Let's dive straight into the thick of the b.s. that is the representation we have in congress. I heard on the radio this morning that some idiot in elected office was saying that because no businesses and no people are spending more now than they did 2 years ago, that the government should take the same tactic. Seriously? That's your reasoning? I'm not saying we should necessarily be spending more, but governments are completely different from businesses and individuals when it comes to how they should spend money and for what reason and when. What happened to "trickle down economics" idiot? The whole point of "trickle down economics" is that the government should spend more than it takes in so that the economy improves. The same is true for stimulus packages that spend tons... we get money into the hands of the people and that lets them spend and the economy improved. How we get money into the hands of the people depends on your political views. Republicans tend to prefer the uber-wealthy so they give high-end tax cuts. Democrats tend to prefer the middle and upper-middle class so they like to spend more instead of giving tax cuts. Both plans come out to the same principle if you go to the most basic level: governments deficit spend to improve the economy. Those who think that we shouldn't spend more should think of different rationale than to compare government fiscal planning to that of business and individual fiscal planning.
Monday February 25, 2008
And now where are we? McCain has started joining Clinton in attacking Obama about how little experience he has. It's rather amusing that the party that brought us W. Bush is attacking anybody for not having enough experience. It's also amusing when you realize that Romney supposedly dropped out of the race to prevent exactly this scenario in reverse, providing more artillary to the opponent, though the Democratic race is much closer to there is rationale for Clinton to stay in. According to CNN.com, Obama has 1,327 delegates to Clinton's 1,255, with 2,025 needed to lock up the nomination. A much closer race than the race in which McCain leads 971 to 233 over Huckabee in which 1,191 is needed to secure victory. I will be amused if the Republicans get to the convention without a secured winner. I will laugh my ass off if Huckabee manages to get the nomination.... that and thank whatever gods made it possible for McCain not to be the one the Democrats have to run against.
Unfortunately for the Dems, Nader is throwing his hat in the ring. What a jackass. He claims he didn't cost the Democrats the White House in 2000 because Gore won the popular vote and the Republicans stole Florida, which should have gone to Gore... tell that to everybody who recognizes that we've had W. Bush for President for the last 7 years. Tell that to me now, when the Democrats are almost definitely going to be facing what looks like a slightly right of middle Republican who has worked with far left Democrats time and again! SON OF A BITCH! Don't fucking tell me the Democrats don't need the left. Don't fucking tell me that McCain isn't going to take the middle, which is where the 2 remaining Dems live! Fucking JACKASS! You don't play games with this. You DO NOT play games with this.... not after 8 years of throwing our reputations away. Not after 8 years of fear mongering and saber rattling. Not after 8 year of throwing massive amounts of money into wars with 2 countries. Not after 8 years of forgetting the environment. Not after 8 years of trampling on the Constitution. Not after 8 years of.... NOT AFTER 8 YEARS OF THIS BULLSHIT! You just don't! Do you fucking get it jackass? I understand that alternate parties have a hard time. I understand that you may feel the far left needs a voice. Hell, I even understand your desire to say that the Democrats should start speaking for the values of the party instead. But, one last time, I repeat.... NOT AFTER 8 FUCKED UP HORRIFIC YEARS YOU FUCKING MORONIC SON OF A BITCH IDIOT!
Thursday February 14, 2008
So, in the course of 3 days, I've heard 2 people talking about religion on NPR and both times I got a bit pissed off. The first was someone complaining about religious schools that were going to be leased to the city and cease being religious. The reason for this change is that the schools were just too expensive to continue as is. What the person said first that pissed me off was to ask what she was to do since the school was no longer going to be religious. My immediate response in my head was "perhaps you could do what the rest of us do and put your kid through public school?" She then followed that question up with the statement that by taking god out of schools, they were letting Satan in. Are you fucking kidding me? So you're saying that I was taught by Satan because I didn't go to a religious school? I'm fine with someone desiring to send their kid to a religious school, but if you're going to have thoughts about everybody else sending their kids to evil schools, keep them to yourself please. The final straw came when she said that everything would work out and be o.k. because it was all God's plan. If everything is God's plan then STOP COMPLAINING! If you really believe that everything happens for a reason and that God is behind it and that God does nothing but good, sit down and shut the fuck up. You have just given away your right to complain that something is evil or that by transitioning these schools the kids will be tempted by the Devil and all sorts of chaos will occur... because it's God's plan and thus you think whatever happens is for the best.
The thing I heard today was about the election. Someone commented that religion should matter and that it was reasonable for Romney to lose votes due to his being a Mormon because religion is a conscious choice unlike race and gender. O.k., that's reasonable, except that not everybody from one religion is the same or has the same ideals or would carry all those ideals over to their political decisions. Let's expand that from Mormons and Atheists to some other groupings... all Catholic girls are sluts, all catholic men are pedophiles, all protestants can't handle talking about sex, are hipocrites and condemn others for everything under the sun while doing everything under the sun themselves. See how this logic could fail you in making a decision based on the person's religion jackass? Certainly you have the right to choose based on religious beliefs, but don't start claiming that you're better for using that than those who use race or gender, not that I would advocate any of these criteria. I obviously prefer basing my choices on things that actually matter, like where they stand on issues, if I believe they're truthful, whether I think they'd make a good president, whether I think they're electable. I also heard someone ask why nobody was asking about Obama's religious beliefs and instantly I thought to myself "because Dems don't care about religious beliefs". The reason we don't care? Because we believe in the separation of church and state and we are not looking to force our religions on the general populace through statements or law or practice.
