Jazz hands

Repeal and Replace

2010-09-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

For many many years the Republicans ignored the health care crisis. They were poked and prodded by the Democrats for decades and were able to successfully kick the can down the road. Then Barack Obama becomes president off the counter winds of the Bush incompetence. health care and the obscene practices and immense power of the health insurance industry became center stage. The president and congress did some serious and ugly sausage making to finally shake things up. On paper the idea is incorporates market competition and actually designed to save money in the long run. The real balance in my mind is that competitive health care industries are more efficient but the companies retain somewhere like 20% in profits by ensuring they deny as much coverage by making it complicated or by actual chicanery. The counter is that public offices are non-profit but loaded up with bureaucracy, inefficiency, and a "set in stone mentality" where no innovation is possible.

I am excited about the prospect of the republicans taking over, I am excited because they would actually have to solve the same problems with health care 2.0. The democratic health care reform may get repealed, but the they can't repeal without a replace and you can't keep all the popular line items without solving the universal coverage issue. In the end the point I want to make and the realization that led me to share my thoughts is that the democrats got us health care and it will be next to impossible for even the most fervent republicans to turn the clock back to the point where the problem just gets swept under the rug again.

The democrats attacked one of the largest and controversial issues of America and, even if all the details change in some final republican version or grand compromise, it was that shake up that shake up that ultimately changed things. Change happened, change is scary, and I am confident this change is just starting and that it will be good. I often think back to the first fedralist papers that pre-dated our current constitution; sometimes you need democracy to crash and burn in a 1.0 version to get to democracy 2.0.

Also, in the upcoming month I will be analyzing my local candidates and any national ones that strike my interest. Stay tuned for some punditry from Jazz Hands. Today's insight, I think I kinda like Tea Party Mc' Marc Rubio and will have more on that later.

Losers

2010-09-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

I have decided I need to talk more about the movies I watch because I watch a lot of movies, even bad ones, and I judge, and from robo cop to ghosts of girlfriends past, there is some stuff that needs to be called out on how crappy it is and its due if it shines.

Tonight I am sad to say that loser is how I felt about the movie the losers. for the love of god they have the denny dude from greys anatomy playing the cliche super good guy. And not only was the movie so cliche for the whole "heros on a mission" genre, but it was over the top and poorly orchestrated. I wanted to vomit when super hero guy saved the 24 innocent children. I was so annoyed by the children gimmick that I first decided I am not going to root for writers next time they go on strike. I bet some stoner just lifted "rescue the children" story line from an old A team episode. Ironically it may still have been better that the A team. I understand the movie was based on a comic, er ah, graphic novel; but come on. Please. They could have kept the story simple without it being ridiculous. And was I not supposed to notice all those stomach churning moment where you just say "really". I have seen video games with better stories.

But I gotta say this movie did have something in the explosions, the over the top fight scenes, and just that raw sex appeal. Those things were on point at worst and kick ass in rare exceptions. There were some good names like the Stringer Bell guy, the Torch guy from fantastic 4 but there was one that stood out. The chick from Avatar/Star Trek (forget her name). That chick is so friggin hot you forget how ridulous the plot is or how stupid the shit they have her saying is.

All in all this film was bad. But I would like to introduce you to my new rating system for movies... drum roll... was it worth those 2 hours of my life and do I want them back? Even with all its flaws, I will say the movie was worth 2 hours of my life. But those two hours would have to have very little competition with a better movie.

If you overreach... 39 will turn into 80... again...

2010-09-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

None of my stats are accurate, they are close, but not accurate and I want to call that out with full transparency up front.

A 39% tax bracket is not going to kill the economy and, even if it presumably slows it, it won't slow it to the tune of the 700 billion or so we would be borrowing to make up for the loan and interest payments. I am not against that tax bracket but you must offset it with spending cuts and the GOP shouldn't get away with an unfunded give away and giving cash to rich folks under the guise of "it'll help the economy trust me" any more then the Dems should get away with inefficient stimulus programs (though I find it comical that those who say the stimulus didn't work cite the drying up of stimulus as one of the reasons for contraction).

Furthermore I never trust the man who thinks he is fooling me because when you are right all you need is the truth and the GOP talking points are specious/misleading at best and all out lies at worst. For example only 3% of small businesses will be affected by the tax rate cuz most are smart enough to ensure the books only show 250k in profits anyways despite the fact that they claim 50% of small businesses which are the "job creators" will be affected. There was a time of class warfare when the highest tax brackets where things like 80% and such and those kinds of brackets were ridiculous and releasing that irrational amount of burden on the upper brackets led to all the good things about Reaganomics. That rising tide has risen now and the only way to raise the US again is to rebuild the middle class and I think a bit (ie 35% to 39%) is completely rational even if I someday soon fall into that bucket.

I am generally in favor of pro-business and lower taxes but you must offset with cost savings. It is just as irrational to let the chinese pay for our healthcare as it is to let them pay for the top 1% of American's private jets, but at least my Christian values feel warm and fuzzy on that one. The GOP is a great propoganda machine and this may very well cost Obama and Democrats, but that will have to be the price they pay to do the right thing. And when the GOP gets into power and drives us into the ditch again there will be a 1930's style backlash and all the people complaining about a sensible 39% are going to be overrun by a tide of populism when it jumps back up to 80% because they were short sighted now.

Say This...

2010-08-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

Those that are governing our country suffer from one fatal flaw. they don't know how to speak to America and don't realize people only can retain headlines. Here are the headlines.

The economy tanked because we went to war without war bonds and tax hikes.
We were going to be in a great depression, we saved you.
We planted seeds for new industries, look at those battery companies GM buys from.
We are bringing the wars to a dignified an professional conclusion saving billions
Renewing the bush tax cuts will only benefit the rich. period.
We saved the automobile industry with our faith in it and can't wait to sell our shares
We are sane and rational.

goodbye me... hello me...

2010-08-27T13:35:00.001-07:00

Ideally steam will soon vent from my ears and there will be a release of pressure, an uptick in sanity...

I did not start a new blog today. I am not myself today, I was yesterday. Today is someone else, tomorrow I won't be who I am today ever again. This morning I decided that I need a place to release all the words in my head. I need to say "hello world" to the world that I can not allow to be real. I need to hide behind anonymity, and I need to say things, communicate things that I did not say, that I may not even believe. I own none of it. I confess to none of it. It may be. It may not be. It may almost be.

What's Using My Juice?

2010-07-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

I am livid. I am angry at the world. I am angry at america. I am angry and the right the left and all of us in the silent confused and detached majority in between. Currently it is electricity that has me spinning because every sound bite and every consultant like speech, where someone borrows your watch to tell you what time it is, gets us no where. How about we all stop whining admit that no one is right and just start doing things again. Little things to start and let big people do big things, but for the love of god lets jar out of this frigging 10 years of complacency and stop blaming the Bush's or the Obama's or your taxes or anything else. Do something damn it.

My current frustration is due to the fact that my power bill skyrocketed the last couple months. I am livid because I want more then anything to bring that down and the power company is great at sending me little graphs and lip service for decreasing my power usage but this is all BS like the consultants and the watch. I want to use less power and I have started bugging my roommates to turn off lights, fans, and computers not in use but that is not enough. If we don't have a way to identify where the power is being used, the culprit, then how can you really make any change. And if you have to wait 2 months to see if any of the behavior changes had an impact how are you supposed to manage it.

It is 2010, and everyone and their brother claims that conserving power is their goal. We just shelled out billions in stimulous for energy efficiency and such. Well how about we start simple and we get some thing that duck tapes to every outlet in your house so that when the power bill comes you can actually identify the outlet that sucked the juice. If you know which one is the fat little piggy then suddenly you have the ability to conserve, probably more then a whole squad of those squiggly bulbs!

Ok America... I am laying down the gauntlet. This is not hard. Someone out there invent something I can buy at my hard ware store that will at least approximate the amount of power my outlet is using. It could be something that needs to be installed like a dimmer switch or less integrated like a power strip, but give me something. Its not that I don't trust that magic meter number the power company sends me every month, but if I can't find the parts of that whole then how the hell am I supposed to know how much electricity things are using. Not sure who's best interest it is to make that information so convoluted and difficult but that persons time is over. I am no green hippy tree hugger, I just want to know whats using all my juice.

dead flower

2010-06-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

The seed has sprouted, I allowed it to take root
Being together even when we are apart. You are with me
Sitting in silence with you next to me. You are with me
Laughing at something or another we see. You are with me
Holding you close in the evening and softly in the morning. You are with me

A beautiful flower balances with the water and the earth.

