One Furious American

In a trap of their own making...

2011-08-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

I have to honestly say that I watched the whole debt debate with a mix of both horror and sadness.

However, I can't think we can honestly talk about our debt crisis without talking about the country that's one the largest holders of our debt. This country is of course, China.

Lots of people have argued that this puts China in a strong position, however, I think it's quite the opposite.

Here's why...

China has for years now, devalued their currency while simultaneously buying our debt. Their market competitiveness is based entirely on being the cheapest. It also means that they've consistently had to deal with internal inflation because of this devaluation.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but during most of our debt debate, China was quiet and then got quite vocal about how we need to get our financial house in order without raising the interest rate...

Raising the interest rate in this country would cause every dollar to be worth a bit less. This causes two things happen in China. Firstly, their pile of US dollars is worth less, and secondly the distance between their currently and the US dollar shrinks. As China, what do you do? Do you continue to devalue your currency causing additional inflation? China's citizens are already rather pissed about that... Since China's economy relies on exports, letting their currency catch up means they're less competitive. China's talked about developing their domestic market, but with inflation so high and wages staying low, unless you're ultra rich, you may work in a factory making big screen tv's but you'll never be able to afford one.

China could threaten to sell some portion of their T notes. What would that get them? Suddenly flooding the market with say 500 billion worth of US currency would do nobody any good. It would have the same effect as increasing the interest rate. Plus it would hurt the other large holders of U.S. debt and could quite likely cause an inflationary death spiral where more countries would try to offload their t-notes before they become worthless, driving the price down, etc.

What are the solutions to this problem?

One thing is that China could allow their currency to slowly appreciate in a controlled way thus slowing their inflation. This however would make them less competitive globally, but it would prevent explosive inflation.

Another thing we could to is slowly increase the interest rate, while working with the Chinese to revalue their currency. They come up, we come down and we meet in the middle.

However, this being America, we're not big on protectiveness. We'll wait until we can't hold out any more and then we'll flood the market with cash and/or raise the interest rates and screw everybody.

Cry me a river!

2011-05-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

I hope that you, like me were completely disgusted with the performance that the oil companies put on in Washington. Seriously, they weren't even trying!

Let me get this straight. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are out of work. Gas is at four dollars a gallon and oil companies are raking in huge profits... Yet those guys argued that cutting the billions of dollars worth of subsidies is un-American?

I REALLY hope that wasn't from a prepared statement... I just would like to hope that they had a Sarah Palin moment and stupid just fell out of their mouth.

Otherwise, what the fuck. Are they that crass?

Let's not forget that BP wrote off $10 Billion of the money it put aside as a tax credit...That's right... they pollute the shit out of the Gulf and then push a portion of the cleanup on to us...thanks assholes.

Though I suppose you have to see it from their perspective. They've been on the government dole for so damn long they don't know what it's like not to be partially subsidized by the government. To them it seems very un-American to take away something that they practically consider their right... namely to fuck us black and blue coming and going.

What's probably even more flabbergasting to them is the notion that for all the money they've spent putting the people into congress who were gonna tow the line have suddenly gotten all independent and starting listening to their constitutes (the voting one's, not the big oil money one's)

All I can say is "Cry me a river!"

Bin Laden's dead... shrug

2011-05-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

So finally after a trillion dollars, two endless wars and a whole pile of bullshit, we managed to kill Bin Laden. Whoopee. Quite frankly I'd forgotten about the old fuck a this point. No big surprise he was in Pakistan.

As for disposing of his body at sea, that make sense. A body, grave, pictures all that stuff turns the guy into a martyr. I'm not sure that this generation of jihadists really care that much about the message of Bin Laden anymore. I think the pictures of the Iranians shooting their students in the street when they asked for basic rights pretty much spelled the end of the idea of any other state turning into a theocracy.

You don't have to look far in the papers to see that your average Muslim has taken a hard long look at their governments and said "This is bullshit!". The governments got the guns but they've got the numbers. I'll place my bet on the numbers any day.

Libya... Seriously?

2011-03-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

The issue I have with Libya is the fact that I don't see how we're not going to get involved in mission creep (and by us I mean the coalition).

Right now we're bombing the shit out of anything that looks even remotely military. Which is to say, I'm sure Gadhafi is packing every tank/APC and truck with civilians so when we bomb them he'll have a pile of dead civilians he can point to and say "See, They're killing us!!!"

The question I have is in the near future, when suddenly this ragtag group of rebels try's to take back some of the places that they've been pushed from and then we start providing air support for them... then we're no longer providing no {fly/drive} zone coverage. To make sure we don't accidentally bomb the rebels who look exactly like the pro-Gadhafi forces we'll have to put forward air controllers on the ground to direct the air strikes.... you see where this is going.

Pretty soon this will stop being a limited no fly/drive zone and turn into providing air cover and tactical support for the rebels, who for the most part have shown themselves to have plenty of guts, but little or no military training.

The other question, I have is... Who exactly are these rebels and are they people we really want to be consorting with? Honestly, nobody is really sure (that I can tell). Since Libya is basically a whole pile of different tribes, quite likely these are the tribes that were um... disenfranchised by those tribes who got in with Flynn with Gadhafi. Also, since there are zero democratic or social institutions in Libya, quite likely we're going to help the rebels depose one dictator they hate so they can install a dictator that they like... Who will quite likely hate America just as much as Gadhafi only won't be nearly as charismatically crazy and/or capable of holding the country together.

While were on the topic of African nations... Why Libya and not the Ivory Coast where the current president (who was defeated in an election that was widely viewed as being fair) is refusing to leave power and has instead started to raise an army to massacre the supports of the guy who was fairly elected?

How about Yemen and Bahrain where they've dropped all pretense and have just started firing into the protesters? Oh wait... the 5th fleet is stationed in Bahrain and Yemen is "helping" us in the war on terror... What's it going to take in those countries? When the security forces roll in the tanks and start firing grape shot at point blank range that we'll finally take a stand (and by take a stand, Mrs. Clinton will pen a strongly worded letter?!?)

I'm suspecting that we'll only get interested in Ivory Coast once it turns into a Rwanda like genocide that we'll suddenly take an interest... maybe... we've got a pretty poor track record... We howled a lot about Darfur but we didn't really do a thing. We'll just sit back and let the Africans slaughter each other.

So here we are...

2011-01-08T04:04:00.000-08:00

So the Republicans have taken back the house of representatives. They're claiming that they're going to cut 100 billion out of the budget without touching any military spending. Apparently they've already decided that's too ambitious and are only go for 50 billion.

I know I'm approaching this with marked skepticism. I've just heard a hell of a lot of rhetoric without any meaningful policy discussion.

Case in point, healthcare. So they're going to repeal it. Once that fails, they'll just not fund it. Okay... What's on the table to replace it or improve it in a way that'll make these people happy? I guess I just don't understand they're stance.

"This is tyranny that when Americans have a medical emergency they're not completely bankrupted!"
or
"Why should my tax dollars go to supporting a system where someone whose already sick should get insurance, this is an abomination!"

To me they're stance is just so insane and undefendable I don't even know where to start.

I'm going to stop right here, but I'll add on to this post later...

Wikileaks is a good thing

2010-12-07T03:43:00.000-08:00

As you turn on the TV, you are bombarded with silly hyperbole about how Assange could, might possibly be a terrorist!?! What you're actually seeing is the status quo in full damage control. Wikileaks changes the playing field in a fundamental way, it actually makes entities accountable.

I don't see how this is a bad thing, if you're a citizen. If you're a government that's been acting in a way that's less then transparent, it's horrifying. If you're a corporation that's been misrepresenting itself or doing things that you'd rather not have the government, shareholders and/or the general public knowing about, Wikileaks is a threat.

Clearly, these entities understand the idea that the control of knowledge is power.

What I also find interesting is that there's been no shocking revelations as of yet. There are no smoking guns.