Wednesday February 13, 2008
The politicians of Massachusetts have started discussing whether to have seniors be required to take driving exams in order to keep their licenses, making me once more proud to be from this great state. There's also some discussion going on about cracking down on drivers by the state troopers. To further increase my spirits, Obama has pulled ahead of Clinton, if only so slightly. They're within 50 delegates of eachother and each has about 1150, so it's not going to surprise me much if Clinton gains the lead back, but I'm hopeful once again.
Unfortunately, congress' biggest news event recently, aside from the huge, fantastic, super, completely-pointless, mis-named "stimulus" package, is the hearings on whether Roger Clemens did drugs. Good job at making sure commercial sports are conducting business appropriately. Spy-Gate.... SPY-GATE?!?!? Fucking Christ! The Patriots won every game in the regular season and lost the last game of the post season, thus cutting open the hearts of everybody in New England and you want to look back to the first couple games and see whether there might have been something bad about what they did? Are you fucking kidding me? The NFL already punished the Patriots, so fucking do the nation's business, not the NFL's! I understand that you have every right to conduct these investigations but do you really not have anything better to do? We have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have seriously fucked up shit going on in Africa. We have homeless. We have starving children. We have a health care system that everybody agrees sucks so much more than anybody else's in the world (except for maybe 3rd world nations). We're spewing out massive amounts of polution. Our auto industry is failing. Even our government officials say we're heading into a recession. And the best use of your time is asking Roger Clemens whether he took drugs and talking about how the Patriots cheated 3 months - 1 football season ago? Are you fucking kidding me with this? Thank god we don't have anything to put our heads together about such as Social Security, our deteriorating infrastructure, or THE STATES RAVAGED BY TORNADOS. Give me a fucking break. You know, I think I could waste my money a lot better than congress is doing with these hearings... or better yet, I could use my money on something useful. Self-absorbed media-lusting jackasses.
Wednesday January 30, 2008
Thank god we have gotten past all issues of race in this year's Democratic nominee campaign. Now we're on to gender. First Carolyn Kennedy endorsed Obama, and that was fine and good. Then, her uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy endorsed Obama, and this was clearly wrong because he's a guy endorsing a guy. New York's chapter of The National Organization for Women said "women have just experience the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Domcratic presidential primary campaign has really hi women hard" and "He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton." Certainly the only reason someone might be more in favor of Obama than Clinton would be that he's a man instead of a woman. It couldn't have anything to do with thinking he's a better candidate or that Clinton's mudslinging has gone too far too often. I haven't heard of Obama's campaign firing staff for sending out emails about Clinton's past that went to far in accusing her of being part of organizations or attending churches. I haven't heard of Obama's spouse railing against Clinton as being a ridiculous candidate. What's more, while I get the sense that Clinton and Obama hold similar values, I have heard Obama saying that the Iraq war was a mistake, something Clinton hasn't done, and I haven't heard him trying to convince people he's something other than what he is, while Clinton seems to change her stance based on the wind. So why is it that Ted would be betraying women by throwing his support for his choice? Is it because nobody can throw their support toward a man when a woman stands a good chance of getting the nomination? Isn't that the same BS that could be said about throwing your support to a white candidate over a black candidate? And why is it betrayal when Senator Ted Kennedy does this and isn't betrayal when Carolyn Kennedy does it? I'm very glad to hear that the national office of NOW iin Washington, which has endorsed Clinton, said that Senator Ted Kennedy is o.k., "The National Organization for Women has enormous respect and admiration for Sen. Edward Kennedy... For decades Sen. Kennedy has been a friend of NOW, and a leader and fighter for women's civil and reproductive rights, and his record shows that."
Tuesday January 29, 2008
Last night was the last State of the Union Address from President George W. Bush. Why we listen to him, I don't know, but here we go again.
Bush started the adress with "These issues call for vigorous debate, and I think it's fair to say we've answered the call." Sure, if you consider ignoring the other side's arguments as a vigorous debate, we've definitely had a very vigorous debate. He continued "All of us were sent to Washington to carry out the people's business. That is the purpose of this body. It is the meaning of our oath. It remains our charge to keep." I'm glad he said this as I've been wondering why we elect people. I thought it might have been to hold toga parties and sleep with random paiges (oh, did the last part strike too close to home?). Thank god for the clarification of the role of the federal government being to do the "people's business".
"Let us show (our fellow Americans) that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results at the same time." Couldn't you have started cooperating, oh, say, 7 years ago? You used something similar 8 years ago to get elected? Compassionate conservative my ass. Bring the left and right together , right? Nice lie.
"From expanding opportunity to protecting our country, we've made good progress." Perhaps he meant no progress? As I see it, we've made the Middle East more of a breeding ground for anti-US radicals, ruined our relationships with our allies and ruined our image in just about ever country in the world. That's protecting our country? And expanding opportunity? Maybe for the upper crust of the economic scale.
"To build a prosperous future, we must trust people with their own money and empower them to grow our economy." Nice non-partisan speech. In other words, we shouldn't have taxes right? Bite me jackass. It's not that I don't trust my neighbor to spend his money and grow our economy, it's that if he doesn't pay for the firestation and his house catches on fire, mine will to. We have common goals, common goals, let's pay for them together, what a concept.
"So last week, my administration reached agreement with Speaker Pelosi and Republican Leader Boehner on a robust growth package that includes tax relief for individuals and families and incentives for business investment." This is of course referring to the plan to provide $600 to each person to "stimulate" growth. Unfortunately this plan has absolutely no chance of helping the economy and is all for show. Everybody thinks we're heading into a recession, so everybody will save the money, not spend it on American-made merchandise. So if we take the money that the government doesn't have and save it, the economy does not move at all. Instead we could be spending tons of money on public works projects (rebuilding roads, and such) which is desperately needed to maintain our country's infrastructure and which would be a true investment in our country's industries and workers. More on that later, there's so much left to cover of his speech!