The fractious divide begins as a hairline. You are drifting.
Your voice is different, your eyes are different. You are drifting.
Plotting and preparing to avoid or accept fate. You are drifting.

A yellow edge appears on the large leaf, all at once I realize the petals are dry.

I see all of it now, you have said the words, they can't be unsaid. The end
Attempting to uproot the former flower from my mind. The end?
Reclassifying my memories as weeds by way of accepting it. The end!

Yellow becomes crumbled brown, the wind had taken all but the stem

Feeling you here even though we are apart. You are with him
Sitting in silence alone in the park. You are with him
Suffering the memory of something or another we saw. You are with him
Holding my head in my hands, I know those poisonous pains in my stomach.

It has died

The remnant of roots of yourself that I allowed you to plant lurch for water.
The slow suffering, dying of thirst, but they won't die fast enough.
Like a stain on my brain a residue of you remains afterward,

I see it when I use your expressions.
I see it when I see your name.
I see it when I see you in everything you touched.
I see it when I think about how great it was to have everything I wanted.
The stain. The rotting.

Moving along. A fresh breeze over my stomach and through my hair.
Opening my eyes. The wind blows away the dried up leaves but not the stem of you.
Guarded. I won't trade the dried up flower for anything, it hangs on my wall.
Content. Searching for new seeds in the wind.

am i done?

2010-05-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

I found this little poem I wrote in a notebook I hadn't opened in a while...

I realize that I exist, and I am running
thud thud. thud thud...

The ground speaks to my body as the dirt and cement course from feet to head.
Inhale, exhale, breathe breathe. breathe breathe...

The pace of ghosts and hopes of my past pass through my lungs,
my days are distracting me as they melt away

My pulse quickens,
thump thump. thump thump...

There is no such thing as control, fear so pointless that there's nothing to fear
yet nothing but fear fills in my heart.
Speed up to let go. make it hurt. make the heart pound

Sweat drips into my eye,
sting sting. sting sting...

Wipe your eyes, clear your brow, and you can do this alone.
Coughs become primal,
roar roar. roar roar...

The demons need to be scolded away.
I AM POWERFUL
I AM STRONG
I AM NOT DONE.
I stop.
I breathe the last deep breath

My sore heart races and is ready to break again
I feel the baptism of salt on my skin
my voice yearns to speak to silence

did I follow the trail?
did I finish?
did I go far enough?

am i done?

Falling off the fence... may need to see a DR!

2010-03-21T10:50:00.001-07:00

I have been on the fence about health care and since some folks actually like my political ponderings I thought I would share my conclusion and paste a link to what the REAL fiscal conservative movement has to say about the bill when discussing it. It is by no means a glowing review but it is an honest point by point analysis of what benefits it affords, shortcomings it clearly has in the short term, and future liabilities that require a "follow through" from future politicians. This follow through is seriously in doubt based on historical trends.

http://bit.ly/cAMG1s

After following this debate closely and empathizing with the calls to scrap the plan and find a more market oriented solution, my conclusion is that I support passing health care this weekend. My main conclusion is that the democrats have produced a bill that reflects our center left President even though they had no honest broker from the right that would require such balance, he held the liberals at bay all on his own. Obama used the diversity in his own party as a proxy to infuse republican ideas that not too long ago represented the "Bob Dole compromise". Imagine being forced to work with someone on a school project who was forced to take the class. All they would do is complain about the teacher and complain about the work, of which you were doing all of. In the end would you be able to translate their infantile whining into constructive criticism and infuse it into the final product as if they were given properly. That is Obama's gift.

I support this legislation because it is not the end in my mind but the beginning. There is nothing in it that can not be tweaked by a future congress (ie a good republican one) if the size and scope begin to balloon out of control as the republicans have promised. There is much doubt about future politicians appetite to follow through on the 2018 taxes and much well deserved skepticism about the fuzzy math that leads to the CBO deficit reduction number, but it is our responsibility to attend to these challenges not shrink from them. What the bill does is bring the invisible "the ER is my primary care physician:" into the light, gives me certainty that if I want to leave my big employer I can still get healthcare, and if God forbid someone in my family gets that rare expensive disease seen on the show House the insurance company will spend their efforts supporting me, not devoting themselves to finding a way not to pay.

I also feel that one of the most important aspects is this bill will declare from the rooftops that the status quo will change and the powerful forces against this change will now have to reset their calculations about how to self regulate. If insurance companies do not pivot to competing for our business on quality of care as a competitive advantage as opposed to their skill at denying coverage then they will usher in the single payer system that this bill pointedly avoided. My hope is that this bill will shift the ocean liner towards a future where America comes together to solve the problems and focus all parties on solving the problems. If the energy used to fight this bill can now be used to solve our problems within this new system, we can do it. I must note though that I do not believe this bill solves the problems and do concede it has the potential to do harm. That risk is now ours to manage.

Free speech

2010-02-02T12:53:00.000-08:00

This article is a fascinating explanation of the recent supreme court decision allowing corporations unfettered ability to spend in elections...
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/what-is-the-first-amendment-for/?hp

I do not have the time to communicate my strong beliefs on this topic because I honestly believe too much bad speech is better then even the slightest infringement on even the most banal speech. Basically I would rather 1,000 Larry Flints and KKK members (bad speech) be tolerated lest we prevent one person from reading the phone book into you tube (banal). Most of this comes from my firm belief that the government should have no say in making this distinction.

My point about this article is very simple though... perhaps we have stretched this too thin? Its like the 4 year old seeing how far he can spit and reclaim that spit after drinking a glass of orange juice, maybe its time to not suck this one up. The leaps of faith that I think we need to question are not whether limits should be placed on free speech but how we came to identify a corporations campaign spending as speech. In this I challenge congress to clarify what is and is not speech, and (to the ire of some of my friends) in a similar vain to how I call for a distinction between gay marriage and marriage, congress should allow for a separate but equal distinction of a corporation's constitutional rights and an individuals.

Basically, we can not allow the monopolization of speech any more then we can allow a corporation monopolistic powers to disseminating it (FCC). And we should re-examine the ruling that money is 100% entirely speech. This does not mean to cheapen president nor challenge my libertarian tendencies. What this is, is a call for the legislature to define these things such that the court is no longer responsible for doing this from the bench.

The judicial branch is responsible for interpreting the law and the legislature for making it. You can not blame Alito or Roberts for this ruling, the responsibility falls on the Congress to decide how the law must be changed if this result was not to their liking. Our constitution is a living document that may be amended and clearly separating the protections of a "corporate individual" and a human one in the eyes of the consititution would do a great deal towards leveling the playing field such that they no longer hold undue influence on the powers of the government that "We the people" must control

the man at raiders nation

2009-10-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

The line at raiders stadium is pandimonium on the way in. Liquor sits on the breath of every man, testosterone flows through the air, and everything is interactive and inflamatory. This gauntlet is not the place for a child.

Today there was a man walking with his boy. The child was at that age where a man is gestating inside the boy, he is being shaped consiously and subconsiously by every boob, rockstar, and dose of pop culture. The man walking with his boy kept one arm on his son's shoulder. They both wore the colors of the invading team, they were both the ire of the gauntlet though not the subject of any direct scorn.

In front of me stood a man. He looked like what you would expect a raiders fan to look like. If you didn't know better you may not ask for directions if you were lost, a woman may have instinctively clutched her purse in front of him in the elevator, and my mother would have locked the doors of the car if she saw him in the street. This man was directly behind the man and his son and he was surrounded by an ambivalent pack, all intoxicated by the moment.

The man in front of me did an honorable thing. The raiders fan represented all his kind powerfully and with a quiet dignity. You had to really be looking to see it, I can assure you the father and the son did not see it, but I saw it. I watched as the aroused mass lurched forward in a good natured frenzy with no regard for this man and his boy. You could see an awkward misunderstanding, perhaps violent, almost assuredely hatefull could happen at any moment, you could taste the two paths that this moment could have taught that boy who would soon be a man.

The raiders fan in front of me was shielding the man and his boy. He was doing it so subtley that you could barely tell he was doing it on purpose. The raiders fan kept a watch for what surprises may be coming at them, he steered his freinds and all the physical hootin and hollaring by "moshing them away". He was not clearly any more sober but he was clearly protecting the foriegn invader and his boy. Like a body guard he made sure nothing happened with general decency and honor. I noticed how he watched his friends and steared them jujitzo style from carelessly starting some shit, and none of them even saw the patronizing behaviour he emplored to keep them in check.