What have we learned so far from Wikileaks?
* Iraq and Afghanistan are the ugly messes we all thought they were...
* Pakistan's ISI has been involved with the Taliban
* Pakistan's leaders while publicly condemning drone strikes, have given tacit approval of them because it means it doesn't cost them any troops.

I could continue to list "revelations", but we all get the idea... It's all stuff that without being outright said, we'd pretty much all deduced at this point.

While as an American citizen it's interesting to actually get some insight into the inter workings of one corner of my government, I can only imagine what other countries who have governments that are entire opaque suddenly getting some insight (albeit through our state department) into their governments, now that'll interesting!

This of course is bad news for those involved who have secrets they'd rather not talk about, so they'll attack Wikileaks, baring that they'll go after it's infrastructure. When they can't stop Wikileaks they'll go after Assange. When that doesn't work, they'll then try to argue about the validity of what's been released.

Now when this latest freak out over, I see a number of things happening...

Firstly, everybody possible will try to enact draconian laws which will be shot down by the judicial branch.

Secondly, the State Department and the DoD are going to make it impossible to get anything out of their networks. As an IT guy, why it's was so easy to get this information off the network in the first place boggles my mind.

Manhattan Mosque brouhaha

2010-08-26T07:38:00.000-07:00

I don't have an issue with a mosque being built two blocks from site of the WTC.

The people who attacked the United States on 9/11 did so as an act of hatred. Religion was and still is nothing more than a means for justification, period. Just as the people who attacked the United States on 5/19 (Oklahoma City bombing) did so as an act of hatred.

What's the difference between the 11 hijackers and the two people who perpetrated terrorist attacks on this country? Nothing.

Both groups of people took their hatred of the American government out on innocent people. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sihk, it didn't matter to them, their goal was to punish the United States and therefore it's people.

So I ask this question... Would people have an issue building a church two blocks away from the site of the Alfred P. Murrah building? I bet not. I don't even think it would make it into the papers

As American's we seem to have a collective blind spot when it comes to the aftermath of 9/11.

While 9/11 was a tragedy for the United States, it was a unmitigated catastrophe for the followers of Islam. Since 9/11 more than 1 million Iraqi's have died. For every person who died on 9/11, 447+ people have died and that's just in Iraq, that doesn't include Afghanistan. Our use of deleted uranium munitions has ensured that parts of Iraq will continue to have cancer and birth defeats rates higher than anywhere else in the world, thus multiplying the tragedy.

Keep in mind that none of the hijackers were from either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Only a few of the masterminds of 9/11 have ever been caught and we've never been able to get our hands on Osama Bin Laden, despite spending trillions of dollars.

I'd also like to address the absurd analogies that people have been making.

Comparing 9/11 to The Holocaust is insulting to the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocost. 9/11 was an single act of terrorism that cost the lives of 2,985 people. As for the number of jews killed the scope was so large that people can only estimate it was ~5.59 to 5.86 million. At Auschwitz-Birkenau alone ~1,400,000 jews died. If my memory serves me correctly Germany was one of the proponents for the creation of Israel.

The other comparison I hear all the time is "What if the Japanese wanted to build a shire near Pearl Harbor!?!" Actually, the Japanese have built a Shinto shire near Pearl Harbor. People would do well to stop parroting Rush Limbaugh, he is an idiot.

What I don't understand is this. IF the world trade center is hollowed ground then shouldn't be treated as a cemetery? Why are we going to build some new building there? We should cover the whole thing with a granite capstone and make a memorial out of it. Tear down every building in a three block radius and turn the whole thing into a park that's managed by the national parks service.

Just fucking wow!

2010-05-20T21:27:00.000-07:00

Where to start!

I'm not sure who to be more furious at... the government for it's grossly inadequate oversight of these idiots out there drilling offshore or the idiots offshore that seemed to be doing this in as slapdash a fashion as possible. There's literally thousands of gallons of oil a day gushing into the gulf and you've got fucking idiot senators still pushing for drilling in ANWR. How about we fix the current disaster before we get off on destroying the only piece of untouched habitat we've got left...okay. This whole thing is SO horrifying I don't even know where to start. I think when it's all said and done the true scope of this disaster won't really be known because people won't want to measure it or it'll be so fucking huge accurately measuring it will be out of the question. When the entire gulf is a destroyed soupy oily mess devoid of sea life, you just stand on an oily sandbar with your clip board and under "Habitat Assessment" you'll write "Fucked!" and you pass in your findings.

I don't know what game North Korea is playing at. I don't possibly see how sinking a South Korean destroyer accomplishes anything. Brinkmanship would be shooting across their bow or something... I mean... they just committed an act of war! I don't see what any other regional power gains from restarting the Korean war. Where do we go from here? Do we start sinking North Korean submarines? That would cause them to freak out and pull the trigger. Has the military in NK just gone rough and they're doing their own thing without their dear leaders permission? Also how much longer can China keep a lid on this? I have to imagine the phone call from Beijing to Pyongyang started with "Seriously? How the fuck are we going to explain this?"

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the possibly awesome news that they were able to synthetically create a bacteria. Yeah, I understand it wasn't of their own design, but the mere fact that they got all the bits to work is awesome. I know, the uncle Ben quote applies here, but the possibilities of once we start writing our own genome sequences and then putting them together to create organisms, that's when it'll get crazy. As for right now, I'm just waiting for all the crazies to come out of the woodwork in a frothing mass.

Gee, you'd think there'd be a law against that...

2010-04-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

How fucked up is it that it would appear that Mexico has higher standards when it comes to ground beef then we do?

Actually thinking about it, considering that Mexico does not *seem* to be having the serious epidemic of obesity and diabetes that we have maybe we should stop letting giant faceless corporations who only care about their profits and not the food on our plates.

Go read this, get good and mad and then come back.

If there was ever a reason to know where your meat comes from, I can't think of a better reason!

On a side note, I'm now part of a meat and vegetable CSA. So, I actually can answer that last question and I know that the food I'll be eating is going to be raised sustainably and humanely.

I can only imagine who they're going to spin this...

2010-03-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Princeton University just released a study showing HFCS contributes to obesity. You can read the article here.

Obviously those of us who think HFCS is partly responsible for dietary health abyss this country is falling into feel that this will finally give some legitimacy to what we've been saying.

However, I'm rather interested in seeing how the other side responses to this.

I figure there's three things they can do.

1. They can attack Princeton.
2. They can attack the study.
3. They can attack the message.

I suspect they probably won't do the first thing. That would look really petty. However I do expect them to attack the study and the message is sends.

I'm sure right now there's a study showing that there's no link between HFCS and obesity. You know once it's done they'll roll that baby out! I also expect them to go over the study with a fine toothed comb and tout any inconsistency they can find.

I also expect to see lots more of those "HFCS, it's just like sugar" with lots of healthy looking happy people playing in the park, with not a fat person in sight!

You're Trying to become...What?

2010-03-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

So scanning several of my RSS feeds this morning I came across this jem: Woman aims to become worlds fattest.

I'm not one for overly disparaging others. If you've got a goal of making it to 1000lbs, that's a goal I suppose. In my eyes a horrifyingly sad goal, but a goal none the less.

What truely saddens me is that this woman has a daughter. While it's not mentioned in the article, it sounds like a young one at that.

Firstly, That kid is going to have a seriously fucked up notion of what's healthy and what healthy eating is.

The reason I wrote this post is that as I'm reading this article all I can think of is that upcoming TV show hosted by Jamie Oliver where he goes into a town in the US and tries to tackle the towns obesity problem. This woman is almost the flip side to what Jamie Oliver is trying to do.

Secondly, chances are pretty damn good she won't make it to her kids high school graduation, and that's truely sad.

Long time, no blog!

2010-03-13T09:18:00.001-08:00

Hey, it's been busy at this end!

Am I the only one whose been watching this whole debate about the healthcare reform and has merely come to the conclusion that their all disingenuous miscreants? Read some of my earlier posts about healthcare... I'm not going to repeat myself.