"We have other work to do on taxes. Unless Congress acts, most of the tax relief we've delivered over the past seven years will be taken away. Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase." Are you really going to tell me that letting the original plan for these temporary tax reductions is a tax increase? In that case, I would suggest that if I take a day off and return to work, I've got myself a brand new job. And what's more, if you're going to play this kind of game, we should never have another temporary tax decrease because when your pre-determined time is up and we're supposed to go back to the old taxes, you're going to pull this crap. Also, how can "most of the tax relief ... be taken away"? How is it possible that the relief you gave us last year is going to be taken away. Are you going to get in a time machine and change what happened last year? Cut the crap, stop being a complete moronic jackass of a liar, and say what you mean. You don't like government, you don't like taxes, and you especially don't like taxes on the wealthy, just say so.
"Next week, I'll send you a budget that terminates or substantially reduces 151 wasteful or bloated programs, totaling more than $18 billion. The budget that I will submit will keep America on track for a surplus in 2012. American families have to balance their budgets; so should their government." First of all, I'd like to point out that I have no idea what these programs are, but can I ask why it took you 7 years to find them and determine that they should be cut? It also took you 7 years to decide that balancing the budget was important. So you think that the best option is to cut government spending now that everything will fall apart on someone else's watch? Good plan jackass.
"The people's trust in their government is undermined by congressional earmarks". I beg to differ. The people's trust in their government is undermined by their President lying to them consistently year after year. But then again, how could I expect you to tell the truth about why we don't trust government?
"On housing, we must trust Americans with the responsibility of homeownership and empower them to weather turbulent times in the housing market. My administration brought together the HOPE NOW alliance, which is helping many struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure. And Congress can help even more. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, modernize the Federal Housing Administration, and allow state housing agencies to issue tax-free bonds to help homeowners refinance their mortgages." Again with the two-faced lies. You say you must trust us with the responsibility of home ownership, but you're going to bail us out of our poor judgement. I'm fine with the bail out but let's be honest about why it's happening. It's happening because without the bail out, you're going to see tons of loss both on the part of the investors and those that bought the houses. Why lie about that? Why on earth do you want to lie more than you have to about things and lose more of the dwindling respect and trust you have.
"Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships you approved, more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our Nation's Capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school." I'm happy to announce that we now not only have the interconnectivity of church and state but are separating church schools and non-church-non-public schools. This is a clear distinction that we must demonstrate at every moment because.... we're fucking morons and can't help but mention that we're in favor of faith-everything and that an organization of any kind that isn't faith-centered must be separated out as just another in a crowd of whatever.
"Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions. Let us increase the use of renewable power and emissions-free nuclear power.... And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases." Thank god we're now reacting to the environment. What was that pesky agreement that we helped get started and then backed out of? The Kyoto Agreement? But that's from the past. We should do stuff with more impact than a WORLD WIDE INITIATIVE. Let's take a look at the technologies he's looking to support too. Coal and emissions-free nuclear power. To start us off, does anybody really believe the myth that coal can be clean? Give me a break. Emissions-free nuclear power, another wonderful myth. First of all, if the nuclear facility has a melt down, I believe there is a bit of danger in the emissions. A nuclear plant doesn't need to melt down to cause environmental impact however, as the spent fuel rods are still radioactive centuries later and have to be stored some place secure and away from anything they might harm. We haven't finished developing such a storage unit so perhaps we shouldn't be so gung-ho about moving forward with more power plants?
"To keep America competitive into the future, we must trust in the skill of our scientists and engineers and empower them to pursue the breakthroughs of tomorrow." Here President Bush neglected to add "except in the case where we can exploit their efforts by banning them for political gain" as in the case of stem cell research.
"And so I call on Congress to pass legislation that bans unethical practices such as the buying, selling, patenting, or cloning of human life." I forgot that we were allowing people to patent human life. In point of fact, didn't Merck recently patent all forms of cats? From now on, if your cat is going to have kittens, you have to pay Merck, right?
"On matters of justice, we must trust in the wisdom of our founders and empower judges who understand that the Constitution means what it says. I've submitted judicial nominees who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel. Many of these nominees are being unfairly delayed. They are worthy of confirmation, and the Senate should give each of them a prompt up-or-down vote." Well thank god you have submitted reasonable judges, that last guy that submitted judges was full of shit and so there were prompt up-or-down votes on all of those... oh, wait, there weren't... it's just politics as usual. And you're not fooling anybody by saying that your nominees "rule by the letter of the law". Your nominees do what everybody else's nominees do, rule based on what they believe the constitution means. I love this tactic of the right wing of this country to claim that their view of the constitution is the what the constitution says and that the left wing's view of the constitution is full of crap. It's a shame that not everybody knows the truth about what the constitution says and that we on the left make things up constantly, would you care to force religion on people and ban some books?
And coming back to us needing to build nuclear power plants to release us from having to use gas, "Our message to the people of Iran is clear: We have no quarrel with you. We respect your traditions and your history. We look forward to the day when you have your freedom. Our message to the leaders of Iran is also clear: Verifiably suspend your nuclear enrichment, so negotiations can begin. And to rejoin the community of nations, come clean about your nuclear intentions and past actions," oh, wait, that would suggest that we don't think anybody else should have nuclear power plants. O.k., so, we're in favor of us having nuclear power plants but not Iran because we think Iran should use gas, because gas there doesn't cause environmental trouble here.
"America is a force for hope in the world because we are a compassionate people," are you kidding me? We're not a force of hope, we're a force of doom. Nobody believes we are there to help them, everybody believes we're only there for ourselves. Individuals may appear to be good, but America doesn't.