The raiders fan was so human at that moment and not just because he did right thing but because he did it invisible to untrained eye. That moment, that butterfly effect resonated through the man, the boy, the raiders fan and me. It did so silently potent and infinitely confident in mankind. It made me think deeply about how I think about God and what I mean when I say I see God everywhere. It is also my only explanation for how the raiders beat the eagles today, I challenge you to prove that wasn't God.

Isn't Law and Order a Conservative Principle?

2009-04-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

In response to this article...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124044375842145565.html#mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

I am offended by the hubris that the wall street journals editorial board displays by labeling potential criminal activities as "policy disagreements". If the Bush White House decided to let the CIA steal a dollar from every American in secret to raise 250mm in additional revenue and their crony legal department wrote breifs to justify this, then would this theft be a policy disagreement?

I am an independent and I do not relish any investigations into the behavior of individuals who almost certainly were patriotic with our best interests at heart. But if the worst accusations from the left turn out to be true then someone needs to be held accountable. The most extreme charge leveled by the left is that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld purposefully used torture techniques known by the Chinese to generate false propaganda and confessions in order to corroborate their pre-determined conclusions that Iraq was involved in 9/11. If it is true that we tortured human beings because they would not provide information about something that did not exist (think 2 + 2 = 5) then this is perverted, it is criminal, and it needs to be prosecuted. I would also add that based on the strong arm and manipulative tactics employed by the office of the Vice President this claim from the left is not an entirely a fantastic notion no matter how many times Kieth Olberman spews it out.

This investigation is crucial for the US, the World, and humanity because 24 is a show and America is more then a nation, its the defender of liberty and the hypothesis that a nation of free men may exist where all men are created equal and no man is above the law. Pray this nation does not perish from earth by way of rot from within.

Seriously Microsoft, Gimme Something

2009-02-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

I am sick and tired of using microsoft products even though, for the most part, I am a huge fan of Powerpoint, excell, and to a lesser extent word. But seriously there are some ridiculous little things that could help me out so much and they do not include these things in any of the releases across the 15 years or so I have been using their products. Since I have a blog I am gonna list some and just because I am a fair guy I am going to point out one they finally did include. For years I thought it was ridiculous that the only colors you could changes cells to in excel were the list of 40 colors available in the drop down. The most recent excel finally lets you use any color you fancy. Unfortunately it also saves your files with a different extension so all the files I need to share with anyone else always get reverted anyway...grrr

THE 'DUH' LIST:
1. File History. You only let me see the last 4 files I opened? Are you serious? What is would be the big problem putting a link that lets you see the last 400 files you opened? You don't need to display them all but give me a button that checks. I can't remember what I named a file from this morning let alone something I may have been working on weeks ago. Hook a brother up with some simple ways to find the file he is looking for using history.

2. Losing my formatting. I may not be an expert so maybe there is a way to prevent this I don't know but I want to throw my PC every time I past something into PPT or word using a certain font, size, etc and it just changes it willy nilly. I could understand if it changed the format to be consistent with the other text in the text box or document. But no, thats not how it works, it doesn't retain the size/font of what I copied from nor does it lock in consistency to other text. WTF microsoft.

3. Double spacing. When I copy and paste something from other documents sometimes it gets double spaced. I have no idea why this happens and it is such a pain because you can't just hit ctrl +1 like you could in the old microsoft works days to turn it back to single space. I usually paste the offending text into a flat text editor and then paste that into my document. My guess is there is some hidden something that the text editor drops off, but c'mon why do you make this such a pain?

Ok, I feel better. I will probably add to this at a later date, microsoft will get to me again!

-dan

Like the Post Office, Health Care Office

2009-02-11T12:47:00.001-08:00

You know what I hate about the private sector public sector argument about health care. First is the way that republicans make national health care seem like a bad thing when by every measure of how much we pay for healthcare and the results all the nationalized systems are better. But what really bothers me is the either or rhetoric. I say we have a "Health Care Office" just like we have a post office. The post office operates at a loss because if UPS and FedEx were to drop off the face of the earth having messaging service would still be crucial to the nation. The post office is like the off brand version of these fantastic and effecient companies but little by little it gets better competing with them. This is the same way the health care system should work. Blue cross and blue shield and pacificare aren't going to be put out of business. Instead a post office type health care system will develop to provide care for government employess, the poor, and anyone who is kinda healthy and can deal with the low cost (almost no cost) off brand health care the goverment provides.

I think the post office's co-existence with the other mail companies should be a model for how national and private health care can co-exist and I am sick of hearing the boogey man rhetoric from the right or the sky is falling we must act now rhetoric from the left.

The 80s are over

2009-02-11T12:39:00.001-08:00

Reagan did the right things. He was a hero because of success. But to be a follow of a former great leader is not Obama's goal. He needs to be the next great leader and this is why he won. we need a new generation that understands deeply the way things and is well versed on the way things were. the republicans live in the past and they live in a stalemate where they don't attack the problems such as governement inefficiency but accept it as unavoidable dogma.

What worked for reagan was the right fit for the time. Lowering taxes after decades of fat cat democratic rule were the right fit. after 8 years of fat cat republican rule where the rich got their money back enmasse is not the right fit for the current times. tax cuts fall under the law of diminishing returns and in reagans day each dollar cut in taxes fed innovation and growth because the tax burden was stifling. it would be great if there were no taxes but they are far from stifling anymore.

I agree with so much of the republican dogma but can't ever see myself supporting them because they take past facts as if they were current events, they take issue with the way government functions and think the only way to solve the problem is to not govern or regulate, and they have no solutions just a blind belief that what worked in the past surely will work again.

Please, start a new party devoted to efficiency, transparency, and operating our government according to a creed of a ounce of empathy and pound of cold hard measurable goals, plans, and score cards. Fix the government, just solve the problems.

Co-pays, a Suggestion for Health Care Reform

2009-01-19T23:26:00.000-08:00

I think that a new generation maturing presents opportunity to raise more money for government provided health care. Use the same 80 20 rule that most of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers and apply that by expecting that there is a market for additional optional services that cost a co-pay. So many people who can afford that would pay for it that the revenue could trickle down so that the other 80% of customers get a great socialized experience.

If I don't want government healthcare can I sitll keep the insurance I have? Yeah, blue cross ain't going out of business. But there are a bunch of people who will definitely still be deep in medicare. Let the medicare system throw the preventive tests like the MRI, every blood test instead of the ones you need, or fancy toilets that tell you how hydrated you are and if anything is fishy. Because there are 20% dying to consume these things if the government helps dish it out. Think about how many people will be employed in the factory that makes the "analyze my piss" machines.

Detroit needs one more drink

2008-12-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

First. $1 dollar pay is a great idea. Its symbolic of your right to compensation but at the same time a grand gesture that you will live and die by the company's health as represented by the stock price. I don't care if a CEO makes a bizzillion dollars on stock because that means the board agreed he was worth the options and all the other stock holders made a bizzillion too. Thats capitalism, and capitalism kicks ass.

Second. We have to at least bridge load the auto companies into the next year. Whether the country and the world are ready for it or ready to admit it stuff has already been changing like CRAZY since November 5th and we really should hand the new president and new congress an auto industry. Even if it is on life support and it will take a miracle to save it, thats better then Bush handing over another corpse of what America once was before he took over. I barely remember when we had living and breathing respect around the world, budget surpluses, and a fair and balanced justice department. Lets not even talk about general faith the government could accomplish anything.

Third. I want a Chevy Volt. I really want a Chevy volt. The driving generator idea is the future. I don't care if it runs on oil, coal, gas, hydrogen, cold fusion, or hippie love ins. I like the idea of the car and the power being one thing and the energy being another. That and the fact that you don't have to worry about the batteries running out when you need to go all mad max and drive with gas canisters in the back seat. I want a volt SUV, a volt golf cart, a volt motorcycle (ooooh can I pedal it to save money on gas in case I missed a work out at the gym!). So all this defense of the car companies is really just my love affair and desire to see the volt happen. Please congress, please obama (screw you bush ya lazy bastard),please scary which lady, er ah, I mean Nancy Pelosi, please Jesus Buddah and Allah, give this drunk just one more at last call. Give Detroit one more chance to fail.

Supersize he US Muslims

2008-11-22T09:02:00.000-08:00

In my on going thoughts about how to destroy Al Qaeda it occurred to me that we have barely leveraged our most powerful asset. Those nut jobs should not speak for Islam because they are nothing but fringe revolutionaries. But what they do is capture the imagination of Muslims around the world. Everyone needs someone to spill their own aggression over to, and its easy to hate on the coolest, richest, smartest, biggest, toughest, best looking, kid in class (aka the U S of A). My solution is simple, use our American Muslim community to capture the imagination of Islam.

