Common Sense Revamped

How to end the same-sex marriage debate

2010-12-29T12:19:00.001-05:00

Same-sex marriage is a pretty perennial issue, and it's the second most annoying of all the perennial third rail topics. There's always an extremely bitter fight between "SAME-SEX COUPLES FOR ALL!!!" and "CHRISTIAN VALUES FOR ALL!!!" (whatever that means).

Before I start, I'd like to make one thing clear.
If you make homosexuality illegal, will it stop happening? No.

Whether or not you believe in allowing same-sex couples to be married, there is an even bigger question. Why should the government care what people do in their personal lives?

Even better: what right do YOU have to tell someone else what they can or can't do?

I mean seriously, why do you need to have a license granted by a judge in your local government as proof of marriage? If you don't have that, how come people can't officially consider you to be married?

Why are there so many financial incentives (tax breaks, for example) that you can only get if you're married?

What right does the government have to determine which values of religious institutions it can and can't follow?

Why do we have such complicated adoption laws? The stupidest people living in the worst conditions have as many children as they possibly can, and that's not much of a problem. However, adoptions are almost impossible unless the people adopting are married, heterosexual, upper middle class, and a whole list of other things.

Why do we even need complicated inheritance laws?

Or rather, why do we need complicated laws at all?

If you're a Christian and you have your own idea of marriage (which is inconsistent considering many biblical marriages were one man with many women), do you have the right to impose that on anybody else? You might justify a Christian state by saying that the Founding Fathers were Christians. No, they were mostly Deists and Freemasons.

Freedom of religion is part of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and most of the 50 states also have freedom of religion written in as a fundamental human right.

To the alternative relationships out there:
Why are you trying to get the government to grant you rights? If you believe you have the right to get married, then that right has to come from you. You don't have to be given rights. You have them already, and the government just refuses to recognize some of your rights. THAT is your real problem.

So how do you end the debate about whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal? By asking serious questions about whether or not the government has any right to interfere with people's relationships at all.

Think outside the box.

Il faut aider son prochain (why we must help others)

2010-09-16T13:41:00.000-04:00

If you don't speak French and you want to read this, use a translator.

If you're a native speaker and you notice any mistakes, please correct them.

Il faut aider son prochain

Les êtres humains sont fondamentalement égoïstes: ils cherchent surtout par eux-mêmes, et ils essaient généralement de faire les choses qui vont satisfais au mieux de leurs intérêts. Pourquoi, nous devrions nous nous aider les uns les autres? Pourquoi y a t’il de nombreuses organisations caritatives et tous ces actes aléatoires de bonté?

Pour trouver la réponse, considérez cet exemple:

Une nuit, vous avez un accident et vous ne pouviez pas l’éviter. Il y a une tempête, la voiture brûle, et vous êtes victime de plusieurs fractures. Que pouvez-vous faire? Rien. Lorsque vous pensez que vous êtes sur le point de mourir, un homme s'arrête avec sa voiture et il arrive près de vous. Il vous voit dans la voiture, et vient à vous aider. Il tente immédiatement de vous réconforter. Puis, il appelle une ambulance avec son téléphone cellulaire. Lorsqu’une ambulance arrive pour vous emmener à l'hôpital, il s'en va. Vous ne le reverrez jamais.

Pourquoi cet homme a engagé 15 minutes de sa vie quotidienne, de ses affaires, pour vous aider? Il aurait pu pendant ces quintes minutes des choses plus importantes. Son intérêt n’est-il pas de vivre sa propre vie au lieu de vous aider. Pourquoi vous aidé a-t-il? Peut-être qu’un jour, il va se noyer dans un lac et un passant inconnu à pied va lui sauver la vie. Nous ne savons pas ce qui s'est passé dans son esprit et ce qui l'a convaincu d'aider les autres, mais ne comprend-il pas quelque chose que tout le monde comprend? Nous, êtres humains ne sommes pas parfaits et nous avons tous des difficultés et peut-être, nous avons une confiance mutuelle entre les uns envers les autres. Si nous avons un problème, nous sentons que quelqu'un d'autre va nous aider. Aussi, quand les autres ont des problèmes, nous sommes obligés de les aider.

Quand bien même l'égoïsme est un trait naturel de l'homme et que l'altruisme pourrait sembler illogique, nous avons réalisé qu’aider les autres encouragera ces mêmes personnes à nous aider en retour. En d'autres termes, « Vous m'aidez, et je vous aide » est un système de troc où aucune transaction formelle et faite, mais il y a toujours l'avantage mutuel de savoir que nous vivons, uns pour les autres. Ce commerce nous a aidés à croître et à prospérer en tant qu'espèce et nous a permis de prospérer dans tous les domaines de notre vie.

Après avoir écrit ces quelques mots, je suis allé à ma voiture pour aller à la maison, et j'ai découvert que ma voiture ne démarrait pas. J'ai rapidement trouvé dans le quelqu’un qui cherchait une place pour stationner. Il a vu que j’étais sur le point de quitter. Je lui ai demandé de m’aider à faire démarrer ma voiture, et il lui a fallu me donner des minutes précieuses pour m’aider avec ma voiture.

The only real energy solution

2010-06-20T14:54:00.006-04:00

Dual-posted on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=440932770750

I can't talk about energy nowadays without mentioning the recent oil spill. Well, I know what kinds of stuff people are saying all over the internet and frankly, I don't give a fuck. This incident is the perfect example (just like Hurricane Katrina) that no one in big business or the government (together they make FASCISM, not CAPITALISM) really cares about anything except the bottom line profits. I am NOT going to speculate anything about peak oil, carbon taxes, or any of that nonsense. What I WILL do is talk about various methods of power generation and which ones will work the best in the long run.

Again, I refuse to speculate on anything involving the recent oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico. It's a mixture of bad business practices with bad political leadership. Yes, the two sides are in bed with each other, but what isn't nowadays? Stop looking deep into it and finding things that aren't really there. That's all this situation is.

Oh, and it's not an excuse to start imposing carbon taxes (which BP will BENEFIT from because they're involved in the carbon trade). Don't jump in favor of "alternative" energy because... well... you'll see.

Here are some common energy sources and the basic ideas within them.

1. Coal
It's available as needed, but the environmental costs make it prohibitive in many cases. But it's a catch-22 because there is so much coal available, and shutting down the economy is destructive. Clean coal technology can minimize pollution. Unfortunately, almost all of clean coal technology is devoted ONLY to carbon capture while doing nothing to reduce the real, legitimate threats to the environment.

2. Oil
Oil is cleaner and more effective than coal, but the environmental problems are probably equal due to accidents that can happen. Peak oil is mostly bullshit because there is still a lot more oil in certain areas of the world where you can't dig it out. For example, the California coast. The best way to get this (which is safer to reach than the oil in the Gulf of Mexico) is by lifting the bans on offshore drilling, which you can't do or else Greenpeace will dump all of the oil on the west coast to prove their point. There is SOME clean oil technology just like clean coal, but again, it's being used to capture carbon and not really clean up the smog.

3. Gas
Gas is cleaner than oil, but is much more expensive. The amount of environmental damage is also, comparatively, very low. Remember the combustion reactions in Chemistry classes? Yeah. And gas is about as clean as you can get from a traditional fuel source. The biggest worries are that you need a pipeline to constantly support the plant, and even the slightest accident could cause an explosion. You can also get this gas from both farms and landfills, which is a way of recycling energy and making things more efficient.

4. Hydroelectric
-Really hard to build
-Doesn't generate much power
-Disrupts too many ecosystems
-Not enough rivers to build on

5. Geothermal
It's overall a really good power source, but how many people live in places like Iceland? Almost none. The only threat is a volcanic eruption, and that alone can stop a lot of people from living anywhere near these power plants.

6. Biofuel
This is the biggest bullshit I ever heard of. If you spend a lot of time in a supermarket, you've probably noticed that food prices have more than doubled in the past few years. Why is that? The conventional idea is that global warming is causing droughts, which is reducing crop yields. That's why they want us to replace the edible crops on farms with more biofuels. But wait! Didn't food prices go up in the first place because of biofuels? And now they want the farmers to replace the food they grow with MORE biofuels? Won't that raise the food prices even more? Won't that make people in third world countries starve to death?

The environmental laws say that biofuels are carbon-neutral. Why? Because it's the law, that's why! Well, these biofuels are usually horribly inefficient and they do more damage than they benefit. A farmer will grow only ONE crop (corn or soy) all the time instead of the crop rotation and mixed farming they learned about, because farming regulations are prohibitive and there's a lot of money to be made selling biofuels. This will ruin the soil in the farmland and all surrounding areas. Then the biofuel will have to be processed, which will probably use energy from coal or oil-powered engines or power plants. Then that has to be transported to a new location, in an oil-powered truck. Then it will be stored somewhere where the storage facility is maintained by fossil fuel-powered power plants. Then it will be burned at an efficiency rate LOWER than fossil fuels! In every step of the way from growing crops to using the fuel, people will need to be heavily subsidized by the government because otherwise, it would take more energy to grow, process, and ship the fuel than you would receive from actually using it. Carbon-neutral my ass.

"But if we don't keep up this nonsense, too many people will lose their job!" ~ John Maynard Keynes

7. Solar
The technology is behind many other power sources by several decades. Also, it's really hard to get enough solar power unless you live in a tropical arid place. It's also overly subsidized so it uses up more energy than it gives you back.