"Our military families also sacrifice for America. They endure sleepless nights and the daily struggle of providing for children while a loved one is serving far from home. We have a responsibility to provide for them. So I ask you to join me in expanding their access to child care, creating new hiring preferences for military spouses across the federal government, and allowing our troops to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children. Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them." Perhaps we should honor them by helping the troops when they return home as well. That's all I'm going to say about that because I believe that speaks for itself.
"So tonight, with confidence in freedom's power, and trust in the people, let us set forth to do their business." If you believe that he's setting forth to do the people's business as they would like him to, I've got a bridge to sell you, which brings us to how big a fucking liar he is and the number of lies he's told us over the last 7 years.
Saturday January 26, 2008
And so South Carolina comes to bat. The latest polls show that Obama is wildly popular with blacks and wildly less popular with whites. Thank god we're done with racism in this country. You know, I never stop being amazed by how racist some parts of this country still is. I grew up thinking the past was the past and that things were much better now. Too bad that's not even remotely true.
In other news, the Massachusetts House of Representatives has passed a bill banning text messaging with a cell phone and using a cell phone without a handsfree device. I don't care much, except that it's typical decision making without actually trying to resolve the problem. The problem with using your cell phone while driving is not that it makes you a worse driver, it's that it allows bad drivers to become worse drivers. The problem with banning talking on your cell phone while driving is that it's an instinctual ban. People tell me that they always see people almost getting in accidents while on the phone... I have news for you, those people are being irresponsible and bad drivers. I see people almost get into accidents all the time without talking on cell phones... ALL THE TIME. I see people cut eachother off within feet of eachother. I see people move into my lane WHEN I'M NEXT TO THEM. I see people drive within 3 feet of eachother while going 70-80 miles per hour (for those of you counting, that's 100-117 miles per second boys and girls... meaning that if the car in front of you has a problem, you'd better be damned fast or you're going to be a part of that problem)... I see this just about every day I drive home if I leave work around 5 to 6:30 . It's not that we don't want people to drive better, because if we did we would make that illegal and go about enforcing it, aka, cops should be out there monitoring how close you are to the car in front of you instead of just how fast you 're going... the Germans do it so don't fucking tell me we, the richest country in the world, can't afford to. We're a country of bad drivers (you want to claim Boston's the worst drivers, fine, but in my experience the worst drivers have license plates from New Hampshire, New York, Florida, New Jersey, just about everywhere... yes, I've seen plenty of bad drivers from Florida, wierd huh?) and nobody wants to do anything about it except unsubstantial little things. That's all fine and good, just don't suggest that it's anything more than trying to get people to quit smoking by telling them it makes their breath smell bad or trying to get people to not shoot others by telling them the gun might hurt their hand. I heard a talk show host complaining about the recent suggestion that the state troopers crack down on speeding as a way of making more money. Fine, it's wrong to do it as a way to make more money for the state, but perhaps it's not a bad idea to start cracking down on speeding and whatever other reckless driving that is against the law. Listen, when it's the norm to drive at least 10 miles per hour over the speed limit that's a bad thing. I drive in the middle and left most lane of the highway and am constantly witnessing people driving 75 mph in a 55 mph zone, 75 mph may not be super fast but it's still 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. So give me a fucking break with this whole cell phone thing. Crack down on everything, get the guy trying to drive 90 mph off my ass and stop him from cutting me off less than 5 feet in front of me, or get the fuck away from my hand on my phone. .. o.k., I'm not actually upset about losing the ability to use my cell phone with my hand, but it's kinda ridiculous as previously mentioned and I would kinda prefer those in office be dealing with more important things, like poverty, hunger, energy needs, and education.
Monday January 21, 2008
With 4 states with delegates done and 2 states stripped of delegates out of the way, the Democrats have just about put a nail in Edwards' coffin. I've been wishing it weren't so, but I think it may be. Unfortunately, South Carolina also seems to place Edwards in at second place, but thankfully the state appears to be going to Obama. I still appreciate Obama's seeming sincerity over Clinton's total lack thereof and her willingness to play dirty. I support positive campaigning rather than mudslinging and there has been plenty of mudslinging from Clinton's campaign.
In other news, I saw late last week that Honda has a natural gas vehicle which costs a few thousand dollars more than a Prius. It's not quite what I'm wishing for, but it's a good step forward. Unfortunately there aren't filling stations, it takes 16 hours to fill an almost empty tank at home, and the company that installs the filling device into your house is not everywhere (closest to Massachusetts is New Jersey or New York) so it's not super convenient. It also goes about 220-250 miles on one tank, so again, not so convenient as long as there aren't filling stations everywhere (and if it takes you 16 hours to fill an almost empty tank at non-house filling stations, it may require overnight-fillling). I also read that Toyota is going to put out a plug in hybrid by 2010 (and before if possible). This would compete with the GM Volt which I had read about earlier this year which will also be a plug in electric vehicle with a backup source (sounds like a hybrid to me). The GM Volt is supposed to go about 40 miles on one charge, while the Toyota plug-in hybrid reportedly gets 20 miles on one charge. The Toyota car currently goes 8 miles on a charge though obviously they're still developing it and have a higher target. I read today that Honda is planning to lease Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars in Southern California mid-2008... that's THIS YEAR! (duh) Very exciting news if they can manage to expand this to a country-wide market. The car reportedly can go 270 miles per charge. In any case, I look forward to hearing more as 2010 comes closer and maybe I can hold out on buying a new car until one of these new cars is available.... though if it requires any installation (the Fuel-Cell definitely would), I may have to wait longer as I don't plan to own a house for much longer than that.