The nut jobs use the misconceptions of America as a homogeneous nation of rich white Christians as a blunt instrument to hide what they do not want their followers to see. America is truly a land of freedom where you are free to be whatever you want and the government will still root for you and allow you to succeed on the merit of your character. The Islamo-fascists use freedom as an excuse to highlight those that use the this beautiful freedom to live innocent lives different from their demands. They focus on the fringe excesses of our culture to highlight the supposed immorality and dangers of it. We should exploit the inherent flaw of their lies of omission. When I was a child my mother had to explain to me that purposefully telling half truths can be worse then lying, and by omitting the truth about the large swaths of pious, devout, successful, and FREE American Muslims they support their bowling ball of hate on a bed of tissue paper. Lets shine a bright light on our Muslims communities and Supersize their message so that it reaches all Muslims of the world.

With the election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States we have unique opportunity to recapture the American brand. Instead of a Pakistani child growing up in fear of the corrupting influence of "The Great Satan" he should be growing up with dreams of living amongst our free, peaceful, and prosperous Muslim community. I once saw a documentary where an evangelical christian went to live with a community of devout Muslims in Michigan. They were so happy and very similar to his ideals of piety, family values, and goodwill for all man. In one segment all the men gathered in a gym to throw a bachelor party wherein they played basketball, ate, and listened to music. They were very happy. That documentary should be on YouTube and forced down the throat of every Muslim being corrupted by the Al Qaeda message. The policy of the US Government should be to reclaim our brand by getting that message out and supersizing it.

In America you are free. In America you have the right to the pursuit of happiness and that means that you have the right to live and create your ideal pious Muslim utopia with the full support and equal civil rights guaranteed by the government. We are the best nation in the world and there are pockets of citizens living out the fantasies of every possible dream dreamt across the planet earth. If we could supersize that message and get it out to the Islamic world then they would yearn to live in that pocket, and for those that could never come to the US they would have a shining model of the city on the hill that they could use as a model to build free, peaceful, and prosperous nations of their own.

The First Simple Majority Amendment

2008-11-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

I am probably one of those people on the fence about the whole crazy prop 8 issue just because like a lot of folks I think just changing one letter in the name would settle the whole thing (who wants to get Narried or Harried or Rarried!). But I know one thing I am sure about that I don't hear anyone mentioning. Regardless of your thoughts on this annoyingly hot button issue (don't we have more important things to figure out) when was a simple majority enough to change the constitution?

Correct me if I am wrong but in our democracy we had the wisdom to allow for amendments to state and federal constitutions but amendments had different requirements. If supporters of prop 8 (they keep telling me what to think at church but I can't seem to get passed the feeling that its wrong for me to tell other people what to do when it doesn't hurt me at all) believe that any kind of discrimination, ie certain citizen do NOT have this right, should be written into the constitution doesn't that require more then a simple majority? Isn't that the whole ideas of having constitutions? So that a hefty chunk have to be on board before guaranteeing any new freedom or taking any away?

So just to finish my thought I am really confused by all this controversy. If you want to ban gay marriage, and I am not sure if I am against that because civil unions seem to work just fine, wouldn't you have to amend the constitution? The courts interpret law -> court says rights bestowed on married folks are in the constitution -> legislators make the law -> ipsos facto -> go ammend the constitution you lazy legislators? Now if the legislators don't want to take that up because they are afraid they aren't gonna get enough votes or re-elected, well that leads me to think that was the point of the whole special process for amending the Constitution in the first place!

my first iPhone blog

2008-09-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

I just read an article on fortune about peak oil. I suggest every republican read it.

Mobile Blogging from here.

Putting Methadone on the credit card is so 1950's...

2008-08-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797900578415011.html?mod=todays_columnists

I don't want to be one of those blow hards who always goes off on articles like the one above. I do want to bring something up that rarely gets brought up during the energy debate. Many mention nuclear power as a possible solution for our "addiction" to foreign oil but fail to mention its just the methadone of cures. If we could wave a wand and build as many nuclear power plants as we desire instantaneously then we would run out of uranium in (depending on who you ask) 10-20 years.

I am not saying that I am against nuclear power, but when I hear John McCain offer this and drilling as the big idea solutions for righting the ship towards energy independence, I get frustrated, because it is a false promise and false hope. The other nations of the world (ex. China, Germany, France, and Brazil) are making large investments in the future of energy RIGHT NOW that may not pay off for 100 years, and that means that the way that the US used to be the leader on the world stage they will be for our grand kids.

We are America damn it. We brought the entire universe of ideas to the world including electricity, the radio, the tv, the internet, nuclear power, cars, air planes, and the list goes on. If we don't take a serious look at what the world will need in 100 years and start investing the force of a unified America in it now, then we are going to end up buying whatever that is going to be from the Chinese at that time. I find John McCain's desire to use the goal of energy independence as a wedge issue by mis characterizing his opponents positions and offering up temporary fixes as if they were permanent solutions viscerally offensive because I am still young enough that, if enacted, this same issue will be presented when I am about his age. His solutions may be enough to bring relief for the rest of his lifetime, but he still saddles the problem onto the next generation. Its like paying one credit card with another, eventually the bills come due.

All the talk about nuclear power and drilling more oil is fine and good, go for it. But what is needed for our nation to retain the mantle of leadership in the world is to be the ones who innovate and put the full force of the American people behind the future and oil and nuclear are not the future, they are just methadone.

Can Americans Talk Like Adults?

2008-04-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

I have been going from site to site to read peoples comments about the "post Wright" Obama situation and it is clear that the groupthink of the hour has left out any clear analysis of what actual implications the drama have. True, there has been some tempered critiques of how his judgment and calculations handling this relationship may inform the electorate either positively or negatively, but for the most part the sentiments are emotional repudiations. They are rife with assumptions and specious reasoning where we, as the audience, use the details to find a path towards our foregone conclusions.

I am an independent (i.e.. not a democrat or republican) and I too allocate my vote on a large part with emotion, what my gut tells me will work. My emotion, my research, and my analysis has led me to believe Barack Obama would be the best choice for president. It is because I inherently trust Obama that I give him the benefit of the doubt that the undecided voters hold back, and I can understand their trepidation. I am not an idealist, a white person voting for racial forgiveness, or a black person voting racial pride. I am an American who believes that it takes immense courage to change the way Washington works and that it is irrefutable that Barack Obama has that courage and has already begun to change the way that Washington works. This campaign has been the closest thing any of the 3 have had to an executive experience and organizationally, in tone, and financially he has been true the promise that he will use the presidency as a vehicle to change Washington.

Money, pandering, and fear based propaganda have corrupted our country because of the "post 9/11" thinking of the last 8 years. Whether you believe it is a performance or not, whether you trust Obama or not, he has set his agenda and all the momentum of his campaign on shifting the money engine of campaigning to small contributions of the many and away from the elite few. That alone has already been the realization of change, and I see no reason to doubt there is more to come. His campaign, regardless of whether he ultimately prevails, has tapped into the American desire to unite and solve our problems with compromise. And let us not forget both the Clinton and McCain camps have over spent or under-organized where Obama has displayed superb planning and execution of strategic road map.

All individuals who want to be President are elite and swell with a sense of un-natural ambition or they wouldn't be able to get the job nor perform the job. I accept that Obama will fight for what this country needs. I think the tit for tat distractions are drowning out the real issues. Things like the proposed gas holiday which would solve nothing should be the focus now. The country needs to debate the differences between Barack's health care plan and Hillary, we need to start articulating why a new strategy for the middle east is required, and an honest analysis of our national infrastructure is imperative. On all these fronts Barack Obama has again attempted to change Washington even though we are still only in a campaign and he has done this by trying to speak to Americans like adults. I am saddened as I read all the web sites that are discussing the Wright controversy, not because they are anti-Obama overwhelmingly, but because they are overwhelmingly demonstrative that American's are not ready to talk to each other like adults.

Lets make iraq more guamish

2008-04-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

How is it that we have a base in Cuba? Did we invade Cuba at some point, land on an aircraft carrier, and I missed it? Perhaps we had a "Mission Accomplished" ceremony some time in the 80's when the CIA was all powerful. No, no no, the real story is more boring, the facts are just that America has got a couple of hunks of land out there and some hunks of land enjoy some privileges, little things like representation.

