Category Archives: political

washer & dryer; Reagan

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This week reverted back to the non-post on wednesday, I would have let the fact be known on Tuesday had I known it anytime before about 4p.m. on Wednesday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I have recently realized that there are only two types of people in the U.S.. Yes, I have broken down every single race, denomination and class into exactly two groups. Those two groups are 1) People who own matched washer/dryer sets, and 2) People who do their laundry at a central facility in an apartment complex, or, worse yet, have to take their laundry to some laundromat in a really bad area of town where fear of life becomes more important than the quality of cleaning. Now, this second group of people (like me) are the ones that are happy to find a used washer or dryer at a favorable price, brand names be damned! Having your own machines makes it an experience that is not quite so intolerable, as the machine is just running in the background while you are doing your normal routine. No special trip to the laundromat, no changing in dollars for quarters, no having to question why the one guy has seven garbage bags filled with bloody towels, etc..

I do understand that in some apartment complexes, and particularly in condos, they really don’t want you to have the machines. That is likely the reason that most apartments/condos do not even provide a hook-up for the devices. I understand also that the space in an apartment is pretty cramped but they have full washer/dryer stack things that are made to fit in the space of a small closet and have all of the features of normal machines, though not the same capacity. Imagine that your options were to do a few small loads of laundry a week, or drag it all down to the public laundry at the end of the week, I know which option I would choose, but, as previously stated, many apartments/condos do not have proper ventilation for the dryer.

That little digression aside, I was meaning to explain why washers and dryers can start out as pairs yet end up as singles. The reason for that is pretty simple; the washer just lasts longer than the dryer in about 90% of the pairs. The simple reasoning behind that is that the washer is a big tub that spins with a direct drive, while the dryer is an enormous drum that is belt-driven and relies on little wheels to keep it on course. The wheels on the dryer are likely to give out under a large load, that is, the bearings will begin to disentegrate and the dryer will sound like it is spinning a piece of lumber in it. When that happens, the people who own the matched set of laundry appliances will likely call a repairman. The dryer can be fixed for about Eight dollars retail in parts, anything above that is them being screwed by the manufacturer.

The dryer is the first casualty in most every case. While the dryer could be repaired for less than a week’s worth of quarters at the laundromat, it is very rare that a ‘set owner’ would actually call the man to repair it (since that would cost more than the value of the dryer in many cases) and so another dryer ends up on the street, soon to be picked up by a local “re-seller” of such items. Said ‘re-seller’ will pay the eight bucks for parts, fix the dryer, and then sell it for fifty. Hefty chunk of change for such a quick/easy repair, and having picked the dryer up from the side of the road, he had no investment into the machine.

The fate of the washer then goes into a kind of limbo. Some may sell the washer, some may gift it to a friend or relative in need of that appliance, it is just a bit strange that the washer never seems to hit the side of the road.

I have had to replace the wheels on a few dryers in my time, I don’t think I have ever had matching laundry appliances in that time either. Yet, when the washer starts to leak, I have no idea how to fix it. I am sure there is just a hose that is broken somewhere inside that porcelain machine, where it is I do not know. It is for exactly that reason that we will continue to use a Kenmore dryer once we get the Maytag washer. The old Gibson washer will be pushed to the curb, and likely someone will pick it up and throw a two dollar piece into it, then sell it along with a random dryer for 150 bucks for the set.

This one just goes to prove my point that while technology has advanced, if you do not know the exact type of technology necessary for said operation, you will pay whatever they ask.

• Random Thoughts on Reagan

I found out today that there is going to be a Federal Holiday (day of mourning) for the loss of ex-president Ronald Reagan, who passed away on Saturday. I was not old enough to understand a lot of the things that happened while he was president and I likely remember his successes more than his failures, even with that in mind, what did he really do?

The first thing, the one that comes immediately to my mind is the Iran Contra Scandal. Trading weapons for POW’s may seem like a good thing at the time, but in the end it is just wrong. Reagan introduced a tax cut that went across the board, low, medium, high class, the tax cut affected you immediately. Then he signed legislature to raise the same taxes many times over his presidency. It is not my intention to belittle him, but it is just so easy.

I am pretty liberal, very democratic, and I still think that Reagan was possibly the best negotiator that we have ever had when it comes to foreign policy. Some of his Kooky ideas, site “Star Wars” for example, were a bit over the edge, but he did preside at the time that communism was ending and for that I will respect him. Could the same thing have happened if there had been a different president at the time? I think the more relevant question is could it not have happened with another man in charge.

I suppose we will start calling this “Reagan Friday”. What is to stop the national rememberances from having a “Biggy Tuesday”? Biggy died for “gansta rap” and should be remembered…Where is his monument?

Dogs; Dubya

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The puppy problems persist. Well, I don’t think that the problem really persists so much as the puppy is afraid that it still does and is walking quite carefully on the recently injured appendage. I base this assumption on the fact that when I got home to let the dogs out, after they had been locked up in the arizona room all day (which most canine companions would consider a spacious abode at about 160 square feet…Hell I have stayed in smaller hotel rooms), Zelda was jumping up and licking just like she did before she had the injury. I am sure that she is still not completely healed, but she is certainly doing a heck of a lot better. As I said previously, she still does tread a bit lightly on the leg that has the injury, but now it seems that it is more to make sure she doesn’t hurt the still tender tissues as opposed to the inability of a couple of days ago.

The one really unfortunate side effect of Zelda’s malady has been in the interaction between her and Warlock (the older dog). Warlock has been our dog for a couple of years now, and is a very clingy sort of dog. He is a happy, wagging, in-your-face type of dog all the time. Having had Zelda as a playmate all these months, Warlock has been tiring himself out playing with her rather than being so needy of us (my wife and I). With the injury to Zelda, Warlock is not able to go outside and frolic like he would with Zelda. That has led to him being a bit (saying ‘a bit’ is a real stretch) hyperactive around the house.