8. Wind
There are two kinds of places where wind power is a viable option. One is TORNADO ALLEY. The other is coastal regions. You can't put them in coastal areas because Greenpeace will destroy them. Many people say that the wind mills pose a significant threat to migratory birds, but the ones who get killed are the weaker ones who die on migration routes anyway. And most birds will never migrate at a height of 50 metres, which is a typical height for wind mills.

9. Nuclear fission
Nuclear power is overall the cleanest, safest, and most effective electricity generation system ever designed. There have only been two disasters. Chernobyl was a horrible failure of the USSR and that thing was built sub-standard by every definition. Three Mile Island wasn't as bad as the media (AND GREENPEACE) made it out to be; the farmers near the plant got the equivalent radiation of a chest X-ray. It was handled really well, and is the kind of disaster that only happens once in a lifetime. The containers that nuclear waste is stored in are indestructible, and science is progressing so rapidly that people will find ways of using the waste in only a few decades. The terrorist threat is more hype than reality, because the real threat is statistically negligible compared to everything else that goes on. But if you really need a new place to dump the nuclear waste, I recommend feeding it to Greenpeace members.

10. Wave
Power from waves of moving water. It sounds like a great idea, but it hasn't been extensively studied. No one wants to attempt it because the initial costs are astronomical and no one knows what the returns will be. We're better off only studying it for a while.

Okay, so fossil fuels are destroying the environment, most of the "clean" energy sources cost more than they benefit, and Greenpeace is making everything worse. What do we do? Well, we need to get rid of Greenpeace, first of all. Then what?

Have you ever played SimCity? Remember the Microwave power plants? Believe it or not, we actually have that technology. I'm not sure why no one really talks about it, but several countries (including the United States) have space programs capable of capturing massive amounts of sunlight and beaming it back to giant Microwave satellites on Earth. You can read about it here.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power ]

If there's anything that will get us out of a horrible depression quickly, it's microwave power. It's also the one solution that will completely replace petroleum for electricity generation. And the power source is unlimited; you can easily send more orbiters out to space to beam to more parabolic dishes on Earth. Electric cars will go on the mass market within the next 20 years or so, and with good batteries, that eliminates the need for oil (or hybrid technology, which just doesn't work).

The technology is still in its infancy, but just like SimCity, it will be available by the year 2030. Even the Peak Oil people think we will run out of oil by then.

Before oil, people were using coal and horses. Well, the horses were pooping all over city streets and it became a serious health and environmental hazard. In a way, the automobile replacing the horse and buggy cleaned up the environment. Now, space-based solar power replacing fossil fuels will help to accomplish the same thing.

This is just another example of an impossible problem being solved by humans with relative ease. I don't pay attention to all the nasty things that people say about humanity. There are good things and bad things in all of us, and I don't think we appreciate the good things enough.

Your thoughts?

The Progress of Ideas

2010-04-09T23:12:00.001-04:00

Some people will tell you that nothing original has come out of anything in the last ________ (unit of time), while others will continuously marvel at human innovations for all of eternity. Well, I'm going to settle this once and for all.

First, I'd like to ask you one question. What does World of Warcraft have to do with Christianity?

Are you stumped? You should be.

Let's start with World of Warcraft. For the record, I refuse to play this game because I've heard how addicting it is. Anyway, one of the races you can play with in this game is the Orcs. It's a very original game, right? Well, no. There have been countless MMORPG's before WoW, and there were countless video games before MMORPG's. Before that, there was Dungeons and Dragons, and before that, Chess. The Orcs are original, right? Wrong! They were created by Tolkien.

So now we're back to Tolkien and his Middle Earth collection. It's very original, is it not? Let's just take the Dwarves for example. They're from Norse mythology. And then there's the one ring, which is based off of the opera, Der Ring des Nibelungen, composed by none other than Richard Wagner. And that's based off of the Nibelungenlied, which is an old German epic poem.

The Nibelungenlied is a story about the German migration in the 400's AD, where the Germans were being massacred by the Burgundians and the Huns, which happened in the interim period between when the Roman Empire had collapsed and the Christian Roman Empire had emerged.

So, in a way, Christianity was the trigger that made World of Warcraft possible.

I could give you countless other examples, but I think you get the idea.

Did I just prove that there are no original ideas? Well, yes and no. World of Warcraft is similar to Middle Earth, but it's not the same. Middle earth is similar to Norse mythology, but it's not the same.

The truth is, every new idea is based on some other existing idea. That's just the way things are. However, at the same time, every new idea is unique, despite being based on everybody else's ideas. Why? Because every human being on this planet who thinks of such an idea is a completely unique individual in every way.

THAT's how different people can have ideas all based on the same roots and still be real innovators. After all, it's through such an exchange of ideas that human progress is made.

The Prophecy of the Condor and the Eagle

2009-12-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

From Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (page 209) by John Perkins:

"Nearly every culture I know prophesies that in the late 1990's we entered a period of remarkable transition. At monasteries in the Himalayas, ceremonial sites in Indonesia, and indigenous reservations in North America, from the depths of the Amazon to the peaks of the Andes, and into the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, I have heard that ours is a special moment in human history, and that each of us was born at this time because we have a mission to accomplish.

The titles and the words of the prophecies differ slightly. They tell variously of a New Age, the Third Millennium, the Age of Aquarius, the Beginning of the Fifth Sun, or the end of old calendars and the commencement of new ones. Despite the varying terminologies, however, they have a great deal in common, and “The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle” is typical. It states that back in the mists of history, human societies divided and took different paths: that of the condor (representing the heart, intuitive and mystical) and that of the eagle (representing the brain, rational and material). In the 1490's, the prophesy said, the two paths would converge and the eagle would drive the condor to the verge of extinction. Then, five hundred years later, in the 1990's a new epoch would begin, one in which the condor and the eagle will have the opportunity to reunite ad fly together in the same sky, along the same path. If the condor and eagle accept this opportunity, they will create a most remarkable offspring, unlike any seen before.

“The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle” can be taken at many levels — the standard interpretation is that it foretells the sharing of indigenous knowledge with the technologies of science, the balancing of yin and yang, and the bridging of northern and southern cultures. However, most powerful is the message it offers about consciousness; it says the we have entered a time when we can benefit from the many diverse was of seeing ourselves and the world, and that we can use these as a springboard to higher levels of awareness. As human beings we can truly wake up and evolve into a more conscious species."

I do not believe there is intelligent direction of the universe or that we were “born at this time because we have a mission to accomplish.” But there are patterns in the evolution of culture that intuitive people can recognize. When similar prophetic visions occur independently in many cultures, they should be taken seriously. However, specific interpretations of these visions should always be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Here is my take on this prophecy. Western Culture, since the middle ages, has been increasingly dominated by intellect at the expense of other dimensions of the human psyche. This one sided development of reason created modern science and technology through which Western culture has dominated the planet. Reason is a very powerful but also very limited tool. Inevitably it seeks over simplistic models in domains that are too complex for a rational model.

In large part, my thinking follows Carl Jung's Psychological Types. Jung saw the human psyche organized around two pairs of opposing functions: thinking versus feeling and intuition versus sensation. The first pair represent rational functions. Thinking organizes material from an objective standpoint as an engineer might. Feeling organizes material from the standpoint of what is important to ones well being as a mother protecting her children might. Since these represent different rational ways of organizing the same material it is difficult to develop both of these functions.

The irrational opposites are similarly difficult to develop together. They are both pattern recognition processes. Sensation looks for patterns in what is present here and now. Intuition looks for the patterns that explain what lead to the current state of affairs and how the situation may evolve over time. Sensation types cannot see the forest for the trees. Intuitive types are well aware of the forest as they crash into the tree in front of them.

At this stage in history the natural next step is the development of intuition. Developing feeling, the opposite function to dominant thinking, is too difficult. Intuition and not sensation has the potential to offset the over simplistic views that is a fundamental weakness of intellect.

Of course both intuition and intellect have been essential to the development of science and technology. However intellect has remained in the driving role. Academia is focused on developing intellect, Intuition is seen as an almost magical force that just happens without systematic development. Ancient systems of developing intuition like astrology, tarot, and the I Ching remain steeped and superstition and no modern replacements have evolved.

Intellect's dominance cannot be overthrown externally. Instead it bears the seeds of its own waning influence. This is starting to happen at many levels. As intellect solves more of the problems that it is capable of dealing with, it expands the scope and importance of problems that are beyond it. For example the enormous improvements of productivity that technology has created are beginning to be a problem. Instead of leading to better lives for everyone, they are concentrating wealth into ever fewer hands, while earning a decent living is becoming more difficult for the vast majority. Simplistic laissez-faire capitalism exasperates the problem. A far more subtle and complex understanding is required. This can only be done through open minded experimentation using both intellect and intuition to design and interpret the experiments.

Intellect seeks the solution, the correct answer the true path. The ultimate achievement of intellect is mathematics. This is a pure product of reason unsullied by the ambiguity and complexity of the real world. Yet is in precisely this purest of intellectual products that the limitations of reason become most apparent. It has been proven with mathematical certainty that there can be no single path approach to discovering all mathematical truth. This can only be accomplished with a divergent process that, over time, follows an ever increasing number of paths. This result is known as Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.