Now lets talk about the democratic race for president thats going to go to places like guam in the coming weeks. Those places may have no constitutional protections, but they seem to be in some spare red white and blue cot, like staying in the basement when visiting Uncle Sam's house. So Here is my crazy idea for the democrats. Make Iraq Guam then win war.

Now I realize that it takes leadership to try and sell something so ambitious, and of course, democrats don't really have any leadership. But even though this appears to be an aggressive notion at first snicker you must recall greatness is achieved aggressively. Crazier things have happened before though and tons of things could be the catalyst, for example, what if someone like Jimmy Carter went all Al Gore on us and made this his issue. Heck, I think John McCain would be the perfect candidate for that job. America can start a new tradition of the losing presidential candidate fixing one thing while the other guy runs the show.

Any way you shake it I say we allow the Iraqis some delegates and let their parliament allocate them however they see fit. It would be a good idea to choose the number as something catchy, 1 for each province or something symbolic that Iraqis will identify with. The number is unimportant because the message, the voice of that vote will not be counted in delegates.

Now I know this is a crazy out there idea, but if the democrats did this after the Iraqi's chose Obama or Clinton the general election will be no more then a coronation. John McCain will become nothing more then the next Al Gore. And most importantly America will completely pull off the unimaginable 4th quarter victory in the war on terror. The reason we will win is because of the truth, justice, and pure Patriotism in the notion that you win a person's heart and mind by first giving breath and attention to thier voice. (suggested reading, full us declaration of independence).

http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm`

Re-Broadcast from another blog... because it deserves repeating

2008-04-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

--excerpt from http://nextround.net/2008/04/04/we-dont-want-to-hear-it/ which I fully endorse

You know what we hate? (Besides being late for the lunch buffet at the strip club, of course.) We hate the loser strolling around the office on a Friday afternoon touting some lame excuse about why they aren’t going out this weekend.

We can’t stand when we hear some cream puff declaring their intentions to “take it easy” on their two days off. Some douchebag telling us that he needs to save up for next weekend. Save up? What does that even me? Save energy? C’mon. What are you, an 85 year-old man on a respirator? You need to save money? Please. Get a fucking credit card and drink yourself into insurmountable consumer debt like the rest of us.

Or, if you’re really hurting for cash, go buy a bottle of grain alcohol and smuggle a flask into your establishment of choice. Money is no excuse. You can get hammered for 5 bucks if you’re creative. Take a few tips from the homeless.

We loathe when some loser says they’re “past their prime.” Past your prime? Let’s be honest buddy. If you say things like “past your prime,” you never had a prime. Your prime consisted of dominating the library on Friday nights and occasionally grabbing pizza with the math club. Drop “past your prime” from your vocabulary.

We detest the comment “I feel like the creepy old guy at the bar.” Have you ever talked to the creepy old guy at the bar? Sure, he is super creepy, but that guy can party. He tells stories about being backstage at Def Leppard concerts. If you can’t tell stories about something awesome you did in the 80’s, you aren’t the creepy old guy. Nobody under 35 is the creepy old guy. Trust us. We spend our time in the best city in the world to party (Vegas) pretending we’re older so that unsuspecting chicks will think we have more than 400 bucks in our checking account.

Now that winter is over it’s time get out there and dominate the weekend. Go prove to the world that you still party the hardest. When someone suggests a Jager Bomb, tell them you’re taking a Bear Fight (def: a Car Bomb followed by a Jager Bomb, aptly named Bear Fight because it feels like two bears battling in your stomach).

If you aren’t violently hungover on Sunday, you didn’t bring it this weekend. We expect you to be in the fetal position, shaking, next to some chubby chick with no pants on come Sunday morning. After you rent a fork lift to get the land monster you brought home back to the zoo, we expect you to lie in bed all day chugging water and swearing you will never drink again. Ordering a pizza should be the culmination of your activities. Lifting your head off your pillow or getting a glimpse of daylight should make you seriously consider putting yourself out of your own misery.

Now, get out there. Be Cool & Tough this weekend.

Gerald Ford is to Obama as Reagan is to...?

2008-03-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

The answer to the question in my title may surprise you. Gerald Ford is to Obama as Reagan is to Hillary Clinton. In the election of 1976 the republicans were dead locked. The fight was tight between Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, but only one could prevail. (Sound familiar at all people of 2008?)

There was a time when 1976 was the present not the past. The press in that moment treated every little detail of the world, those that would not survive a one week news cycle, as if each were earth shattering and new. Our crazy shnazy 2008 media is not all that different, though we imagine it is. In 1976 the discussion was all about the danger of the Republican Party taking the fight all the way to the convention.

Ever since I saw Gerald Ford on the Simpsons I thought he seemed like a good all around guy. He was well humored, humble, and wise. I especially enjoyed the sentiments he allowed to be released after his death on the dangers of the Imperial Presidency and his distaste for the direction America was heading. But thats him in history, in 1976 Gerald Ford was a politician in the thick of it with slick haired actor turned politician on his second wife named Ronald Reagan. Forget the great man he was and the great leader, in 1976 he hadn't done anything yet, oh, and, he was from California. Ford had the number advantage, he was gonna win unless something swung, but the Reagan team decided to fight him down to the last delegate.

Gerald Ford lost that election to Carter. Ford won the nomination but it was Reagan, whether he planned it this way or not, who really won. Reagan destroyed Gerald Ford for the general even though he was a long shot to get the nomination. Reagan did not win the delegates but it became 4 years until could run again, not 8. Hillary Clinton will be 65 in 2012 and her only chance at becoming President is to destroy Barack Obama so that he doesn't spend 8 years in the office.

Just like Reagan it is entirely possible that this notion didn't occur to Hillary Clinton personally. And that comforting notion is why I respect her and her service to our country. The issue that complicates things is that Clinton is a brand and a political machine more then it is the individuals. This machine allows them to accomplish great things, which both have, but it also breeds distrust in a time when Americans feel the urge to rage against the political machine.

I hope I am wrong about this but I think the Clinton Strategy is to create division amongst democrats in a game of political chicken until the bitter end. There are many objective arugments that can be made such as popular vote, delegates, national opinion polls, fund raising numbers, or head to heads against John McCain which all could be used to make the case that Obama should flinch first. I think if Obama was were no winning in every one of those measures then he would have the wisdom to flinch first in the name of the country like Al Gore did in 2000.

Hillary has made the right choice to stay in until Pennsylvania, but if she loses even one more after that then she needs to pipe down. She does not have to concede or drop out. They just need to stop trying. I like Hillary Clinton, but she is no Reagan, and I do not want her to think she is in 2008.

Obama Speaks

2008-03-18T13:45:00.001-07:00

Below is the link to Obama's major address on Race, Religion, and American unity. I recommend every American regardless of who you support or which politics you find yourself drawn to read it or watch it.

Obama spoke today about our quest for a perfect union. In this speech he demonstrated his grasp of how hard it is to achieve great things and gave no ground to the nay-sayer who attack his hope and faith in the goodness of America. He is a provider of Hope because of his very clear vision of what he hopes for and what it takes to achieve it.

America is a pursuit of a more perfect union. This is not a pursuit of the perfect union or my/your perfect union. Our nation was founded on the principles of a constant re-examining of the law, global acceptance for all men, and in a word ; liberty. Barack Obama has the potential to not only lead, but awaken this country because we ARE a great nation, and we do aspire to those lofty ideals. Americans have the courage, humility, and realism to endeavor to come together and attack the challenges of this world head on and most importantly with our eyes open.

Transcript:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?ei=5087&em=&en=06a539b9d149224f&ex=1205985600&pagewanted=all

Video and Transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23690567/

Constitution Should Make you Giddy

2008-03-11T01:48:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama mentions in passing that he was once a constitutional lawyer. I am one of his supporters and I think I have done much more then the average folks to get details about his past. I have actually hunted out the storyline on this guy and I still know very little about his time as a professor of Constitutional law. How long was this, when was this? Was it a couple years and he was an actual teacher or was he the TA in a Constitutional law class that some one assigned him to for law school credits.

I am guessing none of the answers to these questions is all that impressive or else there'd be a commercial about it paid by the Obama campaign, but I still wish I knew what they were. At the very least I should be able to spout out what college it was at, right? I mean shouldn't I have gotten a test or something before they let me wear the Obama t-shirt to work.