Zelda is healing but is still in no condition to go out and play with Warlock in the faux death match type playing that they normally engage in. This leads directly to Warlock not being happy, and whining a lot. I have tried to take him out and do the whole throw a ball thing, but he invariably will just run out to the ball, then stop, then look at me and walk back. I know that he is thinking, “But where’s Zelda”. Of course trying to explain anything to a dog is much like trying to swat flies with a hammer, so I don’t even try. He seems to know that there is something wrong with her, but he is not in a position to understand that her condition requires much rest and no ‘Dog Wars’.

There is also the fact that we do not know what the two of them do once we leave the house. Sure we know that they are locked in that little room, but what happens while they are locked in that little room? They both seem to enjoy each other – as I began to write that line, Zelda just went ballistic on Warlock.-

Zelda is much smaller than Warlock, yet she owns him. Even in her injured state, Zelda just handed him his ass, and he walked away happy that she let him have it. This makes me think that she is certainly getting better but that she knows that she is not totally healed yet. I really must get a video camera before she makes it to 100% healthy, ’cause I bet she is really going to give him a thrashing for picking on her while she was injured.

• In other news, or what passes for it here. Does anyone other that Dubya think that he is going to spend four more years in office? Having read a lot of news sites, then a lot of blog sites, I am not sure that he has a chance. He has pissed off everyone that is remotely liberal, he has pissed off a lot of people that are staunch conservatives, he has pissed off the rest of the free world as well as pissing off the rest of the world who are ruled by dictatorships. Who, if sober and not doing it as the result of a bet gone bad, is going to vote for him? He (Dubya) is trying to compare the ‘War on Terror’ to WWII. While I can understand that he needs to drum up some support for his agenda, I still think that he should go ahead and take the blame for leaving the “War on Terror” behind when he left Afghanistan and started attacking countries with better oil reserves. I would like to blame this on the American people for electing him as President, but as you will recall he was never elected to be the president. Sure he got the presidency through some hundred year old loop-hole, but he was certainly not elected.

I sure hope that if he is re-elected has enough corporate backers to buy him in again, he will look at the world rather than looking at his own bank account. Of course I could site my earlier quote about trying to kill flies with a hammer, since neither will ever happen. This is going a bit too political for me so I will end it here.

• There is one other thing on my mind tonight, but I can’t remember what it is. If I remember by this time tomorrow I will add some info about it, if I don’t you should just cherish this moment.

Collection agency; News; Gay marriage

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I was thinking that when I got home from work today I would go ahead and finish off cleaning up the chaos that is the ‘computer room’. Instead, I got a letter in the mail from a collection agency regarding a long distance company that I have not had for several months. I did a quick check of my banking register to find that yes the amount in question was 103.53, and the check for it had been written and mailed forever and a day ago. I don’t keep my bank statements anymore so I had to get online to find the particular check (706 in this case) to make sure that it had been cashed. The company had cashed the check a couple of weeks ago, then turned me over to a collection agency without even sending me one of those demanding ‘final notice’ type letters. So, I called the collection agency to give them the information about the check, the date it was cashed and an offer to get a copy of the check emailed to them. She asked me to hold for a moment, I assume she was calling the referring company at that point, then came back on and said that the processing time for payments can sometimes be longer than expected, but noted that if I call her back in a week we can see if the problem has resolved itself.

I know that companies make this type of error frequently, I do not really hate them for it as it is just a clerical error that is usually quite easy to fix. What can their defense possibly be when you produce a copy of the check that they cashed? The thing that I find irritating is that she would not say that, yes, the company had cashed the check weeks ago and it was an error on their part to turn the bill over to collection. So will my credit report now show that I left the bill unpaid long enough for it to be turned over to a collection agency, while the reality is that the bill had long been paid? If that turns out to be the case I will likely be more than irritated, hostile perhaps. And honestly if they thought that I had not paid them, why not one of those lame courtesy calls that could have cleared it all up when I explained to them that they had cashed the check? I am not entirely sure if companies moving their call centers to foriegn countries is really working out all that well in that respect.

Hopefully this situation will not escalate to the point where I have to get the Attorney General involved. That may seem far fetched, but my wife had to do exactly that to get her cell phone company to finally admit that they had cashed her check. We still don’t know whose account they posted that payment to, but it certainly wasn’t hers and it took government intervention to get the matter cleared up. Now That is customer service.

• I haven’t posted many news items here lately since the only thing there seems to be to post is about prison abuse. Today, however, I found a few things that I am going to comment on, not because they are newsworthy but because they are humorous, except one.

I usually just read the headlines from Yahoo News, and the little story that they have there, if the story interests me I will go to a major news site and search for the subject. This has worked pretty well for me in the past, it seems that I may have been getting a lot of bogus information though.

The first instance can be found Here. It is in regards to drugs being used by participants in the Olympics. But read this quote:

Greene said Monday he stands behind the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency rule that can bar an athlete from competing in the Athens Olympics without a positive drug test. On Sunday, Jones said she would go to court if USADA held her out because of the rule.

I read that paragraph several times to make sure that I was seeing it as it appeared and not omitting any words. You see the thing is that most athletes get banned from the sport because they test positive for drugs. So is that saying that we actually require our Olympians to use drugs? If that is the case then perhaps the athletes in question should just smoke a joint and get re-tested.

This one is pretty good also. It is an article about states that are run by republicans raising taxes. And at quite an alarming rate:

Ohi o. Spending in the Buckeye state has risen 71% during the past decade, when Republicans have controlled both the governor’s office and the legislature. To fund this spending, Republican Gov. Bob Taft, backed by the GOP legislature, has increased the sales tax by 20%, upped the gasoline tax by two cents a gallon and increased numerous small business fees.

Wow. The sales tax here just went up by 2/10ths of a percent (city tax) and I found that a bit irritating. Imagine if someone suddenly upped your sales tax by 20%! That would likely be the start of a revolt. I think that what they mean is that if the tax there was 10% previously it is now 12%, yet since the tax itself is measured in percentage it makes it look like it would have gone from 10% to 30%. Perhaps they could have elaborated on that just a bit to let you know exactly what they were trying to say?

I have said it since day one, I don’t proofread. It may be a fault but it is all mine. I really think that a site as popular as Yahoo News should go ahead and do a bit of proofreading.