If you've read my blog with any frequency in the past, you know that I have a long standing issue with the rampant use of High Fructose Corn Syrup (hence referred to as HFCS) in practically everything we eat. My wife whose healthy skepticism regarding some of my more passion rants about things finally hit the tipping point when she noticed that there was HFCS in the yogurt she was buying. Needless to say, there's a lot more Stonyfield organic yogurt in the house, and I couldn't be happier.

I'll move away from HFCS for a moment and rant about something else that I find in products all the time that drives me crazy... preservatives. I understand that you want to extend shelf-life, I hear ya. However, when I pick up something from the freezer section and I find both HFCS and preservatives, obviously you've lost my sale, but it begs another question... if it's got preservatives in it, why's it in the freezer?? Mind you, I'm not talking about Italian ice, I'm talking about something like frozen waffles. I make home made waffles all the time and the ones we don't eat end up getting put into the chest freezer for eating at a later date and they're just fine.

I promise to parrot Michael Poulin as little as possible, but I've gotten to the point where if I can not readily identify all the ingredients, I don't buy it.

This approach to buying food has altered our diets in some interesting ways. For one thing, the junk food has truly left the house. If we're going to have a package of cookies in the house as a treat, and keeping with the rule laid out above, it forces us to buy higher quality products. It also means that our consumption of fruits and vegetables has significantly increased.

As we've cut the HFCS and preservatives out of the house, something odd has happened to our portions... they've shrunk. As far as I can tell my gastronomy hasn't suddenly become spectacularly efficient. What I think has happened is that my bodies sense of being "full" isn't being suppressed anymore.

In a rather non subjective test, I have noticed that I have no problem completely emptying a regular (HFCS) can of soda. However I can only seem to get partly through one made with real sugar. Obviously, not a double blind experiment, but it would be interesting to do such a test and see what the results are!

For us the real results have been that our waists have significantly shrunk. Granted, our grocery bill has gone up, but I'm honestly okay with it. I think of it this way: "I'm investing in my health." I'm blessed to have to healthy children and I'd like to get them off to a great start in life by giving them some healthy eating habits. My oldest daughter abhors soda, and I'm a-okay with it. For full disclosure it should be noted that we're both at the gym three times a week... so in a nutshell... eating healthy and getting your ass to the gym helps you lose weight... I know crazy talk!

Something else that I really want to get going on this year is a much expanded garden! Last year I had to have MAJOR construction in my back yard (basically all my retaining walls needed to be rebuilt) and it caused all my grass to go goodbye... This I see as a great opportunity to put a huge garden! I know that once my garden gets growing it'll have the added benefit of giving me both fresher veggies and reducing my grocery bill.

No Soda and other ramblings...

2009-10-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

Here it is the 15th and I'm still Soda free! I should also note that since getting my ass to the gym I'm down 15 pounds as well!

I borrowed King Corn from a co-worker... I'm interested to see how it is.

I just saw the reports about this kid they thought was up in the balloon but they found in his attic instead?

What kind of fucking idiots do we have here... you're telling me the first thing you didn't do was search your house from top to bottom including all the crazy places? Also, I have to say, I'm seriously unimpressed with the media on this one. He's in the balloon, he's not, it's a balloon, it's a flying saucer. You know you could just say "We've got no fucking idea, they haven't told us anything...

Anyway, let's see if I can go a month with no soda now.

NSFAM

2009-09-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

It's pronounced "Nes-Fam", what does it stand for? "No Soda For A Month".

I figure I'm going to be heading off into the woods for a couple of days with my cousin and a good friend to clear my head and I figured it would be a good time as any since I'll be away from the stuff to get my head (and body) away from the "liquid candy". I've been getting my ass to the gym and needless to say I've started to see some results. My waist has slimmed down and I have more energy and strength then I know what to do with.

As anybody who reads this blog (all three of you!) know, I hate High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think it's utterly diabolical shit that'll end up killing us all in the end, so I've really been striving to completely remove it from my diet.

So Starting Oct 1st, I'm going to try going soda free for a month. My plan is if I make it a month, I can make it two, etc. I have to be completely honest though, I don't really drink much soda to begin with so it's a bit like a guy who smokes 3 cigarettes a week announcing that he's quitting. However, with all that said, there's something to making a promise and sticking with it!

12.1 Billion of TARP money for bonuses?

2009-07-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Federal Government,

I'm writing to you to inquire about the completely obscene bonuses that you're letting companies who borrowed massive amounts of public money pay out. Between Bank of America, Citibank and Merill Lynch they're paying out 12.1 billion dollars in bonuses. I know that many of the people at these firms are hard working Americans who probably desire a little extra in the paycheck, but this seems just a little steep. I don't know about what business classes you were forced to take in college, but at least the marginal one I was forced to sit through gave me enough of an idea of how a business should work that if you're not making money, you probably shouldn't be paying bonuses.

I'm wondering if you see the insane hypocrisy of companies who helped drive our national economy into the ground using money borrowed from the Federal Reserve to keep operating now blowing it all on bonuses. I guess I was delusional as an American that this money would be used for things like fixing the economy and that it would have the same sort of strings attached that food stamps might have, you can buy food so you won't starve, but no booze or smokes!

Now that we're all part owners of these companies I wonder if you will do the right thing and step in take this money away from these nitwits. Obviously if they've got the money to pay people one million dollar bonuses, they don't need ours.

I guess I could ask why you decided to save all these companies in the first place. Honestly, I think that talk about being too big to fail was just to make sure you didn't look stupid since all your deregulation bullshit had finally come full circle to bit us all in the ass. I'm beginning to think all the deregulation stuff is just a misleading name for letting companies run amok without any accountability.

It's been my observation, however myopic it may be that people in Wall Street are interested in one thing only, making money. They don't care who it hurts or the long term consequences of their actions. IF they did, do you really think we'd be in this situation?

Now I know that as far as this whole bonus situation is concerned, since congress is completely bought and paid for their won't be any resolution. The American people will continue to take it up the ass while our hard earned money is given to these weasels.

Your loyal citizen.

Well isn't that a pile of sad shit...

2009-07-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you remember this, but a couple of years ago down in New London Connecticut a bunch of people were evicted from their homes and the town took their land under eminent domain. Obviously the homeowners got lawyers and the whole thing ended up at the supreme court where the court basically fucked the average citizen in the ass and said that it was totally cool.

It's good to know that after all that, they went and built a... oh wait... the lands still sitting barren four years later?!?

Are you telling me the town evicted a whole shitload of people and then bulldozed their homes and then did nothing with the land?!?

What about that hotel and those condos they were going to build? Oh it was predicated on the idea that they were going to build some Coast Guard museum that I guess the people involved haven't even decided they're going to put in the area?

Wow that's pretty fucking lame. I guess when it's time for elections that'll be a pretty easy campaign slogan:

"Vote for me! I won't steal your home and then bulldoze it for nothing!"

Also a shout out should be made to the Supreme Court who basically decided that business was more important than peoples rights, but this being America, we pretty much knew that was the case anyway...

What really scares me...

2009-07-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

I've got a house and a couple of cars.

If I went outside and found my car a smoldering hulk, while I'd be sad, I know that my auto insurance would at least give me enough money that I could go to a dealership and get myself another car. Yeah, it would be a hassle, but it would be okay.

Same with my house. If a pipe burst and my cellar flooded, or if there was a fire or a tree landed on my house, I know a phone call later things would be okay.

However, I don't hold out any illusions when it comes to health care.

Getting sick, even though my health insurance comparatively speaking to others is probably really good is a scary proposition.

It amazes me that in this day and age, the number one reason of people going into bankruptcy is because of medical bills.

Yet our congress, who I might add apparently is fully of weaselly dipshits care more about keeping their health care constituents happy then actually serving the people they supposedly represent.