This country has a hunger for Obama, whether he wins the nomination or not thats undeniable. I think one of the reasons for this is that sense that he is an idealist and pragmatist on the same frosted mini wheat. The fact that he was once a constitutional lawyer makes me so happy. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights are the most important words that our President should go gah gah over. Every elected official should live and die by words like inalienable and of, by, for the people. He or She should get teary when they thinks about the freedom of the press and the genius of our founding fathers, of illegal search and seizure, and most of all that amendment that made it legal to drink booze again.

I can only assume that there is very little substance to the time Barack spent as a constitutional lawyer because a couple well placed sentiments about how much he loves the constitution would make me giddy and I am sure that, if there is going to be a second act to the Barack Obama story, this period in his history would have been turned into a digestible narrative by now. I am really hoping there is a second act instead of "Hillary somehow beat him" or "He won and then lost to McCain". Maybe someone out there knows what this narrative is, if you find 'em lemme know.

Why Hillary Could Be a Good VP

2008-03-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

It is plausible that Dick Cheney may be hated by conservatives in the near future, read on to find out why...

I am not very interested in seeing Hillary Clinton as president and according to the rules of the game she doesn't add much to the ticket as VP. I wholeheartedly support and respect Hillary Clinton and I don't see this as being in conflict with my strong desire to NOT see her as President. I truly think that she is a Patriot with battles to fight for America. But her chances at winning those battles would be greater if she remains a US Senator in a 60 Democratic Senate.

Barack Obama will be the best possible 44th president of the United States because his leadership is well suited for the current enviornment in America, the current collective soul. Barack Obama and Hillary share almost identical plans for solving our problems and having her in the Senate as an ally to push through an Iraq Policy (I like to call it Success Plan for Iraq), a health care policy, and a suring up of our infrastructure would turn these into HER acomplishments. The next president will need to address the economy by modernizing our energy policy and motivating the country for it. We need to make renewable energy our apollo project and if Hillary is in the Senate she can be the architect. Same goes for health care and Iraq. Hillary can be the Obama pen in the Senate where she changes the law as he engages the nation and builds willpower and consensus.

If Hillary Clinton was chosen as VP then you would lose her as an ally and, frankly, a vote in Senate. I think a rational decision maker would conclude that she could do more good for the nation and exert more influence in that capacity.

Now all that said, I started off with a qualifier about the rules of the game. One of the best things about America is we are nimble and can change the rules of the game very quickly. Vice President Dick Cheney has established a transformative notion of the VP that enhances his role as leader of the Senate. In an official and even legal way he has been able to claim without refute that his office occupies significant authority in both bodies and co-exists in 2 of the 3 co-equal branches of government. This transformative role of the office of the Vice President of the United States will either be dismissed by the next administration or we could see the VP being somewhat of a Prime Minister/President relationship in the not too distant future.

Dick Cheney brought the very first movement to the US, the very first inching along on the slippery slope of transforming the Vice Presidency. No longer a back up in case of the President's incapacitation, he formed energy policy, directed intelligence, and held independent sway in much of the national decision making. If Hillary Clinton would be elected Vice President I think it should come as a surprise to no one if she views this as a co-presidency role. She could very easily build on the Dick Cheney legal precedents set and even challenge to take them further. Oddly enough the conservatives may come to hate Dick Cheney as much as the Liberals do if history anoints him as the one who broke down the limitations of the Vice Presidency and allowed Hillary Clinton to assume that power as the first Prime Mininster in VP's clothing of the United States

I love spending alot of money on the military

2008-03-09T12:04:00.001-07:00

I am sitting here reading about hostages and crap and it just occurred for me, I had an epiphany, I am afraid and I like spending alot of money on the military. Its our most effective form of warfare after all, the US can build more missiles, tanks, and planes then everyone else. And because of this any challengers would have to work twice as hard as us, because we got 2 tanks and they have 1, and they should just NOT fuck with the US. Its kinda kewl being the US and how fortunate it is that we can afford this military dominance financially.

Closer to home I realized the real reason behind why I support having this overpowering military strength. I bought a personal security policy with my 35% taxes to uncle sam and I don't give a shit about world politics as long as I feel as personally safe. I think my support for the military means that if some terrorist crazed jack ass comes after me then, as an american tax payer, I have a reasonable expectation that the calvary will arrive to come get my ass. I mean if I got put on Iranian TV, I would be looking every guard in the friggin eye to find that one dude whose gonna whisper in my ear..., "Sir,I am working with the US, Tuesday we will kill all these people and put a chopper on roof. Sorry for the inconvenience sir, here is a diet coke." Now this scenario may be unrealistic but I don't wanna know how the cavalry works, I just want it to work.

A government that uses our massive military spending correctly, or at least just focused on the correct things, should be able to do whatever it wants in the world. Just having a devoted, mind you I said devoted, army of resources assigned to intelligence gathering and diplomacy should make us unstoppable. Think of this scenario, you are being taken hostage and need to just be whisked away to the nearest friendly embassy. This escape can happen if the US government flips the one guy who has the power to move a prisoner from point A to point B. Like the cops trying to extricate a confession from a murderer you get enough background on the right one guy to find out what pushes his buttons and make it clear you have the power to hurt him. Use this as a bluff before answering all his prayers and offering him everything he could ever want for he and his family. Provide a fortune and freedom in order to purchase his betrayal. The rest is simple.

How could the US save me in this scenario (I hope someones reading this in the govt in case I ever get nabbed!)

Here is an example of one possible scenario, let say I am in a hostage taking crisis. On day one of a crisis you send in 100 or more "diplomatic staff" as the American Diplomatic Team (ADT!) to in person to Country X. This team is like an army of international lawyers so if they caught you with a bag full of heroin you may get the new kid or the b team since you kinda fucked up. This team (the ADT!) should also bring along a squad of support staff that come off to the people of Country X as tradesmen, like cooks and clerks supporting the well suited, celebrity type Ambassadors of ADT. We all start throwing money around playfully on anything that drives the local economy under the guise of free media, local amusement, and curiosity. The cooks will talk to every other cook and eat dinner at his restaurant, etc, and invest, under the guise of cooking stuff and clerks in the people you come across. In no time you will have an information apparatus because throwing money around like donald trump on "The Apprentice" will act as magnet for information. This activity should open up lines of communication to talk to enough people in the country in order to gather intel on your supply chain to freedom and obtain a basic understanding of how things work on the streets of Country X. Ambassadors responsibility would be to pace talks appropriately and make man to man contact with any higher order negotiators until launching the rescue operation with the full backing of the US Military.

So, why can't the US provide a calvary that can effectively guarantee my saftey as a free US citizen? We are already paying for it, all I want say to the national security officials is, hey stop it with the playing the RISK boardgame with the world, lets get serious. Summer break after the cold war is over and now you have to do your jobs again. I love spending money on the army, but I want to get my money's worth.

Actual Letter Written to CBS News

2008-03-09T12:02:00.002-07:00

So with this letter I tried to come across like a little bit of an eccentric nut ball with money and too much time on his hands. The facts aren't necessarily true but the general premise that I think i should be able to get my hands on anything that broadcasts on the airwaves the large media companies lease from the people sure is. If they think I am a nut job who really will sue them over nothing (someone beat McDonalds for hot coffee!) that would awesome and sooooo funny to me.

-----------------------------

I am an over 30 year old who attempts to watch the news every day as if its my civic duty. I have learned that you are struggling to attract a younger demographic to this programing from articles I have read in the new york times. I take serious issue with the fact that the local news plays a million times a day but due to the schedule of an over 30 year old I constantly miss the world news. Your company needs to make your world news available the same way that you do features of your hit shows. CBS news should begin allowing unadulterated access to their news immediately as a matter freedom of information (even though, when you think of it, it is also in your best interest to attract my demographic as a win win).

I think it is unethical of your parent company, Viacom to withhold publicly broadcast information available from your website in its entirety. The airways you lease from the FCC belong to the people and I plan on writing a letter to my district's congressman nancy pelosi, local councilman, and my local senator to demand you make this Data available. Viacom has no right to horde its broadcasts which containin "on record" Data because this affords Viacom too much power to "control the conversation" in politics. The public must be free to scrutinize every moment our president and other foreign officials say. How is it ethical for John Stewart and other brainless comedy shows to obtain your clips and re-broadcast them, yet you do not provide this access to the public from which you lease your air waves?

I would like to see, in months not quarters, a notification that you have made your broadcasts available in some kind of form and in any kind of format. Any access at all would acceptable as I do understand that you will need almost a year to formulate a distribution strategy that it as monetized as possible for you company. I am a republican and fully support industry and capitalism.