• Here is a news item that is just plain depressing. Dubya has decided to start attacking gay marriage again. Could there be a worse time for him to do it? Actually I guess the question should be could there be a better time for him to do it. A quote from the article:

Noting that he had called on Congress some time ago to pass a constitutional amendment banning such marriages, Bush said “the need for that amendment is still urgent, and I renew that call today.”

Hmmm. Makes me wonder why this is suddenly ‘urgent’. Maybe he actually has advisors that read the latest popularity surveys for him and let him know that he doesn’t have much time left in office? Imagine if they do get that legislation pushed through. In they eyes of all but the most hardcore right-wing supporters, the legacy of Dubya will be failing to finish the job that his daddy started and pushing western society back a few decades by making homosexuality illegal. How can anyone have a set of beliefs that are just so idiotic and be in control of the most powerful country on earth?

Well I guess that is about enough for today. Check back tomorrow for more of my cheery, happy writing.

Meta blogging; Abu Ghraib

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I spent a bit of time on Wednesday, and an hour and a half today, getting finished with the March 2004 archive page . That, of course, required reading through my posts from the month of March which, while time-consuming, was a lot less depressing than I thought it might be. It turns out that it really is better to let what you have written sit there for at least a month before you try to read it and do a short description, as it seems that you are looking at it with fresh eyes. There were a couple of essay type things that I wrote during the month of March that I think were really quite good. There may be some point later when I pick a couple of them out and post a section of ‘stuff I wrote that doesn’t totally suck’ on here, but that would make people quit reading my daily update, which usually does suck, and then just go to the link for the stuff that doesn’t suck. The inherent problem is that I do not know if what I am writing sucks until I read it a lot later than when I write it. In my mind everything I write sucks, only time can clear my mind enough to look at what I have written with a clear perspective and that does not lend itself to making sure that every word I put down is worth the paper keyboard it is written on.

The other thing that I noticed as I was reading through the old posts is that I seem to be getting progressively better at getting my idea down as time goes on. It seems that with each new post I get just a bit better at keeping all of the ideas in my head long enough to put each one down and move on, while in the earliest posts I was trying to type all of them at once and often lost most of them in the process. The result of that was that each paragraph that I had written would look like it was four paragraphs that I had taken a sentence or two from and tried to make into a single, flowing concept. It was shit, honestly. Though I am always my worst critic, I am sure that anyone reading this would really have to agree that my writing in this form has gotten better from when I started. That being said, I still have a long way to go to make entire posts that will hold a reader’s attention and not make me look like the ass that I am. But isn’t that what I signed up for when I started this whole page in the first place?

• I haven’t posted any news here for a while, not for lack of trying. I was hoping to get a bit or two up here today, but it seems that all there is to talk about anymore is the damn Abu Ghraib garbage. Don’t get me wrong, I think that what our people did to those prisoners was inhumane. From the pictures that I have seen, though, it did not seem as there was any physical abuse to the men. It was sick and wrong for anyone to even stage the events for such photos, but it happened, and we (the U.S.) did it to prisoners of war (well I guess there is a loophole so they aren’t actually POW’s, still it was inhumane). If we (the U.S.) can’t understand that the entire world has a microscope on the way we are handling ourselves in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ this is going to get infinitely worse for our brave men and women who are there actually fighting it.

Whether those photos were staged by the U.S. troops who posed in them as ‘trophies’ to take home with them, or if that is the way we treat prisoners on a daily basis seems to be a dead discussion in every nation except ours. Less than half of our country is behind the war in Iraq at this point and I don’t think we have any allies left that would actually send more troops over to help us if it came to that. That whole war has gone completely to hell. I am pretty sure that Dubya doesn’t mind, since it has driven oil prices over forty dollars a barrel, and that is extra profit for him, but now it appears that he is ready to bail out. Just makes me wonder what his reason for bailing out is, the fact that he has a financial windfall with oil prices skyrocketting, or the fact that an american civilian got his head cut off.

That is exactly why I don’t like to talk politics. I have some pretty strong views, and Dubya is such an easy target. I sure wish I hadn’t voted for him, but I did. So, please, to help clear my conscience, do not vote for him next election. We have seen the FUBAR that the country can become when being backed only by ‘big oil’, and that somehow drives the prices up. I am so sickened by the situation that I am honestly thinking about putting down ‘Reagan’ on my vote, as a write-in.

• Guild Wars

Today is the last day of the E3 trial of the aforementioned game. I played it a bit each day that it was online and it seemed pretty cool. The one thing that I question is whether the local PC crashes that I experienced were based on it downloading ever more data, or if my system just can not run the game. I am leaning towards the game downloading as you play, I have all of the minimums beat by a lot but still get weird freezes when trying to play it. I hope that they get that all worked out when they go to Beta testing, which I am sure they will, and the game could be really cool. Also, having the game already installed on your machine, as opposed to having to download each zone that you enter, would likely make it much easier to play. I am not going to throw out an opinion based on my experience as it would be quite negative, if they do have a beta test for it, though, I am going to jump all over that. It would be extremely cool to see such a game in its infancy working towards a world-wide release. I do suppose they would likely be looking for players who had cable or dsl connections though, yet, at the same time they must be trying to sell it to normal people like me who have neither., My hope is not dead yet…

Politics; Deadly Rooms of Death

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Well as you may have noticed, the real life event that I thought might lead me to bitching did not happen yesterday, sorry. It was such a good subject too, but since it didn’t happen it just makes me think that I am really a cynical son of a bitch. Today I will bitch, regardless of your protests.

There was, I understand, a closed door meeting today between George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the 9/11 commission. As of now I can only find one news story about it, and it does not speak of anything that might have come to light after the meeting. I went to check the Political Animal (which is the new blog spot of the former CalPundit blogger) and he has yet to put in his two cents. I am sure that whatever news you happen to see regarding that meeting is going to say the same thing; The administration didn’t know that there was any possibility of a multi-terrorist attack on American soil. Which is obviously bull-shit. The Clinton administration left them plenty of information regarding terrorist activities in the years leading up to Dubya becoming president. A cursory search for “9 11 warning signs” on google (without the quotes for the search) just got me a few hundred thousand web sites. I read a couple of the older ones and found that, yes, the information was in place, it was simply not acted on.