I fully understand these fucks live in some wacky bubble where real world shit doesn't affect them, but I have a distinct feeling, their caving to the health care industry is going to back fire in a huge way, at the ballot box.

How much more expensive is health care going to be, while supplying a inferior product before these nitwits wake up.

If we can't have nationalized health care system, then I think the government should demand that any health care provider who wants any government perks must become a none profit.

I don't understand why these nitwits fear becoming a government entity anyway. It's not like real market forces effect the government. Got an over priced weapon system designed to fight an enemy that doesn't exist? No problem, we'll still fund it! And these guys would actually produce a useful product.

I think the problem that these guys have is that if the government was to provide a universal health care program, or was to nationalize the existing systems into the Department of National Health non democratic countries around the world would see it as a failing of capitalism.

Unfortunately, the health care system, strayed away from capitalism a long time ago. The first big issue is that in a fee based system, healthy people don't make you much money. Thus there's really no incentive for them to treat a problem when it first appears. If it looks like you might be diabetic, offering a free gym membership isn't going to be nearly profitable as selling them insulin, lancets and syringes the rest of their lives... Being efficient isn't profitable.

Thus, until a really great health care system comes out that is both profitable and good for the patient (and can get past the red tape and monopolistic behavior of the existing health care providers) we'll be stuck with our current bad medicine.

Dear Sarah Palin...

2009-07-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

Wow, how you've fallen from grace girl! What happened? Only a couple of months ago you were riding around in a private jet with lots of nice fancy cloths actually thinking you might be vice president. Now here you are resigning as governor hoping like hell you don't end up getting brought up on ethics charges!

I know it must be rough when the press who sat on their asses while George Bush and his cronies got us involved in a bunch of illegal wars, lied to the American people and racked up massive debt basically gave them a free pass, maybe you were hoping they'd give you the same courtesy.

Who are we kidding. We both know the only reason you got elected as governor of AK is because the last guy was so terrible your entire campaign consisted of "I'm not that guy." The only reason you were picked as vice president was in hopes of stealing votes away from those people who were pissed that Joe Biden was picked for VP instead of Hillary Clinton.

It could also be that after seeing Barack Obama speak they realized they were totally fucked and needed a scapegoat to blame when things went wrong. I can't imagine that any presidential campaign worth its salt wouldn't have looked into your closet and closely examined all the skeletons before signing off. We both know the GOP has better scruples then that! Except we both know the don't... More likely is the idea that by basically burning you at the stake they've taken the heat off the prior administration that had you not been such a hilarious side show would likely be infront of a congressional hearing answering for all their bullshit.

We both know the GOP is totally freaked out by women in power. The idea of a woman in control of the largest state in the union must have really pissed some people off. What a better way to get rid of you then to nominate you for the VP, know you'll fail but will fail so amazingly that by the time the dust cleared you'd be hawking crap on informercials. I also hear that Cheney had his CIA assassin squad take care of a certain boisterous TV celebrity to make room for you!

Though now that the press has had a chance to look into your personal life, I'm sure MTV called and pitched the idea of the reality TV centered around your life. I'm sure it'll be something of a mash up between the real world and that show about Hulk Hogan's house.

Best of luck with all that!

Mashup...

2009-07-21T07:18:00.000-07:00

Hey Gang,

I'm going to warn you now that this post is going to be all over the place!

I've always been a huge space nerd and 40 years on I'm still awed by what we were able to accomplish and saddened by how little we've accomplished since then. Yeah, the ISS is kinda cool, but it's in low earth orbit and it's honestly been a huge money sink. I'm not sure we've gotten anymore out of it then we got out of Mir.

When you think about the Trillions (a number with 9 zeros after it) we spent fucking up Iraq/Afghanistan/etc we could have a fully manned base on the moon and mars and a couple ISS as way stations!

Also, while the shuttle is cool, we should have started a long time ago building it's replacement. The big issue is that it's not nearly reusable as we were led to believe and it's actually turned out to be a huge headache to maintain and it's fragile.

I've been watching what's been going on in Iran with somewhat of a sidelong glance. In so much that after we've finally getting Iraq sorted out, Iran (who BTW had a lot to do with the instability in Iraq) is going to come apart at the seams. What I think the whole world has learned (as well as the Islamic council) is that there is a whole heck of a lot of unhappy people in Iran who feel very disenfranchised. We've also all learned that the the people currently in power basically will do anything to stay in power and anything they say about democracy is just empty prattle. Now, a weak Iran might be good for Israel, so how they're going to manipulate this is yet to be seen.

Now, of all the TV shows I've ever watched, one of the shows that I can watch over and over is Futurama. I've come to the painful conclusion that Fox is being run by drug addled criminally insane gophers in clown suits. How do I know this? There is talk of recasting the voice actors for the show...

FOX, are you out of your FUCKING mind(s)? While your at it, why don't you redub all of the smurfs with and Gilbert Godfrey and Serena Williams!

I'm pretty sure in some sensible society what you're doing would be considered a crime!

I guess I need to explain my position on Evolution...

2009-06-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

While I'm a firm believer in Evolution, I feel compelled to explain my position.

So here I go.

Let's for the sake of argument, go with the idea that God created the universe, etc.

Now, let's think about pi. You know, that number that denotes the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter, i.e. 3.14159265. Pi has some really amazing properties. One of it's neater properties is that no matter how many places you calculate it out to, it never seems to end and it never seems to repeat. People have calculated PI out to several billion places and does not seem to have any pattern, it's just random, just think about how amazing and elegant that is.

Going on the theme that God created the universe, then he must have also created pi.

Following that line of thought, it makes it hard for me to believe in stuff like genesis, creationism, etc.

A God elegant enough in thinking to create something as amazing as Pi would never have come up with such an inelegant hack such as creationism or the whole genesis idea as it's written in the bible.

The idea that all life on this earth evolved from a couple of simple chemical interactions in a scum puddle billions of years ago is both amazing and elegant.

PRNK...

2009-05-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

I guess it only makes sense that I should put in my two cents about North Korea.

I believe that Kim is no longer in power. He's either on a ventilator somewhere because he had a second stroke, or he's abdicated his power.

I believe this because of three things they've just demonstrated.

1. That they have a demonstrated functional nuclear arsenal, though of unknown quantity and quality.

2. The surface to air launch is an act of deterrence against fly overs.

3. The surface to ship launch is an act against the many navies (including our own) who have surface intelligence gathering ships.

All this adds up to a new dictatorship that wants to show the world how strong it is.

Think about the environment in NK. You have at this point two generations of people who've been schooled in the idea that they are at war with the west. Now these people are coming to power. They've been convinced their whole lives that we're in South Korea just waiting for the chance to pounce on North Korea and destroy them.

What is the first thing their going to do when their in power? Show the world how strong they are. Now that their is a new administration in Washington, Pyongyang wants to be taken seriously.

Hopefully those in North Korea who are a bit even temperament will explain to the new people in charge how tenuous their position is. Though I doubt those in power will listen to them.

Now how this bodes for the international community is yet to be seen. Do I think the North Koreans are crazy enough to attack South Korea. I'm not sure their that crazy. However if they do think that their still at war (which they do) and they think that their about to be attacked (who knows) maybe that would start something stupid.

I sure hope not. The North Koreans have a huge stock pile of chemical and biological weapons.

People tend to forget that the last war that we were involved with in the Korean peninsula cost more lives then Vietnam and only lasted a year.

A bloody war is the last thing anybody needs. Not the least of which is the fact that the North would invariably get their asses handed to them (though it would be an ugly costly affair on both sides) but with it would come a really messy humanitarian problem as well.

Cheney, the GOP talking head...

2009-05-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

I know that people could argue that maybe the best thing our president could have done instead of addressing our former vice president Dick Cheney is ignore him, but I think they'd be wrong.

What we're currently seeing from Cheney is a rear guard action. Can anybody remember in recent history the last time a sitting president had to contend with sniping from the former vice president? What it comes down to is as President Obama sorts through the myriad of messes left by the former administration and works to right the many wrongs, some seriously dirty laundry has been hung out to dry.