I see this prophecy as fortelling the rise of intuition and the beginning of a reconnection with ancient wisdom that does not fit into a narrow intellectual framework. But this must not and cannot be an abandonment or a renunciation of the achievements of intellect. It must be a union of the two that creates something different than and beyond what exists today.

I have spent a good part of my life thinking about these issues. One result is the book: What is and what will be.

Paul Budnik

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That being said, I'm a big fan of racial integration.

I'm sure many of you are either multiracial or have been involved in a multiracial relationship, so many of you will be able to relate.

The year 2000 was the first time that the U.S. Census started keeping track of people who are multiracial. It turned out that 7.8 million people were counted, and 41% were under 18.

Just look all around you. Mixed people are everywhere. Even though it is happening at a faster rate in the United States than other countries with substantial immigrant populations, this trend is spreading like wildfire.

It's because of the global world that we live in. Race doesn't matter so much anymore. After a few generations, race will cease to exist in most countries.

I have friends of every race, and I'm a huge fan of integration. Every race/ethnicity/whatever has its own strengths and weaknesses. The mixed kids get the best of both parents. They're also way less likely to get any genetic disorders. Because genetic disorders tend to be native to one group or another, the genes of mixed people will be so diluted that finding two identical alleles on both chromosomes will be an extremely rare occurrence.

What I don't understand is why so many people are opposed to this kind of thing. Yeah, the kids won't really be tied to one culture or another. In this new day and age, who IS anymore? In the new global culture, even the economic slave third world countries are contributing their share.

For my part, I'm not starting a family with someone else who's from the same part of the world as I am. And no, I obviously don't care what my parents have to say about it. I'm not very Bengali anyway. I never go to Bengali Cultural Club, I don't speak Bengali outside of the house, and I have almost no Bengali friends.

I also want to have one or two kids of my own and adopt several more from all over the world. Imagine how that would look in a family photo...

Eh... I can dream, can't I?

How to Refute Global Warming: Intro

2009-12-05T17:24:00.001-05:00

Unless you've been living in a bubble for the past few weeks, you've heard the whole Climategate story. I won't bother telling you about it because you can get plenty of that from other videos.

What? You're in a bubble? Fine, just watch this:

It doesn't make any sense to you? Oh well.

So the question on everybody's mind right now is, does this scandal prove once and for all, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that man-made global warming is fiction?

Of course not. There is no way of knowing from a bunch of politically motivated emails whether or not the climate really is changing the way we think it is. Instead, the only way to really understand the climate crisis and what's causing it is to look at legitimate science for the answer. For the next few months, I will be showing you just that: scientific evidence on the whole global warming deal.

If you have questions, you're certainly welcome to submit them, and I will try to answer them as much as possible. Just in case there are any serious doubts about what I say, with each video I'm going to include a link to my blog, where you can get a full transcript with all of my sources cited.

So... for now, just stay tuned and subscribe to my YouTube videos. I will upload my first video on the issue in a few days, and I hope to upload at least one video a week after that, for as long as it takes to convince you of the truth.

http://www.youtube.com/InMooseWeTrust

My Views

2009-10-30T15:49:00.000-04:00

Table of Contents

I. Nagging Question
II. Bipolar America
III. How Others See Me
IV. My Views
V. My Presidential Picks
VI. Finishing Thoughts

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I. Nagging Question

For a while now, people have been constantly asking me where I stand on the political spectrum. People are confused because of the positions I take on different issues and because of the candidates I support for president. I figured I should explain it to you once and for all.

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II. Bipolar America

The reason I have such a hard time explaining my views sometimes is because this country as a whole is so politically bipolar. Basically, everyone has to be either a Democrat or Republican. For the various levels of office you have to vote for one of those two or else your vote is a wasted one for a candidate who has zero chance of winning. Why does it have to be this way? Are we not allowed to be independent thinkers? Why can't we take different sides on different issues, whether or not they agree with our party affiliations?

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III. How Others See Me

So where do I stand on the political spectrum? Which party do I strongly support? Actually, a more appropriate question would be, "How do I see the world?"

It's extremely difficult--if not impossible--to give me a political label. I look at each issue INDIVIDUALLY and do extensive research before I take a position. Most people, however, don't see it that way. They're so quick to jump to conclusions every time some political statement comes out of my mouth.

-When I talk about the Second Amendment, I must be a Republican.
-When I slam the incumbent president, I must be a Republican (or a Democrat if the incumbent's a Republican).
-When I talk about the environment, I must be an environmentalist.
-When I mention the blatant lies that the McCain campaign kept throwing at Obama, I must be an Obama supporter.
-When I talk about the problems with healthcare, I must be a Socialist.
-When I address the grievances of rural family farmers, I must be a Populist.
-When I question the motives of the Dalai Lama, I must really hate pacifists.
-When I accuse the federal government of resorting to unconstitutional means to enforce Civil Rights programs in the 1960's, I must be a states' rights Dixiecrat.
-When I talk about the problems with the two-party system, I must really hate Americans and the democratic process.
-When I say that Ross Perot looked more Presidential than either George H. W. Bush or Bill Clinton in the 1992 Presidential Debates, I must be a member of the Reform Party.
-When I question the need for income taxes, I must automatically support a national sales tax.
-When I talk about how government spending has gone out of control, I must be a Libertarian.
-When I advocate a non-interventionist foreign policy that doesn't involve in America policing the rest of the world, I must be a terrorist lobbyist who gets paid to keep the U.S. government out of doing good to the rest of the world.
-When I talk about how Libertarians deserted their party platform, I must be a member of the Boston Tea Party (real political party est. 2006 on the sole basis of separating themselves from the likes of Bob Barr).
-When I question whether Reagan deserves credit for taking down the Soviet Union, I must be a Communist.
-When I accuse Israel of using the persecution of Jews as an excuse to ignore every international law when dealing with foreign affairs, I must be an anti-Semite.
-When I say that Black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have taken the race issue too far, I must be a white supremacist.
-In elections where I refuse to support either the Democratic or the Republican candidate for president, my views are automatically null and void because third party votes don't matter.
-When I worry about things like NAFTA and the gradual move to "Unionize" Africa, North America, East Asia, Europe, etc., I must be one of those crazy conspiracy theorists.
-When I try to explain why there really isn't a gender wage gap, I'm a woman-hater.
-When I show just how ridiculous American attitudes towards racism are, I must be a white supremacist.

Who knows? Maybe there's some elaborate conspiracy where someone like me is secretly plotting to overthrow all forms of conventional wisdom (and in the process destroy everything great about America and Americans)? Maybe I'm a part of it. Or maybe you're just being paranoid.

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IV. My Views

No, there's no conspiracy. I just come up with my own ideas and then stand up for them. When people ask me where If you REALLY want to label me, you can call me an Extremist Independent.

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V. My Presidential Picks

Just to show you how I think, I made a list of every man who I would have voted for in every Presidential election since 1788. You won't be able to make much sense of this list unless you know at least as much American political history as I do.

NOTE: I had this written out when I wrote the first version, but it's really irrelevant and I wasn't getting anywhere with it. Whatever, it's not important.

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VI. Finishing Thoughts

You don't have to support one party or another. You don't have to think one way or another. There is absolutely no reason why you must conform to the political standards as they are now. You don't even have to agree with me on anything!

All I'm asking is for you to be consistent in your views and defend them.

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The problem with boys

2009-05-05T08:56:00.000-04:00

The Problem With Boys

By Marty Nemko

What changes would you recommend if I told you that African-American children were:

four to eight times as likely to be drugged with Ritalin and other stimulants, which pediatrician Leonard Sax, calls “academic steroids.”

reading much more poorly than are other students.

five times more likely to commit suicide.

two and a half times as likely to drop out of high school.

severely underrepresented in college and even more so among college graduates, thereby locking them out of today’s, let alone tomorrow’s, knowledge economy.

You’d likely invoke such words as “institutional racism” to justify major efforts to improve African-Americans’ numbers.

All of the above statements are true except for one thing: I’m not talking about African-American children. I’m talking about children of all races, indeed half of all children, half of our next generation: boys.

When a disparity hurts females or minorities, major efforts are implemented to redress the situation. Why not with boys? In our politically correct world, if you point to an inequity against women or a minority, you’re considered heroic, but dare you point out a deficit suffered by men, you’re demonized as a whiner or anti-female. Today’s media leaders, when in college, were relentlessly told how oppressive men are, so now, these media gatekeepers usually refuse to publish male-positive pieces. So, except for a few minimally influential books and articles, all we continue to hear is an endless, often unfair drumbeat about how girls and women continue to be shortchanged. (For example, there’s that ubiquitous bogus statistic that women earn 79 cents on the dollar compared with men when, in fact, according to the definitive book, Why Men Earn More, for the same work, women earn at least as much as men.) Meanwhile, the media, when it mentions boys at all, insist that boys are doing just fine. For example, a recent Time magazine cover story, The Myth About Boys, declared “Boys are all right,” implying that those horrifying statistics cited above are somehow outweighed by tiny recent gains in test scores (which, by the way, are dwarfed by girls’ gains.)

And our schools continue to get ever more feminized. Competition, one of boys’ favorite motivators, has largely been excised in favor of “cooperative learning,” (which, in the real world, usually means that the bright do the dull’s work.) Stories of heroism and bravery are replaced with tomes about relationships and female heroes. Recess is increasingly being replaced by yet another round of phonics. Girls are told they can accomplish anything while boys are taught that masculinity is an anti-social trait that must be extinguished. It’s no surprise that the number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001.

