Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock and dodging health insurance companies about getting a plan, you’ve probably heard of the passing of “Obamacare”, the gajillion dollar healthcare plan that increases federal funding to hospitals and doctors for abortions, c0ntrols what vital services people can and can’t have under the public option, and does everything in its power to increase actual insurance company premiums (gee golly, I thought it was supposed to do the opposite). In addition, it makes it downright illegal to *not* have insurance and you can be fined and prosecuted if you don’t.

I’ve railed against this many times on Facebook, so it might be getting old, but the fact is: this is an issue worth fighting for- and the Senate and House Republicans feel the same.

All night long last night, the republicans used every tool in their toolbox to stop and reverse the legislation voted on and approved by 50.3% of the house on Sunday. Eventually, two items were found to be in violation of Senate procedure. Republicans have launched a massive attempt to not only shut down, but amend the bill if the former doesn’t work. They’ve proposed 29 amendments that really don’t have much hope of succeeding, but each takes a really good shot at the legislation and would “unbalance” the legislation. Like it was balanced to begin with…

Now, most of this info is just regurgitated from the cnn.com website, but they had some … interesting …  quotes from Dem legislators. FTA:

“It’s unconscionable,” said [Sen. Carl] Levin, who as chair of the Armed Services Committee was supposed to conduct a hearing with a top U.S. military commander in Korea who had flown in for the hearing. “Our national security cannot be held hostage to disagreements over a health care policy.”

What about meeting with him on your own time? You know… maybe earn that pay raise you suddenly feel yourself deserving.

[Sen Claire] McCaskill had planned an oversight hearing on problems with contracts to train local police departments in Afghanistan. She said the Senate rule that allows the minority party to block committee action was “really dumb” and should be dropped.

“Disagree with us, debate us, vote no,” she said. “But to use a rule to stop us from working — that dog just doesn’t hunt from where I come from. That doesn’t even makes sense. That’s why people in American think we are clueless here.”

The only thing “dumb” about this is your apparent lack of vocabulary, odd idioms, and a disregard for the “rule”s which were put in place for situations exactly like this. If we must suffer under this law, lets make sure it conforms to the rules as all laws should (disregarding the fact that it doesn’t conform to the law, the Constitution).

Carl Levin continues, “It seems to me this is an example of how the obstructionism around here has gotten mindless.” Oh, yes, good sir. This is mindless. Please keep in mind that merely 39% of Americans polled were in favor of Obamacare and 59% opposed in a CNN poll this week (also setting aside the issue of representatives actually representing their constituents instead of the party line seems to be quite a thing of the past). The only mindless people are the 5% polled who have no opinion and the Dems who stop at nothing to make sure this succeeds: letters and phone campaigns, overwhelmingly negative polls, a clear breach of Constitutionality, etc.

With the recent surge in HSA-backed high deductible health care plans, health insurance can be affordable for just about everyone. That, my friends, is real reform- not adding a tax-payer backed insurance company into the mix that seeks to own everyone’s health.

This is a dangerous time, my friends. Know how your representatives voted and remember that in November.

Its strange seeing a good number of people reacting negatively to the NYS Senate’s decision against legalizing gay marriage, but not many people at all reacting favorably, especially considering the ratio was greater than 3:2. Its also surprising given the definite left-leaning tendencies of the state. So what gives? O…ut of touch senators or vastly vocal minority?

Today is Oct. 22nd, marking the official release to the public of Windows 7. I’ve posted before the cheapest ways to obtain it (also, there is a 3-license Family Pack available on Newegg for $149.99)

Today marks a very historic day.. the first highly-lauded Windows release since 2001!