I don't care if you email me an obscure link to some obscure site where I can download a fuzzy avi every day as long as I get to make informed decisions on where I stand on issues and who should be elected in the USA. Please provide me a contact to confirm whether I have any legal basis to bring a suit, because even if I am a loon, I could spend only a couple thousand dollars to have a lawyer find the smallest technicality or ambiguous wording and the publicity alone would force you to provide this data. I would prefer to hear from you that you are taking steps to make your world news available instead making this my hobby and paying law clerks to research (though it would be kinda fun to get 15 minutes of fame for under 10k), so please just contact me.

Regards,
Daniel Patriarca
Internet Services Analyst
danielpatriarca@gmail.com

PS. Sorry for the poor grammer and spelling but your form is terribly thin and difficult to use.

Obama’s demise, My thoughts (I hope I am wrong and may very well be)

2008-03-09T12:02:00.001-07:00

(Originally written Wednesday, February 20, 2008)
The patriots lost the superbowl this year (stay with me here) even though they were perhaps the best team in football ever. The way they lost is because there was a huge turning point when they played the philadelphia eagles mid-season and almost lost their first game. The reason this was a turning point is the eagles unlocked the formula for beating them, the chink in their armor, allow moss under 20 yard gains and bring obnoxious pressure on brady, was followed by the giants.

Renewed attention on Obama's cake walk with the media has revealed the big chink in Obama's armor recently and, though he looks numerically unstoppable, that recently discovered attack strategy has time to take root and superdelegates will do their job (they were only created in '82 for the very purpose of confronting a populace woo'ed by style and no substance). We are that chink in the armour. They have not come up with a way to attack Obama because he is arguably the best canidate you can image. But his supporters have a willing suspension of reason that they are willing to be caught up in. When I watch the talking heads on TV I see that the Obama supporters can not answer the question of why they are supporting him beyond the words change and hope. When they come up with anything else they are hard pressed to provide an answer.

If Hill-dog can keep her firewall strong in ohio and texas by exposing this then the tide will quickly change in the "who has the best chance to beat McCain" numbers and there will be an Obama exodus. An effective strategy of putting the face of irrational hippy liberals on Obama supporters and hard working blue collar americans on Hillary supporters can be his demise. Many people just feel that Obama is the right choice and reason be damned. Many of those folks are having trouble making the reasoned arguments and point counterpoints on the national stage as either surrogates or supporters.

That said Obama is outspending Hillary about 2 to 1 on media and organization. Ironically he may be able to use the old strategy of buying the nomination even though he is the good guy. The difference is he has all this money because people like me logged on to Obama.com and donated comfortable amounts, an unprecedented event in modern politics and a revolutionary idea, "you can spend all you want, but your money has to come from the voters, not the special interest."

I love this stuff.

Rabbit's Hole

2008-03-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

The world hides its mysteries in plain site
The greatest momements
stand behind unlocked doors
Sifting and sorting aches
jumping with causality strains.

The greatest risk is activity,
the pitiful death is a surprise.
Will you be with me?
even if I don't care what we do?
Sometimes I just want you to want
me to want to be with you.
Phew... the honesty
I'm not done yet....
I'm not done yet?

Burrowed deep in the rabits hole
leaping legs tend to gain weight
Hindsight jumps to regret
as realization sinks in.
what could have been, can be
and you see now it should be had.
Of course,
now I see.

Guide the masses. Lead us from the darkness.
Draw the blood back towards the feet,
correct the stupidity of standing on my head.
But my sad ass is yet laden.

Oh so much could be seen,
The things that you could do.
A man could do great things with one of those
Wait a minute, I am a man!
But where should I go?

Crystal balls are made of me

2008-03-09T11:57:00.001-07:00

So I have a dirty little secret. I like my dorky job. I like the promise of what can be done with the enormous amount of information that flows around now adays. Data is like a crystal ball and really can be used to make predictions about the future. You need to be good at the art of hypothesizing on behavior and processing it if you want to make magic happen but if you are good at it you can do anything. Things like have your tivo record the shows you actually want and maybe didn't even know about, or the netflix to tell you the right movies to rent, or determine which promotions would really interest you (any one need a free ipod). It just so turns out that databases, excel, powerpoint, and business speak are the raw material to build crystal balls.

So at work all day I get excited because I feel like I spend my time helping people with thier crystal balls or building my own. And gosh darn it, It may be a dork job, but I like my dorky little job.

Liberating speech, one pebble at a time.

2008-03-09T11:56:00.001-07:00

The freedom of speech is in great peril in the United States of America despite it being the most import right needed to maintain a truly free society. It is this right that enables the powerless to confront the powerful, it is the nucleus of the equality designed for us, and it is in great danger of death by drowning.

The power hungry (and bear in mind you can be power hungry and not evil, some of the greatest benevolence has come from Imperialistic forces) have learned that the way to circumvent the difficulties presented in the denial of free speech by "silencing" it is to silence the message by drowning it out. Information flow, the sales pitches floating around, is contributing to the corruption of our system. The fact that it costs money to put together a quality sales pitch makes it cost money to get out information. And add to that America needs to be sold everything from a war to a plan to fix social security. Our country needs to clear the path for well defined messages one pebble at a time. Currently the dynamite to the wall approach is the only one being used in America with huge resources going toward every problem. Think about how much Bush spent on the presentation alone trying to sell the Social Security plan. Now think if a congressman from some po-dunk state with a better idea could have shouted over that and the rest of the pool of opinion, fract (god bless s. colbert), and talking points.

One big problem, the thing that lets dirty people hide the evil and lets selfishness continue is the ability to trust there will be anonomity for your dirty, evil, and selfish deeds. By making it a right that people have free speech that means they are free to shed this light into anyones closet. America is based on the fact that we do have this right. If you know the president cheats on his wife you won't be killed for telling people.
Giving money to a political canidate is using money as free speech but it is time for that notion to evolve into the new era. The original talk show was nothing more then the leveraging of tv to make announcements and the commercials pay for it and therefore sponsor the message. Not too controversial when the message was the Yankees score. Now media is owned by the corporations and the special interests have every right to take over the media which is much more complex, so we need to put a price tag on the making every message a special interest because the lobyists are the dynamite we are performing surgery with now.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a company that puts together just any old sales pitch in order to get your message put forth. It wouldn't be hard to start, just rally together all blogsphere folks and pay them dirt cheap to do the work around a set project plan. Find some of those guys who are good at getting the message out by leveraging a complete media strategy, put a pricetag and time box around "message" and find out who thinks something is worth saying. Once enough people think something needs to be pitched, the pitch is created.

In my vision of etopia people express thier veiws on an issue one penny at a time like a telethon. Once you reach your goal you get your research done and message out. The messengers would be topic agnostic so that you may have impartial representation of both sides. Why can't the same company make a telethon and make a comercial that is pro abortion and one that is anti?

Momentum

2008-03-09T11:54:00.002-07:00

I don't believe in luck. I believe in momentum. Everything from dating women coming in ebbs and flows to the momentum of your career dictates the force of your succeses. I believe that physics is applical in metaphysics and sociology in that the start up velocity of the momementum can be a variable, measurable amount of force applied by the individual. Once this force is applied and momentum is created then things that appear to be luck fall into place because of the way that momentum attracts these succeses.

Luck is the blind mans explanation for why he was too lazy to create momentum.

Lowercase w the war on drugs

2008-03-09T11:54:00.001-07:00

It is sad that we spend so much money trying to fight drugs. The War on Drugs is an absurdity. People use drugs and drugs are a highly renewable resource. How can you fight that?

No, I think that there is a better way to handle the situation and we just haven't pulled our Ace yet, make it complicated. If there is one thing that the business world teaches it is that the more bureaucracy the less that gets done or, perhaps, more gets done but more slowly. The solution is to make drugs legal but to make it a pain in the ass with a lot of forms and lines and lead time to satisfaction. Make it more like paying your taxes or getting your car registered.

In order to dis-incent you really can't play with the price because if you raise the price as a deterent then adicts will just whore themselves out or steal my shit. These are the activities tjat lead the innocent folks getting hurt instead of those who decided to put themselves in harms way getting hurt. The better solution is to make drugs legal and add cost through bureaucracy. No profit for the organization really, but the government runs the shit and makes it such a pain in the ass, maybe hire idiots on purpose to fuck up orders, that you really have to be committed and unashamed. Part of the budget would also get funneled directly into anti-marketing campaigns.