Tuesday January 15, 2008
Today Michigan has their presidential primary. They have been stripped of their Democratic delegates by the Democratic National Committee for having moved their primary before Feb 5 without permission. The fact that states are fighting so much for position in the primary schedule lends itself to my suggestion that all states should hold their elections on the same day rather than the staggered approach we have now.
Having looked at the scorecard, I am happy to see that the top three Democrats are within 7 delegates of eachother while the top 3 Republicans are within 14 of eachother. Why am I happy about this? McCain is in third place on the Republican side and everybody is still talking about him as a probably nominee even though he is down by 14, whereas Edwards (GO EDWARDS!) is down by only 7. Another 87 delegates will be put in place between now and Super-Duper-Gazooper-Tuesday (Feb 5, 2,075 delegates on that day alone!) which is how many delegates are currently decided, and of course the outcomes in Michigan and Florida will still have some impact, so the journey is far from over. I'm hoping Edwards can stay this close to Mr. Positive and Ms. Politician so that he has a good chance at scoring big on Super-Electuper-Tuesday.
Sunday January 13, 2008
I'm in favor of a progressive taxation system because I believe that those who make more money can give more and not have it hurt them as much. I know that if I made $20k more than I do now per year, I could give up a higher percentage of it without it hurting my lifestyle as much as if I were to pay that higher percentage now. I currently make a very decent salary, I make more than many people, and so I pay more taxes, which I think is perfectly fair, and if I get a promotion and make much more, I not only understand that I'll be paying more taxes, but welcome it. Do I voluntarily pay more taxes by not taking all the credits I can? No. And why should I? It's not fair to say that those who want to contribute to the community through taxes should and those that don't, shouldn't. People feel that the tax code is too complicated and some suggest that we should take drastic measures to make it less complicated, such as making it a flat tax (like Massachusetts has) or getting rid of the income tax all together. I'm obviously not in favor of either of these two options, but I certainly think it's worth investigating either starting from scratch in terms of what we give credit for, or looking at each and determining if we want to give credit for them.
&nbps;
Friday January 11, 2008
Getting back to the options to take money out of the elections, I imagine a large part of the cost that is incurred in running an election is the commercials, both tv and radio. If you banned all commercials having to do with the elections, that would be a good start, no? Now, let's say that people became convinced that we should hold all the primaries on the same day, perhaps it would be wise to hold several primaries, each time eliminating any candidates who didn't get a minimum percent of the vote. That way you don't necessarily have run-away elections where there's a front runner who gains too much momentum from everybody believing the candidate will inevitably win.
But enough about wishful thinking, let's talk about wonderful fucking New Hampshire for a minute. A friend of mine once proclaimed that New Hampshire had a better society than Massachusetts because there was less violent crime. What he didn't realize is that there are several key causes of violent crime that are more prevalent in Massachusetts than New Hampshire. Massachusetts is almost 6 times as densely populated as New Hampshire is and Massachusetts is much more diverse in terms of race/ethnicity (New Hampshire is 97% white while Massachusetts is 88% white). And "live free or die"? Fucking give me a break. Get over yourselves. Congratulations on not having a personal income tax or sales tax. Good job at not liking government, liking guns and priding yourselves on being independent thinkers. Good job too at being so full of yourselves too. If you're such independent thinkers, why is Massachusetts the state with all the schools and why are you ranked the 12th smartest state while Massachusetts is ranked the 2nd.
Wednesday January 9, 2008
New Hampshire... New fucking Hampshire. First of all, Clinton is elected by New Hampshire to be their Democratic nominee for President. She was in the lead for, what, a year? Then Iowa elects Obama by a strong margin and puts Edwards in second place only slightly higher than Clinton. All the pundits immediately start saying that Clinton has fallen and needs something to get back in the race and the polls start to show that Clinton has fallen behind Obama in New Hampshire. Clinton takes a question during a debate about how she manages to continue to campaign day after day and she almost cries while answering and says that she really cares about the issues, and New Hampshire citizens change their votes to or decide to vote for Clinton and she wins over Obama by 3% (39% to 36%). The pundits all announce that this is shocking and a huge come back. Where do I begin? How about we start with the reasons that people would change their votes to Clinton after the debate. She says that she really cares about the issues... because none of her opponents do right? She almost cries, which makes her human. Since when do we vote for someone because they can become sad? She says it's hard (and almost cries) so we feel sorry for her, but is that really a reason to vote for someone?!? The pundits, whose job it is to watch the polls and what the politicians are doing and predict and discuss who will win, were surprised that Hillary was able to pull back to just in front of Obama with that stunt? Are you kidding me with this? So, New Hampshire, the little bizarre brother of in the New England family changes its mind for stupid reasons and the pundits are surprised? Give me a break
And then there's the issue of whether New Hampshire should be the first primary. There are two rationales for this that I've heard; New Hampshire residents are good at it and the proof is that they have predicted 15 of the last 20 Democratic and Republican nominees and New Hampshire being the first allows for smaller candidates to have a chance even though they can't raise as much money. For the first rationale, yes, when a state has a large say in who the nominees will be by removing some of the candidates, they will have better odds of being right. If Alaska went before New Hampshire and people dropped out after Alaska if they didn't get enough of the votes, Alaska would be more often right than wrong too. As for the allowing smaller candidates to have a chance, perhaps there's another way to do this than to say that we absolutely need to have the candidates become friends with everybody in one state in order for this to take place. Perhaps we could have ~gasp~ reform? We could change the way we hold elections, make them more about the issues and the candidates than about money. More on that later.
Saturday July 15, 2006
But this blog is mostly about me, sort of... so let's get back to what's happened to me. Well, first of all, I got a promotion as part of a restructuring in my company, and with it has come a very decent pay increase. I now make almost my month's rent twice a month. This should help with my mountain of debt, which is good since my side-job doesn't actually pay me.