There has, however, been a bit of a snafu. Those of you who purchased and downloaded the copy of 7 from windows741.com may run into a problem about folder permissions upon running the installer. Gathered from here, follow these steps:

1. From within XP/Vista 32-bit, I downloaded the 64-bit version of Win7 Professional upgrade.
2. Used the installer to extract the files, but received above mentioned error.
3. Checked the file size of the folder “extendedSetup” and noticed that it was 3.01 GB.
4. Moved extendedSetup folder to root (C:\)
5. Downloaded this file and placed it into C:\WINDOWS\System32: http://www.sevenforums.com/attachmen…-l-oscdimg.zip
6. Bought up command prompt and typed the following: oscdimg -bC:\expandedSetup\boot\etfsboot.com -h -u2 -m -lWIN_EN_DVD C:\expandedSetup\ C:\7.iso
7. Burned ISO with ImgBurn (freeware)
8. Booted, installed, and activated

I’m trying that as we speak, so I’ll keep you posted as to if it works. Happy Windows 7 day!

EDIT: Command line syntax error.. -1 should have been -l. Its fixed above now

I’ve heard a lot of comments over the past days, about how he amazing he his and how awful he was. Regardless of what you think of his actions in life, it is undeniable that he revolutionized music in many ways. Some of the comments along the lines of “good riddance” and such sadden me.. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t exactly admire the man for the things he died in his personal and public life, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that he was human. He had family, he had loved ones, and in as much as he was a person, his death is a sad event, especially with the question of his eternal state in mind.

Farrah Fawcett has, in my mind, been fairly rudely shoved aside. This women struggled for a while with cancer, yet stayed strong and decided that she would show the struggle involved to the public. It seems that such a remarkable fight and death (which brings to mind qualities of the classic/epic/tragic hero) has been overshadowed and its force lessened.

There was one death that we haven’t heard much about, though. A death that could alter world politics and the course of a nation. A death so tragic and so vivid that I still can’t get the video out of my mind. You’ve probably heard about the election turmoil in Iran- how the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad basically said “Oh hey guys.. Don’t worry about the election. I won.. really I did, and if you protest, I’ll arrest or shoot you.” Talk about Democracy, right? So this Ahmadinejad guy is a pretty rough guy- calling for the destruction of Israel, denying the occurrence of the holocaust, and flaunting his power via threat of nuclear weapons.

So protests have been illegal in Iran in re: the election, but yet thousands still do. Riot police are called and things tend to get out of hand, but protestors have rallied behind a girl named Neda Agha. Sadly, this girl has been dead since Saturday. Caught in traffic due to the protests, she left her car to get some fresh air and within minutes was struck by a bullet from a government sniper. What happened next was shocking and sad, because someone nearby had a camera and recorded from that point on. The video is available on youtube in several places and, due to it being pretty graphic, I won’t embed it- only link to it here.

The government in Iran has gone so far as to make illegal mourning for this poor girl, as mourning in the Iranian culture actually has vengeance-based retaliation times scheduled in its 40-day cycle. President Obama condemned the actions of the Iranian government and now Ahmadinejad has demanded an apology.

Here we are now, on the brink of something possibly devastating… Will democracy prevail and western relations restored with Iran or will we see tensions with a nuclear power increase? As hard as it is to say it, from a nation-building perspective, this is a good place to be. The people are rising up and the structures are in place for a nation to truly become democratic (in its modern interpretation). A regime change could mean many good things for a country that, frankly, scares me.

Sadly this video has embedding disabled, but here’s the next best thing:

Okay, even if evolution, as evolutionists urge, is simply an alteration and adaptation of genetics over time due to stress from the environment, we have to say: we’re done evolving. Also, one may have to deduce backwards-evolution is explicitly as much of a possibility as forward-evolution is. Without stress on our spoiled American lives, diabetes from a sedentary lifestyle seems to be more of a trend than growing eyes on the back of our head or those laser-fingers we’ve always dreamed of having. So if we are ‘done,’ have we really arrived to our most optimal state? It is mainstream idealists who suggest our ‘recent’ descendents in a sort of simplistic, barbaric and animalistic light, though praise our current state of comeuppance as though we’ve taken our place as masters of the universe. Have we really grown über so quickly, especially with a decrease in environmental stress? Humanism is scary; sounds more like Excusism. Even without any greater supposition than an accidental existance, evolution as a theory seems like one of those things that will regardless come to a “well that was dumb” status when looking back through the annals of history and science.

