A Trapdoor In The Sun

It's the little things

2011-10-15T08:11:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in a terminal of Detroit International Airport. Terminal; that's a great term for something that you are going to fly out of, right? I am taking an impromptu trip to DC to see Rochelle. This was completely spur of the moment. Sometimes, it's the little unplanned things that make life so wonderful.
While I'm in Virginia, I'll be walking in a CCFA event in Reston, something I really wanted to do ever since I heard about it.I will also meet one of Rochelle's kids, Hannah, for the first time. This is a big thing. JC has been hesitant to allow me to meet the kids. I suppose it's natural jealousy or something to that nature. That's okay. I'm not trying to take his place as a father. I'm only trying to be the rock in Rochelle's life that she needs. It will take time, but we will all get there, I believe.

So now, I need to do some classwork. I'm writing an Op Ed Essay for English 111. A thesis. Ugh. I hate these types of assignments...

Watergate Summer: Steve Jobs Gone....RIP.

2011-10-08T20:43:00.000-05:00

Watergate Summer: Steve Jobs Gone....RIP.

Stay Hungry

2011-10-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

Hearing about the passing of Steve Jobs this week reminded me once again, of how brief our life is here on Spaceship Earth. The sum of our lifetimes are but mere blips in the timeline of the universe. We form from the elements, have a flash of self-awareness, then dissolve back into the dust that we were birthed from to give life to something else. Steve Jobs didn't waste his time here barely existing. He didn't set his life on cruise control and attempt to go along for the ride. He created his own ride. He chose his own journey, and in doing so, impacted the lives of millions around the world. His impact will be recognized in the history books for generations to come. He is legend.

So this led me to wonder if a college dropout like Jobs can reach out for his dreams and grab them, what's stopping me? Why do I feel like the world is conspiring to hold me back sometimes? Really, success is a state of mind... a desire. Jobs once said, "Stay hungry" Perhaps that is the problem... I need to starve myself some more to remember what it is like to be hungry again.

I'm not only talking about financial success or achievement in my career. I need to strive for success in my relationships; with my woman, with my sisters,... my parents and my son. I need to reach out to my friends and be there for them instead of letting myself get wrapped up in my own little world. I'm afraid that I have hurt some that are close to me by forgetting to water the friendship. Somehow I will learn. I will be successful. I will achieve what I want to with what I have left. Failure is not an option.

Sigh

2011-10-03T05:50:00.001-05:00

Woke up alone at 5 A.M. I don't know what I feel... Sadness, anger towards myself, lonely... I don't know why... It's no different than any other morning in Columbus. But I guess it should be different and I'm kinda fucking things up. :(

Fix You

2011-09-28T21:39:00.001-05:00

"Lights will guide you home...and ignite your bones... and I will try... to fix you"

Sometimes in life, I have to take a step back and remind myself that I cannot fix some things in life, as much as I really want to. This is an especially difficult lesson to understand when someone I love greatly is suffering, whether it be physical pain or mental. What makes things worse is that I am 300 miles away from even being able to hug her and tell her that everything is going to be alright. Somehow, I have got to learn to accept that life isn't perfect and I cannot fix this thing about her.... it is part of who she is, like her nose or her little toe. I have to learn to help her cope and give her reassurance that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I know for a fact that she would do the same for me.

Wishlist

2011-09-18T15:51:00.000-05:00

One thing that we have in common as human beings, something that is definitely absent among the ranks of the lower mammalian, is the unique and beautiful ability to dream. I'm not talking about the random (and sometimes scary) visions that roam about our heads at night while we are in that deep R.E.M. state. What I am referring to is the way we can imagine and produce a mental road map or itinerary of what we want to do, see or accomplish in life. Some call it a plan. Some call it their bucket list. I refer to it as my Wishlist.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."-Mohandas Gandhi

As babes, we enter life being asked by the grown ups, what exactly do we wish for. I remember in kindergarten, in between the naps and learning the letters of the alphabet, my teacher asking me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Most of us replied with the grade school standard 'fireman', 'policeman' or 'astronaut'. An enterprising few stated that they would love to be the President or a rock star. I never remember anyone wishing they would become a garbage man, a toll-booth collector or a burger flipper. We were prodded to think big, as if the world was our oyster for the taking.
Growing older, I realized that one can think big, but this world, full of opportunity and promise when we were young, gradually becomes smaller and smaller once we are aware of the finite realities of life. The odds are stacked against us like a game of Jenga in an earthquake. The truth is there can be only so many Presidents, rock stars or astronauts. More likely than not, we will become a cog in the wheels of society. We will hold down "Joe" jobs. We will do boring and predictable things with our precious time here. When we get to Heaven and the bearded guy asks us, "How was the ride?", we will likely respond, "Meh."
This is where I feel we need to hold tightly onto what separates us from the rest of the animals, who go about their existence in the same boring, predictable and mundane manner. A starfish doesn't dream of skydiving or visiting the Eiffel Tower in June. A starfish goes about it's business being a starfish, sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor looking for sustenance.
We can see beyond our lot in life if we only try. Dreams and wishes will always be just dreams and wishes until they are acted upon. My Wishlist has evolved into a multitude of things.

I want to be in a happy, stable and loving relationship for once in my life. (check)
I would love to spend a weekend in Ireland
I want to finish college and obtain my degree
I want to retire with my lover when I'm old and gray, driving around the country in a Winnebago
I want be in shape
I want to do something in my life that makes a difference
I want to learn a new recipe every week
I want to be free of debt

These are some of the wishes in my list. It is an infinite process; a list that I will always be adding to. Some things I have checked off my wishlist. Some I am currently working on. Some, I may never complete. The important thing, though, is that I didn't sit in the water and look for sustenance while the world passed me by. I got up and tried.

2011-09-15T16:19:00.001-05:00

The Twin Demons of Fear and Insecurity

2011-09-11T18:38:00.000-05:00

These two guys have been rearing their ugly heads in my life the last week or so and I've been trying to decide how best to handle them. You see, I believe that I've really battled fear and insecurity since I was young. It's almost as if I expect bad things to happen and I'm trying to mentally prepare for the shock. For instance, when I was 21, I worked myself sick during college. I got so bent out of shape that I couldn't work anymore. I spent almost a month broke and feeling sorry for myself, lying in bed trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I was achy, felt awful, and my head was spacey. I ended up going to the hospital and having a battery of tests ran on me... nothing abnormal being discovered. Finally, I had my sister come pick me up and I spent the next two months recovering at home with my family. That moment seemed like such an utter failure to me. I had to drop out of school. I had to leave my best friends and our awesome apartment that had really become a cell to me. I really felt I had hit a low point in my life... and I was only in my early 20's. It took me quite a while to get back to where I felt healthy and vibrant again.

I do think, though, that the situation left me with insecurity that I've always had a difficult time keeping away. Since that time in my life, I've struggled with having faith in a lot of things, including myself. When my car starts making noise, I assume the engine is simply going to fall out and that I will end up stranded somewhere alone, needing a tow truck and a $2000.00 repair. When I have some random pain in my chest (that I've had off and on for years), I assume that I'm due for a heart attack or stroke. When something bad financially comes along, I assume that I will end up homeless and living in my broke down car.

I need to work on believing in myself. I am an awesome person and a wonderful soul. I know this but I keep forgetting. I wrongly fall back on a time when I was 21 and just couldn't take care of myself. But I have to remember, I am not that person anymore. I was a boy then. I am a man now. I've got the most wonderful beautiful woman who is depending on me to be there for her. It's time to man up and deal with issues as they come. I'm getting better. Slowly.