The percentage of female elementary school teachers has risen from 82% in 1980 to 91% today, a record high. The main role model boys see in school is the custodian. And when boys get home from school, the male role models get worse. Whether watching a sitcom, movie, cartoon, or commercial, the odds are good that the male is a buffoon or sleazebag while the female is savvy and confident. Males are primarily responsible for creating the cars we drive, the buildings we live in, the computers we use, and the medical discoveries that save our lives, yet if a Martian descended upon earth and watched TV, he’d conclude that men are disposable. If role models matter, how do you imagine boys are affected by all this?

What to do? Children’s mindmolders are the media, schools, and family. Each has a role:

The media now takes inordinate care to ensure that women, minorities, and gays are not disproportionately portrayed negatively. Equal care must now be given to boys and men.

Schools claim to celebrate diversity yet insist on providing one-size-fits-all education. Whether in co-ed or single-sex classes, boys need boy-friendly instruction: more non-feminized male teachers, more competition, praise for boldness, more active learning (for example, drama and simulation) and less seatwork, less relationship-centric fiction and more how-to books, teachers’ simply accepting that boys will, on average, wiggle more than girls--and that does not require ongoing criticism, which, not surprisingly, leads to more oppositional behavior, to the school psychologist, to the little yellow bus of special education, and even more often to Ritalin. The number of boys drugged with stimulants to control “hyperactivity” has, in the past 20 years, risen 3000%!

Ironically, educated parents often do particularly badly by boys. The college curriculum and the media consumed by the intelligentsia stresses the accomplishments of women and the evils of men. So, these parents too often feel justified in emasculating, squeezing the maleness out of boys: aggressiveness, competition, physicality, dislike of long seatwork. Of course, I’m not advocating that parents allow Junior to become a savage, but the above qualities, channeled wisely, can be the stuff of which greatness is made. We can refine but rarely remold so we must honor males’ ways of being, just as we’ve been urged now for decades to honor females’.

Boys represent half our future, so a problem with boys is a major problem for society. In addition, having so many children unnecessarily unhappy and underperforming is, in itself, most sad. Over the past 20 years, I’ve noticed a dramatic shift in the boys I’ve counseled. Twenty years ago, most boys were confident and ambitious. Now, disproportionately, they’re despondent or angry, while the girls much more often feel the world is their oyster. And they’re right, but it should be both genders’ oyster.

Boys advocate Joe Manthey reminds us that "When girls were behind in math and science, we said, 'We want to help these girls; there's something wrong with the schools.’ But when boys don't do well in school, we say there's something wrong with the boy."

Let’s stop blaming the boy and start fixing our schools and media.

Nemko is co-president of the National Organization for Men: www.orgformen.org. He holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of California, Berkeley and subsquently taught in Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. He is also a Contributing Editor at U.S. News & World Report.

Issues I don't care about

2009-03-01T09:50:00.000-05:00

These are issues that politicians always beat to death but nothing ever gets done about them. Feel free to add to my list. Because this is getting so long, I will expand on some of these later. If you want to add to my list, go right ahead.

1. Abortion
Abortion is the most polarizing issue I've ever seen where everyone pretty much agrees on the same thing. The Liberals use it to champion women's rights and freedom of choice. The Conservatives use it to defend the right to life and think getting rid of it completely will save all those babies from purgatory.

The Liberals don't realize that although early women's rights activists supported birth control, they were, for the most part, completely opposed to abortion. These women included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sarah Norton, and Alice Paul. If you ask Neoliberal Feminists about that, they'll just pretend you don't exist.

The Conservatives are so stubborn that they won't vote for anyone who holds what they consider to be too "Liberal" or "Ungodly" views on the issue. How those two words are synonymous I will never understand, but it certainly doesn't justify slaughtering abortion doctors in the name of God.

Here, the words you use to describe your stance on the issue mean everything, because everyone essentially has the same stance on abortion:
While birth control should be kept legal, there should be limits placed on abortion. Abortion should be used as a last resort, such as in the case of the mother's health. Abortions after the first trimester should not be legal.

2. Gay Marriage
The Liberals want to embrace homosexuality and give special affirmative action privileges to gays. The Conservatives want to shove God down their queer throats. I only have two things to say about that: Jim McGreevey and Larry Craig.

If you're gay and you're reading this, I want you to know that I don't support you. However, you have certain rights as an American that I will never try to take away from you. Those rights include civil unions, adoptions, and the ability to do whatever you want in bed. I won't think less of you just because of your sexual orientation.

We will not have a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Ever. It's not going to happen.

3. Stem Cell Research
This issue shouldn't even be on the table anymore. Umbilical cord cells work just as well and there are millions of embryos frozen in jars in fertility clinics all over the world. You can't just throw the embryos out.

The bigger issue is the idea of designer babies. Stop talking about stem cells.

4. Iraq War
Don't even get me started.

5. Media Bias
It's real and it happens. "Fair and Balanced" is a myth. Instead of finger pointing, the politicians should thank the media for making their campaigning easy. Instead of making speeches that have any substance whatsoever, the politicians can just portray themselves as good Christians or family men, thereby ensuring their victory.

6. The Democratic Party Nomination for President of the United States
Bipolarization within the bipolarization of America. Get some Aspirin.

7. Border Security
The fence that nobody wants to build to keep out an essential part of the almighty establishment.

8. Illegal Immigration
We should be encouraging legal immigration while putting more restrictions on illegal immigration. The exact opposite has been happening for years and that trend will continue.

9. 9/11
Again, don't get me started.

10. Healthcare Reform
I don't see this happening any time soon. The current system exists because everyone benefits from it, including the unlucky sick people who lost everything.

11. Social Security
Stop trying to save it. Our generation won't see the benefits no matter what you do.

12. Global Warming
Yes, it's happening. Yes, it's a serious problem. However, global warming isn't the only kind of pollution. In fact, global warming isn't even pollution. Other things like the huge smog cloud stagnant over Mexico City and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by overfertilization are a much bigger threat to the world's well-being.

13. Starving Children in Africa, Eastern Europe, etc.
Honestly, do you really care about these kids? If you did, you wouldn't be eating at a buffet on a luxury cruise ship to Aruba. Stop pretending to care, because we all know you don't.

14. Political Correctness
The only reason this is even an issue is because Liberals are trying to please everybody. In doing so, they're just pissing more people off and paving the way for unnecessary discrimination lawsuits (as if there aren't enough already). You can't please everyone. Christmas is a national holiday. Christmas is a Christian holiday. It's "Christmas." It's not "Holiday." Santa Claus is a Christian religious icon. Most of us non-Christians understand that. We don't care. Have your own stupid holiday.

15. HIV/AIDS
This is unarguably the most preventable pandemic on Earth. There really is no point in wasting your resources trying to stop it. If people share needles and have sex with complete strangers, that's their own fault. We shouldn't be helping them. HIV will stop being a problem the day when people learn to practice safe sex. I firmly believe that HIV is God's punishment for you being a hypocrite.

16. Child Pornography
A couple years ago, a 15 year old girl got arrested and sent to jail for emailing a naked picture of herself to some guy she met in a chat room (who turned out to be a decoy). She was charged with child sexual abuse and possession of child pornography. Parents routinely get sent to jail for taking naked pictures of their kids doing sexually insignificant things like taking a bath. More about that later.

17. The Liberal Media
exists, but not to the extent that the FOX pundits will tell you that it exists. The major media conglomerates NBC Universal, AOL Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., Disney/ABC, and Viacom all have an inherent bias towards the Neocons. The journalists are usually Liberal, but they're getting laid off at record high rates. More about that later.

I'll add more to the list if I feel like it.

Christmas for the gentiles

2008-12-25T06:06:00.001-05:00

If you're reading this, you're not Christian. You probably don't even recognize that Jesus ever existed.

Anyway, I was thinking maybe a bunch of us could get together next year and every Christmas after that and do something. The Christians are having their fun and we have absolutely nothing to do, so why not?

BTW, apparently Facebook has a daily wall post limit of about 350. I was trying to write "Merry Christmas!" on the walls of every single one of my 697(last time I checked) Facebook friends. After two long hours I got to the letter L in the alphabet (last names) and I got warning messages saying my account will be suspended if I keep posting on people's Walls because I'm almost past the limit. First of all, why does Facebook even HAVE a wall limit. And second, yes, it does take two hours to copy and paste on the Walls of 350 people (even with Firefox tabs).

How to not fix healthcare

2008-07-27T08:25:00.000-04:00

By doing something about it.

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I'm sure all of you know about how messed up the country's healthcare system is. I won't talk about that. There are plenty ways of fixing it, but I won't talk about that either. Instead, I will talk about WHY healthcare is a problem and WHY it gets worse every time somebody tries to do something about it.

What's the biggest problem with healthcare in the world? Rather, what is the only problem? The answer is simpler than you may think: people are selfish! All other problems branch off of that one simple fact.

Just look at this list...

--Doctors want to keep making ridiculously high sums of money without doing anything. Thanks to direct to consumer drug ads, sick people (who are in no position to make any health decisions because they don't know anything and sickness could impair their judgment) demand that the doctor prescribe a drug. The well-trained professional who should be making all the hard decisions is just writing names of pills on pieces of paper and getting paid a lot of money from both the patient and the drug company to do it.