This is a subject that is far too political for me. I encourage you to check out the Political Animal website if you are looking for more information, he has nothing posted about the interview with the 9/11 commission at the time I am writing this, but in the morning he will likely have whatever is available, and break it down into bite sized pieces.

I think I am gonna totally switch gears. I was flirting with actual content there for a second…

• Deadly Rooms of Death (that cumbersome name) , yet again. I don’t know what it is about these old games that drives people to play them. I know what drives me to play them, but the rest of the people, I got nothing.

The game is, first and foremost, a puzzle game. There is an illusion created that there is some hacking and slashing, but the reality is that you are just doing puzzles. That may be the thing that sours the average ‘First Person Shooter’ player, while it is what lets me look past the really sparse graphics and focus in on the puzzle. Of course, talking about this game right now is like releasing the walkthrough for the old Atari Pitfall, but I must go on.

You would not like this game. It is one of the games that you either Love or Hate, there is no middle ground. It gets progressively harder as the level number raises, but the fact is you are doing a puzzle. It might look like you are actually killing things to clear out the dungeon, but if you don’t do it in the right order it is possible to be stuck to the point where it is impossible. Perhaps I have played way too much Diablo in the last few months and welcome a mental challenge, I don’t know, I just know that those puzzles keep making me try until I find the way to do it ‘just such’ to clear the board. Yet another addiction for me, how many addictions does one have to have before he/she can stop it.

• Mandatory Birth Control

This is an idea that I have been kicking around for a couple of years. I am sure that the idea is not going to go over well with people who are very poor, but those are the exact people I am hoping to get involved in it. If you have a baby, and you can’t afford to raise the child, needing the government’s assistance in the form of WIC, WELFARE and FOOD STAMPS, as well as reduced cost Housing, I think that you should have to take passive birth control measures.

I do not mean to say or imply that there should be government regulations regarding child birth, or who can have children, just that if you do have children you need to have a way to support them. It is very easy to have a child, a lot harder to support that child. If you have no means to support that child, and ask the government to do it for you, it would only seem fair that the government would ask, in return, for you to not have any more children, until the point where you can provide for them on you own. The easiest way to get to that point, in my mind, is passive birth control.

The passive birth control will be the latest birth control implant that women can get. It seems expensive at the start, but think that the cost of raising a child (food and diapers alone will cost more). No more babies while they are on Government Assistance plans. It really doesn’t seem that bad of a deal to me. If they want to have more babies, they just need to get off of the government assistance program, then they can have a baby whenever they want.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am a high-school drop out, yet I pay all my bills with funds that I earn through my own labor. I don’t ask the government for anything (possible exception being to make the man with the most votes be President), I just think that it is wrong that two people, without one job between them, can spit out kids and live as well as I do. The government pays their rent, buys their food, pays their utilities, even gives them gas money to look for work, though they never get the job. It could be different in your area.

So a child that is raised in that environment, do you really think that child is going to go out looking for a job? I think that child is more likely to do what mom and dad did. That is my tax dollars, and your tax dollars, but them, they get money back from the government even though they never paid in a dime…

Car; Politics

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Today is my wife’s birthday, Happy Birthday! She just turned way younger than me. There will be a time when I am like 104 (well I smoke, so let’s be honest, 64) and she will declare that I am still just robbing the cradle, since she is eternally 25. Why is it that most men will lie about their age to add years while women do the same to subtract years? That will be tomorrow on “springer”.

• I wanted to help out my mom, so I gave her our old car, it was an ’86 Chevy Nova, it still runs, but won’t drive because of some problem with the engine that can not be fixed even by the manufacturer. I gave that to her since 1) the tires were the same size as the tires on one of here cars. 2) they had the same bolt pattern. 3) it has been sitting here for like a year or more just looking for someone to pick it up.

I have never in my life given away a car that you could turn the key to start, until now. This car still starts, idles, the air-conditioning works pretty good (though you have to keep your foot a bit on the gas pedal to make it do it while idling). The only problem with the car is that the second you try to use the gas pedal to accelerate it dies. It doesn’t actually die, it just starts to spew out really nasty smoke, and it won’t move. If you let it run for about ten minutes (long enough to get the engine up to operating temperature) the idle goes to a normal idle level and you can drive it, but with the thickest dark-blue smoke that you have ever seen billowing out behind it.

I did tell her that she might not get anything more than the tires and the battery from the car, and I think I was pretty much right. Those are probably the only parts of that car that can be swapped over to whatever decent car that they have. I could also be wrong, though, as my mother lives right next door to a pretty good mechanic who could make that car live again. I would like to see that happen, as my wife spent like 900 dollars on it, then spent over 2,000 dollars to replace the shocks, struts, CV joints, alternator, radiator, brake master cylinder. Hell, there were so many parts that she had to replace that the old Nova might as well been brand new. Actually, if they were to replace the rack and pinion, everything would be brand new, except the engine, and that is where the problem is.

I don’t know how much the price of a toyota motor has gone up in the last 10-12 years, but you used to be able to get a complete one for about 700 dollars. If that is still the case, my Mom will have gotten a car that she can drive for the next ‘indefinite term’ absolutely free. Yes, I would love to be able to just buy her a Ferrari, but we both have to scrimp and scrape to get what we have.

We all have something in common here, right, you pay taxes, I pay taxes. Why don’t we start to take charge of what our tax dollars pay for? That would seem, what, almost Democratic. The people in the U.S. should be able to vote for every measure that goes through the house or senate, because it(the fact the the average person is not represented in any way) is being exploited. The ‘house of representatives’ is at least a pretty good view of that area’s take on something. Then we have to send it to the senate. Hundreds of thousands of votes being weighed by two guys (per region) before they cast their vote. How is/could that be the voice of the people?