Secondly, my side-job, ah, the Circus... once again I've taken on more than I can handle and have, in so doing, failed several people. Today I was fairly violently reminded of this and pretty much broke down. The correct response would probably be to try to delegate various responsibilities and get back on the ball, but my initial reaction was to suggest that perhaps I should announce to the board of directors that I intend to quit. I even went so far as to ask one of the up and coming students (who has started teaching 2 of our classes) if she would be up to teaching one of my classes and co-teaching (with other up and coming students) another one of my classes. And now I don't know what I want or what I should do. Right now I know what to do, which is to pick up the ball I've dropped and do my best. After this season, I don't know. Any thoughts? Of course, as I'm writing this it brings a small edge of a smile to my face as I realize that of course nobody is reading this as my rant hasn't been updating in quite some time and nobody was reading it before.
And of course, there's Pirates of the Spanish Main, which I can almost say is the one part of my life that unequivocally, I am doing well. Unfortunately that's not the case because I have dropped the ball on updating the website for the league, which I happen to be winning by leaps and bounds... which is slightly less impressive when you realize that I'm the only player to have played in both games that have been run thus far. Oh well, so much for a happy ending to a day's rant.
Tuesday May 2, 2006
Alright, let's start from the beginning. The US has, for quite some time, had trouble with enforcing its immigration policies. This has led to lots of illegal immigrants crossing the borders. These illegal immigrants have found jobs which often (if not always) pay less than minimum wage. As they are illegally here, illegal immigrants can't exactly organize or demand basic rights, nevermind complex rights. As they are illegally working, employers don't report the workers' earnings and neither employer nor employee pay any sort of taxes regarding these employees. And so the decision to legalize them is obviously better for everybody but the businesses, the employees and the government get more money. The businesses on the other hand, find themselves having to pay a lot more in the form of higher wages and taxes (social security and medicare). There is a point to be made, that the businesses would be unfairly penalized.... but then again, they're illegally hiring these workers and profiting from doing so. There is a more defendable point which is that without the cheap labor, what will happen to certain parts of the economy. Many fear that various parts of this country would fall apart. I'm not sure how drastic this is actually. Gas stations can be self-serve, people can either pay more to hire help around the house or do the work themselves. Then there are the farms, factories, restaurants, and construction companies that hire for cheap. I don't really have an answer to that except for that they're doing something illegal right now in employing people below the minimum wage who aren't legally allowed to be working here anyway. Will it have a big effect on the economy? Yes, most definitely. Is it the right thing to do? Well, that's a much easier question to answer than its being made out to be. Since we can't deport them all, we should deport a smaller portion, or none, and legalize the rest.
The real issue is how to resolve the problem, which isn't that we have illegal immigrants working here, it's that there are illegal immigrants immigrating all the time. If we aren't going to just allow anybody to work legally, we need to end the flow. I don't have an answer to that question but I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve the riddle of what will happen to the Californian economy if all the illegal immigrants suddenly had to be paid minimum wage, not to pick on California or anything, just that it's the place I've heard the most in regards to the riddle.
On a completely different yet similar note, on my way to work, I go by a location where people drive in the break down lane a lot, even though its illegal. Why do they do it? They do it because there is often a line in front of them going slower to get off at a later exit than they are going to, it's probably only about 200 yards, and there is no enforcement of the fact that what they're doing is illegal (and dangerous)... until now. In the past week I've gone by twice and seen cars pulled over, by a cop, who stands in the breakdown lane and presumably gives people tickets when he sees them there. This has caused there to be congestion at this point, to the point where there isn't a line in front of us waiting for the later exit but instead a line waiting to get by the cop as he pulls over several cars (not all, since not all of us drive in the breakdown lane). It's a very gratifying thing to see, but I wish that they would do something like have a camera there instead of a cop so that people's practice wouldn't change while he's there and then change back shortly after he isn't there any longer.
Wednesday April 26, 2006
In the past week, gas prices have soared from about $2.30/gallon to about $3.00/gallon. Everybody is up in arms again about this, having grown complacent about the fact that gas prices had risen about $1.00 in less than 2 years. So what do we do? We yell, we scream, and we buy an SUV. Good job! The president has decided that this calls for extreme measures, no, not additional funding to alternative energy research, not additional tax breaks to companies that make more fuel efficient cars or cars that run on fuel other than gas, not tax breaks to energy companies that invest in efficiency or alternative energy sources, no, of course not. Our president removes restrictions on environmental protections for energy companies and allows gas that would go to the national reserve to be used... because what we really need is to screw the environment and not think about the future in these times. He also spoke about ethenol and how wonderful corn can be... care to wager a bet on whether government subsidies for corn-based fuel of any kind will happen? Personally, I'd bet that they go the other way, as they have been for the past few years. Who knows, maybe he can sell the American populace on his being anti-oil while he helps the oil companies reep huge profits.
Friday February 3, 2006
Anyway, on to ever more depressing topics. My aunt is dying. This isn't a possibility, this isn't a likelihood, this is a fact. She is dying and there is nothing anybody can do about it. She has weeks to live at most. She was a vibrant, loving, and cheerful woman. I don't know what else to say.