100 Million > 3.5 Trillion

A famous Mark Twain quote my grandmother use to use comes to mind when I think about the recent coverage of President Obama’s budget cut: “Figures don’t lie, liars figure.”  This type of lying using figures always seems to come up when the government starts using really really big numbers. Most recently Obama told his cabinet to reduce their combined budgets by 100 million dollars. The media hailed this as grand fiscal responsibility and told us that Obama had listened to the tax day tea parties and was giving the people what they want. American’s all across the country hear 100 million and think, “holy cow that’s a lot of money.” Truth be told, yes it is a lot of money, but compared to 3.5 trillion it’s chump change. A discerning person will recognize the difference between million and trillion, however, it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing that 100 > 3.5 and they’re both “illions” so this must be a good thing. Realistically this comes down to a lot of zeros and even if I write the numbers out as follows, it still seems like 100 million is a lot.

         100,000,000
3,500,000,000,000

You could take a minute to stop and realize that just one trillion is the same as a million millions and that since 100 millions is a lot smaller than 1 million millions that should give you pause, however even that makes things hard to comprehend. 100 million is 0.0029% of 3.5 trillion, which means that it would be the same as having 29 out of 10,000 of something. Realistically that’s really stinking small. To give you a better idea of scale I was going to put together a picture full of pixels each representing 1/10,000th together but somewhere along the line I got lazy and by now really you should be getting the point. Obama is cutting a minuscule fraction of the budget but making sure that it sounds like it’s a lot.

To put it another way: imagine you make $100,000 per year and in the 2009 year you expect to spend $134,000 (the ratios are analogous to the current government budget situation). You decide you want to be fiscally responsible and cut some spending so you decide not to have your $3 coffee. The thing is, you’re deciding that you don’t want your $3 coffee once, on one day – that’s it. You cut $3 out of a 34 thousand dollar deficit and then tell all your friends you’re being responsible.

General Electric -> NBC/Universal

My post is long enough already but since yesterday was Earth day and you’ve probably been spammed with all kinds of “go green” initiatives on radio, TV, the Internet, and even at work and school. NBC/Universal has been running commercials all week about going green. We’ve been encouraged to recycle, plant trees, use less electricity, and most importantly of all use fluorescent light-bulbs and switch to wind power if we can and so desire. News stories, TV shows, and commercials all say the same thing and NBC and it’s affiliates are pushing all of it stronger and harder than anyone else.

It might be interesting to know who owns NBC. If you don’t already know it’s GE, the company that makes all those fluorescent light-bulbs and wind turbines. The company that has positioned them perfectly in recent months to gain government bailouts, the company pushing cap and trade legislation and the company that stands to make billions (that a thousand millions) if the whole country puts its faith in environmentalism.

Personally I have no problem with you believing in man-made global warming or save the whale campaigns or you want to keep the oceans clean or protect the rain forest. Those are all well and good, but if your company stands to profit in the billions by particular initiatives and then uses a TV station to help spread propaganda I start to get a bit angry at you. I happen to like several shows on NBC but I can’t stand when the characters on those shows have to tell me why I’m evil and destroying the earth. I know they’re not the only TV station to do “public service” commercials for the environment, but they’re really the only one profiting if we follow them and their ideas.

Really though, don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain, I’m sure he’s not manipulating anything at all.

You see the tea parties weren’t about taxes on April 15, 2009. They were about the taxes next year, the year after, and for generations to come. They were about uncontrolled government spending both the stimulus and bailout bills of the present and the proposed spending measures of the future including but certainly not limited to universal health care. The parties were about a federal government that has taken too much power and failed to abide by the 10th Amendment. They were about the hypocrisy of the Republicans and the Democrats and the corruption and lies that permeate both political parties. They protested the media and it’s harlotry with one Party and its failure to report truth on even the simplest issues. These Tea parties, in large, were organized by everyday folk like you and me and were filled with people who are ticked off about their government’s trek towards tyranny no matter who gets in power. The parties were reminding each other that capitalism is the life-blood of our economy and that our president is leading the nation down a path towards socialism.