Firstly, I think the GOP has charged Cheney with being their bulldog. He's not going to win any popularity contents but due to his former position in the government, he gets a default bully pulpit. Also, he has a cultivated cadre of people and organizations who support him. His entire job is to merely be the guy who everytime Obama says "The Bush administration was wrong about X" He jumps and and yells "No we weren't, you're wrong!!! We're all gonna die because you're against X!!!!" I guess that makes him the GOP heckler... or something.

Secondly, It's a form of damage control. Cheney wants to control the message of how the Bush adminstration legacy is percieved and remembered. Right now peoples take on the Bush administration is generally bad. This lets him get out in front of the message and put his spin on the policies he implimented, instead of having the Obama administration saying "X policy was bad for this reason."

What's interesting is that I don't think this gets any points for either side.

The people who think Cheney is an evil sociopath who helped run our country into the ground are going to see him sniping the president as merely that. A has been who wants to make sure he's not completely remembered as a crack pot nutbag.

Those whoe think Cheney was on the right track and is protecting the country will keep believeing that as well.

It's a win/win for everybody... except for the American people who get to watch their president get side tracked as the former vice president conducts a side show.

Either way, I think it's foolish.

The Dark Side...

2009-03-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

I've add a book to my suggested reading list that actually is not about the evils of HFCS.... Instead it's about the evils of the Bush administration.

In the nutshell, the Bush administration basically had their own little cadre of nutjob lawyers who basically would come up with some outlandish legal stance, hide it from the legitimate legal council of the president, get the president to sign it and then make it secret. Through this backdoor system, it allowed the president and vice president's lawyers to circumvent congress, pretty much every level of checks and balances and give the president sweeping powers.

Time for the annual tax raping, in triplicate!

2009-03-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you're thinking this post is mainly going to be about our completely obscene, convoluted and ass backwards tax code... it is.

However, I'm going to spend just a few minutes on one company in particular that has caught my ire... Intuit. You may know them better as the company that markets the product "TurboTax." Now you could also make the argument that when a countries tax code is complex enough that a company practically makes a mint a year selling people software so they can figure out how much the government has fucked them, something is wrong.

Now, I'm sure you could go off and get the forms and do it all by had, but the IRS and the media has drilled it into our heads that we're too stupid to not make mistakes...

Thanks Sony, I just bought a Wii...

2009-01-25T10:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Sony,

I really wanted to buy a PS3, really I did. I did my research on what version of the PS3 I wanted to get and that's where the problems began.

Basically it boils down to your dropping support for PS2. I could possibly understand PS1 but PS2? Why would you do something as asinine as orphaning ~1500 games from your game library?!?

If you were going to make an incompatible games system, do so but don't call it PS3, call it "Game System One".

Because of this stupid move, I decided to take my money elsewhere and buy a Wii and I couldn't be happier.

Whoever over there at Sony got the bright idea to drop PS2 support from the PS3 should be fired for stupidity.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

2009-01-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

Thank you Mr. Churchill your saying seems very appropriate.

Here we are... at this point I'm not sure the president can fuck up anything else, but who knows... maybe we'll invade Cuba or he'll authorize the release of radioactive beetles or something... Who knows.

However, what struck me was that some yahoo was on TV blabbering on about how when it was all said and done that Bush would be vindicated in Iraq and that we'd come out of it victors.

Considering the number of American Soldiers killed: Thousands
Considering the number of Iraqi's killed: Hundreds of thousands, if not a million
Considering the money that we've spent: ~1.9 Trillion
Considering what we could have done with that money instead: who knows!
Considering what our country could have done with those Americans who gave their lives serving their country in something that could best be described as a fools errand: Beyond measure.

All I can say is... We'd better fucking win this thing!*

* - "Winning" being that we get the fuck out of there ASAP while we still have a shirt on our back a pan to piss in and a window to throw it out of!

As for things here at home, I'm not sure how much deeper the hole can go... I get the sense that we've hit rock bottom and started digging, but how deep will that be? How many more stimulus checks can the government send out? We're only borrowing against our future, which to me seems utterly insane.

I would much rather we put that money into green public works projects such as TDP and wind farms!

Okay!

2008-11-05T08:01:00.000-08:00

Phase 1 of our master plan is coming to fruition! Oh wait, you never got that secret memo! Shit, let me outline it for you!

Phase 1:
Democratically elect a competent president! Preferably someone who has a solid grasp of the constitution and the English language. This person should be capable of dealing with our enemies and our friends in a sensible diplomatic way. Also we should make sure that their vice president knows what the fuck is going on.

Phase 2:
Set for a platform that consists of the following policies...

End our dependence on oil period. NOT just foreign oil, but oil period. Put the kind of money into this problem we've spent dicking around in Iraq!
Take a genuine leadership role in planetary stewardship. Let's stop arguing about global warming and start doing something about it. (see bullet point #1)
Immediately review all presidential orders and revoke the ones that are harmful to this country, the goals of the current administration, etc.
Sort out our financial problems in a pragmatic way that does not include giving out money like candy to institutions that make poor financial decisions in the first place and are now paying the price. Any bills/measures that get passed MUST have provisions in them that exclude giving out compensation packages. The money must be used to fix financial problems, not make rich people richer at the taxpayers expense.
Let's get out of Iraq ASAP. They don't want us there, we don't want to be there, it's costing us a shit load of money for no gains. I've got no problem providing the Iraqi army logistical support and flying manned and unmanned support missions. At worst I'd be okay with leaving a fabulously outfitted combat brigade to help the Iraqis for some fixed timetable and then they'd be out as well.
Let's find Bin Laden and put his head on a fucking pole, period. While were at it, we'll actually talk to the Taliban and give them an ultimatum. Either come to the table, sign a treaty and become a functional part of the Afghan government or be destroyed. I figure after we achieve #4 we'll have plenty of troops we can rotate home, get some R&R and then finish the job.
Have the president work with the congress and the attorney general to investigate the behavior of the prior administration and hold people accountable for their misconduct.

Our job isn't finished yet...

2008-11-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

I figure the best insurance against our elections getting stolen is to go out and vote in such numbers that even if there is voter fraud, it'll be merely swamped buy shear numbers!

What it does mean is that more than ever we need to start racketing up the pressure on our elected official to ensure that these fuckers {Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney,etc} GO TO JAIL!

Once their asses are out of office, we need to make sure that congressional committee's start meeting immediately and investigating everything that's transpired in the last eight years!

Go out and vote!

To Hell With High Fructose Corn Syrup!

2008-05-03T17:49:00.000-07:00

Walk into your grocery store and take a look around... sure the food *looks* like it used to... now pick up the package and take a look at the ingredients... exactly... What the fuck happened to our food, when exactly did it happen and more importantly, why! As I've looked more closely at the ingredients I find in the food I feed my family with, more furious I become.

My backlash against this is to strive to rid myself and my family of unnecessary preservatives and chemicals in our diet! Modern science is starting to prove what people have for many years believed. The farther you move away from the raw ingredients, the more processed the food, the worse it is to be for you. Another thing to think about is this... Our bodies evolved to eat the food that was available to us... which for a majority of human history has been without things like sulfur dioxide and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

You would think this would be something that would be relatively simple to do, as I've found out, it's actually really hard and insidious problem to solve.

One of the things that I've taken to is reading labels much more extensively, much to the chagrin of my wife! Surprisingly I've found that the fancier brands seem to be the more processed. Once place that I seem to find high fructose corn syrup needlessly is bread. I searched for 5 minutes yesterday looking for a loaf of bread that doesn't have HFCS in it. I finally found the store brand (which happened to also be the cheapest) was the only brand I could find that was at least -minimally- processed. As I use up and replace things in my house, I've been trying to find minimally processed replacements.