So Much to Say

2011-09-07T20:02:00.000-05:00

It's Wednesday, September 7th and I'm three days removed from the Pearl Jam weekend. I think post-PJ depression is starting to set in finally. I would gladly take that over the post-Rochelle depression I've been experiencing since watching her walk into security yesterday at Port Columbus.
The weekend itself was quite the experience that it had been billed as. We left in my little Mazda 3 at six in the morning, hell bent for Wisconsin. I hadn't anticipated driving Snowball on this trip, but she was somehow up for the task. Drama ensued as we had to hunt down a mechanic in a small know-nothing town in Indiana to fix random noises that were coming from the engine block. It turned out to be a loose piece of plastic and was fixed quickly with a plastic tie and a few holes drilled into the chassis. Still, it was a very stressful morning for the both of us. The thought of being stranded in Indiana was not a pleasant one, despite the nice things that John Mellencamp says about the little pink houses.
After spending several hours in horribly slow traffic, we managed to crawl through Chicago and ended up checking into our hotel in New Berlin in the afternoon. Rochelle and I spent some alone time together and then sauntered off to pick up our tickets and continue to the pre-party in Lake Geneva to spend a few hours helping out and meeting fellow Jammers.
Saturday, we spent some much needed rest time doing absolutely nothing. We were fascinated by the automatic pancake machine at the hotel's breakfast bar. They also had the most amazing Cinnamon rolls. Ro and I spent some time in the jacuzzi, had a great jammer get together and BBQ at a friends rental house, and then got ready to see the show. The weather conditions were awful. It rained during most of the sets, although it dried out a little bit during PJ's set. We were up above the 10 Club lawn in the fan club tent. It was nice and relaxing, since we weren't going to have a good view of the stage anyway. The band played a great set, culminating in the much anticipated Temple of the Dog reunion. Cornell sounded amazing. I was truly impressed, but at the end of the night, too tired to fully appreciate it.
We skipped town during the closer and made it out of the venue way before most of our friends. There's something about a clean, freshly made bed.... so inviting.
Day two started a bit earlier. We made it back to the venue to see some of the side acts play and take some pictures. There was an excellent PJ museum with tons of memorabilia from the band's 20 year career. It was quite worth the two plus hour line. Later we found our seats in the pavilion. They weren't front row center but still we had an excellent view of the stage on Mike's side.
The band opened with Wash. I've never liked Wash too much as an opener myself. If I were to pick something slow to open with, I would chose Release or perhaps Sometimes. But I suppose we all have our preferences, right? The band rolled through a slew of hits before playing some more obscure numbers like Pilate and Leatherman. They brought back the "It's Okay" tag from Jones Beach 2000. I've always loved that tag... it's so encouraging and hopeful. I also was very happy to hear Unthought Known for the first time. I've loved that song since the moment I heard it. It is truly my favorite PJ song.
For me though, the highlight of the evening was after the set break, when Ed sauntered out and downed a bottle of wine. He stated how amazing it was to see fans from all over the world that had come to see them. He seemed very humbled and honored.

"It doesn't make us feel older at all. It almost gives us a sense of being reborn. It's something else. It feels like a new beginning."

Ed went on to play what was truly the highlight of the weekend for me, an improved song about how beautiful our lives can be if we stick around to experience it.

I love this song. I love the lyrics. I love the emotions of it. I kept thinking of Rochelle while he played it. I thought about the difficulties we had went through in our lives and the struggles we had both experienced individually that, for me anyway, sometimes seemed insurmountable. I was overwhelmed with the sense humility and thankfulness. I felt that while life can sometimes drag you over the coals, it's somehow truly worth it to get to "the good stuff". I was so happy to know that WE had made it, we made it to when it all got good.

I'll just say the rest of the show was fantastic and the night was truly epic in every sense of the word. Hopefully they will be throwing this shindig again next year and we'll have to make another road trip out of it.

After a long drive home, we spent our final evening together. It was wonderful, but sad all the same. When she leaves, I feel as though my arm was missing. I can still feel it, but I see it's not there. She has brought back into my life a sense of happiness and wonder that I haven't experienced in a long time. It's an amazing feeling to be able to give someone 100% of yourself and get that back in spades. Simply amazing. I can't hardly wait to see her again.

Driving through Chi-Town

2011-09-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

So glad we made it, till' when it all got good. =)

2011-09-06T13:41:00.000-05:00

I'm back at work today after an exhausting and extemely out-of-this-world weekend. I will be updating Trapdoor tonight with a full account of the PJ20 weekend. Peace and love.

Drew

Twenty twenty twenty four hours to go...

2011-08-31T15:39:00.000-05:00

...and Rochelle wants to be sedated. No, seriously. She is taking some Xanex prior to her flight to Columbus. The poor girl has not been on an airplane for more than a decade and seems to be petrified at the thought of flying. I wish I make her understand what a non-issue flying really is. It's the safest form of transportation we have!
It's a short trip, though, and I'm sure she will be fine. I cannot wait to meet her at the gate and feel her in my arms once again. It's going to be a beautiful start for an awesome weekend.

One More Day

2011-08-30T12:42:00.000-05:00

PJ20 is set to be the party of the year in the heartland of America.

One more day of work that is, although technically speaking, I have a day and a half left. The afternoon is dragging horribly. You see, typically, I've gotten used to carrying on a nice little email back and forth with Rochelle during work hours. This helps the day go by and keeps me in contact with her as we cannot talk, chat or be physically together. Unfortunately, she had a horrible time getting to sleep last night. I know what that's like as I've dealt with that many times. The following day is almost always unbearable. So, Ro took off around noon and went home to sleep. I'm a tad lonely without her cheery banter, but I know it's good for her to nap. We both know what a long weekend lies ahead.
Speaking of the weekend, let me elaborate.
If there is one thing that brought the two of us together it would be Pearl Jam. I've been a fan for almost 20 years and Ro has loved them all of her adult life as well. It was through the world of social media that we ran into each other on Facebook. Our relationship took root and began to bloom. Finally, we both feel complete.
See, Rochelle is flying out to Columbus on Thursday morning. We will spend the day together before tackling an eight hour trek to Alpine Valley, Wisconsin, where we will spend Saturday and Sunday watching the band who brought us together perform. The weekend is going to be filled with music, parties, food, friends we've never met, passion, alcohol and basically awesomeness in general. We will be coming home Monday for a BBQ at my friend Mike's house..and then Tuesday we will have to say our goodbyes. Although I am a little weary of letting her go, I know that we will see each other sooner rather than later. Upon returning I will begin to make my strides to move to Virginia and leave Columbus behind. It is there, with her, that I want to be.

If nothing is everything, I'll have it all

2011-08-30T12:22:00.001-05:00

Time to Redecorate

2011-08-29T22:23:00.001-05:00

Back in the blogging glory years of the mid-2000's this was a lively, vibrant blog. I used this to bare my soul and flush all the shit out of my head that was sloshing around up there. I thought of it as Ex-Lax for the soul. With the social media advent of MySpace, and more recently FaceBook, this little blog was abandoned, although I get random comments from time to time about posts I remember very little of. It seems kind of sad when I think of these people visiting my vacant blog.
I've decided to come back. For a while anyway. I need to clean things up. I need to vacuum and dust, maybe move some furniture around and let my fung shui flow.
I've decided to write about a journey that I am taking soon. This journey I speak of will be the most important trek of my relatively young 40 years. While it is, in fact, a physical move; that is a change in latitude; it is also dependent entirely on a sea change in my attitude. Thankfully, I have already made strides to turn the tide.
In April of this year, I met someone who completely turned my universe inside out. It started off innocently enough, just a chat or an email on Facebook. Our relationship grew like a bright yellow sunflower. We thrived on each other's presense, laughed at each other's cornyness, and lusted after each other's flesh. I have never in my life experienced true love on so many different levels. She fullfills the spiritual, physical and emotional gaps that have plagued me most of my adult life. And as it would seem, I satisfy her needs, wants and desires as well. We are like two pieces of a puzzle, lost for years, but finally matched up together. We fit perfectly. So perfect it is scary.
In August, we met in person for the first time. It seems like a dream when I think about it. Those four days would define my life's path from that point on.
That path leads to her. At this point in my life, I am focused on being with her permenantly. I had the idea to use this blog as a daily motivator; to give me direction during the times when I feel that I am not accomplishing what I've set out for. More importantly, I want to look back at this, maybe a year from now, and read what steps I took to make such huge changes in my life, and to appreciate what and who I did it for.
Consider this day one of the quest.