Our founding fathers saw this coming and they worked hard to create a constitution that would keep our republic squarely between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny. They were so concerned about having an oversized federal government that our first constitution, The Articles of Confederation, so stripped the central government of power that it nearly collapsed altogether. The Constitution as we know it today has been interpreted into oblivion, however, and we have set ourselves in a position opposite of the Articles of Confederation that we risk collapsing on the other side of the pendulum. Thomas Jefferson warned us of the exact position we are currently if we are to “preserve our independence” we would do well to heed his call and return to the principles of this nation’s founding.

“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” — Thomas Jefferson

That being said there is at least a little hope. A similar poll taken at the end of December 2008 showed that “70% of U.S. voters say a free market is better than one managed by the government” with only 15% undecided and 15% suggesting that a government managed economy is better. The question that we must ask is whether or not the discrepancy of these two surveys has to do with a change in mindset or if it has to do with the definition and understand we as a nation have for the words capitalism and socialism. I hope it is the later and that people seem to understand that a ‘hands off’ approach by the government is the best.

I fear that public opinion has simply changed. We have seen little public rage about the president firing the CEO of a private business and yet have seen plenty of rage when a private business decided to honor it’s prearranged contracts. We aren’t just approaching socialism anymore we are embracing it and with it we are embracing the policies of the great socialists of the past: FDR, LBJ, Woodrow Wilson, Vladimir Lenin, Hugo Chavez, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler. While some of these men were not “socialists” by name (although many were), they all share the same basic economic principles and it is these principles that are diametrically opposed to ours. The progressives of the early 20th century hailed Mussolini just the same way the progressives now hail Chavez and Castro. We stand on the edge of a cliff and we can choose to follow the economic failure of some of the worst scum on earth, or we can follow the example in our own country where we have prospered in the free-market and miserably failed when we forsake it. If this poll is any indication, we are moving in the wrong direction.

To prove that not all of my statistics are made up on the spot you can feel free and check out the poll here.

All seems to be working so far, so consider this a test. I really like having a standalone application to do this

Along the same lines of trying out new things: over the past 8 years, we’ve had a president who, regardless of your thoughts on him, must admit that he was at least a courteous and respectful gentleman. You know what this means, of course… CHANGE

Over the past few speeches and conferences that Obama has partaken in, I’ve started noticing a disturbing trend. Watch below and see what I mean:

In case you didn’t catch it, it seems our President has a tendency to insult and poke derisively at the very people he calls out because they don’t bridge the gap over to the left..

Please keep in mind that I don’t disapprove of spunk and strength in the Presidency… All of the men memorialized on Mount Rushmore showed it and deserved their places up there (yes, that includes Roosevelt who pushed for universal health care and insurance towards the later part of his presidency). Being a good president doesn’t rest squarely on “the issues”, but also in the man’s character- his courage, his compassion, and his morality. Sadly, in all four areas, he seems to be lacking.

Last Sunday, HT"’s dad preached at my church. He said very graciously and very accurately how regardless of what we think of him or in what areas he doesn’t perform well, we have an obligation to love this man and his family and to pray for them. I was a bit convicted in that- frankly- I didn’t. I realized I had a bit of a plank in my own eye to get rid of.

So that’s my post, exactly 3 days late.

I figure- what better time than to have another concept contest? Take a gander at the following vid and see if you can guess what our theme is:

Any guesses? What caught my eye/ear was the line “Everything is better with Bluetooth”.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to:

• come up with a design/concept/idea of an item that would be epic if bluetooth was incorporated into it
• concept must fall within normal zomgee contest rules (nothing crude, obscene, blasphemous, etc)
• concept may be presented in text, picture, video, or a combination of any of the
• concept must be submitted via comment to this post no later than 3/31/09
• shortly thereafter, HT, OhYo, and I will review the entries and pick our favorites
• a prize will be awarded to the winner valued between $10 and $15

Rubric

Get to it!