I know that this has all worked in the past, and that it was actually to the advantage of some former presidents. I just want to know why. The system of checks and measures is there only to keep the president from abusing his power. When the president does, invariably, abuse his power, you have to again start talking about why he had the power in the first place. Dead discussion.

Global Warming; Recycling

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Well, it seems that I don’t really have a lot that I am planning to post here today. I have one thing from the news that absolutely requires bitching and a couple of personal notes and that is about it. So I will just jump right into the one news item.

But first, there is one other thing that I took from the layout over there at Blackchampagne and that is the color change for items that are quoted. I have always put quotes into block quotes, since that is the entire purpose of them, but having read a lot of other blogs since I started doing this site I have found that a different color is a good idea. There are a lot of people who use blockquotes when they are quoting something that they had previously written as well as things that they had taken from other articles. Honestly it gets a bit confusing, especially if you are just trying to skim a dozen pages to look for anything worth reading. Of course that is kind of a moot point here, as I have never written anything intersting, and have never felt the need to quote myself in the first place, but the separate color at least should keep anyone from thinking that I was the author of that content.

That digression aside, the news article that I was speaking of can be found Here. It is about rising levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. I am not sure why it is really news at all, I mean take the following pieces of the story for instance;

The reason for the faster buildup of the most important “greenhouse gas” will require further analysis, the U.S. government experts say.

Well, it turns out that it really doesn’t require any further analysis as they seem to answer the question of why with the remainder of the article. Like this next paragraph that was either the next one, or the one after;

Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases.

I altered that paragraph only because I wanted to make the part that is causing the problem in bold text. So, wouldn’t it seem like a fairly safe assumption to think that the reason for the increase in the levels of carbon dioxide could be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels? Of course industry is blamed for the majority of this, with huge stacks on power plants billowing out black smoke every minute, every day, but anyone who drives an automobile is spewing out the very same stuff. So, it would seem that there would just need to be a bit of legislation passed to limit the amount of the stuff that any person/company can spit out, right?

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol (news – web sites) would oblige ratifying countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions according to set schedules, to minimize potential global warming. The pact has not taken effect, however.
The United States, the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitter, signed the agreement but did not ratify it, and the Bush administration has since withdrawn U.S. support, calling instead for voluntary emission reductions by U.S. industry and more scientific research into climate change.

We’re number one! We’re number one! Why is it that the only remaining “Superpower” on the globe can only seem to be number one in things like obesity, war and pollution? I am a bit surprised that the current administration isn’t more concerned about this, what with the tax breaks that they are giving to government employees who buy the gas-guzzling SUVs as opposed to giving tax breaks to the ones who buy the hybrid vehicles with less than 10% of the emissions of those SUVs. Okay, maybe I am not really all that surprised at all.

I do wonder, though, when the Hydrogen powered vehicles, which have been in testing for quite some time, and have only liquid water as emission, actually come to market if anyone will want to buy them. Here is a link to a pretty good argument for hydrogen powered vehicles, and to be fair, here is the best one that I could find against Hydrogen powered vehicles though the black background with white text makes it a painful read (so painful in fact that I was not able to finish it, and that person did seem to get into a pretty good discussion of fuel economy in gas powered vehicles. Maybe it is a good read?).

The whole point of this, I think, is just to mention that both my wife and myself drive little foreign cars, Kia Sephias to be exact. The cars get amazing gas mileage, 300 miles per ten gallon tank while mixing heavy traffic and freeway, and even while running the air conditioning. The average SUV doesn’t get that kind of gas mileage on an empty freeway, even if you shut off the motor while going downhill. But, America is the land of excess and there is a reason why we are the world leaders in consumption of fast food and fossil fuels, thus making us the leaders in attacking other countries to secure oil for our future use.

Recycling!

This was the other thing that I really wanted to get into today. It seems really odd to me that recycling is not as big as it should be here (arizona) as it is in many other U.S. states.

A lot of states, Oregon, California, Massachusetts and Vermont just to name a few, have made the recycling of aluminum cans and other containers mandatory. It is not mandatory to recycle the cans, but you are charged a fee for every can that you buy at the store (a nickel in most states) that you get back when you return the cans. Simple and straight-forward, you would not just stand in your kitchen throwing nickels into the trash, would you? That is a nickel that you paid, like you were just renting the can for however long it took you to drink the fluid in it. I guess it is more like a ransom in that way, you are holding the can hostage and they are willing to pay you one nickel for each can that you set free. That is some pretty good incentive, since you had to pay the money before they let you use the can.

Here in Arizona they just don’t really give a shit. Well, to a point.

When I first moved here I really felt guilty about throwing away soda cans. It felt almost like I was breaking the law or something, but time has passed and I have realized that there is a reason that people dig through the dumpsters every night looking for soda and beer cans. Them is good money.

You have, as I see it, three options for your cans here in AZ. 1) Throw them away. 2) Put them into a recycling bin (which the town I live in does not have, even though its major draw is tourists since the town has the oldest continuously operating courthouse in the state and half of the houses are on the historic register at over 100 years old). 3) Recycle them. This is, of course the best option, but one that is hard to do in practice.

See, the thing is people will pay you for these cans. The prices vary between about thirty and fourty cents per pound, but that is money that you did not pay out in the form of a deposit. Yet, you can not take the cans back to the place that you bought them, nor to any actual store. You have to take your cans to a place like a scrapyard, like an automobile junkyard, where they deal in scrap metals. These places are invariably open weird hours and subject to the whims of the owners, but they are the only option down here.

I drink a lot of beer. I drink a lot of cheap, canned beer. I end up with a lot of cans. At some point my wife realized that if we could use my alcohol consumption for a good cause it would be a wonderful thing. She bought a separate trash can for me to throw the empty cans into, and thus her plan went into action. The bags, with normal cans, just fill up so quickly that it was hard for either of us to get to anywhere where we could sell them before the next bag was already full.

She bought me one of those ‘can crushers’ that are just insanely cheap on ebay. Since the people who buy scrap aluminum down here just don’t care about product labels (since it is scrap aluminum, not them paying you back the nickel per can deposit) they prefer them crushed, so it all worked out good.