How I think we've got to this juncture is as American's we've been suckered into thinking that cooking is too hard. Especially anything more complicated than something that you can take out of a bag or be instantly heated up. I think a big part of this is gullibility in the face of marketing. Turn on the T.V. and you'll here all manner of ads to the tune of "Don't have time to cook dinner for the family? Use our ready made, prepackaged, microwavable dinner!". What they won't say in the commercial is that it's loaded from top to bottom with chemicals even your high school chemistry teacher would throw their hands up at.

What my wife and I have found is that with some common sense and a good cookbook, we can make pretty much make anything you'd eat on an average night in about an hour. This runs the gambit from a simple chicken dinner (with homemade French fries) to well... you name it.

Now, while we cook and we consider ourselves pretty good at it, we're not elaborate cooks. As we've explored our cookbooks we've had more than a couple "you mean, it's that easy?!?" moments. One of them was when we make al graten potatoes the first time. For a long time we'd bought the box ones because we thought there were elaborate steps to making them...nope.

What we've found consistently is something the big companies don't want you to know...
1. If you've got the time to preheat an oven or boil water, you've got the time to prepare the things you'll need to make the dish.
2. You'll sit down, take one bite and go "Damn, this tastes better!"
3. For the jackass who just commented under their breath that they don't have the time... make time to spend time around the table with your family!

As Americans get on this "reducing our carbon footprint" kick, I hope some of that mental and financial energy goes towards taking a hard long look at the industrial food chain that many Americans sit at the very end of. I hope when they start looking at the food on their table and contemplating what's in it and what they're putting into their bodies they'll become (as I have) horrified and sickened at what they find.

I hope they're horrified and sickened at two levels.

The first level is at the massive amount of chemicals and needless over processing that's in their food. From a carbon point of view I see as needlessly spent energy. Billions of BTU's used to create additives and preservatives, not to mention the packaging and the ink, etc. Then the energy used to put all that together, the oil used in the plastic packaging on the inside. Let's just say there's a foil package on the inside, so there's some aluminum thrown in there for good measure. Aluminum takes massive amounts of energy to refine... it's no coincidence that first power lines from Niagara falls went to an aluminum processor...

The second level is when you think about all the energy that went into bringing all the raw materials together to make the final product and then shipping that final product to the grocery store.

Now contrast that against the relatively simple path that the raw ingredients took to get to your plate...

I'm not saying that there isn't going to be processing involved. Unless you've got a garden and eat out of it extensively everything takes energy. It's just a question of how much and where it's wasted.

To a certain contingent of people my argument will seem pointless. They'll shrug and say "so what, I'll eat a few preservatives, but I'll recycle the box!" These people I consider the completely enshrined industrial eater. No argument I make will sway them.

To the rest of us, I plan to continue down the path of eating locally and trying to remove as many unnatural chemicals as possible from my diet... and saving the planet at the same time!

Maybe $10 a gallon gas isn't such a bad thing...

2008-05-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

Standing around the water cooler, a couple of my co-workers were fussing over the idea that gas might get to $7.00 a gallon this summer.

I mulled it over for a second and came to the conclusion that this is probably a good thing. In the short term, it's going to cause a far number of people some serious pain, but in the long term it'll probably go a long way towards helping our environment, local economy and encouraging innovation.

The obvious thing that high priced gas is going to effect is transportation. I like millions of other Americans get up every morning, kiss the wife and kid goodbye, get into my car and drive to work. I had the foresight to buy a pretty fuel efficient vehicle (Honda Civic) I'm getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 37mpg driving at 50mph. My commute is pretty typical at ~30mins. However, even with that said, I've already talked to my boss about working from home. Think about the ramifications of millions of people suddenly driving slower and telecommuting. Not to mention the poor bastards who thought buying an Escalade seemed like a good idea... Think of all the CO2 that won't be going into the atmosphere! Actually I take that back, I have no sympathy for the stupid fuck who buys an Escalade, that's just obscene.

Agriculture is another area that high fuel prices will cause a fundamental shift. As it stands right now a local farm using sustainable farming methods just can't compete with the industrial model. Why is this? There are a number of reasons, but to name a few, it's cheap corn and cheap oil. What happens when suddenly those raw materials become insanely expensive? In a nutshell, I believe we'll see a return to the local farm. Why is it that a steak from a local farmer whose only inputs are sunlight and grass is twice the price of steak that was made from corn and fertilizer? I believe it's because the government subsidizes the latter instead of the former. I have to admit, this idea is not mine, go borrow or buy "The Omnivores Dilemma: A natural History of four meals". You don't have to agree with it or it's premises, but feeding your head has never been a bad thing!

I'm not going to parrot what's said in that book, you should really read it. The author brings up some very good points, not the least of which is that we've basically backed ourselves into a corner. We let several powerful corporations combined with some questionable farm policy and our own willing ignorance to now put us in a situation where our entire food infrastructure is highly centralized and completely out of our control. What's even more frightening is that the food this infrastructure creates is inferior and I believe is killing us.

With that all said, 10$ a gallon gas will do the one thing that I wished 9/11 should have done, which is to get us off oil. Fuel economy and sustainable and renewable energy has stagnated because it was cheaper to just do nothing. The status quo was that the oil would just keep flowing and the argument was to worry about it tomorrow. I call this argument "IJOTH" (Innovation is Just Over The Horizon). Don't worry... some magic thing some guy develops somewhere will fix it! Good luck with that...

Greed...

2008-03-19T12:34:00.001-07:00

For those of you who are confused at this moment on what exactly went fucking wrong with our economy, it can be summed up with the title of this post: Greed.

In a nutshell, when these people at the top realized that their house was built of fog and sand, didn't do the sensible thing. The sensible thing would have been to turn around and immediately run from these investments as fast as possible or fix them, but they didn't because of greed. Instead they did the most insidious thing possible... they took them and rolled them into the market. Knowing full well when the shit really hit the fan, much like the S&L scandal, the government would swoop in and save their asses.

Only, they didn't count on our government being in a massive financial crunch and that it might possibly not have the resources to bail their dumb shit asses out of the mess they've made.

So, here we are. The dollar is tumbling like it's going out of style and the Fed is at best acting reactively to try to stop the hemorrhaging. Personally, I'm not sure they'll be able.

At this point, I'm looking for asses to nail to the wall and I'm writing my senator asking that they immediately start questioning people like the head of Country Wide Mortgage and asking questions like "When exactly did you and your VP's know that these loans were a ticking time bomb?"
Considering that Country Wide Mortgage is a publicly held company, at a minimum these guys can expect lawsuits from shareholders who feel they've failed their fiduciary responsibilities.

What I find even more absurd is the idea that people were convinced the market was never going to correct itself. I'm not an investor by any stretch of the imagination and I knew that eventually people were going to look around and say "Geez, giving a 350,000 dollar loan to a guy who makes minimum wage seems like a really bad idea!"

Ultimately, I believe a lot of these people really didn't care. They took the path of "Well, if it really gets fucked up, the government can save us, so we might as well play as wide and fast as we can and make as much money as we possible before the whole shit house comes down on us!"

Ethenol makes no sense to me...

2008-02-29T03:48:00.000-08:00

I've read a couple things on the internet, which I'm sur eare super reliable, but it's brought me to one simple conclusion... Ethenol makes no sense to me.

Firstly, let's think about this... we started using ethenol because we wanted to use less oil... I guess that would make sense if it weren't for the fact that we take oil out of the ground and crack the nitrogen out of it to be used as fertilizer for the crop that we're going to turn into ethenol.