Pearl Jam - Unthought Known

2011-06-20T15:58:00.000-05:00

Video I put together for Unthought Known off of the Pearl Jam album Backspacer. Basic synopsis is the story of a homeless guy who learns to conduct the world around him.

Goodbye Office Space: The Shrinking American Cubicle

2011-02-08T12:32:00.000-05:00

(CNN) -- If you feel like your cubicle walls are closing in around you, you may be right.

A combination of the troubled economy and the influx of mobile technology is changing the workplace landscape. Literally.
Companies across the country are shrinking those boxed-in work areas or scrapping the notion of the once-ubiquitous cubicles altogether.
At tech-giant Intel, employees who used to work in a 72-square-foot space now work in a cozier 48-square-foot station, company officials say.
"Everyone used to get a cube, but that doesn't work for the way people actually do their work today," said Neil Tunmore, director of corporate services at Intel, who spearheaded the corporate redesign that began in 2007.
In 1994, the average office worker had 90 square feet of office space, but the area had been whittled down to 75 square feet in 2010, according to the International Facility Management Association, a professional network for the facility management industry.
Space for senior office workers shrunk, too, from 115 square feet in 1994 to 96 square feet in 2010.
But not to worry, that corner office keeps growing. During this same time, space for executive management actually increased.
Open-space seating found at companies such as Facebook are becoming a popular "team-oriented" model in the past 10 years, she says.
"In recent years, we've seen how companies are trying to shed real estate cost," says Shari Epstein, director of research at the IFMA. "When you have less space to work, you will try to cram as many people into one space."
The word "cubicle," which emerged in the 15th century, is derived from the Latin word for bedroom. But the office partitions to which most white-collars workers are accustomed were introduced in the late 1960s. At the time, Robert Propst with Herman Miller Inc. of Michigan pioneered the idea of a more efficient open-office model called "Action Office," which became known as the cubicle.
Cubicles became attractive because they were a functional way to give workers an office without relying on heavy construction, says Lisa Bottom, a design director at Gensler.
Over the years, cubicles have been mocked in popular culture such as the Dilbert comics and the movie "Office Space."
"The panels made it so you could move it around," Bottom said. "It made it the job of the facility manager easier; it had little to do with making the worker's life easier."
Several of the companies that have opted to reduce their cubicle sizes say their reasoning goes beyond simply boosting the bottom line.
With flat screens replacing clunky monitors and the growing popularity of wireless products, such as such as laptops, iPads and BlackBerries, some managers say cubicles no longer make sense for workers who don't need to be tethered to their desks. And employees in the younger, more tech-savvy generation embrace the idea of working remotely and from different spots in the office.
Smaller office spaces come with environmental perks. Less space reduces the carbon footprint, workplace and design experts say.
In response to the shrinking workspace, sales of new lines of slimmer, lighter, eco-friendly furniture that often serve dual purposes have increased, says John Michael, general manager for business interiors at Staples, a leading office furniture seller.
Cubicle furniture made of lighter materials and featuring lower walls are in high demand, according to Staples.For example, filing cabinets with plush tops that transform into seats and thinner cubicle panels have been in higher demand over the past five years, he says.
Intel officials say when the cubicle downsizing began in four years ago, they eliminated extra furniture and waste. On one office floor, the company disposed of nearly 10 tons of paper, says Tunmore at Intel.
To accommodate a smaller square footage, furniture companies are designing multipurpose pieces.Intel has created more conference and meeting rooms where employees can collaborate. Intel is also going wireless. About 30% of their employees in the renovated space don't have assigned cubicles, officials say.
Instead, sales people and laptop users can grab chairs at kidney-shaped desks where they can boot up remotely.
So how are employees adjusting to less work space?
Martha Johnson, administrator of the General Services Administration, says the government has improved its efficiency by overhauling the large, clunky outdated cubicles spaces for the past few decades. GSA is a federal organization that rents out office space to government agencies.
Many employees don't mind the smaller work spaces, Johnson says. She added that 30% to 50% of work space typically isn't used because of meetings or travel.
"It's not about making it smaller," Johnson says. "It's about making it more flexible. People don't all want their own space."
But Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Business School, says working in such close quarters may bother some employees who need more privacy or feel crowded.
After all, he says, employees spend almost half their day at work.
"Cubicles, and often times many of these cubicle farms, don't have very good acoustics, and so you are hearing other people and getting distracted," Pfeffer said.
There is also the belief, particularly among baby boomers, that cubicles are a status indicator: More space equates to more power, workplace design experts say.
Though it tends to be rarer case, some companies are taking the opposite approach to shaving off cubicle work spaces.
For two years in a row, Fortune magazine has named SAS, a business intelligence software company in North Carolina, the No. 1 place to work. Company officials say they give almost all their employees private offices, which they say cotnributes to their success.
"We do value an employee not just as a commodity," says Jim Davis, senior marketing officer. "But as an asset."

All Those Yesterdays...

2010-12-05T21:37:00.000-05:00

The Ridiculous War on Drugs

2010-11-27T21:45:00.002-05:00

Willie Nelson Busted for 6oz of Weed

And the ridiculous "war on drugs" marches on. We waste billions of dollars on drug enforcement every year so the government can keep an eye on what it's citizens put in their bodies. The majority of inmates in the prison system are incarcerated for drug related convictions and we spend even more tax money keeping them there. It seems to me that the money would be better spent on treatment programs and education.

Let's face the facts here. Marijuana is not nearly as potent as alcohol, nor as damaging. Yet, alcohol is completely legal and socially acceptable. But really that's beside the point. Why should our government have ANY right to determine what is legal or illegal to consume? I would extend that to any "controlled substance". If I'm an idiot and want to drink gasoline, I should be able to do that.

Ideological Drift

2010-11-18T13:21:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading a blog my sister wrote regarding family and politics. She brings up some very valid points. Clicky on the above link.

A Note on the Midterms: History Always Repeats

2010-11-07T17:28:00.001-05:00

I think this is very telling when it comes to American politics. In 1982, Americans were angry and upset over the economy and voted their anger. The result was a wave of Democrats being voted into the House, and an impatient voting populace sent a message to Ronald Reagan: Fix the economy and do it quickly.
To put thin...gs in perspective, Reagan swept up after the Carter recession. Clinton swept up the Bush 1 recession. Obama, to his credit, is trying to fix the Bush 2 recession. What I don't think people realize is that our economic system is like Jenga. Crashes are quick and immense, but rebuilding and growing the economy takes much more time, effort and focus.
It will be interesting to see over the next two years what history holds for Obama and how he will work with the Congress.

2010-11-03T15:39:00.000-05:00

My mini-Me is a Freshman in marching band this year. I'm so happy that he has found something that he really loves to do. Just like me!

2010-11-03T15:36:00.000-05:00

Esther the Wise. I miss having cats. This one belongs to the 'rents.

Christine O'Donnell's 90's MTV Anti-Masturbation Campaign

2010-09-18T18:04:00.000-05:00

[ Download ]
Every time I touch myself, I think of you, Christine.

