No to the Bailout
Alright, I have to say this. I know this isn’t a political blog, but I have to throw something out there for the sake of reason. Why is it that we’re trying to pay for all these bad mortgages out of tax payers’ pockets, when it’s not the tax payers who are at fault, but the stupid financial companies who made idiotic decisions and suffered as a consequence–not to mention that they preyed on an uneducated public to get them to take loans they couldn’t afford, etc.?Why should I pay for the bailout of all these companies? I know it’s to help the economy, but I don’t feel that I or anyone should be responsible for fixing their mistake. Why are we just going to hand over money to them, money the tax payers will have to pay out of their pockets? Couldn’t there be conditions? Say, perhaps, offering this money as a loan to those companies, with a reasonable interest rate? That seems logical to me. We give them money, they pay it back, and we use the extra to pay off some of the deficit or for healthcare or whatever.Everything about this whole bailout stinks of right-wing politics, greediness, and the same mentality that put us in this position in the first place–and you know what I’m talking about: it’s that mentality, that mindset where the average America, you and me and hundreds of millions of others, are completely unimportant, where money and power are all that matter. This has to stop. We don’t have the money to pay for this, dammit. We don’t. This is like forcing me to have to pay for my neighbor to get his roof fixed because he thought it was cool to shoot cannonballs through it. You see how stupid that sounds? Well that’s what our politicians are making us do. I don’t give a frak about the tax cuts they’re now offering. Why? Because most people won’t even notice it. It’s the rich who will see that cut and the rest of us (or at least those that are working) will see hardly anything change. I know that the rich pay more in taxes, but it seems unfair to the American people that the rich get all the benefit out of this. And then I have one more question: What is it going to take to get the lot of us off our asses to collectively throw a complete frakked-up fit and tell the government that enough is enough? Seriously. What is it going to take to get all of you off your lazy asses to fix what is wrong with this country? When it comes down to it, it is the American people who are directly responsible for all that is wrong about America. We are responsible, because we never got up as one and said, “No!” We took it all, right in the ass, over and over, serviced like cattle lined up at the milk farm (and I don’t mean the milking, but the other things they line cattle up for). Have we had enough now? Have we? Or are we going to let the politicians continue to walk over us? And congratulations to us for letting this all slip through. We’ve just taught anyone who has such a stranglehold on the American economy that they don’t have to be responsible for their business practices because we’ll just bail them out. Fantastic. This is like teaching your child that it’s okay to steal by not punishing them for stealing… (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Religion and Schools: One Man’s Voice
The next time I hear someone spouting the great idea that religion/creationism/the Bible should be taught in schools, I’ll just think about these words: Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character and training must be derived from faith. Adolf Hitler said those words. Adolf frakking Hitler. Not some guy running around handing out hugs, but the guy who waged war against the world, killed off millions of Jews and other folks for no real reason at all, and did a lot of other terrible things, or had other people do those things for him. Yeah, because that’s the kind of world I want to live in…
Sitemeter Update
Okay, so apparently not even half a day after I made a post about how I was upset with the new layout for Sitemeter, they begun reverting back to the old layout. I’m taking credit for it, of course, and I have to say I’m happy to be back to the classic look. Whether I’m the only one that got this treatment, or everyone, I don’t know. If it is like this for everyone, you can thank me for whining about everything and being a baby. So, I’m happy I don’t have to switch traffic trackers, because I really do like Sitemeter’s simplicity. True, you have to pay for all the fancy features and extensive information that is provided for free with Google, but Google can also be a hassle because that darned tracker code hardly ever works. And really, all I care about for tracking my traffic is provided by the free version of Sitemeter. Anywho! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Sitemeter Changed and I’m Not Happy
So Sitemeter, the website I use to track my traffic, has changed it’s entire interface…and I don’t like it. True, the new interface is pretty and reorganized, but it’s also slow as hell. I can’t even get it to the stats section. It just sits there on “loading” the whole time, and the pages I can get to run like crap. If this doesn’t improve in the next twenty-four hours I’ll be forced to go elsewhere for the same service.This is something that really pisses me off about software designers. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Seriously. What was wrong with Sitemeter’s previous interface? True, it wasn’t beautiful, but it was simple and really easy to use, fast, and graphically un-intensive. That meant it got the job done without having to be flashy. I want a system that works fast. I don’t have time to dilly daddle while trying to figure out how many people have visited my site. I’ve got other things to do, like writing blog posts, or writing in general, or reading. The new Firefox (3.0 I think) did the same thing, making the interface look new and beautiful. The problem? It ran like crap. So I downgraded and I won’t upgrade ever again. And if they force me to upgrade, I’ll go elsewhere for my browsing needs. There’s absolutely no reason to change an already functional interface. None. And if you’re going to change that interface, you should at least offer a “classic” view or skin or something so that people who don’t really give a crap about visual beauty in their software don’t have to deal with it. The good thing about Windows Vista is that it upgrade its interface, but allows you to go to a classic interface. I’ve left my Vista the way it is, because it doesn’t run slow for me, but XP had the same thing and it did run slow, so I used the classic interface.The way I see it, software designers need to realize that people who like their products probably don’t care if you try to make it look prettier. A lot of us really don’t care. We’re happy with the product as it is. If you need to upgrade, do so without fiddling with the way it looks. There’s really no reason to upgrade the visual layout if all it’s going to do is slow things down. Moving on. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