So you see, we are helping to save the planet with the beer that I consume. And, we are getting some cash back also. That cash is currently at 27 dollars, which will fund our next dinner at the restaurant that I bitched about a couple of days ago. I would like to make that fund large enough to eat at a really nice restaurant, but let’s be honest, the beer (that I would have to drink )would cost much more than the bill at the restaurant, and I do only have the one liver. But, money for selling cans, why aren’t people other than hobos doing this?

Howard Stern

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Well, it seems that I must break form again, as I saw yet another news item that just riles me up. whether or not anyone is reading this (or ever will) just seems to take a back seat to my desire to bitch about it. It is another issue that I am sure I would not be comfortable talking about with a random stranger on the street, yet somehow comfortable to do here, with an entire world of potential strangers to read it – yet let me say my piece first – Also, how many days in a row does one need to break from before it is the form, and by not breaking form that is breaking form?

I am reading the story through yahoo news, I will put a link to it here, but it will be gone in just a few days, so likely it is a dead link if you are looking at the page. The link.

WASHINGTON – The nation’s largest radio station chain announced Wednesday it was suspending shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show after issuing new rules to limit indecency and address criticism of what airs on TV and radio.
Clear Channel Radio said it suspended broadcast of Stern’s show after assessing the content of his show Tuesday.

“Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content and Howard Stern’s show blew right through it,” John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel Radio, said in a news release. “It was vulgar, offensive, and insulting, not just to women and African Americans but to anyone with a sense of common decency.”

Yes, and shit smells a bit like shit too, doesn’t it? If you do not live in a third world country, I would think that would really be basic knowledge (the show being vulgar and offensive, I mean). In fact, I think that may actually be what he is going for with his show. I mean look at the guy FFS he is obviously not out to tell a wonderful tale about Winnie the Pooh in the 100 acre wood. He looks to be more of the Sociopath type. Though I do not think he has enough charisma to be that sort of a person, he certainly has gained an audience large enough to believe that he can.

Congress is considering increasing the maximum fine for indecency from $27,500 to $275,000, a move that the Federal Communications Commission endorsed even before the tumult over singer Janet Jackson’s exposed breast during the nationally televised Super Bowl halftime show.
“In the history of broadcast indecency, there have been these moments where it makes headlines,” said Jeremy Lipschultz, a professor of communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “In the short term, broadcasters become much more careful. You’re going to see people playing it safe. The long-term problem is the same one we’ve had, which is it’s very difficult in the end to precisely define what is indecent or not. ”

Under FCC rules and federal law, radio stations and over-the-air television channels cannot air material containing references to sexual and excretory functions between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children may be tuning in. The rules do not apply to cable and satellite channels and satellite radio.

So there is proof of ‘Freedom of speech, and expression’ in action. You can say whatever the hell you want to as long as you are absolutely alone at the time. No one can see, or hear, what you are doing or else you might be found to be in violation of FCC terms. I Love this country.

Like everything else in life, you have a choice. If you don’t want to Hear about women wearing g-strings and being provocative. Don’t. I stressed the word hear in the last sentence for the single reason that it is something that was heard. When my little virgin ears learned about sex, it was in about 1980 and I heard it from an eight year old kid at school (which is, I think, where most of us do learn about it). Do we assume that the kids today will simply quit telling stories if they had not seen a VERY UNAPPEALING portion of Janet Jackson’s breast? How did it happen that kids sneaking into dad’s bedroom to look at the playboy magazines has turned into this battle over what is decent to talk about on the radio?

If the point that you are going for is for children to never have sex, you should just go ahead and kill yourself now, that is never going to happen. Children (from any species) realize that they have genitals and a strange desire to do things they had never previously done at exactly the point when their body is able to produce a healthy child. The age at which that is happening is getting smaller and smaller due to medical procedures that can support the infants who would have previously died due to being too small (or the mother that had to have a C-section to make the birth happen).

My wife and myself are 27 and 29 (respectively) and do not desire to have a child for a lot of reasons. She has to see a doctor, with a happy hand, once a year to meet these ends, she makes that sacrifice to keep us from having a child. We are both very stable in work and just not in desire of the kind of responsibility that comes with a child.

The people that actually have the children, though, seem to never spend a second with them and try to blame t.v. and the radio for their shortcomings as parents….Way to make a stand…. Sure he/she (the child) saw something happen on t.v. and as such will never want to live in a t.v., but the odds that he got his idea to actually beat his wife probably came from home, as well as the idea that he wanted to do drugs, smoke, all that kind of stuff.

If you really feel that Howard Stern is the beginning in the descent into the lungs of hell, you really need to get some medication…Also, since it is just a radio show, you could monitor what your children are listening to, but, that would require actually paying attention to your children then, wouldn’t it. I guess that is why people don’t want this stuff on the air, because they collectively just don’t care enough aboout their own children to make sure that they are safe. I know that my parents were with me every damn second (well, sometimes mom had to pee, but beyond that.)

You should blame yourself if your child is a hellion, Howard Stern’s radio show had nothing to do with it. If you believe that his show was a contributing factor, you are in such deep denial that you should be put to death, for the sake of your children.

As an addendum, I really hate Howard Stern, as such I just do not listen to his show. How hard is that?

Gay marriage; Dinner with relatives

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In a fashion that is quite unlike me, I am going to do a news item here today, I am then going to comment on it, and it is also political. I hope I don’t sound like the uneducated oaf that I really am.

The article can be found Here. The center of it appears to be about gay marriage, but the actuality of that I think may be far different.

Bush’s call for a gay-marriage amendment came as the president sought to regain his footing after he was thrown on the defensive about issues ranging from his Vietnam-era military record to missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (news – web sites ).
“After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization,” the president said.

Answering Bush, Kerry said, “All Americans should be concerned when a president who is in political trouble tries to tamper with the Constitution of the United States at the start of his re-election campaign.”