Alright, let's get back to the world. President Bush just performed his 6th State of the Union and low and behold, he discussed how we were bringing democracy to the world. And then he went into how we need to be less "addicted" to oil and that we should avoid making human-animal hybrids. Was anybody actually thinking of making human-animal hybrids? People have been going on about how shrouded this President is from the reality around him, how the people around him keep the world hidden from him, but this wasn't a speech written by him, it was a speech written for him. How on earth did his speech writers and public affairs people think this would play? Perhaps they thought that the right-wing religious people would believe that this is the avenue people are trying to go down in the scientific community. Perhaps they figured that if they scared the right-wing religious, that populous would rally against the left-wing oppressors who are so amazingly evil as to have stood up for their beliefs. How dare the Democrats not go along with the President's plan for destroying Social Security, which the general populous agreed with the Democrats about. The gaul.
But there is good news in the future, which is that the Democrats came back with a resounding.... Oh, wait, no they didn't. Hm, well, I guess there's not much to hope for, except hydrogen power and American ingenuity. That great ingenuity which led to the American car companies all not recognizing when it was time to stop producing gas guzzling cars and instead start producing much more efficient cars. Speaking of which, isn't it amazing that car companies will tote the fact that they have 5 cars that get 30mpg or better when there's another two car companies that have at least 1 car that gets 50mpg on average.
And so I leave you with this thought. If Americans are so ingenious, why is it that our car companies are laying people off in the thousands, but not the high payroll employees, and why is it that while a state declared that all coal mining must stop for something like a month or two while the government figures out what to do about the hazards of mining (18 people have died in mining accidents in the past month alone), the President, in all his wisdom, has decided that on some day soon, coal mining operations throughout the country should stop for 1 hour for inspections... 1 hour? 1 hour?!? Are you fucking kidding me?!? How the fuck are you going to sincerely tell me that 1 hour's inspection will make things better for coal miners? Perhaps 1 hour each day, or at least 1 hour each week, but we're talking about a 1-time 1-hour inspection. And that's the state of our union, SNAFU! (Status Normal All Fucked Up)
Monday November 7
On the other hand, smart people aren't doing too much better. President Bush (W.) said last week that he wanted the Alito confirmation to go through by the end of the year... what did frisst say in response? The SOONEST Alito would be confirmed would be in January. And now the White House is requiring its staff to take ethics workshops so they know what's right and what's wrong? Like outting a CIA agent is possibly thought of as ethical. Nevermind the reason for the outting being political maneuvering, it's just wrong, you just don't do it. So basically, the White House is saying "it's alright that we've done this amazingly bad thing and then lied about it under oath because now we're going to take trainings on what's good and what's bad, cause we really didn't realize that breaking the law for political gain and lying about it to a grand jury was wrong." I mean, these are the same people who were after Clinton for lying about his sex life.... not even lying about shoplifting, lying about his sex life. Here we have people who have committed just committed a minor crime but a pretty major crime against the US Government, then lied about having done it to a grand jury, and where are the cries for blood that there were toward Clinton who didn't break the law at first but lied under oath about his personal affairs?
Last week I made mention of Watergate... I have to ask, what is it with Republican presidents breaking the law in major ways? Nixon has his people break into the Democrats offices. Reagan has the Iran-Contra affair run under his administration. And it doesn't appear to stop at Presidents, as Delay (Senator) is going to court for having committed crimes in Texas and Frisst (Representative) is under investigation for illegal stock manouvering. I just hope that people will pay attention to what's happening in national politics in about a year when mid-term elections are under way.
Monday October 31
First I should mention that I keep thinking that Libby was part of Watergate, but I'm of course mistaking him for Liddy, who was one of the organizers of Watergate. Libby has been indicted on 5 counts, all having to do with lying and conspiring. And to get people to stop talking about Libby and Miers, Bush has nominated someone very quickly for the Supreme Court Justice seat that he had nominated Miers for. Reportedly, nominee Judge Samuel Alito is about as far right as judges come. But what gets me is that it will work. No, I don't mean Judge Alito will be confirmed (though it'll be a hard fight to keep that from happening), I mean people will stop talking about everything else. People will put a halt on the talk about our passing the 2,000 mark of US citizens killed in Iraq. We'll no longer hear about how Libby is doing and wondering what is going on with Rove. We already had stopped talking a lot about how the poor in Mississippi and Louisiana were forgotten until the hurricanes hit and how we should work to help all those who are under the poverty line (thank goodness we can stop talking about that, otherwise we'd have to give some cloud cover to the fact that we didn't raise the minimum wage).
On a completely different note, I went to a fundraiser on Friday night called "Taste of Somerville" which basically was a bunch of restaurants coming to the Holiday Inn and providing tiny portions of a couple of their dishes. It was somewhat interesting to see how they set it up and I found a few things I'd want to do differently if the OAC did a similar fundraiser. They had 2 rooms, one was a smaller subsection of the pool room (not the game) which was across the hall from the main room. I had 2 issues with this setup. Firstly, it's a second room and it wasn't promoted very well, so most people didn't even know about it until it was announced about 20 minutes before the event ended (maybe they announced it before then, but I got there about an hour before the event ended and didn't know about it for 40 minutes). Secondly, it's in the same room as a pool, this brings with it certain atmospheric properties, not the least of which would be humidity and the smell of the air, a horrible combination for this event. The restaurants had servers there, and at least for one of them, the owner was there to help out. My guess is that this was not something given for free, so that would be a pretty big difference between what we would do and what was done at this event. All this commentary and I don't even know for sure that the Circus is going to hold a similar event... we'll see in the next 2 months.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
Thursday October 27
In other news, there may be a new Star Trek movie coming out. Reportedly it's going to be an Enterprise spinoff or something... with Archer being a main character. I'm all for another Star Trek movie but I'm surprised that making the movie based on the series that they cut short due to low ratings would be even considered. Maybe the actress who played the vulcan was right when she said that it wasn't ending (just goes to show how closely I followed the show that I don't remember either the actress' name or the character's name). Honestly, I liked the show, I never ended up watching it on tv regularly but what I did watch was enjoyable.