--Insurance companies give us wonderful plans to choose from like HMO's. You don't have to watch Michael Moore's documentary to understand why HMO's are awesome.

--Lawyers want to keep suing for malpractice because they know it's a great way to make money. If you're not a lawyer because you want to get rich, you'll be one of those public attorneys or something, and they get neither money nor respect.

--The drug companies want to keep selling you overpriced magic pills that you have to take every day for the rest of your life even though an overwhelming majority of them are extremely dangerous if used long term.

--Even though the business press has said countless times that only a tiny percentage of the rise in malpractice coverage rates are due to the increase in lawsuits in recent years, of course the insurance companies will hide behind malpractice as an excuse to raise doctors' rates.

--The hospitals want you to go to the ER for little things so they can essentially do nothing for you and then charge a ridiculous amount of money. For example, a few years ago my brother started throwing up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason so my parents took him to the ER. The doctor examined him and disappeared and the nurse gave him a few OTC pills. He was in there for about an hour and a half and then sent home. What was the bill? About $900. This was only a few days before our new insurance policy took effect. My brother was fine the next day and he didn't throw up again. The problem turned out to be food poisoning.

--These days, hospitals see themselves as so competent that they feel that any mistake they make is probably somebody else's fault. For example, they routinely make all kinds of mistakes and give their patients infection. These mistakes are often paid for by either the insurance company or the patient.

--In inner city areas, there are plenty of hospitals and clinics that give everyone living in the city unlimited free healthcare services. Who picks up the bill?

--The Food and Drug Administration is supposed to regulate all those nasty drugs, but why are they so biased in favor of the drug companies? Because the people working for the FDA are either ex-pharma employees or vice versa. Can you say, "conflict of interest?"

--Your elected politicians want to keep getting lobbying money from all of the above special interest groups, so of course they won't do anything that will result in them getting less money. People who run for office do so to get elected, and once they're elected, they'll do everything they can to make sure they hold that seat.

--You benefit from this system too. You don't want to eat and live healthy because that's too much work. Why bother when you can swallow magic pills that will cure everything for you? And if you can't pay, the government will pay for things for you.

--When you start a retirement fund, what do your brokers speculate on? Drug companies and insurance companies! Why? Because everyone knows they're guaranteed to make ridiculously high sums of money no matter what happens to the economy. Also, when doctors make even the slightest mistakes, you sue and get enough money to live in Beverly Hills for the rest of your life. Who wouldn't want that?

Over the past couple decades, any attempt at fixing healthcare (Medicare in 2002, CHIP in 2007) has ended up being a complete disaster, raising the costs of EVERYTHING related to healthcare for EVERYONE.

Compared to every other country in the world, our system is a disaster. Socialized healthcare would be better. Free market healthcare would be better (we don't have that). Even a managed care would be better if the government made it work properly.

There you have it folks. ANY system would be better than the one we have right now. So why hasn't there been a big change? Because nobody wants to change. Everyone's too selfish. The problem with healthcare is not whatever people say it is. It's YOU, America. YOU are the problem.

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Martyrdom

2008-04-26T11:35:00.001-04:00

is a fancy word for suicide.

I know, I'll piss off a lot of people who read this. If you're one of these people, blame Andrea for encouraging me to write this.

The other day I was watching one of those Bible movies on TBN (because I was sick and bored and I couldn't think of anything else to do). It was portraying men who died in holy wars as these noble heroes who will go to heaven. Depending on what you believe, that may or may not be true.

So what happens when you die fighting in a holy war? You die, of course. However, you're guaranteed a spot in heaven. You also get a page in the religious texts about what a noble thing you had done. Your wife and kids get to brag about how you were such a holy man and all that. Gee, dying must not be so bad after all, right?

What do you do when you go on a suicide mission? You disappear from this world and leave everything behind. By everything I mean your wife and kids (not husband because women with families are smart enough not to do this kind of thing). So you die in some holy war over who has the better god. Back home, your wife and kids have to fend for themselves. One less person providing for the family means the mother has to take over both roles. The kids have to grow up with no father figure and that can also cause a lot of problems. Why put them through this kind of torture?

I believe in God, and I have faith. However, I will never accept most of the things that religious people do. Holy wars, I believe, are insignificant arguments over who has the better imaginary friend. What's the point? If you ask 1000 people, you might get 2500 answers on what their religious beliefs are.

Also, what if you're following the wrong religion? Then being a martyr will just get you into a deeper circle of hell.

TO MY FEMALE READERS:
The males are always killing themselves in holy wars for some noble cause. It's always so easy to die, isn't it? When they do die, they leave their wives behind to do everything that they used to do together, especially raising the kids. Is that honestly the right thing to do? Would you be happy if your husband killed himself for some meaningless war so you would have to be all alone for the rest of your life? Maybe if you hated him, but in most cases, I think you would say no.

Everybody's a Freeloader

2008-04-12T11:32:00.000-04:00

That's right.

I know. Nobody wants to pay taxes. After all, the evil government eats away your hard-earned money and funds stupid special interest groups with your blood money.

If you're a financial institution who is looking to loan out more money, of course you hate corporate taxes. They mean less money in your reserves, which translates to you being able to lend out less money and therefore make less profits.

If you're a middle class American, you hate taxes. You're not poor enough to get all kinds of government aid programs. You pay taxes to take care of the Baby Boomers who are retiring, other people's kids, other poor people, big businesses (I'll explain later), etc..

If you're poor, you hate taxes. You already live paycheck to paycheck. The unskilled job you have at the local factory isn't economically viable anymore thanks to globalization. Globalization means that factory job that you're getting paid for minimum wage will either get shipped to some third world country you didn't even know existed or it will be given to the next lowest class on the totem pole (illegal aliens, anyone?). Because you're not economically viable, you can't afford to pay any taxes. Stupid government should be helping you instead of collecting taxes from you.

If you're rich, you have every reason to hate every kind of tax ever imposed on anyone. After all, you're filthy stinkin' rich! You're on top of the world! Of course you don't want to help out everybody who's beneath you. It's their fault they can't be as rich as you are.

If you're a politician, you hate taxes. You hate taxes because you know that saying you need to raise taxes (even if it's inevitable because of the economic situation) will automatically cost you any hopes of winning.

If you're a Reaganite, you hate taxes. You know that lower taxes will guarantee that the economy will grow regardless of current and prospective circumstances. That's why you say that lower taxes will always result in higher tax revenues in the long run no matter what.

So why do taxes suck so much? Because you give away your hard-earned money to help somebody you hate that you don't want to support.

Then one day something bad happens. An economic recession hits. The lenders lent out all the money they could lend, and nobody can pay them back. Who do they go to? They go to the GOVERNMENT to give them blank bailout checks.

The middle class shrinks and many of its members join the poor class. The poor stay poor or get poorer. The poorer, more numerous poor demand more tax dollars for social services like Medicaid and food stamps.

The rich argue that none of this is their fault. Well, they were affected by the economy too. In fact, they lost all of their millions of dollars in corporate shares. With the reduced payout, they want the government to give them more tax breaks to make up for the loss in capital gains.

While the federal politicians have some leeway, the state and local politicians know that they can't have budget deficits. However, even in the Federal government, you can only sustain a budget deficit for so many years before a real crisis forces you to balance the budget. That means during a recession, the politicians have to raise taxes or cut spending to make up for the lost revenue. They scramble trying to figure out how many programs they have to cut or how many taxes they have to raise before they commit political suicide. Why did George H. W. Bush lose to Bill Clinton in 1992? "Read my lips: no new taxes."

If you're a Reaganite, you have no idea what the hell you should say about any of this. Oh, I know: damn all the stupid Liberals for ruining everything!

This is where we are right now. If you're stuck in a tough situation and you want any help from anyone, shut up and pay your taxes. You heard me. If you don't want to pay any taxes, you're a freeloader. EVERYBODY benefits from tax dollars in the form of social services. The only discrepancies that exist do so because some people pay higher taxes than others and some people benefit more from tax dollars than others.

If you don't think you benefit from tax dollars, go live a self-sustaining life in some remote jungle somewhere.

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I'm not saying that the New Deal (which didn't get us out of the Great Depression) is any better than Supply-Side Economics ("Reaganomics"), it's clear that Reaganomics don't work. If it did, we would have a trillion-dollar budget surplus right now, even with the ridiculously high amounts of military spending.

Da-Lie Llama

2008-04-08T11:31:00.002-04:00

The Olympic Torch is under high security right now because of the massive protests all over the world against the Chinese control of Tibet. China is an evil Communist country that deserves to not exist, and there is no reason why Tibet should be free.

While protesters all over the world are all "FREE TIBET," what kind of freedom are they referring to? Just ask the Dalai Lama.

You see, the Dalai Lama is just a fancy name for a Tibetan monarch. The current Dalai Lama is the next in line to rule over Tibet. Because China is such an evil country, the Chinese took over Tibet and enslaved the masses. China also provided with horrible things like electricity, running water, and a prosperous economy. I know. It's horrible, isn't it? The poor Tibetans.

What does the Dalai Lama have to gain with a free Tibet? A restore to the throne, of course! While the Dalai Lama ruled over Tibet, the Tibetans had to live in lifelong servitude. Disobeying the Lama would result in cruel and unusual punishments like eye gouging, pulling out tongues, and disemboweling.