Ron Paul Vs. the Sunshine Patriots

2010-08-24T00:30:00.000-05:00

Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?
It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are “fiddling while the economy burns.”
The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.
Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”
Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?
In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.
They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.
The claim is that we are in the Middle East to protect our liberties is misleading. To continue this charade, millions of Muslims are indicted and we are obligated to rescue them from their religious and political leaders. And, we’re supposed to believe that abusing our liberties here at home and pursuing unconstitutional wars overseas will solve our problems.
The nineteen suicide bombers didn’t come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. Fifteen came from our ally Saudi Arabia, a country that harbors strong American resentment, yet we invade and occupy Iraq where no al Qaeda existed prior to 9/11.
Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don’t want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be “sensitive” and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.
This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible.
There is no doubt that a small portion of radical, angry Islamists do want to kill us but the question remains, what exactly motivates this hatred?
If Islam is further discredited by making the building of the mosque the issue, then the false justification for our wars in the Middle East will continue to be acceptable.
The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer.
Conservatives are once again, unfortunately, failing to defend private property rights, a policy we claim to cherish. In addition conservatives missed a chance to challenge the hypocrisy of the left which now claims they defend property rights of Muslims, yet rarely if ever, the property rights of American private businesses.
Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam–the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.
It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty.
The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservatives’ aggressive wars.
The House Speaker is now treading on a slippery slope by demanding a Congressional investigation to find out just who is funding the mosque—a bold rejection of property rights, 1st Amendment rights, and the Rule of Law—in order to look tough against Islam.
This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.
We now have an epidemic of “sunshine patriots” on both the right and the left who are all for freedom, as long as there’s no controversy and nobody is offended.
Political demagoguery rules when truth and liberty are ignored.

Even a blind squirrel sometimes gets a nut.

The Mosque somewhat vaguely near Ground Zero

2010-08-24T00:24:00.000-05:00

Once again, Islamophobia raises it's ugly head. I bet you if a Catholic Church petitioned to build a 'community center' across the street from ground zero, not one person would raise their hand in protest. In fact, the center would likely be funded by some Faith Based initiative (which is conserva-speak for religious welfare). But when a Muslim group decides they want to build a community center two and a half city blocks away from ground zero, the Right Wing Jezus-Zombies start coming out of the wood work, citing one non-factual claim after another to incite fear among the population. So much so that these morons have began protesting mosques being built all over the country.
Now, I can see if this Park 51 was built ON ground zero, how that could be a problem. But it isn't. It's two blocks away.
But at the core we see what a double standard these idiots subscribe to. On one hand, they go on about the Constitution and Freedom of Religion. They constantly decry the so called Separation of Church and State, the 10 Commandments being moved out of courthouses, the term "God" being removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. But of course, this issue has brought out the truth. Their words are tainted with the stains of hypocrisy. I've heard a few Conservatards state that since the majority of the U.S. population opposes the mosque being built, that it should not be allowed to happen. Since when did we become subject to mob rule? As I understood it, America is a "Democratic Republic". Does Freedom of Religion only apply to Christians, Mormons and Jews?

What more, had the 19 hijackers been Catholics, or Atheists, or Jewish... would we be having this discussion at all? When Tim McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building, did we lash out at the Christians, as McVeigh admittedly had been? When Jim Jones was able to murder and induce suicide upon 900 followers, did we go back and blame the Methodists who gave that Svengali his religious teaching?

19 brainwashed Muslim men, most of whom were from our ally, Saudi Arabia, followed their own wild eyed Svengali, and unleashed the worst loss of life on American soil in a century. Yet we have tried and convicted the entire U.S. Muslim population for their crimes, through disinformation, knee-jerk reaction ism, and straight up lies.
Muslim. It's the new "Nigger".

Phrase of the Day: Coffee Vomit

2010-08-16T15:19:00.000-05:00

Coffee Vomit is when you get a nice steaming cup of to-go Joe topped by one of those plastic lids with one singular uncovered hole on the top, only to have coffee suddenly shoot out of the opening like a gusher from a whale blowhole. Usually it's your freshly clean dress shirt and tie that suffers the most, aside from 3rd degree burns on your cup holding hand.

Chris Matthews gets pwned by Ted Olson on Gay Marriage

2010-08-10T08:40:00.000-05:00

If you've never heard of Ted Olson, he's the attorney that successfully argued Bush V Gore in 2000. Although he is known to be a staunch conservative, he was the attorney behind the repealing of Prop 8 in California last week. In this interview on Fox, Olson schools Chris Wallace on the 14th Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and what truly defines the overused phrase, "judicial activism".

Where is the right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution?" asked Wallace.

"Where is the right to interracial marriage in the Constitution, Chris?" replied Olson.

"The Supreme Court has looked at marriage and has said that the right to marry is a fundamental right for all citizens. So you call it interracial marriage and then you could prohibit it, no? The Supreme Court said no. The same thing here," explained Olson.

"The judge after hearing three weeks of testimony and full day of closing arguments and listening to experts from all over the world concluded that the denial of the right to marry to these individuals in California hurt them and did not advance the cause of opposite sex marriage," Olson continued.

"This is what judges are expected to do. It's not judicial activism. It's judicial responsibility in the classic sense."

Freedom of Religion (Christians and Jews only)

2010-08-08T17:42:00.000-05:00

Ah... I love the Constitutionally enforced freedom of religion in this country... unless your religion is Islam. Then you are a filthy terrorist. Seriously, what kook kool-aid do these people drink?

While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.

Mosque Plan Clears Hurdle in New York (August 4, 2010)
Planned Sign of Tolerance Bringing Division Instead (July 14, 2010)
Times Topic: Cordoba Center (Ground Zero Mosque)

Enlarge This Image

Christopher Berkey/Associated Press

In Murfreesboro, Tenn., arguments broke out over a planned Muslim center.

In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.

In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.

In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.

At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.

In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.

These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.

“What’s different is the heat, the volume, the level of hostility,” said Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky. “It’s one thing to oppose a mosque because traffic might increase, but it’s different when you say these mosques are going to be nurturing terrorist bombers, that Islam is invading, that civilization is being undermined by Muslims.”

Feeding the resistance is a growing cottage industry of authors and bloggers — some of them former Muslims — who are invited to speak at rallies, sell their books and testify in churches. Their message is that Islam is inherently violent and incompatible with America.

But they have not gone unanswered. In each community, interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members of other faiths have defended the mosques. Often, they have been slower to organize than the mosque opponents, but their numbers have usually been larger.

The mosque proposed for the site near ground zero in Lower Manhattan cleared a final hurdle last week before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and MayorMichael R. Bloomberg hailed the decision with a forceful speech on religious liberty. While an array of religious groups supported the project, opponents included the Anti-Defamation League, an influential Jewish group, and prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.

A smaller controversy is occurring in Temecula, about 60 miles north of San Diego, involving a typical stew of religion, politics and anti-immigrant sentiment. A Muslim community has been there for about 12 years and expanded to 150 families who have outgrown their makeshift worship space in a warehouse, said Mahmoud Harmoush, the imam, a lecturer at California State University, San Bernardino. The group wants to build a 25,000-square-foot center, with space for classrooms and a playground, on a lot it bought in 2000.

Mr. Harmoush said the Muslim families had contributed to the local food bank, sent truckloads of supplies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and participated in music nights and Thanksgiving events with the local interfaith council.

“We do all these activities and nobody notices,” he said. “Now that we have to build our center, everybody jumps to make it an issue.”

Recently, a small group of activists became alarmed about the mosque. Diana Serafin, a grandmother who lost her job in tech support this year, said she reached out to others she knew from attending Tea Party events and anti-immigration rallies. She said they read books by critics of Islam, including former Muslims like Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan and Manoucher Bakh. She also attended a meeting of the local chapter of ACT! for America, a Florida-based group that says its purpose is to defend Western civilization against Islam.

“As a mother and a grandmother, I worry,” Ms. Serafin said. “I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that.”