Generally I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve tried to hold off critism of our new president until he actually does something I disapprove of, and when reading his speech over I tried to do the same thing. That was until Obama claimed that he’s “proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks.” Now I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, since I brought this up last week, but the so-called stimulus bill was many things but one thing it wasn’t was earmark free. In fact it was a bill that comprised lots of little Democrat projects they’ve been trying to get passed for at least a decade. This isn’t unexpected, realistically it’s the way Washington does business and while I’d like to see it reformed we all know that both the Republicans and Democrats have been putting earmarks in their bills since 1776. What I can’t accept is the President coming before a joint session of Congress and a large portion of the American people and flat out lying to us.

Remember Nixon, remember Clinton? What didn’t we like about them? It was that they lied to us. With those two former presidents they were lying about somewhat significant things. Clinton lied under oath which is a felony while Nixon lied about a crime he had people commit. The Democrats have been saying for years that George Bush lied about the war in Iraq and while I would disagree with them the point still remains that the American people don’t like liars. You could say, well Obama’s just lying about a silly bill. Sure if you consider a 900 billion dollar stimulus bill to be silly, or if you consider the future of our country’s economy to be a trivial matter then yes I might agree with you, but the fact of the matter is that he is lying about important things too.

It doesn’t simply stop there either. If he lied in this one sentence of a 5,902 word speech where else did he lie in it? Did he lie about saving jobs, or about the significance of his tax cuts? Did he lie about keeping local governments around the country responsible, or about the federal government’s fiscal responsibility? Did he lie about how effective government is at fixing problems, or did he lie about health care costs and risks or about global warming? The list goes on and on and on and this is just one speech. We already know he lied about posting legislation for 5 days prior to a vote and about keeping lobbyists out of his administration so I’m going to go out on a limb and say it: Barack Obama is a liar. That’s right he’s a liar and until he starts proving to me otherwise I’m not likely to trust a word he says. There is a lot of time left to start telling the truth Mr. President, but somehow I doubt we’ll see or hear that anytime soon.

The school that I go to is… odd. Things such as the one-man Karl Marx in modern culture play tend to pop up among the “free-thinkers”. You’ll also find various calls to communism, 57 original flavors of eastern religions, people who walk around in bare feet (yes, bathrooms are frequented by them..), and the largest population of adult males aged 17-24 who don’t shower. Ever.

So I wasn’t exactly surprised when I saw this at school: 

Click for larger

Now, keep in mind that I don’t mean to ostracize anyone in this post. I have several vegan/vegetarian friends who take their eating habits seriously and some of which get sick from eating meat (much in the same way some get sick from dairy).

I am, however, calling out PETA on another load of garbage. I’m going to dissect this flier a little, but first let me direct you to some of their other propoganda.

I’m all for the ethical treatment of animals and even have certain family members that take it upon themselves to go the extra mile and rescue stray and feral cats. Yet even these family members consider PETA to be crazy.

I’ll cite some of the “facts” and quotes mentioned here.

First off, at the top, we see a quote from Paul McCartney about how going Vegan is the single most important thing someone can do. Sorry Sir Paul, but thats fairly low on my list. Saving someone’s life, curing cancer, erasing the national debt, bring character and accountability back into politics are somewhere near the top. I could go on, but you get the point.

Another quote is on the left margin: “(The meat industry) is one of the top two or three [Dan: real precise I see...] most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every scale from local to global.” Really? With all those vaguisms can anything really be gleaned from that? Any citations? Any speciality in the field of agriculture, conservation, forestry, etc? or are we just getting an “in” celeb to help us make our message seem credible. I don’t really value highly the opinion of a man who sings about living on a yellow submarine.

Ok, so on to the “facts” (I should note that even though “reports” and “researchers” are mentioned, no direct citations are given here).

“…the meat industry is responsible for more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined.” So what exactly defines the “meat industry”? I’m guessing everything from the animal feed and the process to create it, animal excrement (I lol at that word), animal breathing (WOW look at all that exhaling those cows are doing!), transport, refrigeration, and consumption, right? A bit of an unfair comparison now that cars have to be like ULHZEV (uber leet haxor zero emissions vehicles) for the EPA to even consider allowing them to exist. Oh and yeah.. global warming is real too right?

“Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times more excrement [Dan: There it is again!] than the entire human population of the U.S.!” (The exclamation mark wasn’t added by me!) So.. cows are bigger than humans, right? And all they do is eat all day. US pop = ~300M. US # of cows alone: ~100M. Do cows poop 3x more than humans? probably. Why does this matter? Oh, wait, and poop is biodegradable too, right? And doesn’t it fertilize soil? Make your homemade tomatos bigger? Make that corn you buy in the summer taller? K.. just wondering.

“More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared for grazing and for growing grain to feed farm animals.” Now.. that grain- does that go to feed humans as well? Does some of that go to fuel our new, shiny ethanol cars? 260M acres is approx 11% of the entire landmass belonging to the U.S., so I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the term “forest” means any sort of land where tree-like vegetation was growing on it as of 1500AD.

“A vegetarian uses only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eater [Dan: Like from Land Before Time!!!] uses more than 4,000.” I absolutely love this statistic, and I can tell you why: Its because we “meat-eaters” take showers every day. You know, that time of day when you wash your hair, clean yourself, make yourself smell better than before… We also wash our clothes too. Also, it seems to me that the world is quite full of water and ways to purify it, so this is just as assinine as saying that since I have big lungs I should be excommunicated for breathing too much air. QQ

The list goes on and on, and, frankly, I’m bored and tired and have a final in a few hours, so I’ll just catch the last one: “Chickens, pigs, turkeys, fish, and cows are intelligent [Dan: SRSly.. I saw a cow solve a Rubiks Cube on youtube], social animals who feel pain, just as humans, dogs, and cats do. More than 27 billion [Dan: WOW thats a lot] animals are mutilated, confined [Dan: Like.. put in a cage?], and killed in horrible ways by the US meat industry every year.” Yes, animals can feel pain. If you flick a cow’s ear, it will moo at you and quite possibly kick you. Yes, they are social- they travel in herds, schools, etc.. but they don’t have PTA meetings, have Friday poker nights, or swim down to a southern state for 8 days of relaxation and gaming. Yes, death is a gruesome thing, but it can be and is done humanely. Animals do not have souls. They don’t have a divine spark or even come close to being on the same level as humans because, frankly, we aren’t animals. All this section does is appeal to the emo side in all of us, and it tends to work.

I don’t hunt. I never have and probably never will. I’m not callous towards the suffering of animals, but lets be realistic here. Humans are designed to eat meat. Those who don’t can have serious problems from a lack of protein. Besides.. meat is yummy.

I don’t know how many of you watch TV on the air with commercials and whether or not you pay attention to a single one of those commercials. I for one hadn’t watched “live” TV for years until I recently bought one and have since seen far more commercials than I’d like to admit. One of the one’s that was spammed at me for a while was McDonald’s and their quarter pounder deal taking place on Feburary 17th. I wish I could find the ad for you but frankly I’m too tired to do more than a basic google/youtube search so I’ll have to summarize. Basically the ad hails the wonders of the quarter pounder and ends by saying: “On February 17th buy one quarter pounder with cheese and get one free for a quarter.”

Prior to yesterday that ad meant only one thing to me, that on Febuary 17th McDonalds was going to lose money on quarter pounders to make money on other things because they were selling you two quarter pounders for just 25 cents. As it turns out McDonalds expects that you believe that the slogan means that if you buy one quarter pounder with cheese for full price you will get the second one for only a quarter. Now maybe I was being neive when I thought they’d basically be giving these away free, but hey Denny’s gave away free Grand Slams a few weeks ago so why not.

The thing that gets me about this, is that they purposely worded the ad so that you would think you get two burgers for 25 cents and they knew that if you didn’t read the fine print and went into the store thinking that, you would probably still buy one because it’s actually still a pretty good deal. I can’t quite say it’s false advertising, because honestly I didn’t read the fine print but what in the world does McDonald’s think free means anyway? Obviously to them free means 25 cents and that strikes me as somewhat odd. Personally I hope people walked out of stores disgusted at the gimmick and didn’t give them any more money. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind McDonald’s doing lots of business, but if they’re going to lie to me they’re not getting mine.