Why is this fraud getting such international attention from peacekeepers everywhere? Because he's a politician. He has nothing to lose (he lost the throne, so what more could he lose that's of any value to him?) and a country to gain. The worst part of it is that everybody's in on it: from the Nobel family to the CIA.

Dalai Lama's not much of a monk. He gets paid shitloads of cash just to give the same cliché speeches about peace and freedom that we already get enough of. All for what, to restore a tyrant back into power so he can enslave the Tibetans who don't know any better?

I don't care what China does. If you ask me, the Tibetans are better off under Communist rule, because under Communism, at least everyone's well provided for. From the looks of it, China's better off getting rid of Tibet. If they let the Dalai Lama do whatever he wants to with Tibet, maybe then he'll finally shut up and rule over his stupid country. That's highly unlikely, though. China's other option would be to ignore protests and do nothing, which is downright impossible because of current circumstances.

No matter what China does, the overwhelming majority of Tibetans won't see any significant improvement in their lives.

Remember folks. The lesser of the evils is still evil, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

"Free Tibet" my ass. The protesters deserve nothing for their ignorance in this issue. Give them no support.

The Low Prices Business Cycle

2008-03-30T11:24:00.000-04:00

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Watch this video before you read. It's funny, but the issue is pretty serious.

Big wholesale retail chains like Costco and K-Mart are really bad for business. Yes, I know that goes against all conventional forms of thinking, including the ideas drilled into our heads in AP Economics class. After all, isn't it a good thing that they cut down costs and increase profits? Aren't people better off with the lower prices?

Not always.

Companies legally have only one responsibility, and that's to increase profits. They'll do that any way they can, and they'll make sure it's legal by manipulating all the politicians through lobbying. Gee, I wonder why lobbying is also legal? If it's not legal, have fun taking on their lawyers. Did I mention the media is also on their side?

I'll use Wal-Mart for my example because Wal-Mart does it better than anyone else.

You go to Wal-Mart to buy a lot of crap for rock bottom prices. This goes on for several years as the amount of junk in your storage space accumulates. One day you find out that your job is being outsourced to sweatshop labor in some third world country you didn't even know existed. They have to do this to stay competitive, because the stuff you make at your company is too expensive to compete with Wal-Mart.

You lose your job. Tax dollars are paying for your unemployment benefits while you look for another job. You see that the jobs that are open won't pay as much as your old job did and these new jobs have almost no benefits. You take the job anyway because you need the money and there's nothing better for you to do.

With the reduced pay and tough economic times, you really have to be careful about how much money you spend. You have to give up improvements on your house, so the contractors lose work. You can't afford to eat out anymore, so all the family restaurants lose money.

Because you don't have any money, you have to go shopping where it's cheap. Good old Wal-Mart. Thank God it always manages to lower prices no matter how bad the recession or how high the inflation is.

You were working at a golf course. That closed down because people couldn't afford to go golfing anymore. You take some more unemployment checks and find another job. This one pays below minimum wage and has deplorable working conditions. Still, you work here anyway because you need the money.

With the reduced pay, you have to get rid of your health insurance; it's too expensive. It's also too expensive to do just about anything else and you keep going deeper and deeper into debt. Thankfully, you can still shop at Wal-Mart for all of your daily needs.

From here, you lose another job, your wife needs a kidney transplant, and the bank forecloses on your house because you can't pay the mortgage. Then you continue the downward spiral into oblivion.

Everyone who has ever shopped at these kinds of stores deserves at least some of the blame. As I said earlier, the only responsibility that corporations have is the increase profits. They'll do this any way they can. That's why they outsource. They're not evil greedy fat cats. Well, they are, but there's nothing immoral or wrong with what they're doing. Businesses are supposed to increase their profits any way they can.

Trying to stop the companies from laying people off and outsourcing won't work. No matter how many tax breaks and subsidies you give them, they'll go wherever they can make the most money.

If you want to change the system, don't whine and complain and then expect the government to take care of everything. Do something about it. Stop buying stuff from these stores. Yeah, the things in small stores may be more expensive, and maybe you won't find a year's worth of supplies in one store. Still, every time you buy from a small store, you pay for goods and services than you do when you buy wholesale. Also buy things that are made in your own country.

Politicians suck. Believe me, I know. If you want them to represent your interests, do something about it. If they're not acting based on what you want, vote for someone better. Politicians wouldn't be so corrupt if an overwhelming majority of the population turned out to vote in non-Presidential years and constantly scrutinized their every move.

Moral crusaders: champions of democracy

2008-03-25T15:26:00.000-04:00

If you think these take too long to read, keep in mind that this took me two hours to write.

If you've been following the news, I'm sure you know Eliot Spitzer's story. Yeah, moral crusader indeed.

Every time one of these guys tells you about how many "moral values" he has, you automatically know he's lying. The whole morality thing is just a way of getting your vote. All the different portrayals of their morality--like ads, for example--are carefully constructed to convey the exact message that the campaign staff wants you to get. The campaign staff will do anything to make you win, so of course they'll try to do so in any way, shape, or form. To them, the end justifies the means.

Don't expect this kind of dirty campaigning to end anytime soon, because almost every lawmaker in office right now has engaged in this kind of behavior at some point in his or her life. Let's say that they did enact legislation against deceptive campaigning, and then...

When you preach the exact opposite of what you practice, what happens when you get caught? The devout Christians, the moral crusaders in the government working hard day and night to maintain God's Kingdom of America, where do they end up? Let's see...

Nixon said on national television, "I'm not a crook."
Clinton got a blowjob from a fat intern and then lied about it under oath.
I'm not wasting my time talking about Larry Craig...
...or Jim McGreevey.
Newt Gingrich gave up his seat in the House of Representatives because while he was busy impeaching Clinton, he had a mistress who was getting busy with him.
The guy who took Newt's place was having the same problems.
Strom Thurmond passionately believed in the inferiority of Blacks. In that case, why did he have an illegitimate daughter with a Black woman?

The Bush family and friends are supposed to all be these great Christians. Yeah, right. The whole Texas farm boy thing was carefully constructed to portray a false image of him so that YOU would like him and vote for him. He's not a humble farmboy. His father's a New England oilman. So is he, but he didn't have much luck in the industry. Instead, he went into politics as a puppet for the oil industry. Jeb's daughter is a drug addict. Dick shot a guy in the face while he was drunk, and then tried to cover it up when the police came after him. I can give you more examples, but you get the idea.

Even though Democrats and Republicans deserve equal blame for this kind of bullshit, the Republicans get away with it in an especially disheartening fashion. It all started with the "Moral Majority" in the Reagan years. Evangelist ministers got together and wanted to rid the world of pagans, Catholics, homos, etc. and they formed an alliance with the Reaganites. That's where the alliance with the church and the Republican Party started.

Republicans aren't that Christian. Look at all the things condemned in the Bible that the Republican party so graciously supports. Usury. Taking bribes. Giving lavish rewards to the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Yeah, those are very Christian values.

The Christian values that get people elected are usually limited to abortion and gay marriage. Entire elections are decided on those two issues. If you think the politicians share your views on those two issues, you will be disappointed just by listening to them in candid conversations.

Remember Dan Quale, the last "Christian" vice-president? He was a pretty strong opponent of abortion and wanted it outlawed in most cases. Then Larry King asked him on his show what he would do if his own daughter wanted an abortion. Quale said that he would support his daughter in whatever decision she wanted to make.

Our current "Christian" vice-president is Dick Cheney. Our president is strongly against same-sex civil unions but the vice-president's daughter is openly gay.

The Church leaders go along with this nonsense for their own benefit. In doing so, they affect the outcomes of major elections. The Catholic Church condemned John Kerry saying that it would be a sin to vote for him. Why? Because he has "un-Christian" views about abortion and gay marriage.

Jerry Falwell is the guy who started the Moral Majority. Here's what he had to say about 9/11:
"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"
You know why I think 9/11 happened? Because the rest of the world is sick of people like Jerry Falwell.

As you can see, the Republicans aren't any more Christian than the Democrats are. However, right wing pundits like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly blindly believe the notion that all Liberals and Democrats are Godless savages secretly plotting with Satan to rid the world of God.

Family values is another idea that's getting on my nerves. Sure, the politicians have family values. They care about their own families. They just don't care about yours. Actually, I'm not sure how much they care about their own families. I'm sure you know how kids of rich and famous people often turn out.

The only politicians with any sense of decency are the ones who don't claim to be these champions of morality. They're all imperfect human beings. Rather than admitting that, they present themselves as perfect individuals. Then they chide their political opponents for not being perfect.

Whatever. If a politician tells you he has moral values, then it's almost always a way of covering up some dark aspect of his life that if you knew about, it would cost him your vote.

Moral values are overrrated.

Gun control and police protection

2008-02-16T12:42:00.001-05:00

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I do writing them. This one took a lot of time to research and write.

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http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=1758
Article about police protection

Myth: Gun control reduces crimeIs it just me, or does John Stossel look like Geraldo Riviera? Maybe John Stossel DOES look like Geraldo. Who cares?

Incompetence of 9-1-1 dispatchers

O.J. videos are becoming cliché, but this one's actually worth watching. You'll see why.