“I do believe everybody has a right to freedom of religion,” she said. “But Islam is not about a religion. It’s a political government, and it’s 100 percent against our Constitution.”

Ms. Serafin was among an estimated 20 to 30 people who turned out to protest the mosque, including some who intentionally took dogs to offend those Muslims who consider dogs to be ritually unclean. But they were outnumbered by at least 75 supporters. The City of Temecula recently postponed a hearing on whether to grant the mosque a permit.

Larry Slusser, a Mormon and the secretary of the Interfaith Council of Murietta and Temecula, went to the protest to support the Muslim group. “I know them,” he said. “They’re good people. They have no ill intent. They’re good Americans. They are leaders in their professions.”

Of the protesters, he said, “they have fear because they don’t know them.”

Religious freedom is also at stake, Mr. Slusser said, adding, “They’re Americans, they deserve to have a place to worship just like everybody else.”

There are about 1,900 mosques in the United States, which run the gamut from makeshift prayer rooms in storefronts and houses to large buildings with adjoining community centers, according to a preliminary survey by Mr. Bagby, who conducted a mosque study 10 years ago and is now undertaking another.

A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.

Radicalization of alienated Muslim youths is a real threat, Mr. Bagby said. “But the youth we worry about,” he said, “are not the youth that come to the mosque.”

In central Tennessee, the mosque in Murfreesboro is the third one in the last year to encounter resistance. It became a political issue when Republican candidates for governor and Congress declared their opposition. (They were defeated in primary elections on Thursday.)

A group called Former Muslims United put up a billboard saying “Stop the Murfreesboro Mosque.” The group’s president is Nonie Darwish, also the founder of Arabs for Israel, who spoke against Islam in Murfreesboro at a fund-raising dinner for Christians United for Israel, an evangelical organization led by the Rev. John Hagee.

“A mosque is not just a place for worship,” Ms. Darwish said in an interview. “It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.”

Camie Ayash, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, lamented that people were listening to what she called “total disinformation” on Islam.

She said her group was stunned when what began as one person raising zoning questions about the new mosque evolved into mass protests with marchers waving signs about Shariah.

“A lot of Muslims came to the U.S. because they respect the Constitution,” she said. “There’s no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law. If there were, Muslims wouldn’t be living here.”

In Wisconsin, the conflict over the mosque was settled when the Town Executive Council voted unanimously to give the Islamic Society of Sheboygan a permit to use the former health food store as a prayer space.

Dr. Mansoor Mirza, the physician who owns the property, said he was trying to take the long view of the controversy.

“Every new group coming to this country — Jews, Catholics, Irish, Germans, Japanese — has gone through this,” Dr. Mirza said. “Now I think it’s our turn to pay the price, and eventually we will be coming out of this, too.”

Life Up Till Now

2010-08-07T22:27:00.000-05:00

I really haven't visited Blogger much in the past few years or so. I think MySpace took over and now Facebook seems to be the place to be. For a while I was blogging at a nice little site called Multiply, but I have since moved on from there.
I'm still living in Central Ohio... in beautiful Grandview Heights. We're located about 2 miles out of Columbus' downtown area. I'm currently sharing a very spacious townhome with another room mate, Ben. It's a fairly cooperative living situation, as he spends much of the year away from home, working sound on cruise ships and as a music teacher at a Jewish summer camp in rural PA. Thus, I get the place to myself for the most part.
I am again working for Chase Bank in mortgage servicing. As an account supervisor, I work with heated borrowers to resolve escalated issues and serve as a team lead for my department. It's been quite the learning experience, but I definitely have a front row seat to the issues that have been going on in the mortgage industry. It can be very heartbreaking sometimes but rewarding all the same. Plus, the pay is quite nice.
Other than that, not much going on in my life. I have dated here and there but not settled down for another long term relationship after Jennifer and I split up. I figure I am meant to be single for a reason.
That's it for now. Peace out.

Eddie Vedder Can't Keep

2010-08-07T21:33:00.001-05:00

I want to shake... I want to wind down...
I want to leave... this mind and shout

I've lived all this life like an ocean in disguise...
I won't live forever... you can't keep me here.

Paul Hawkens Commencement Address for 2009

2010-04-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

by Paul Hawken

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food-but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint.

And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.

The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity.

Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers,and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But forthe first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss.

The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Healthcare Revisted

2010-04-11T20:08:00.001-05:00

I'm going on the record as of now and stating implicitly that I do not support the health care bill as it was passed by Congress and signed in by the Obama Administration. Do I believe that health care is important and a necessary security blanket for all individuals? Absolutely! However, what was passed in DC is so far removed from the original concept of a single-payer system that, in my opinion, it is nothing more than a give away to the Insurance Industry and Big Pharma. So what if they have to drop their pre-existing conditions clause? Insurers don't care because THEY HAVE MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF NEW PEOPLE ENROLLED! And for those who can't afford their premiums, Uncle Sam will subsidize them and pay for them with borrowed money.

Quite frankly, I find it disgusting and I feel betrayed. We voted for change, but it seems that Obama is picking up the baton of corporatism dropped by Bush Jr. and sprinting for that finish line. Along with the recent SCOTUS decision to give corporations the same free speech and political spending allowances granted to individuals, it makes one wonder how longer we will remain a "democracy" (or constitutional republic as conservatives seem to claim) and when we will fully embrace the coming plutocracy.

Passenger Seat

2009-12-19T22:01:00.002-05:00

I was listening to this earlier on my iPhone. I really, truly, love this song. I can't put it into words. It's very simple and childlike. When I listen to the words, I fall back to a simpler time as a kid growing up in Florida. We would take these trips to Walt Disney World every couple of years for our vacation. I remember the long drive back home, late at night, after a long day in the Magic Kingdom. My sister Jennifer and I would lay down in the back of the parent's AMC station wagon and watch the starry night sky through the back window. I remember how good the cool summer breeze felt coming through the cracked windows. I recall falling asleep on the long drive home, trying to pick out Orion and the Big Dipper from a black-blue sky full of gems and rhinestones. I miss those days. I miss not having to worry about bills or making it to work on time. Everything seemed perfect.

I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

Then looking upwards
I strain my eyes and try
To tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

"do they collide?"
I ask and you smile.
With my feet on the dash
The world doesn't matter.

When you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride
When you need directions then i'll be the guide
For all time.
For all time.

The Fragile

2009-09-21T13:13:00.003-05:00

Well, today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Trent Reznor's "The Fragile". This double album was way ahead of it's time sonically, although so was The Downward Spiral. What sets The Fragile apart is the composition of the songs. They are more detailed and intricate than anything on The Downward Spiral. There are moments of beauty, such as La Mer, well you can tell that the sun is peaking out from the dark places in Trent's soul. And of course, there are the angry screamers like No You Don't and Starfuckers, Inc that definitely reflect Trents aggro writing style. Overall, though. This was a really decent record, and one of the best prior to the Orwellian stuff he has gotten into lately with Year Zero. Trust me, Trent. We've already got Muse covering that. Leave it alone and go back to what you do best.