This may sound harsh but think about it, if people want to spend thier existence slowly poisoning themselves to death then we have to let them. How can a species persist where we work to keep the weakest alive? We already have over population and we could never feed everyone if we had to go back to substistence living. Flat out. Some of the people just gotta die. Now they can be innocent folks, cops, and the like suffering or they can be the individuals who want thier poison sooooo much they are willing to wait in their apartment as if the cable guys was on his way. That bastard has got to be determined to hurt himself.

Think about those early stages right when a drug addiction is getting to be a problem. That is when you would be able to use anti-marketing, when you can nipp the thing in the bud. Folks are gonna slip up. And lets remember we aren't even talking about normal folks we are talking about devoted drug adicts here. It may just take John Doe that one job he lost because he took one too many sick days that were actually Heroine holidays until you can get through to him, but you will know who he is cuz you're his dealer.

Another benefit is that by controlling the distribution you can know the quantities that are being distributed to each consumer. You will know who is in what risk category! You can flood thier mailbox with get help brochures. Most importantly you can customize the touchpoint with the customer in such a way that it is the complete opposite of what most businesses are. Most business want to sell shit, most business want to gain more customers, and most businesses have limited resources. We have crazy loot coming in because WE ARE SELLING CRACK! We hope that all of our inventory grows in shelf life. We hope that our weed is all dry and shitty. We want our customers to have to go really out of thier way to get our product. Cokes corprate strategy is to have a beverage within the reach of anybody. Well we want everybody to have to jump through hoopes here at the Crack corp.

Imagine a better war on drugs. A war where the procedes from drugs are the fuel going to fight the drugs. A disease that will slowly consumes itself and where the actual drugs are produced to be the least lethal possible. Wouldn't it be great if there are only half as many things killing you in the drugs themselves(i.e. no bad hit of acid). And most importantly all the folks who get hurt by drugs, though the number will not dip dramatically, will shift more towards those most committed to hurting themselves versus those trying to protect them from themselves. How committed is the average person to self destruction? How committed do you have to be to stop them?

Can't sleep, can't stay awake.

2008-03-09T11:53:00.001-07:00

Trying to stay awake with heavy eyes

The image of a man resting on an edge by his forehead alone flashes across my mind.

How is it he uses nothing but his neck to hold his entire body from falling?
And slowly with his legs and neck how does he manage to fling himself?

He is over the edge and then completes the move by flipping forward with accidental grace.

He places his head on the floor and whips his legs around; visciously.

A quick gust of wind blows him back from his precepice and he holds on to this edge just barely with his forehead.

Eyebrows one by one slipping over the angle.

He can see his feet but no matter how much he desires it, he can not fall.

Asleep at the Wheel, America is Losing

2008-03-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

Has anyone out there noticed that America is losing? We are losing our hegemony due to 3 main mistakes, a populace rife with an unearned sense of entitlement, energy dependence, and ridiculous commitment to continuing with the bureaucracy that led to victory in the cold war. We desperately need a changing of the guard and to prepare our population for the growing pains of a changing world or we are going to become the political equivalent of an Enron type super power whose power evaporates overnight because no one noticed the hot air leaking out of the balloon before it burst.

First and foremost this is not george bush's fault. I am not some tree hugging liberal from San Francisco, though I do live in San Francisco (it's a sweet place you should give it a chance). The blame lies with each and every one of us who wraps themselves in the comfortable "we're #1 blanket" of American mythology and doesn't take the time to evaluate what we are number one at and why we are number one. I love America, I mean I really love America. I also know why, its because it has indoctrinated sharing power between the powerful and the weak that have the ambition to better themselves, it has guaranteed our freedoms by documenting them as the highest law using checks an balances to make sure no institution can overshadow this constitution, and it codifies term limits that force a new perspective into prominence every 8 years or so. These basic ideas have led to our land being the most innovative place in the world and we deserve every bit of that success. Anyone in the world who doesn't like it should have to give back their indoor toilets, computers, light-bulbs, 80's music, air planes, cars, movies, nuclear bombs, ipods, rubber bands, and web pages. But where we are at right now is a country of under informed individuals straining to avoid the true labor of thinking. It's horrifying to ask these people why we are number one and hearing nothing about the present or the future but only empty sound bytes about Russia and ww2. We are at risk because we need to focus on what we need to win in the future and stop harping on the past. I honestly see no value in deriving self actualization from our parent's victories.

The future security of our hegemony, or at least for a peaceful rise of a rival for mutual benefit, (Pepsi is nothing without Coke, McDonalds needs Burger King) depends on energy. Our under informed and civics illiterate populace strains to comprehend that this issue is more then some skinny pot smoking liberal picked last in dodge ball who is whining about the environment all the time. Energy is the responsibility of the school quarterback and the schoolyard bully and we have fallen behind, far behind, the rest of the world on the most important card any country has to play. It has always has been the name of the game since the first cave men raided the tribe next to them cuz they had the fire going, those with energy need to make more, defend what they have, or steal it from someone else. The world is focused on nuclear energy but that's bull. Solar is where it's at. Not because it's clean, but because it is safe, compartmentalized, and has the most potential in terms of lowering the costs and getting more out of it with more research and investment. Every rooftop in America could be a power plant. The sun that demands higher air conditioning costs in the summer can be the very driving force to provide more energy for providing it instead of rolling blackouts.

Energy independence is a multifaceted goal we have completely lost sight of as we try to force feed democracy to the middle east (cuz of their energy). There is potential for propagating a measure of self sufficiency by just focusing on solar though. We can easily safe guard our corporate economy from a major part of it by making sure no other country can turn the lights off. America is more and more an information economy and you don't need oil to manufacture or move information. You just need large server rooms and lots of electricity for pcs, tvs, and cell phones. Yes, this is an oversimplified view but I say put the solar infrastructure in place so that each rooftop is its own power station. Watch how this investment leads to a booming solar industry and how money in that industry will lead to more optimum use. And this will lead to a day when every square foot generates its needed square wattage itself. The grid suffers from scary fault lines that any coordinated terrorist attack could impact, is it so hard to envision Tehran taking down the grid.

The third risk to America and the reason we are at risk of losing everything is that as the bureaucratic heavy weight we have forgotten what its like to be the nimble little guy. We are knuckle up with Iran right now and they can take us down. I truly think that our arrogance and their energy coupled with their understanding that the face of global power has changed gives them the advantage. Sure we can level them with nuclear bombs, but would we? We are so drunk off our victory in the cold war that we are like the sleeping uncle after thanksgiving getting straws stuck up his nose by the kids. If there is one thing that Israel's Lebanon debacle showed us it's that the paradigm has shifted. Our pentagon and our defense department shouldn't forget about traditional warfare but they need to realize that we are a sitting duck until somebody starts thinking outside the box. Remember when we beat England way back when, it was because of the embryonic American expertise at innovation and thinking outside the box. We need fresh ideas and fresh leadership.

America is losing the war on terror, America is challenging its populace to sacrifice their freedom instead of making sacrifices for energy independence, and the world sees our Achilles heel. We need to channel our countries patriotism into an effective strategy to continue as the first and greatest benevolent super power and I believe we can do it. One of the great things about America is our codification of term limits to force new ideas and fresh understanding into power. Its time to remove the grey haired congress and the entrenched presidential candidates. Its time our generation attacks the world stage free of preconceived notions of what worked in the past and surprise the world with a new direction. Let's send flowers to castro, treat Iraq more like Israel 2, and open diplomatic ties with everyone. Lets set a bold energy independence doctrine, demand sacrifice from the populace, and get our marketing message out to the world, America is back and who else would you want be #1?

robots should do my chores

2008-03-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

Its 2006, robots should do my chores

Think about the rich folks who lived all high and mighty back in the day. It was because those people had second class citizens who lived there and did all the crap work. So I think that part of the american dream is that we want to have as few second class citizens as possible and technology has enabled that by producing machines to do the crap work. I think that its time for the next round of technology to do even more of our chores

The microwave can produce a meal from the freezer in about 10 minutes, dishwashers wash dishes in less then an hour, and washing machines wash our clothes. These were all great time savers but living in a bachelor pad there are last mile tasks that nobody ever wants to do and I think there has got to be a way to train a robot to do them. Tasks like empty the trash, unload /load the dishwasher, and put individuals shoes/mail/clothes into segregated areas so that they can put them away at thier leisure.

Now I am not some fancy shmancy robotics engineer but I think there are some out there. I think for at least a few of these things just having a design to make it easier to acomplish these goals could be a huge asset. For example a trash can design that is easier to get the bag in and out of. or a dishwasher where the rack the dishes are washed in just all goes in one quick swoop in the cabinet. Wouldn't that be great. So you people out there, what robots can you think of!