“I believe the best way to protect gays and lesbians is through civil unions,” Kerry said. “I believe the issue of marriage should be left to the states”

What Bush said is just absolute crap. I mean honestly, if one must ‘Ammend’ the constitution to say that it is illegal for gay people to marry, that means that the constitution must be ‘changed’ to make that into a law. As for the part about “after more than two centuries of American jurisprudence” (which is a word he obviusly had to look up), exactly what ‘jurisprudence’ is he talking about? To my knowledge there have not been a lot of cases in court over the last two-hundred years that involved gay marriages. Even if there had been, I don’t really see how he could be trying to use that as a point today. I mean if you want to go back over the ‘jurisprudence’ of this country, you must also keep in mind that the people in Salem killed a lot of innocent people based on the testimony of three children who were being spoken to by spirits. Had the courts used that as a precedent, I think that the ‘Son of Sam’ would not have gone to prison for his killings, since he was being spoken to by the spirits also.

The judicial system, much like religion, place way to much on what has happened before, regardless of the validity of it. After all, it did take an ‘ammendment’ to abolish slavery. If they had just gone by what was written in the constitution we would all still either own, or work on a plantation in the South. Were they correct in adding this ‘ammendment’? Hell yes. Should there have been a need to? It seems so. The problem is that humans are keenly aware of now, but not so aware of the future. When those guys were hanging out drinking ale and talking about how the nation would be when they were in charge I am sure that they missed a few details along the way. But, homosexuality is as old as the constitution for sure, and probably goes back to the beginning of human history -to the time long before man actually understood how to conceive, and as such were likely just looking for any warm spot to put it.- And yes, that means that homosexuality pre-dates the bible, and that being the case I am not sure how one could use any biblical or judicial means to try to battle the sanctity or legality of it.

What comes into mind now is the religious nuts who will say that GOD made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. As per my previous statement, that is utter bullshit. Without going into an atheist lecture, I will just say that human life pre-dates the bible’s EDEN by at least 50,000 years. So if GOD did make adam and eve and put them there, he was putting them onto a happily populated planet that likely already had rampant homosexuality and did not see a thing wrong with it. Fast-Forward to the time of the Greeks, there was a lot of homosexuality there, though no marriage, just like a teacher/student relationship with benefits (for the teacher at least), and this was still the status quo. In fact, the more I think about it the HOMOPHOBIA (I mean sanctity of marriage) didn’t really come into being until well after the founding of the United States. If it was that big an issue when they wrote the constitution, don’t you think they would have thrown something in there about it? We are talking about the same people who said that the control of the militia over land, water and sky would be in their control(two hundred years before flight was even thought about). Yet, butt bashing somehow didn’t make it on there.

I have gone way off topic here. My point is that you should not try to use ancient documents to try to validate your point of view (I used to enjoy mentioning to christians that the bible states that in order to atone for your sins you must spill the blood of a sheep on an altar unto god. – they are quick to point out that when the blood of Jesus was spilled it was for all of our sins- but what if I was taking that book as literal, and I hadn’t gotten that far in the book yet? Boy, I would have been embarassed.

The reason that I quoted four paragraphs from that initial article is that I am now scared for the direction of our country. We all know that Bush is so right-wing that he has to have some tether to keep him from falling off, but when the leading Democrats are opposing same sex marriages what the hell are you supposed to do? This year will be the third time I have cast a vote for the President, and the first one didn’t really count. The last two elections I did a sort of “lesser of two evils” approach to my selection, and it worked wonderfully, except the elected president is still living on a ranch somewhere while we have a Kook in the white house.

The Gay Marriage issue just hit at the wrong time. I am sure that if this was not an election year the republicans would have gotten something slipped through congres to make it just go away. Now, the Democrats have to not want gay marriage also, and that is unfortunate. I try to believe that an elected leader would be more likely to do what is right for the majority of the country, the sad fact is that the majority of the country does not vote. The people who do vote are the very rich, very right- wing conservatives that I would as soon kill as look at. Thus we end up with tax breaks for the very, very rich, while at the same time raising taxes for the ‘rich but not quite as rich’, then giving a tax break to the welfare families…and tripling the deficit. As much as I hate Clinton, and also keeping in mind that he was in office during the technology boom, we had a budget surplus while he was in office, but we weren’t just running around the world looking for countries to declare war on while he was in office either. -countries that the U.S. could destroy, then give huge contracts to Bush’s oil field buddies to repair at a 500% inflated cost- ‘Hiel Bush’

Well, not a lot really happened today. I woke up, went to work, and busted my ass to try to get close enough to done with all of my work that I would be able to get off at 4 so that I could make it to dinner with some of my relatives. That all went as planned, thankfully.

I mentioned in yesterday’s update that these are people that I have not seen in at least fourteen years, and one of them could not even remember me from my father’s/her brother’s funeral. It was not icy at all though. We, my family, seem to be blessed with a really great sense of humor, so after it had all been silent for a minute or so someone just started to speak. It was an anecdote from long in the past, and involving my father, and happened long before I was born, but after that, it was like it was just yesterday that we had all done this last.

The dinner really went quite well, I even ended up with like three magazines about the London Bridge (the original one that they moved to Lake Havasu), and as it turns out the guy who moved that bridge over here is a Great Uncle of mine. So where is my paycheck?…

At any rate, I have spoken to these Aunts of mine only on rare occasions since my dad died. I had not seen either of them since 1990, but it was like we had never been apart (with the possible exception of the fact that the last time I saw them I barely had pubic hair, now I have gray hair, one gained a lot of weight, one lost a lot of weight, okay so you could tell by appearances that it had been that long, but the minds still work the same.)

What really surprised me was how well my mother was getting along with them. These are my Father’s siblings, yet they still had the stories to tell -which no one else at the table got- and they laughed like teen-agers. I found that surprising only because it had been more like 20 years (not counting dad’s funeral) since they had seen each other.

My wife was able to get involved by poking a bit of fun at me, which I don’t mind, and it got her into a conversation where it would have been her around damn near a dozen people that she didn’t know. I have long said you have to pick one that has both the mind and the wit – I actually believe that what I said was that you have to make sure she has the mind at the top and the elevator to get it there- at any rate, my relatives were hugging her at the end of the night.