Pearl Jam - The Fixer: A personal interputation

2009-09-20T20:33:00.004-05:00

I picked up the new Pearl Jam album, Backspacer, over the weekend. I have to admit I was a little bit worried that I may not be able to enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Not because I expected a lesser effort from the band than they put out with their self-titled album, but because I've been on a Pearl Jam moratorium for a few years now. Pearl Jam was the one band that I shared with an ex I had dated for six years. We were both enthusiastic Jammers, attending some 13 shows around the country between 2000 and 2006. We went through a pretty brutal break up during the bands last tour. I guess I was worried that I would associate the new material with those memories and it would sap the enjoyment out of it.
The good news is that the whole album seems fresh to me and I don't feel even a twinge of emotional heartache when listening to it. By far, the earworm on the album is a rocker called "The Fixer". My take on the song is somewhat personal.
As men, it seems like we spend our entire lives attempting to fix things that are broken, like cars, computers, the right leg to the kitchen table, relationships. Do you see where I'm going here? I want to highlight relationships here. When there is a problem in a relationship, it is almost a natural instinct to try to 'fix' it. Example, a man forgets his wife's birthday. He attempts to 'fix' the problem by running out like a fool and buying her a bunch of roses. He didn't do it out of genuine love, but out of guilt. I was watching some God-awful daytime show like Maury the other day in which this guy had been caught cheating on his long time girlfriend. When he comes out on stage, he's a blabbering fool. He tearfully apologizes and gets down in that position, on one knee with the hand in the pocket. He proposes. She slaps him and runs off the stage. The curtain falls. What made this guy believe that proposing on the Maury Povitch Show after being called out for being unfaithful would be the perfect opportunity to ask this woman for her hand in marriage? Is the desire and need to fix things that break, like relationships, so strong that he didn't see the bad judgement he was making?
Women don't want things fixed. Well, not true, they do, but they also want to feel validated. They want to know that their anger isn't misguided or crazy. They want more than band-aids on a relationship that is hemmoraging. The sooner that us men understand that, the better we will all be.

Here's the lyrics:

Yeah, hey, hey
When somethings dark, let me shed a little light on it
When somethings cold, let me put a little fire on it
If somethings old, I wanna put a bit of shine on it
When somethings gone, I wanna fight to get it back again

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fight to get it back again
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

When somethings broke, I wanna put a bit of fixin on it
When somethings bored, I wanna put a little exciting on it
If somethings low, I wanna put a little high on it
When somethings lost, I wanna fight to get it back again

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fight to get it back again
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

When signals cross, I wanna put a little straight on it
If theres no love, I wanna try to love again

I’ll say your prayers, I’ll take your side
I'll find us a way to make light
I'll dig your grave, we'll dance and sing
What's saved could be one last lifetime

hey, hey, hey
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fight to get it back again
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
fight to get it back again, yeah, yeah, yeah
fight to get it back again, yeah, yeah, yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

An Open Letter to Conservative America

2008-11-05T05:28:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the day after.

You are probably waking up right now and feeling that exact feeling of dread that I felt in 2000 and 2004. I don't envy you. But at least look for the silver lining. Now the Limbaughs, Hannitys and Savages have enough fodder to keep them employed for at least the next four years. Think of this as job security.

I've read a few very angry and hateful posts this morning on Multiply. I don't understand why some people take it so personally that in a democracy as the United States happens to be, their neighbor or friend or relative may have voted for 'that guy' instead of McCain. Perhaps they do not understand that when it comes down to it, there are much more important issues at hand than a so-called racist preacher, a washed-up former domestic 'terrorist', a birth certificate (which to my knowledge has still not been proven to be false), and other below the belt associations and accusations.

Shut down the propaganda mill. The whistle just blew and your shift is over.

I am a former Republican. I tend to vote fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I think less spending is needed. Not just at home but overseas and militarily. There is no justification to keep shoveling money into our defense department when technology has made warfare safer, cheaper and less dependent on physical manpower. In that line of thought, I also feel that while some government programs may be needed, it's necessary to dismantle and stop the ones that prove themselves to be failures. Otherwise, the taxpayer is not getting a significant return on his or her investment.

Then I began to realize that our Republican officials were actually worse than the Democrats they were always complaining about. After all, Bush didn't tax and spend. oh no. Bush BORROWED AND SPENT...thus enslaving future generations to pay back a massive deficit with interest to countries that do not espouse our concept of liberty. For six years, the Republican congress went right along with the Bush doctrine, increasing the government's credit limit on multiple occasions and allowing spending to go through the roof. For the first time in our nations history, pork barrel spending by Republicans actually outpaced the Dem's pork. Bush gave massive handouts as well to the pharmacuetical giants (under the guise of improving Medicare), Halliburton and other private corporations in a gulf war profit party, as well as tax cuts to the very oil industries that were sucking the American consumer dry at the pump. Of course, no spending spree would be complete without bailing out the fat cats on Wall Street after THEY shot themselves in their own greedy foot. And this is suppose to be the party of fiscal conservatism?

It is my viewpoint that this behavior is twenty times worse than spending tax dollars on social programs and the like. At least that money goes to Americans and gets spent by Americans, thus benefiting American businesses.

So here is your reality check. Your party has abandoned the ideals of conservatism and embraced the concept of fascist corporatism, dressing it up with family friendly, idealistic carrots such as ending abortion or stopping the impending onslaught of gay marriage. The neo-cons in office have set you down in front of their dog and pony show while the real money gets spent behind the scenes to further an agenda that has all but crippled our country. And if something goes wrong, such as the mortgage debacle or the incredibly high gas prices they blame the Democrats! Deflect blame! Point the other way! This approach had worked for a while, but I believe America finally caught on and hung the failed policies of Bush firmly around John McCain's neck.
So get it out of your system now.

Blame the liberal bias in the media.

Blame ACORN.

Blame the stupid neighbor who is a brainwashed sheep in your eyes.

Blame the racist preacher, the unrepentent domestic terrorist, or the leader of Nation of Islam.

Blame the Democrat-led 'do nothing' Congress.

Blame Hollywood.

Blame Obama's rejection of public funding.

Blame the CRA Act.

Blame the race card.

Blame the New York Times.

Blame George Soros and the "liberal elite".

Blame who you wish.

Just remember four fingers are pointing right back at you.

Cheney likely ordered 9/11 forgery, CIA official admits

2008-08-09T14:00:00.001-05:00

A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency's former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer posted Friday.

read more | digg story

82% of Americans Want Major Health Care Reform

2008-08-09T13:57:00.001-05:00

The vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the U.S. health care system, and 82 percent think it needs to be overhauled, a new survey found. "There is a broad view by the public that our health care system needs a full overhaul, either to be totally rebuilt or reformed."

read more | digg story

Worst Album Covers Ever - A Slideshow...

2008-07-27T04:32:00.000-05:00

How Can America Break the Dependence on Foreign Oil?

2008-07-19T08:18:00.000-05:00

NC man loses his job over refusal to honor Jesse Helms...

2008-07-14T10:41:00.000-05:00

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/politicians/helms/story/1135443.html

RALEIGH - L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, defying a directive sent to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff.

The brouhaha began late Sunday night, when Eason e-mailed eight of his employees in the state standards lab, which calibrates measuring equipment used on things as widely varied as gasoline and hamburgers.

"Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week," Eason wrote just after midnight, according to e-mail messages released in response to a public records request.

He told his staff that he did not think it was appropriate to honor Helms because of his "doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice" and his opposition to civil rights bills and the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Eason said in an interview Tuesday that he did not typically lower the flag himself, but that, as head of the lab, he supervised the technician who did. He also trained new employees on proper flag etiquette, including a one-person folding technique he learned in Boy Scouts.

When the lab opened Monday morning, the flags were not out at all. An employee called Eason's boss, Stephen Benjamin, who worked in another building in Raleigh. About 10:45 a.m., Benjamin told one of Eason's co-workers to put the flags at half-staff.

Another of Eason's superiors later drove by the lab to make sure the flags were up properly.

No one in the Governor's Office was aware of any time in recent memory when a state employee refused to lower a flag. Brian Long, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department, said Eason's refusal was unexpected.

"We've never had any conversations like that," he said.

An ultimatum

In a string of e-mail messages with his superiors, Eason was told he could either lower the flags or retire effective immediately.

Though he's only 51, Eason chose to retire, although he pleaded several times to be allowed to stay at the lab. Eason, who had worked for the Agriculture Department since graduating from college, was paid $65,235 a year as the laboratory manager.

Several people, including his wife, argued to Eason that the flags belonged to the state, as did the lab. But Eason said he felt a strong sense of ownership.