My Vote For President: An Official, Final Choice
Dear Readers,I have come to a decision on who I plan to vote for this coming Presidential Election. It has been, as some of you know, a difficult period for me, with my reservations about Barack Obama and John McCain, my concerns over our economy and the war, over who will do the right thing and keep America from tumbling into the pit of worldly hell that we are, after eight years of ineptitude, sitting on of the edge of. The decision came rather quickly for me when one considers what has been flooding the news these last few days and weeks.I have decided to vow my support for Barack Obama. I don’t believe Obama is the best candidate we could possibly have, but in the face of impending insanity–McCain and his utterly psychotic VP Palin–I have come to realize that Obama is the best choice. Say what you will about Obama, much of what we think about him in a negative light is not founded in verifiable truth. He might be a racist, but we can’t prove that. He might hate America, but we can’t prove that. He might even be a Muslim terrorist, but we can’t prove that either. The fact is, the only thing Obama has done up to this point is continue to sound like an educated, thoughtful human being, someone who has made me scared about where he will go in his first term as President because I have always had reservations about people who speak particularly well and say all the right things–and the world should have reservations about anyone who speaks in such a perfect manner.You see, with Obama I at least believe he means well. He may have features I don’t like and his politics may make America worse, but the things he wants to do are at least good things. I believe we should eventually have a health care system here, just not in the next eight years. I believe in a lot of the things Obama believes in, I just don’t believe some of them are economically feasible in the next eight years. Perhaps Obama realizes this, or perhaps he’s saying what he wants to do and he’ll find out how hard it really is when he gets there. Still, I believe that his politics are genuine. He wants to help, he wants to make America better overall. I just didn’t like him because of his relationships with people whom I greatly disagree with, due also in part to some of the things that were concerning me that I couldn’t prove.All this comes to me after learning more about John McCain and his VP choice Palin and realizing that the GOP choice is almost literally like choosing Hitler and Stalin together as President and VP. Palin is a terrifying human being, someone who is verifiable insane and whose politics and religious believes are so far to the right than it is impossible to hope for anything good if she becomes our VP. With McCain vowing that she meets him on the same playing field, this makes me wonder what it is McCain hopes to do to the country. Palin supports book bannings, and not just legitimate bannings of books in schools (such as pornography), but the banning of books like Harry Potter and other such fascinating reads that our children love and adore. She is part of a group of religious individuals that claims that Hitler was sent here by God to make sure the Jews got into Israel, which is a position that boggles my mind to no end and makes me question what sort of violent, evil god she believes in. She has been shown to abuse her authority in Alaska by firing people to get what she wants. This is just the tip of the iceberg.While I support the right to freedom of religion, I cannot support the imposition of religion into politics. The religious right must come to realize that we all don’t believe what they believe and that much of what they believe is predicated on absolutely lunacy. God did not send Hitler here to make sure the Jews got into Israel. Neither did God mandate us to fight in Iraq. There is no logical reason for Jesus Camps, which use brainwashing and mind control, in the same manner as terrorist groups do, in order to produce “Soldiers of God.” These things are part of Palin and her camp, the forced indoctrination of children into a religion to make them into soldiers, into violent zealots to churn the fires of hate in a Christian uniform. It is disturbing and wrong on too many levels, but these things will go unchallenged because our society has become a slave to religious intolerance and given undue respect to religion when it should be challenged, just like it was challenged in California when those politicians decided it was unconstitutional to deny homosexuals the right to marry.And if McCain and Palin enter the White House, I fear for this country. I fear that we might see the end of rationality in this country, the end of logical science and the end of our educational system. America is growing stupider every generation and it is because of these extremist religious views that this is so.So, having said these things you can officially call me an Obama supporter. I cannot support McCain and Palin, because their politics are nothing short of psychotic–so much so that they should be locked up in a mental institution. Obama is the right choice. Obama is the only choice. Thank you.
Do I Look Christian?
This has been mulling in my head for quite a few days now. I was a Burger King having, well, a burger, obviously. There was an older gentleman there and he wished me a good dinner, which I thought was nice of him–I said the same to him. Generally I feel odd when random people say things to me, perhaps because I don’t know them and Santa Cruz is, unfortunately, somewhat shady in comparison to other small towns I’ve been in. Still, it was nice of him.So, I got my food, I ate, and then I packed up and headed for the door. At the door, the man looked up at me from his table and said, “Have a nice night.” And then, it got weird.“You look like a Christian,” he said.I sat there baffled and said, “Oh, well, umm…”“Are you?”“Not really, no. I’m sort of spiritual.”He proceeded to tell me that it wasn’t a bad thing to be Christian–which I knew, kind of–and mentioned how a lot of kids sort of rebelled at my age–which is true.I said, “I think it has a lot to do with parents who are religious really pushing their religion on their kids rather than letting them grow into their own beliefs. It’s hard for some kids, who live in such a diverse world, to accept their parents’ faith if it’s crammed down their throats.” Basically, my “kids aren’t really as stupid as parents think they are” speech.He agreed and suggested some other reasons, wished me a good night, and then we parted ways. What struck me about this, though, was the fact that I looked like a Christian. What exactly does a Christian look like? Is it white? Clean shaven with a little stubble? Unbrushed hair that lies messy (my hair isn’t long)? Cargo pants? I don’t get it. What about me looks Christian? How could someone of a particular religion look like someone from that religion (setting aside priest outfits and the like)?So, what do you think? Do you think I look like a Christian?