Thursday, November 30, 2006

Who can they blame?

When Pres. Bush first refused to sign on to the KATO agreement the up roar at work was deafening. "See he's nothing but a tool to the rich" or "Big oil men are in charge, screw the poor!" Not being able to ignore the mindless sound bites, I asked them if they could think of any negative consequences if Bush had signed onto the accord. The standard sound bite was, "No cost is to high to save the plant for our children."

I asked if they were willing to loss their jobs, since if I owned a company and was told to spend millions in anti-pollution equipment, I would move to a third world country which was exempt from the standards. The response to this was "Evil, greedy corporations....bastards....." I asked if they thought the poor doing without heat, electricity or other necessities was a cheap price to pay, I got the same response.

So now that a BBC Report says that Europe will be in deep kimpshee with power rates, I guess the environmentalists can tell the poor to suck it up. Unless I'm wrong most energy in Europe is nationally owned or at least government controlled. Now that you can't blame the industrialist, who do you blame?

Friday, November 17, 2006

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Government Agencies Monitoring Blogs for Customer Satisfaction. What Other Reason Could there Be?

FEMA must be very serious about customer satisfaction. The proof is in the pudding. To pass time I look at the hits I’ve had, it takes about 10 seconds to view a weeks worth. One struck me as odd at the end of the IP address it had (FEMA)
Domain Name verizon.net ? (Network)

IP Address 71.252.64.# (FEMA)
ISP Verizon Internet Services
Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)

State : Virginia
City : Round Hill
Lat/Long : 39.135, -77.7718 (Map)

Distance : 282 miles

Language English (United States)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft Win2000
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; InfoPath.1)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Nov 7 2006 5:28:18 pm
Last Page View Nov 7 2006 5:35:44 pm
Visit Length 7 minutes 26 seconds
Page Views 2
Referring URL http://www.blogpulse...e22.x=19&image22.y=8

Search Engine blogpulse.com
Search Words fema

I googled FEMA and the location Round Hill,Va and got this site. So it could be FEMA monitoring Blogs. You can see all the blogs that mention FEMA here.

It’s so nice to know that government agencies are monitoring what Blogs are saying about them. It’s a hell of a customer satisfaction tool.

If I was an Anti-government type I probably wouldn’t be to keen on the idea, but hey, what reason is there not to trust our government with our lives, liberties, and property?

Winning with 18% of the Population Voting for Them

Looking at the sample ballot online, after most state wide positions, the third party candidates mirrored the two parties. It dawned on me, this is like going to McDonalds and finding out you have two choices, a cheeseburger with mustard or a cheeseburger without mustard and being deathly allergic to cheese. (No hamburger just cheeseburger)

I love politics, yet the two major parties actually discourage me, so could this explain why those who don’t even like politics don’t vote? Sixty percent is considered a great turn out. So if 60% percent of registered voters vote and 51 percent vote for the winner, the winner received only (.60x.51=) 30.6 percent of registered voter’s votes. I wonder what percentage of 18 and older citizens are registered. Lets be generous and say 80%, the total percentage of the population the winner would have recieved in votes would have been 24.48%. So now we have less then 25% of the population deciding what’s best for the other 75% (plus minors). I wonder how many of that 24.48% REALLY wanted the winner instead of NOT wanting the other guy. Hmmm, minors lets see, if the average household has 2.1 kids, no lets make it 1.2, that would mean for every two adults there would be about one minor. So since the population is 300 million that would mean 100 million kids give or take, so 30% of the population isn’t even counted in the total. So,.70x.80x.60x.51 = .17136 or 17.14%, less then 18% of the total population is represented. So how can any politician say with a straight face, they have a mandate from the “people” when they only got 18% of the population to vote for them?

The similarities between the two parties bring into question if they really are two parties or just one with slight differences. They both feel government is the solution, that without “Them” we would be helpless. Both throw money at a problem and expect it to fix it. Have you heard either say the problems are the governments making? Look at recent failures, FEMA fails and is rewarded with a higher spot in the pecking order and increased funds. School Districts constantly under perform, and cry that they’re not getting enough funding, so their given more. Not year after year, but decade after decade, yet have you seen any REAL improvement? Could we rename them the left wing and right wing of the socialist party?

Then look at the largest third parties in the state, Independence, Working families, and Conservative. Are they really third parties when all they do is mostly indorse the major party candidates? Would you like your cheeseburger with or without mustard?

We could look at the ballot itself as part of the problem. When the winner gets the top spot and the pecking order is from the top down, new parties have little chance. I knew who I was voting for before I got there, yet I had to look for where they were. A guy with a bad back wouldn’t have been able to bend over that far to pull the levers. Ironic, that by not being able to bend over to vote you get bent over. With the Chinese fire drills that were seen in the past elections like butterfly ballots and hanging chads, one could doubt the intelligence and common sense of voters, with that in mind, why make it harder then it already is to find a “worthy” candidate on the ballot. Isn’t gerrymandering districts enough?

Maybe Jefferson wasn't as bright as I thought and as short sighted as the "Living Document" crowd say. After all he believed democracy was 51% enslaving the other 49%. Is 18% lording over 82% any less, or more for that matter, immoral and evil?

Thursday, November 02, 2006

A Slip or Just a Suppressed Deep Seated Belief

Eye guess ew kould take watt Jon Carry sed moar than one way. Beeing a Former Marine eye no witch way eye took it. Eye giv thees guyz too thumms op.



It is funny though, usually it is the right that says one thing and the masses yell they meant something else. Ironic though, most from the left that I know say this isn't fair and that the Republicans are just using it. Gee, so you want to change the rules now?

Could it be that Kerry, deep down, feels this way about the troops? After all, most slips are from deeply suppressed beliefs, yadda yadda.....