If I had the kind of charisma that I could walk into a room and people would just gather around me, I might use that power to an evil end. Actually, I would definitely use that power to an evil end, I would just have to go on-line and see what ends are available for that particular power. If the powers don’t have x-ray vision I might not even care.

As it turns out, one of the relatives lives in Mesa (which is only about 45 minutes from here) and we were getting along quite well, to the point that he was setting up jokes and I was knocking them down. If he is this close, I am sure that we could -combined- sucker some of the other 5 aunts/uncles down here to at least say hello. I guess I will find out on the 6th of May, as yet another Uncle will be in the area and he wants to spend a day with me and the other guy in question. I want to get my brother (who is a year older and another 45 minutes away) to come up for what is turning into a boy’s day out kind of thing. The Uncle (who is really only a few years older than I am) is trying to make us go play golf, which I have never done and who knows I might like it.

The dinner went well for all involved. Unless my wife is just lying to make me happy, but, as previously stated, she knows how to get into a conversation, then take it over, then start issuing sub-conversations for you to work on as a group. Well, she didn’t do that, but if it had gone on longer, she likely would have started assigning tasks. That’s my woman.

Taxes

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Following with the theme of not getting a damn thing done to get my stories posted, I decided I would go ahead and do my taxes today then get to the site work. That turned out to be a bad idea.

Taxes, in general, are not really that difficult. I mean really, it is just a bunch of numbers that one must throw into a form that looks much like a spreadsheet. I would think that any chimp could do their own taxes, unless they are one of the chimps who make a lot of money and are personally in charge of thousands of employees and the such -they probably go to H&R Block-. Though I really doubt that if you were to look at Bill Gates’ tax forms it would say that they were prepared by a glorified kiosk in a SEARS store. I guess that is why CPAs actually have jobs.

While doing the taxes this year I realized that entire point of them is to crush the ‘american dream’. I mean it is your goal to be successful and to have your worth appreciate annualy, yet, the more your worth appreciates the more taxes you have to pay. I am not talking about a billionaire who has to pay 250 million in taxes, because honestly if you have a Billion dollars you either inherited it or made it on a good idea followed by the labor of the lower class, I have no sympathy for you.

What occurs to me is that the whole taxing system is more of a direct inverse of the ‘american dream’. I will elaborate. If you make really good money (and I mean really good, like sports star, current musical artist, wealthy investor), they tax your earning to like 40% and that is just the Federal tax. That was the reason why there was such rejoice from investors when the Clinton Administration got the bill passed to make some long term stock sales only taxable at 28%. It is difficult for me to understand the way that actual law works (as their are a lot of resrictions and qualifications that must be met for it to be possible) but, I do understand the rejoice. If you had a million dollars in stock, then sold it and had only 600,000 dollars that would seem pretty harsh. If that same stock could qualify for the 28% rate, you would have 720,000 dollars. That is a 120,000 dollar difference, quite a hefty chunk of change.

Who else gets taxed at a rate of 40% -or hell even 28%- for federal tax? Only the very, very wealthy. I have capital gains that I had not yet paid taxes on and I did have to pay a huge amount on those gains, but that was not nearly 40%, were I to move up a couple of dozen tax brackets I may be in trouble. Though if I were in the league of the 40% payers I guess I would have so much money that I really would not give a damn. Actually, I bet I would be totally pissed off still, but my reasons would be different.

The cash cow of our society seems to be the lower class. Now, I know that the lower class is the class in the most need of support, but, if you make less annually than you get back on your taxes I think there may be a real problem. If you have a minimum wage job where I live and work a 40 hour week, you will make just a tad under 11,000 dollars in a year. That is not very much money at all. If you are that same person, and have a wife and a few children there would be no way that you could possibly support them on that income. So, the government steps in and puts them on programs like WIC, Foodstamps and Welfare. Then, they do not take any taxes out of their pay, to help them support their family. Then, when the tax time comes they are giddy with excitement to find that they will be getting over 2,000 dollars back (I use the word ‘back’ to mean that that is the amount of a ‘refund’ check that they are sent, but since they paid no taxes it is more of a gift).

I am not saying that we should just let poor people starve, or that we should kill the rich and distribute the money among the lower classes. Nor would I like to live in a Socialist economy. I just think that the money that the middle class puts into the pot should not be so easily squandered. The very, very rich are the only people that matter in Washington, the only reason that laws get passed is because of them. The very, very poor people get programs to pay for everything from their house to their food, their car, etc…

I am now going to go into speculation, with absolutely no proof to back it up, and no desire to actually research the subject. I am betting that a single woman with three children and a 12,000 dollar a year job actually makes more money than a woman with no children and a 25,000 dollar a year job. By that, I mean that through government programs giving her assistance for all the necessities, if you add up the total of all of the benefits she is getting and add them to the base 12,000, then add the tax check that she is going to get, I am pretty sure that it would be more than 25,000 per year. The woman making 25,000 a year will have to actually pay in taxes over the course of the year about 7% in that tax bracket I think.

This is going nowhere, as usual. This is exactly the reason that I hate doing taxes. It always puts me in a foul mood. Having a foul mood, and a forum where I can post anything I want without fear of repurcussion is not necessarily a good thing. That is, I bet it sure makes me sound like an ass.

It is not that I think that our tax money should not be used to help the poor, just that I would much rather see it being used for things like Passive Birth Control for single mothers who are on welfare. Programs to search out dead beat dads and force them to pay the child support that they are required to. Maybe even paying for daycare for the single mothers to go to school – even if only a trade school- to educate themselves so that they can get better jobs and become self-sufficient.

The way the tax money is being used now it is perpetuating the problem. The programs that are in place make it so that an uneducated single mother (or father for that matter) will never really have to go without food or shelter. If the money were used to offer programs to help the people better themselves, as opposed to just being hand-outs, it would do a lot to help stop the cycle -at least slow it down-. There are statistics that show that children who grow up on welfare are far more likely to end up on welfare, and that makes since, after all, that was the only way they had ever lived. Similarly, teen mothers’ children are more likely to be teen mothers themselves.

I better stop now, this is just a train wreck. Someone remind me never to do my taxes before I sit down to write anything again.