Columbine. Virginia Tech. That one Amish school in Lancaster, PA. The most recent incident in Illinois. All involving guns. [Some crazy high number] of people die every year from being shot by guns. Why, then, do we have these horrible things, and what is our government doing to help? As usual, nothing!

Actually, we have all kinds of anti-gun laws in the books. Every time another shooting tragedy happens, Congress write up another law restricting gun ownership. It's working, right? If they can't get guns, they can't shoot people with guns, so everyone will be happy.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world where there aren't vicious criminals out to get you. We also don't live in a world where the goverment putting restrictions to deter crime will actually deter criminals from doing nasty things. I'm talking about gun control.

The idea behind gun control goes something like this:
Guns are horrible instruments of terror. The only reason they exist is to kill something. Why should we have these? They should only be given to law enforcement officials so they can protect us from terrorists. The Second Amendment is only a collective right because ordinairy people can't handle guns; only law enforcement officials can use guns for good. Also, kids can steal guns from their parents and shoot people with them.

When Texas first legalized concealed weapons, there was an enormous public outcry. The ignorant masses thought the concealed weapons would drastically increase the number of violent crimes and make the state of Texas an awful place to live in. Around the same time, the District of Columbia banned all handguns from the city residents. The move was praised all over the country because the number of violent crimes would go down.

If you know anything about gun control, you know that's not what happened. The number of violent crimes in Texas actually went down as more people started carrying guns. Now, people could protect themselves if somebody would try to mug them. The muggers were also deterred because they had no idea if the person they were trying to mug had a tiny pistol in the inside pocket of his coat.

Meanwhile, in DC, the number of violent crimes skyrocketed and the people had no way of defending themselves. Fortunately, the gun ban was lifted recently. The mayor gave a speech saying that now that gun ownership restrictions were lifted, there would be even more violent crimes in the nation's capital. Actually, violent crimes go down when you let more ordinairy people carry firearms.

The fact is that guns don't kill people. People kill people. Seriously, people suck. Guns are just a way of satisfying people's sick desires. If they can't get guns to kill you with, they could use something that kills more people: prescription drugs, cigarettes, hamburgers, and even CARS, just to name a few. Does that mean we should ban all automobiles just because 45,000 people die every year from car crashes? Absolutely not!

Apparently we learned nothing from prohibition (which I will write about in the near future; stay tuned). If banning alcohol won't stop people from having hangovers, banning guns won't stop people from getting ahold of them and shooting people dead.

No matter how strict the laws are, there is always some way to get around them, and you can't really stop that. The two boys involved in Columbine obtained guns ILLEGALLY, and their gun dealer sold them the guns ILLEGALLY. What would more restrictions do to stop that? Whether or not shooting people dead is legal, people will still do it. That's just how people are.

That's why you have to protect yourself. I'd love to be in a world with no sadistic bastards out to destroy your life. Unfortunately, we don't. That's why we have to protect ourselves.

What about the police? Aren't they supposed to protect you from these awful criminals? They can, but they don't have to. The police are not constitutionally obligated to protect ordinairy citizens from criminals. Check the books. There are laws saying this to some extent in every state. That's why 9-1-1 dispatchers and cops don't get in trouble if they mess up, no matter how loud the public outcry is. Police exist to protect the government from the mob. They're there to stop anarchy and mobocracy. They don't care about you.

Why does the CIA have secret torture prisons in Uzbekistan? It's to serve the government's own selfish interests. NOT to protect you from terrorist attacks. If the CIA really was trying to protect you from terrorists, it would follow its own advice and not torture anybody. I already explained why torture doesn't work.

And no, Borat's from Kazakhstan. Either way, that was a disgusting movie that I will never watch again.

Similar laws regarding police duties exist all over the world. Why do you think some people never get arrested no matter how many crimes they commit? People are not equal under the law, so of course protection under the law won't be equal, either.

The government doesn't have to protect you if it doesn't want to. However, it will sometimes attempt to stop you from protecting yourself. That's why you have to fight back.

The American Revolution would never have happened if the colonists listened to King George. George III wanted to seize all the guns from the colonial militia. If the Yankees didn't have guns to protect themselves, the Lobsterbacks could harass the ungrateful children of England into submission.

The gun control debate was settled once and for all in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. British troops tried to seize colonial weapons in order to stop future rebellions. Thankfully, they did not succeed. That's why we have Article II of the Bill of Rights:

[
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
]
It means that although the states are allowed to have militia, the right of of the People (capitalized for a good reason) to have weapons can't be taken away. There is another version, but this is the one ratified by the states so it's the amendment.

The Founding Fathers didn't want their elaborate experiment to make the same mistake as its contemporaries, so they allowed an amendment letting people own guns. They knew the government would start acting up again and get too powerful, so they wanted to give people a way to protect themselves.

Again, we don't live in a perfect world with no crime and competent police that are required to protect us. That's why we have to defend ourselves when others won't. I'd like to live in a hypothetical world with no guns, but we don't. That's why more ordinairy people should own guns.

Generally speaking, most people would never intentionally hurt anybody with a gun. That's because even though everyone has sadistic thoughts, most people would never act on them, even when their sanity is questionable.

The best way to protect yourself from people who want to hurt you is by learning self-defense. This self-defense can be anything from verbal to karate and even guns. Learn how to protect yourself. Remember, sharp-shooting lessons won't ever hurt you. However, they will help you in that one moment when your life depends on what you do in the next few seconds.

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Concealed weapons are legal to some extent in almost every state with a few exceptions. If you live in New York or New Jersey and you're reading this, tough luck. You can't carry concealed weapons. You can't defend yourself against shooters.

There are some psychological and societal factors that you should consider before you make any judgements about the notorious school shootings. I will write about this in the future.

Yes, kids can get ahold of guns that their parents own. This is as much their parents' fault as when parents don't tell their kids everything about sex until it's too late. Again, I will write about this in the future.

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Torture

2008-02-08T20:48:00.000-05:00

[4:07 Keith Olbermann talking to Robert Baer]
(video removed by YouTube)

Should we torture our prisoners? I mean, after all, they provide us with valuable information and countless leads on the war on terror. Right?

If you want to see just how effective torture is, think about what you would do if someone tortured you. You would get captured by foreign government officials who are hell bent on getting information from you about something. About what? Who knows? Why are they questioning you on something you don't even know anything about?

You would then get dragged into a prison cell and they would start doing all kinds of things to you. I don't need to explain the types of torture in graphic detail, but I will tell you what waterboarding is because it has been all over the news lately.

[
Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent. In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, waterboarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.

Although waterboarding can be performed in ways that leave no lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death. The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last for years after the procedure.
]

Eventually, you give in to their demands and tell them whatever they want to hear just so they would leave you alone. If they want you to say you were a mastermind in 9/11, you tell them that. If they want you to confess to killing 50 million Jews in Nazi Germany, yes, you will tell them that, too.

Everyone has a certain threshold of pain. When you reach yours, you'll do anything to make it stop. ANYTHING.

A huge chunk of information we have about 9/11 came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He said all those things while he was being tortured. Even the CIA said this information is unreliable, but this kind of torture-led information is the foundation for our Middle Eastern foreign policy. No wonder we're losing both the nonexistent war on terror AND our credibility among the rest of the world!

The fact is that torture doesn't work. It's that simple.

I'd like to find one good example of excessive torture that gave any significant leads in the war on terror. You can't because there is no good example of excessive torture ever working. None.

But what about police interrogations? Don't they give you valuable information about criminals and their crimes? No, not at all. This is pretty much the same thing, but done on a much smaller scale. If the cops manage to make you upset, you'll want to confess to whatever they accuse you of doing, even if it's not true. You hear it on the news all the time: people confessing to something under interrogation and then recanting it later in court.

La femme de Sarkozy est une pute!

2008-01-25T16:27:00.000-05:00

Sarkozy's Whore

This isn't really an American issue but it has been getting a lot of bad press so I figured I'd say something about it.

What

the

fuck

...?

Politicians have affairs all the time. That's not such a big issue, especially in this age where our president can get a blowjob from a fat brunette in the office and get impeached for it by a speaker of the house who is also cheating on his wife.

The politicians with brains who do this kind of thing either repent or leave their political office to fix their personal lives. President Clinton eventually came around. Governor McGreevey did the right thing by resigning and getting divorced, but he has turned into a complete nutjob who needs some serious therapy (not because he's gay, but he has some really serious issues). Newt Gingrich saw opportunity when he found out about the Lewinsky scandal and the President's attempt to hide it, but he was smart enough to resign before people found out about his extramarital affair.

And then you have the idiots. Strom Thurmond was raised in a strict racist WASP background, so he got over it by having a kid with a black woman (his daughter's still alive). He saw that it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, but he couldn't believe the truth so he unleashed his wrath on the Black population, running as a States Rights candidate for President and holding a one man filibuster for over 24 hours against the Civil Rights Act. What a shameful figure of American history.

Larry Craig's not much better. We all know he's gay, so he should just try to come to terms with it so we can all move on. Instead he ruthlessly attempts to hide it while trying to maintain his seat in the Senate. You're gay. That wouldn't be a big deal if you didn't try to solicit sex in the men's room. Just shut up, quit, and fix your personal problems. I'm sick of hearing about you in the news.