I leave you today with this thought, with Fox News ("fair and balanced") showing propaganda, Comedy Central showing news shows, and the History channel showing science fiction shows, what business does the Sci Fi channel have showing decent Sci Fi shows, shouldn't they be in the business of showing history shows or perhaps cartoons?
Wednesday October 26
Meanwhile, on a much smaller note, the OPENAIR Circus cancelled its fundraiser because we didn't get nearly enough responses letting us know of people who were coming. Which leaves the bitter question of where do we go from here, and my answer is, we stop talking about what's happened the past 3 months and move on, and in a couple months return to the question of how to fundraise. We have business to take care of and we need to avoid becoming negative, especially toward eachother. I fear that people will want to look at what happened and critique it more than we really need to. We all know what went wrong, maybe some of us know more things that went wrong than others, but we can deal with it constructively and we can deal with it later.
If you're reading this, and want to hear about particular stuff, or think that something is boring, or just have comments/questions, please feel free to contact me.
In case you didn't know, I'm a progressive. One of the big things that differentiate progressives from conservatives, or at least used to before George W. Bush, is that we don't think taxes and government is bad. In point of fact, I'm pro-taxation. I'm one of those goofy people who thinks that if it helps my neighbor, it helps me. For example, I believe that the fire fighters should have their funding not because my neighbor's house might catch fire and if they can't deal with it, I want someone to before it lights up my house. I'm in favor of funding the schools well because, even though I don't have kids, I believe it's the community's responsibility to ensure the next generated gets the quality education they deserve. I'm in favor of funding public works for self-interest reasons (I use roads, water from the tap, etc). In other words, I believe in enlightened self-interest. I don't trust that corporations can do these things better, in fact I believe that corporations do them just as poorly as the government does, but that they're also out to make a profit, which government is not. The fact that government is not out to make a profit makes the difference in my mind. It means that the service I get will be less expensive because they're not trying to charge be above and beyond what the total services cost.
What the fuck? Alright, to begin with, I heard an explanation for what happened in New Hampshire that fits very well. Usually, after any primary, the winner gets a temporary bump but then a few days later the bump dies down a bit to become a more sustainable change. This year, however, the New Hampshire election was so close to the Iowa caucuses that the polls didn't reflect the reduction of the initial increase in Obama's Iowa bump. I believe Clinton's performance certainly made a difference, but not as big a difference as I first thought. The pundits didn't stop to think that since Clinton had a strong lead before the Iowa Caucuses, she might gain back some ground as people began to get over the Iowa Caucus.
One and a half years later...
A lot has happened since the last time I spoke, not the least of which is that the Middle East is even more violent than it was before, causing many to suggest that we are on the edge of World War 3, which is not overstating things much in my opinion.
Ah, the torture of having loose borders and caring about who comes into your country. The US has an immigrant problem, not news. The legislature is talking about what to do about it, somewhat newsy. Immigrants have a rally that closes down lots of restaurants and factories because there aren't enough people working? NEWS!!!
Eat, work, teach, eat, watch baseball, rinse, repeat. An interesting life I'm living these days. How exactly I plan to introduce taking classes one or two evenings a week and bowling once a week or so, I have no idea. But enough about me, let's talk about gas.
So, it's been a while since I've written on this rant. In that time I have come to question whether I should continue teaching the Circus' 21 Century Clubs or if I should try to hand them off to someone else. I was comforted by the fact that there are a good 3-4 kids in each class that seem to like me a lot. Unfortunately there are also a good 3-4 kids in each class that ignore me completely and are determined not to try whatever it is I'm teaching. I think the real question is whether they enjoy the class and if not, whether they would enjoy it more if someone else were teaching it. I have a hard time answering this question as I am often very negative about things.
It's Monday again, and I have a coule questions. First off, why are people stupid? Someone threw a 30-pack of beer out the window, when pulled over by a cop couldn't produce his license and so sped off. This guy clipped a car, sending it into the wall of a building, then drove through a small stone wall, he and his passenger were thrown out of his car and then the car burst into flames. The quote the news gets: "I'm just upset that he was driving so fast in this kind of area.".... what? Did I miss something? So you're perfectly fine with someone who is driving drunk, clips a car, and almost plows his way into someone's house? I can understand not caring that the driver drove away from a cop, but the rest seems like it would be pretty bad even at 20 mph, nevermind whatever the speed limit is on those streets.
I missed posting on Friday, doh. Well, it's Monday now, Rove is still under investigation, Libby has been indicted on 5 counts, India has had some terrorist attacks, and Bush has offered up a conservative man as the next supreme court justice.
Someone wrote to a news station in regards to their coverage of the 2,000th US citizen killed in Iraq yesterday, "I think people think about how the troops feel when they hear that we aren't supporting them." This again?!? What the hell? We're supporting the troops, we just don't think that the troops should be being ordered to go over there and should be ordered to come back so they don't die in a war where "major hostility" is over and yet they still die each day. Obviously since it was Fox, they didn't respond with "well, actually, the people who are against the war are supporting the troops" but instead with "that just goes to show you that there are two sides to every story" (there was another letter read that said that the war needed to stop).
I don't quite know how to start this rant so I might as well just jump right into politics. There are a lot of people out there right now saying "if they end up only having a case for a technicality I hope they won't follow through with it."... what? Where was this reasoning when they were investigating Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair? And lying about what they would be lying about is a bit of a bigger deal in my opinion... lying to save a marriage, lying to cover up a crime.... yeah, the lying to cover up a crime is a bit more important. This, however, does not bolster my opinion of whether the Democrats can regain some control. Meanwhile, we're in a position of fighting a war after the war was declared over.