Eason and a previous boss had sketched out the building's rough design on a napkin at the Atlanta airport in 1984 after attending a national conference on weights and measures.

He then worked to get funding for it in the state budget, and he recently helped snag state money to study building another lab.

"I designed and built that lab," he said. "Even though technically the bricks and mortar belong to the state of North Carolina, I feel very strongly that everything that comes out of there is my responsibility."

It was not the first time Eason felt uneasy about lowering the flag.

A registered Democrat who frequently votes a split ticket, he said he had no problems lowering the flag for former Sen. Terry Sanford or President Reagan. But he remembers wondering whether he would be willing to lower the flag after President Nixon's death.

He never had to make that decision, since it rained both days.

Monday was sunny. And Eason was out of a job.

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

Perhaps he should have burned half a cross in Helms honor instead.

Another homophobic politician, caught sleeping with the enemy...

2008-07-14T10:29:00.000-05:00

http://wonkette.com/401018/anti-gay-alabama-attorney-general-caught-being-gay

Anti-Gay Alabama A.G. Caught Being Gay

This may come as a shock, but a prominent anti-homosexual Republican attorney general has apparently been caught having homosexual sex intercourse with his homosexual gay male assistant. Bonus: The dude’s wife caught him, in their bed. This is the rumor that the AG’s office has officially denied, so now of course everybody is spilling the sordid details.

AG in question is Troy King, who, of course, is only interested in outlawing homosexuality and sex toys. His gay lover is either a college “buddy,” or a very young youngster and “Homecoming King” from Troy University. What are the odds of a dude named Troy King getting caught in bed with a Homecoming King from Troy University? This seems like a wacky sitcom plot, on a gay porn channel. (Is this what that Will & Grace was about?)

Did Bush hit the WAY BACK button?

2008-07-13T10:06:00.000-05:00

Are we in the 70's again? Should I break out some platform shoes and start wearing wide ties?

Today's crunch feels like '70s

By Michael E. Kanell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/13/08

High oil prices, a sluggish economy, persistent inflation, an unpopular president and the Eagles are out on tour.

Sounds like a rerun of the 1970s.

But it is also a snapshot from the summer of 2008 —- even if it does conjure images from the past.

"The similarities are there," said economist Gerald Lynch of Purdue University. "That was a miserable time for the economy. And the clothes were ugly, too."

Wide ties may not be making a comeback, but hints of the era's economics are in the air.

One of the stars of that original '70s show was stagflation, a term invented to describe a mix of rapid inflation and near-stagnant growth. The word has re-entered the economic vocabulary of late.

"As far as I can see, the wheels have fallen off the wagon," said Peter Miralles, president of Atlanta Wealth Consultants. "This is as close to the '70s as we have seen in the past couple of decades."

First, the sluggishness: Gross domestic product the past two quarters has expanded by less than 1 percent. The economy shed 438,000 jobs in the first six months of the year, while the official unemployment rate has climbed to 5.5 percent.

Meanwhile, the official measure of inflation has been running slightly higher than 4 percent per year —- while energy prices have more than doubled.

Yet comparing the current moment to the 1970s can offer some reassurance: Today's numbers pale beside the Hotel California Era.

In 1975, unemployment peaked at 9 percent, fell for a while and then climbed to 7.8 percent in 1980. Inflation hit double digits in 1974 and 1975, slipped back and then roared up, cresting at more than 13 percent in 1979 and 14 percent in 1980. It was a time, too, when the nightly news rattled the American psyche.

The first half of the decade saw the revolution-promoting Weathermen, Watergate, the bitter, bloody end to the Vietnam War and the Arab oil embargo. The second half of the '70s brought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution.

"There was a kind of extremism in the air," said Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a conservative, Washington-based think tank. "Conditions now are also kind of frightening. But the situation is not as extreme."

Still, today's list of potential villains sounds like a cast from the past.

The most obvious repeat offender is oil. Oil prices quadrupled in the mid-1970s, then soared again after the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Now, U.S. troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is renewed talk about a U.S. conflict with Iran, and oil prices are at it again. Crude has doubled in the past year, and the economy again is struggling.

"Oil was at the scene of the crime in both cases," said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the liberal Economics Policy Institute in Washington. "If you have a police lineup, you really want to have oil in it."

And it's not just oil —- global demand has shoved prices higher on a range of commodities from rice to steel.

But inflation this time has some brand-new accomplices: the housing crash; the subprime meltdown that followed; and the crunch in credit that the meltdown triggered.

"This is a very different world," Bernstein said.

For starters, the sources of inflation are different. During the 1970s, workers —- often through powerful unions —- insisted on raises that matched higher consumer prices.

Those higher payroll costs were then added to the prices businesses charged, which were then used by workers to demand higher pay.

"You can't have a wage-price spiral without wage pressures, and we ain't got wage pressures," Bernstein said. "That is a huge difference."

It's not just that business costs don't rise as much. Companies are also less likely to pass them along.

Many are so afraid of losing customers, they don't dare raise prices as much as their costs. Instead, they slash their own costs or accept a smaller profit margin —- and potential inflation never gets to consumers.

What worries some economists is that, eventually, companies must pass along costs. Other economists argue that the official inflation numbers are wildly understating the pain consumers already feel.

"The part that concerns me the most is that the government numbers do not actually represent what's going on," said Miralles of Atlanta Wealth Consultants. "I just don't buy it."

If the plot of the rerun does mimic the original, then the pain is only getting started.

Led by then-Chairman Paul Volcker, the Federal Reserve decided that inflation was so dangerous it had to be stopped —- even if that meant choking off growth. So in 1979, interest rates were raised dramatically.

The economy spun into back-to-back recessions starting in January 1980.

As the economy stalled, the inflation rate leapt to a high of 14.6 percent. After the second recession, unemployment climbed to a peak of 10.8 percent.

But the Fed won its war: Inflation was dormant for the next two decades.

Even now, inflation —- at least the official measure of 4 percent —- seems modest enough to let the Fed keep rates low.

In the past two years, the Fed has cut the benchmark rate from 5.25 percent to 2 percent.

Any inflation-fighting would mean moving them upward again, which would likely slow the economy more.

At least some inflation may be coming from a "bubble" —- speculation that could pop if demand slackens.

"If oil is a bubble, and there's a good chance it is, then its bursting would lessen the inflationary threat a lot," said Doug Henwood, author of the book "Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom" and editor of the economics newsletter Left Business Observer.

Waiting for the scenario to play out, consumers and companies alike must do their best to plan, hoping to protect and nurture their assets.

"There are quite a few parallels to the '70s, and that is a concern," said Frank Butterfield, principal with Atlanta-based wealth managers Homrich & Berg. "The '70s were a bad time for financial assets. Stocks did poorly, bonds did poorly. That could happen again."

To navigate long term, Butterfield suggests diversifying portfolios, buying inflation-protected securities, using hedge funds and "rebalancing" investments as you go.

The economic trouble so far has been manageable, he said. "Things were worse in the '70s than they are now."

Most experts say the U.S. economy seems stronger than it was in the shaky '70s, more flexible and —- most important during an energy crisis —- more efficient.

The economy is about half as dependent on oil as it was at the time of the first oil shock in 1973, said Robert Whaples, chairman of the economics department at Wake Forest University.

"The '70s were a period of pretty slow productivity growth," he said. "There are important parallels between the two periods, but I don't think we will get double-digit unemployment or double-digit inflation rate."

Some things do return. The Eagles, after all, are playing summer concerts and promoting their latest album. But no amount of hindsight can truly tell the future.

As the Eagles themselves put it: "Who is gonna make it? We'll find out —- in the long run."

That was 1979.

GASOLINE

Now: Gas prices have doubled in a little more than three years. They are up a little more than one-third in the past year. Gas is costly but plentiful.