And then there's Nick. He was having an extramarital affair for a long time and people finally found out. He had a very dramatic, public divorce. Now he's showing off his supermodel girlfriend and taking her with him to meet all the other world leaders. He's also begging the paparazzi to keep following him even though nobody cares about him. The French people want a president, not another Charlie Sheen (this is the first name that I could think of because I can't stand him). The French are complaining about not being able to pay their bills but he's too busy fucking his supermodel whore all across the world.

Politicians suck.

Greater Depression

2008-01-25T06:01:00.000-05:00

Let's hope Peter's wrong, but I have a feeling he's right.

Anyway, I'm sure every single one of you here knows about the situation. If you don't, now's your chance to learn.

The stimulus program proposed by Bush and Congress won't help us. What it does is it forces the government to find money that doesn't exist and give it to the American people. The government is going bankrupt. What we have to do to get this money is either borrow more from China or print more dollars. If we borrow more money, we'll just be deeper in debt. If we print more money, the value of the dollar will go way down.

If we keep inflating the money (which we have to do to compensate for our current fiscal policy) and the value of our money goes down, we'll just suffer in both the global and the domestic markets. Yeah, that will do us a lot of good. The stimulus will only add to this problem. Because the dollar will be devalued, the money that families will get will be worth less than their money was worth BEFORE they got the money, because inflation is so high.

The Republicans want lower taxes. We can't afford lower taxes if spending levels are so high. The democrats want a bigger stimulus. I just explained why that's bad.

Why are oil prices so high? Actually, they're not. The rise in price of oil in terms of gold has been 20-30%. In terms of US dollars, however, it's approaching 400%. Oil is traded in US dollars so it looks more expensive than it actually is on the world market.

Lowering interest rates right now will just encourage people to borrow more and get deeper into debt. Do you really want to owe more money during an economic depression? Everyone loses out when this happens, even the major financial institutions.

While we will have a major economic depression compared to the one seventy years ago, the rest of the world will only have a minor setback. This will actually be GOOD for the other countries because we consume more resources than anybody else. If we crash, the resources we used will go to other countries like India and China and help them tremendously.

This should have happened decades ago but it didn't because we were the economic bullies of the world. Now that living beyond our means has finally caught up to us, we can let the free market work its course in the world while we suffer the consequences of our imperialistic jingoism.

Canada and Europe are all "IN YOUR FACE, AMERICA! WE TOLD YOU SO!" I don't blame them.

Abstinence is bullshit

2008-01-22T12:17:00.000-05:00

"Abstinence Only' Sex Education Ineffective"

New research suggests ‘abstinence-only sex education’ does little to dissuade teenagers from having sex. Just saying no may not be an effective strategy in keeping kids from having sex, a newly released study reports.

The evaluation, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, examined the impact of the abstinence-only-until-marriage programs funded under the 1996 federal welfare reform law.

Through the study, more than 2,000 children were randomly assigned to groups that received abstinence-only counselling and those that received no counselling. Over the next four to six years, numerous surveys were done to determine the impact of these programs on the behaviour of the kids.

Researchers found no evidence that these abstinence-only programs increased rates of sexual abstinence.

The study also showed that the students participating in these abstinence-only programs had a similar number of sexual partners as their peers not in the programs, and that the age of first sex was similar for both groups too.

"The basic takeaway message is that there are no differences between the two groups on any behavioural outcomes," says lead study author, Christopher Trenholm, a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research.

Debate Continues Over Effectiveness

Some sexuality experts say the study only confirms what most sexuality researchers have already known that abstinence-only programs simply do not work.

"The data coming forth now is simple proof, solid, unassailable evidence to back up what many of us have known from the get-go," says Joy Davidson, a certified sex therapist in New York City. But the debate still continues on which is the most effective way to help particularly the youth to abstain from sex till marriage since sex has become a very normal element in most relationships. Even the religious principle of not fornicating before marriage is now totally ignored by most. So what’s the way forward? Is abstinence even possible for most of today’s youth? What do you think?

SOURCE: ABC NEWS

Presidential primaries thus far

2008-01-19T14:12:00.000-05:00

IOWA: Democrats
It was a three-way tie between the top three candidates. No surprise there. John Edwards got the rural vote (I said why in the last Note). Obama got the Not Hillary votes. Hillary got the rest. The others didn't really get anything.

IOWA: Republicans
Huckabee won for some of the same reasons why Edwards won, but with a Bible Belt twist. Romney campaigned obsessively and still got second place. Take that, Rudy.

WYOMING: Republicans
Romney won, but who really cares? In fact, what was the point of this?

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Democrats
Hillary won because she turned all emotional after losing Iowa so she brought her husband. She won because people still think she represents them and not the establishment.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Republicans
It's always more interesting on the Republican side. This primary was proof that they don't have a clear frontrunner. I have no idea why McCain won. Romney was disappointed AGAIN, but who cares? Giuliani beat Ron Paul but what difference does that make? Fred Thompson got some ground but he won't hold out much longer. Why the fuck is FOX trying to censor Ron Paul? That'll just gain him more supporters.

MICHIGAN: Both parties
Pointless and won't affect the general outcome.

NEVADA: Democrats
It appears that Obama has a lot of support among casino workers. I wonder if that means anything. Hillary won again, but just about everyone who didn't vote for her hates her guts. Edwards is losing ground. Bill Richardson would have done well in this state.

NEVADA: Republicans
Romney won because he's a Mormon, but the win won't mean anything in non-Mormon states. Ron Paul got second so he must be gaining a lot of ground. His supporters are becoming even more rabid.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Republicans
McCain and Huckabee are involved in a fierce battle similar to the one in 2000 with McCain and then Governor Bush. This time, it's less nasty and McCain seems to be winning.

JOE BIDEN
Biden had a lot of integrity and experience. Looking back, I think he would have done better if he stayed for a few more primaries. He has more experience in foreign policy than any of the other candidates and can bring Democrats and Republicans together. I don't understand why he quit so soon.

CHRIS DODD
He was really scary. His voice was too harsh and neck fat bounced when he talked, so he always creeped me out.

MIKE GRAVEL
Why is he still in the race? He won't ever come out from last place because all of his potential supporters are with Ron Paul.

DENNIS KUCINICH
He won't have much better luck.

DUNCAN HUNTER
I'm not sure if he even exists anymore...

BILL RICHARDSON
Like Biden, he also has a lot of integrity and experience. He would also have done better if he stayed. I would expect him to get a third place in Nevada.

John Edwards

2008-01-15T14:24:00.000-05:00

John Edwards the populist candidate for President. You might remember him from 2004. If you don't, you're clueless about politics.

Anyway, I have no idea why this guy is still running for president. He'd make a good senator or somebody who sticks up for the little guy, but not President. He has almost no experience and nothing to run on except that the rich are oppressing the poor. The rich ALWAYS oppress the poor. That's just life.

Besides that, he has nothing else going for him. NOTHING. His stance on issues don't stand out from a typical Democrat. He's a trial lawyer. He has almost no political experience. He had the worst attendance record in the Senate in recent history. Worst of all, he sticks up for the poor people. That doesn't sound like a bad thing if you don't see how he lives. He recently built a huge million dollar mansion in Florida as his vacation home. Also, who in the right mind would get a $300 haircut, anyway? My hair doesn't look as good as his but I could get the same look at a local barber shop for less than $30. Without depleting my campaign funds.

Practice what you preach, Johnny boy. You always whine about how the rich live lavish lives while taking away precious resources for poor people, but you're doing the exact same thing.

The only reason the Democrats keep him is because he's a Liberal Democrat from the old South. The South has gone Republican ever since Strom Thurmond ran for president (a shameful moment in American history) and they need all the votes they can get. He's just there to get the rural poor to vote Democratic. He himself won't win the presidency.

BTW, John Kerry endorsed Obama. That means Edwards definetly won't win. Back in 2004 Edwards had the same purpose he does now: to get more votes from the rural poor, which wasn't enough to earn him a spot in the White House.

R.I.P. Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

2007-12-28T09:04:00.000-05:00

This is from the Wikipedia article...

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988-90; 1993-96) and, at the time of her death, leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party, occurred on 27 December 2007. As she was leaving a rally in the Liaquat National Bagh in Rawalpindi, Bhutto was shot in the neck and chest by an assassin who then detonated a suicide bomb. She was campaigning ahead of elections due in January 2008. She was declared dead at 18:16 local time (13:16 GMT), en route to Rawalpindi General Hospital. At least 21 people were confirmed dead in the aftermath; other conflicting reports indicate 22 bodies found at the scene. Two months earlier, shortly after her return from exile, she survived a similar attempt on her life that killed over 136 people.

=================================

To make matters worse, the Bush Administration is encouraging this kind of behavior by siding WITH Musharraf. Despite what people say, Musharraf is just taking orders from the U.S. government. It's not like he has any choice in the matter. Why else would Pakistan be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction? Who gave them the weapons?

So what's next for Pakistan? What's next for the world, for that matter? We all know Musharraf is just as big a terrorist as the Taliban (even if he's not part of them), and he'll do anything to stay in power. Every time somebody stands up to him, he or she magically gets assassinated.

If Musharraf actually postpones the election, we all know what will happen next.

Your thoughts on this?

Lightbulbs

2007-12-17T18:30:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone likes the light bulbs that are hung all over E-Pod. You're allowed to rip them off on Friday. Remember, if you get my light bulb and give it to me on Friday you get a small monetary prize.

And yes, I'm the horrible person who rips off other people's light bulbs and then gives them to the rightful owners.