1. We prepare the soil. (which takes diesel or propane)
2. We plant the crop. (which takes diesel or propane)
3. We spread fertilizer and pesticides (both of which have main ingredients from oil) Firstly, large amounts of energy went into making both of these products) and you need to use some machine to do that which also runs on some sort of fuel like diesel or propane.
4. We cultivate the crop (more energy used)
5. We then ship the crop to a grain elevator (more energy)
6. Grain elevator moves it all over the place eventually putting it into a hopper of the freight car on a train (possibly) (Probably uses a fair bit of electricity for this...)
7. Grain is smashed, mashed, mixed with chemicals, heated, to get ethenol (more electricity, plus factor in the energy that was used to create the chemicals)
8. Ethenol is then put into a pipeline or into tankers who then haul it to gasoline distribution points (basically the places that gasoline tankers destined for a service station get their gas along with the additivies). Here's some more energy used...
9. Gasoline ends up in your car + 10% Ethenol.

This seems like a huge number of complicated steps... and I haven't even addressed the fact that most likely that corn is some form of hybrid that was specially culitvated and harvested which used a fair amount of energy (basicially another steps 1 through 5) though the fifth step would be some private grain elevator owned by a seed company.

The other question is when you add up all the energy that was used in those steps does it equal the amount of energy derived from the ethenol? I'm not betting man, but my thinking is no, that we're seriously in the hole. Which asks the question... Yes, burning ethenol in your car is better for the environment as far as what's coming out your tailpipe, but if there are 10 other steps that aren't using ethenol, is it really better for the environment?

There are other ramifications to this as well, the main one being that you shouldn't be using your food source as a form of fuel... it creates an ugly supply/demand problem, especially in a world where there are lots and lots of starving people... The people with the money will end up with the corn in their gas tanks... not in the mouths of people who need it the most.

What's even more infuriating is that there are other technologies, like Thermal Depolymerization (I'm sure I butchered the spelling on that one!) that can turn anything organic into oil, which could then be refined into pretty much anything. Think of the billions of tons of trash that end up in landfills that could be converted into fuel, etc.

However, that doesn't solve the fundimental problem... which is... we need to get off of oil. Technologies such as TDP in the midterm will help us stop pumping the stuff out of the ground. What we need is a renewable end game. I think that will end up coming when people figure out how to make really efficent solar panels, but are capable of manufacturing them efficently as well. Solar, combined with wind, hydro and wave generation would probably generate all the energy we need.

This still leaves us with a problem... there are lots and lots and lots of cars on the road that burn gasoline... The best solution to this problem is to let market economics work themselves out. Once gas becomes impossibly expensive, it'll suddenly make sense to either use other forms of transportation to get where your going, or when your car wears out replace it with something electric / compressed air / [insert unknown technology] / bicycle OR also likely, people will create conversion shops that will for a couple of grand convert your car into an electric / compressed air / etc...

Forget impeachment, let's charge them with Treason!

2007-09-10T19:09:00.000-07:00

In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor.

I believe our president should be impeached and then tried for treason, but I feel that many others in his "inner circle" are guilty of acts of treason against the United States as well.

Our president took an oath of office to uphold the constituion of the United States. I believe that not only has he failed at this endeavor, but that through his failings he has acted in ways treasonous to the United States.

He took us into a war based on false pretenses, namely WMD. Through this ill conceived war, he has helped to not only alienate our allies from us, but helped give cause to many others against us.

His cronies have profited immensely from this contrived war. Specifically the companies KBR and Halliburton have garnished huge profits while consistently delivering substandard service.

Thousands of American soldiers have died in the line of duty in an unnecessary war. A war that has taken resources away from hunting down the real enemies of the United States. A war that has sucked trillions of dollars out of the American economy.

Through tax cuts that mainly helped the wealthy, our president has taken money off the table and worked to create a situation where our country now faces the largest deficit ever.

Through the directives created by people in his inner circle, our country has engaged in acts of torture and illegal detention. Although the illegality of these actions is questionable, the persistent it sets is ominous. How long will it be that when the president it faced with someone asking the ugly questions that he or his administration doesn't want to answer that they merely declare the person an "enemy combatant" and have them jailed indefinitely without trial?

While executing the "war on terror", our president has systematically worked to erode the civil rights that this country was founded on. This includes such acts as directing our intelligence services to spy on Americans and curtailing habius corpus rights.

In short I feel this is behavior I'd expect from someone who doesn't have the best interests of the United States in mind. I don't know if this is just pure incompetence or merely acts of sedition against the United States.

Contact your senator and representatives and demand that they impeach our president immediately and have him tried for treason.

If President Clinton could almost be impeached for lying about getting a blow job, Bush should be in jail now for the behavior he has perpetrated.

How did we get from there to here...

2007-08-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Everyday on the news, I see the talking heads freaking out about the mortgage market. All kinds of mortgage companies are going belly up left and right.

For the hand wringing and crying, I don't hear a single voice saying:
"Why don't we go after the fuckers who thought up these bad schemes and prosecute them?" The ugly truth is that if they were to go after them, the next obvious question would be "If this was going on for so long, why didn't people try to put the brakes on and make the process more sane? The easy answer to that question is simple: $$$$$ oh yeah, and a whole bunch more $$$$$.

If you don't have a clear understanding of the whole situation, let me help enlighten you with my equally dimwitted take on things.
NOTE: THIS IS JUST MY TAKE AND IT COULD BE HORRIBLY WRONG...

Step 1. Person takes out one of these variable rate loans that has a clause in it that says "After X number of months/years/whatever the interest rate is going to go up like mad!". The person taking out this mortgage is making a bet that when X comes due, that a) the worth of their property will go up to an extent that they can refinance or b) their living situation will improve so that it won't be an issue.

Step 1a. (concurrent to the other step 1) Mortgage companies package these loans into securities and sell them on the market. Other people were buy these "packages" and putting them into portfolios, 401k's, pensions, etc. The mortgage companies themselves also hold onto a large portion of these loans and use them as a revenue stream and as an asset to borrow more money for more loans.

Step 2. The housing market doesn't perform to the hopes of the person. They're suddenly stuck with a ballooning mortgage payment and can't get the loan refinanced because no bank in their right mind is going to refinance on a property that's worth less than what the person took the loan out against. They end up defaulting or becoming terribly delinquent on their loan...

Step 3. Suddenly mortgage companies have a huge problem. Firstly, they can't borrow any money for new loans because their "assets" are too risky for banks to make a bet on. Secondly, they have a major cash flow problem because their operation is funded by the loans they own. According to an article in the new york times about Countrywide Home Loans 1 in 4 of it's sub prime mortgages is delinquent. Just imagine if one day 1/4 of your paycheck was missing...

Step 3a (concurrent to step 3). All those other financial institutions who build portfolios around these "junk" mortgages are in the same pickle. Their tangle assets are in reality false promises.

So what do we do about it? Do we let these institutions flounder and get what's coming to them, or does the federal government step in and prop these companies up?

Let's be completely honest about the whole situation. The companies who profited creating and selling these loans are going to get their asses saved. Your average American who had made the unfortunate mistake of getting one of these loans is FUCKED. You can expect that the government will loan these companies plenty of money at a really great rate. However these companies will then turn around and double fuck these people. They'll let you get out of your ARM loan, but only after agreeing to terms so draconian, defaulting will actually seem like an sensible option.

However, there are a group of people who blatantly lied on their loan applications and got loans that well exceeded their ability to pay them at full APR. Those people need to be prosecuted for fraud.

Wikiscanner is your friend

2007-08-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Apprently people who've been doing creative editing on Wikipedia didn't realize that when you hit the "save" button, the old version of the document, including your IP address and the original text gets saved.

Wikiscanner lets you go back in time and see comparatively what's been changed in an article. It also lets you search by IP range, so if you know the IP address range of some pharasudical company (which isn't hard to find) you can quickly see what changes they've made to wikipedia.

Needless to say, this tool has been used to expose some amazing acts of whitewashing by people / corporations / government agencies / etc.

What's that old saying "sunlight is the best disinfectant."

What I want out of a President...

2007-08-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

I've recently come to the realization that all of our options so far for president suck.

I've come up with my list of issues and the stances I'd like to see our president take on them.

