wagyu beef and fly you everywhere in a private luxury jumbo jet.

In 2008, you only made about $2.6 million.

In 2007, your reported net income was $4.2 million.

In 2006, you reported $991,296.

In 2005, you reported almost $1.7 million, and for several years before that you struggled to get by on around $250,000 a year. Somewhere in that time ya'll bought a 1.5 million dollar home in the Chicago burbs.

Life's a bitch, ain't it homie?

If I take our last five years' worth of tax returns and combine them, I still don't break the $250,000 mark that you enjoyed in an average year, so don't come crying to us on TV about how you've had hard times, too.

No way, homie. I know people who have been on hard times.

Hard times are when you have to send a car back to the bank after only 4 payments & screw your credit rating up because one of you loses a job when their company folds. Hard times are when you snag the coupons out of the newspaper that comes to your jobsite to save extra money without buying a newspaper full of bad news & lies.

Hard times are when people are grateful to have their unemployment extended to 99 weeks because they apply for ten jobs a week and send out 10 resumes a week for a year and a half with no results. Hard times are when employers have dropped wages to the point where you'll LOSE money by taking the one menial job you got offered because it pays less than you were making on unemployment.

Hard times are when the government shuts your industry down to fulfill an agenda. Hard times are when you find yourself sneaking rolls of toilet paper home from work to free up money for the light bill. Hard times are when you get stuck doing the work of two to three people because they won't/can't hire anyone to help you or because they let so many people go that you have to pick up the slack. Hard times are when you can't complain to management about work conditions because they'll just fire you and replace you with someone who'll be grateful to do it for less money and longer hours just to have a job. Hard times are when you have to force yourself out of bed to go to a job you hate, working for people you're smarter than, because at least you have a job and the alternative is worse.

You're on your, what, fifth, sixth, vacation in the last 3 months? I haven't taken a real, honest-to-shit VACATION trip in 10 years. My wife and I have been lucky at best to get a long weekend roadtrip in once a year. My vacation days are really just staycation days where I don't have to go to work. You act like spending 36 hours on the Gulf Coast Redneck Riviera is a hardship, and that creature you married must be sooo jet-lagged after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on her Marie Antoinette Tour of Spain. I guess after all this vacation time you'll need a vacation in.....Marxist Vineyard. Yup, headed to Massachusetts as soon as you can get away from those vile, evil, blue collar Red Staters down south....

And trust me, I have never (and likely never will get to) enjoy anything with the name Wagyu associated with it. However, if I wanna skip a car payment & risk repossession, I can get a special raised-in-Australia Greg Norman Signature Wagyu Steak Selection from the Saks Fifth Avenue website....and get two 12-ounce strips, two 12-ounce ribeyes, and two 8-ounce petite filets for a mere $300, overnighted to me.