1. The Iraq situation and by extension our current military stance around the world.

We need to leave Iraq immediately. It isn't the pottery barn, it was broke before we showed up, we merely took the pieces and proceeded to grind them into a fine powder and snort it. Get the boots off the ground and provide the Iraqi military with logistical and air support only. Close Guantanamo bay and swiftly bring all the people there to trial. Find them guilty or deport them to their country of origin. We should also take a hard look at the troops we have stationed in South Korea, Japan, Germany, etc. We've also been involved in several peace keeping operations around the world, such as Haiti. Should Marines really be in Haiti right now?!? Or is this something better handled by the U.N.

2. A real foreign policy.

We need to start talking to everybody. The Palestinians, the Iranians, the Syrians. The enemy of my enemy isn't my friend. We are all in this together. Crazy as it might sound, we need to start doing the American thing and acting like statesman. That means going to places like Iran and saying "We want to have a dialog with you." "We have issues we'd like addressed, as do you, let's sit around a table like adults and hash things out". The worse case is that nothing happens. The best case is that real progress towards world peace occurs.
Yes, I understand this is a lofty goal, but your never going to accomplish anything sitting on our asses.

3. A real domestic policy.

It is a sad commentary on America when Prisons are considered a growth industry and there are more people incarcerated in the US than there are farmers.

Welfare: We need to scrap the current welfare system and start over. What we need is a system that works to turn people into productive tax paying citizens. Not a system that rewards people for staying in the system (such as having children) and works against people trying to get out of the system.

Immigration Policy: It's very simple. Kick out the ones who shouldn't be here. Improve our border security to keep out the ones we don't want here. Improve our INS system to let in those who will be productive members of society. As for the hollow argument that we need people to do jobs that we don't want to do, that's fine. They can get in line like the rest of people and enter our country legally. Owners of companies that employ illegal aliens should be put in jail and have heavy fines levied against them.

Education: I have no idea how to fix this mess. The comprehensive testing from No Child Left Behind seemed like a good idea, but it's forced teachers to teach to the test. The other weird thing is that schools that perform poorly get a boot to the head, not more help. Hence there have been instances of schools basically pushing children out the door who they know if they were to take the tests would bring their schools overall scores down. I would call that Leaving children behind but that's just me talking...

Science: We need to let the scientists be scientists. If they discover something surprising they should have the latitude to release it without fear it's going to get some government agencies panties in a bind. The politicalization of science in this country needs to stop immediately. Just because the scientific facts don't agree with our world view or makes the company who's funding your reelection look bad doesn't give you the right to suppress it.

Energy Policy: This country needs a definitive energy policy with the stated goal of getting this country firstly off of foreign oil and then secondly off domestic oil. This country has massive potential to use wind, wave and solar energy. We should work immediately to utilize these renewable resources. Once these resources are properly harnessed, existing dirty technologies such as coal and oil burning power plants should be phased out or converted to burn renewable resources (such as wood chips). To deal with the existing demand for petroleum products, R&D into technologies such as Thermal Depolyemerization should be pushed forward. While we're doing all of that, we should pass legislation that would impose fines and/or taxes on cars/trucks/suvs/etc that don't adhere to stringent MPG guidelines. The only way to get off of oil is to reduce our dependence on it. These should be vechiles that can be easily converted to pure electric as well.

Trade Policy: China joined the WTO, but so far has either stonewalled or flatly ignored it's obligations to this organization. We need to bring them into the WTO court and if China is unwilling to go along with its contractual obligations it needs to be ejected from the WTO, period. We need to stake out a policy of America first and figure out ways to keep Americans competitive in the global work place so that the hemorrhaging of American jobs can stop.

Agricultural Policy: One of this nations greatest assets is its farmers and the land they farm. We need to stop fucking them over and actually have a policy in place that lets people farm without losing their shirts in the process. Programs should be put in place that will let new farmers get into the business without having to take on massive amounts of debt in the process. We have been in the last 20 years been increasing consolidating our food supply. This is a bad policy for our nation and our food security. One small group of companies such as ADM shouldn't control so much of our nations food supply We should work to regionalize our food system such that a major catastrophe (or terrorist attack) in one part of the country won't effect the food supply in another.

Healthcare Policy: I haven't seen Micheal Moore's movie Sicko, but from what I've heard and the interviews that I've seen, I do agree with some of what he's saying. We need a healthcare system that at a minimum is non profit. I'm sorry, a system that's out to make a buck isn't going to be looking out for my best interests, it's going to be busy trying to figure out how to make money off of me. Hence in a non profit scenario a healthcare system would want to take proactive preventative measures, because it's cheaper than having to deal with my expense illnesses (that could have been prevented) I understand that something like cancer can't always be prevented, but many things (like heart diesease) can be. Also, fraud in the system has to be dealt with swiftly. People or organizations caught scamming the system should have the full fury of the law turned upon them.

That's just a few of the topics I'd like to see a future president tackle. I'm sure there's at least a dozen more that could be addressed.

A Beginning

2007-08-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Dear United States of America,

Please turn off your television, stop playing world of warcraft and please get mad. While we were distracted a bunch of criminals of the lowest caliber have stolen our country.

By waving the flag of fear in our face they have in our name commited acts of attrocity. The America that our fathers, grandfathers and forefathers fought and died for is near death.

They will scream from their bully pulpit that this is not the case and that America is stronger than it ever was, but they are only concerned about making themselves rich at our expense. They will send our children to foreign lands to fight their oil wars and grow their war profits.

Now everything I have said has been in the abstract, I think it important that we talk in the factual.

The biggest and ugliest of these is Iraq.

Let's talk about these weapons of mass destruction that we needed to invade Iraq to get rid of. Oh yes, the ones that were supposidely carted off to Syria or something before we showed up. Okay, so why haven't our intelligence assets in Syria found them. If they were that much of a threat and we knew they were put onto planes and flown out of the country why didn't we follow them? Do you really think the Syrians would have been in any better of a position to really stop us if we'd wanted them? Shocking we could have even used the carrot and stick with them...i.e "Give us the weapons or we'll demonstrate the effectiveness of ours..."

The other argument that I hear from people all the time is that thatey actually found weapons of mass destruction, is'ts just that the media is underreporting it. The problem I see with argument is that I don't see how the media could suppress something like that. I suspect if president Bush had gotten wind that they actually found any weapons he'd immediately hold a press conference and say "Haha, I told you there were weapons! You should have listened to me, I was right!" Needless to say, I'm yet to see such a press conference. Not to mention all those people who were for this war would be screaming is so loud that there wouldn't be a way it wouldn't be widely known.

People then go along and quote the Iraq / Al Quida connection. There has never been any evidence that Bin Laden and Saddam were ever even friendly. Considering that Saddam had a pretty secular government and Bin Laden's goals pretty much go against all of that... There's a good reason he ended up in Afganistan and not Iraq. Not to mention the fact Saddam was pretty much running a one man, one rule type government, do you really think he'd tolerate terroist training camps on his soil? The guy was such a control freak the only type of training camps he'd allow would have been the ones that he had complete control of and knew the loyalties of the people coming out of them. Needless to say, he already had plenty of loyal troops. He would have had no use for Bin Laden. The guy is a nutcase and a liability for any country he's in. Seriously, if you talked to the Taliban leaders now and asked "Knowing now, how the US was going to react to 9/11 and what the were going to do to Afghanistan in their pursuit of Bin Laden, would you have let him into the country?" You could almost bet the answer would be something like "Knowing now what we know, we would have kicked him out of the country the same way Saudia Arabia did." Think about it. The Taliban went from owning Afganistan to it being occupied by a couple different forign powers, all because of Bin Laden and his organization. You can argue that it didn't really work out that well for the Taliban. So, in a nutshell the Bin Laden / Saddam argument just doesn't make any sense.

Once the whole WMD argument fell through, the next argument that was brought up was the democracy argument. Needless to say, go watch this (don't worry it's short and SFW). I recommend that people go out and read Thomas Ricks book Fiasco.