Then: Gas prices tripled during the decade, rising almost 50 percent from 1973 to 1975, and by 80 percent in 1979 and 1980. Shortages forced restrictions on sales.

PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL

Now: 28 percent

Then: 29 percent

IRAN

Now: Tension between the United States and Iran over nuclear programs and U.S. involvement in Iraq has led to higher oil prices.

Then: Iranian Revolution in 1979 overthrew a U.S. ally, led to a long hostage crisis and sent oil prices skyrocketing.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Now: In the past year and a half, official unemployment has increased 25 percent. It remains historically modest: 5.5 percent.

Then: After the Arab oil embargo, unemployment rose by more than 80 percent.

INFLATION

Now: Consumer prices are up 4.1 percent in the past year, the government says, but critics say the data understates reality.

Then: Consumer costs were up an average of 8.12 percent a year through the decade, peaking at 13.3 percent in 1979.

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

Now: 2.58, average, 2000-07

Then: 1.73 percent, average 1971-80

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Energy Information Administration, Gallup Poll, PollingReport.com.

Why I Have Anti-Corporate Views

2008-07-06T04:34:00.000-05:00

When we openly accept a system that allows faceless corporations to place the bottom line in front of human beings, I feel that we have sold out freedom, democracy and everything that being an American stands for. Yet, this story repeats itself over and over...whether it be Enron executives walking all over it's employees and investors of Chevron's direct involvement in the torture and murder of Bowoto protestors in Niger, it seems like the larger a corporation becomes, the less it's leadership feels it should be responsible.

Employers use federal law to deny benefits

Workers -- and some judges -- frustrated in legal fights over benefits with large employers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Dying of cancer, Thomas Amschwand did everything he was told to make sure his wife would collect on the life insurance policy he had through his employer.

"He was obsessed with dotting every `i' and crossing every `t'," Melissa Amschwand-Bellinger recalled about her husband, who died in 2001 at age 30.

But Spherion Corp., the temporary staffing company where Amschwand worked, told Amschwand-Bellinger she would not receive any of the $426,000 in benefits she believed she was due. When she went to court, Spherion succeeded in getting her lawsuit thrown out. The Supreme Court on June 27 refused to review the case.

Amschwand-Bellinger received a refund of the few thousand dollars in insurance premiums she and her husband dutifully had paid. The total, she said, would not cover the costs of his funeral.

The story has played out often under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Designed to protect employee benefits, the law has been used by employers as a shield against suits.

Federal appeals courts, interpreting Supreme Court decisions dating to 1993, consistently have said companies that offer health, life and retirement benefits under ERISA cannot be sued for large amounts of money, or damages. Instead, they can be sued only for typically smaller sums such as Amschwand's insurance premiums.

Several federal judges have bemoaned the unfairness even as they have felt constrained to rule in favor of employers.

"The facts ... scream out for a remedy beyond the simple return of premiums," Judge Fortunato Benavides of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in the Amschwand case. "Regrettably, under existing law it is not available."

The Bush administration has argued that the appeals courts are misreading the precedents and has asked the high court at least twice to clarify the earlier rulings. So far it has refused.

Congress, which could amend ERISA to make clear such suits are allowed, also has taken no action.

The result, in the view of ERISA experts, the administration and some lawmakers, is perverse.

"The beneficiary under the policy didn't get the promised benefit," said Colleen Medill, an expert on ERISA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "To say we're just going to return your premiums, that's a total farce. That's not what they paid the premiums for. They paid them for the benefits."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said at a recent hearing that before ERISA became law, employees clearly could sue for benefits in state courts.

The court rulings, said Leahy, D-Vt., have left people "more vulnerable than they were before the law was passed."

Spherion's decision to deny benefits to Amschwand-Bellinger turned on an odd set of facts. Spherion, which employs about 300,000 people, switched insurers after Thomas Amschwand was diagnosed with a rare form of heart cancer. The new policy did not take effect until an employee worked one full day. Spherion never informed Amschwand of the requirement.

Amschwand asked repeatedly whether there was anything else he needed to do and was told no. He asked that the new policy be sent to him. Spherion never did so.

He died without returning to work. His widow said he easily could have worked a day if that was what it took to activate the new policy. Spherion could have waived the one-day-of-work provision, as it did for other employees but not for Amschwand.

Spherion spokesman Kip Havel issued a brief statement when contacted by The Associated Press after the high court declined to review the case. "We are pleased the court has made its decision and the matter has finally been resolved," Havel said.

The court also recently turned down an appeal from Louis Gerard "Gerry" Goeres, who sued Charles M. Schwab & Co. over hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement plan benefits.

For 16 months, Schwab mistakenly refused to acknowledge Goeres as the beneficiary in the retirement plan of his domestic partner, Stephen Ward, a Schwab employee who died in 1999. By the time Schwab acknowledged its error, the value of the account had declined by more than $500,000. Goeres sued for the rest. Federal courts dismissed the suit. "Unfortunately, legal relief is not available," U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said in ruling against Goeres.

"You know the Schwab commercial, `Talk to Chuck?'" Goeres said. "I thought if Chuck knew this, he'd say, 'Oh my God, this is so wrong.' I live on naive dreams."

Schwab said in court papers that Goeres could have taken legal action soon after Ward's death, when he first was told he was not the beneficiary.

Amschwand-Bellinger said the cases show the need for either the court or Congress to provide "some sort of meaningful remedy for employees when employers have a breach of fiduciary duty."

A Texas native who lives in an unincorporated Houston suburb, she has since remarried and has an 18-month-old daughter. She is president and executive director of the Amschwand Sarcoma Cancer Foundation, which she founded with her first husband.

She recognizes that she is more fortunate than many others who have fought similarly futile battles for benefits under ERISA. "What if we had had children and I was a stay at home mom?" said Amschwand-Bellinger, who previously worked for a public hospital system. "What if I was 60 years old, with no skill sets, and I had to go back to work?"

Four Voices On Energy YOU Should Be Listening To...

2008-07-02T17:19:00.000-05:00

Regulators
Cries in the Dark

How serious is America's energy crisis? These four voices want to make sure policymakers don't dismiss it -- again.

By NEIL KING JR.
June 30, 2008; Page R15

The oil shock of 1973 came and went. So did the panic after the Iranian revolution six years later, when oil prices shot to record highs. Gone, too, is the brief flurry of fear that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

After each, voices in Washington that cried out for big changes in U.S. energy policy were slowly drowned out. James Schlesinger, the first U.S. energy secretary, has said for decades that when it comes to energy policy, the U.S. toggles between complacency and panic.

THE JOURNAL REPORT

• See the complete Energy report.

Will it be different this time around?

With oil soaring above $130 a barrel and fears spreading of a long-term supply crunch, a new cadre of energy Cassandras in Washington argues that America faces deep and potentially wrenching challenges that no amount of gas-tax holidays or rhetorical attacks on speculators and big oil producers will help fix.

From the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, some often lonely voices are warning of big shocks to come if the U.S. doesn't wake up. Not all of them point to the same core problem, however. Nor do the proposed solutions dovetail neatly. But they all agree that the main challenge is to overcome the complacency without triggering the panic.

Here is a look at four of these voices:

Mr. Peak Oil

Back in the halcyon days of March 2005, when oil was at $54 a barrel, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett stood on the House floor to give the first of many lonely speeches.

The Maryland Republican -- son of a tenant farmer, holder of 30 patents, trained physiologist, former dairy farmer -- knew the speech would win neither votes nor applause from the commuters and farmers who populate his district. But he had a message to impart: The world has less and less oil to offer, he told the near-empty House chamber. The age of cheap energy is ending. And if the U.S. didn't start adapting, it was in for a shock.

Roscoe Bartlett

Not much has changed since then, except that the U.S. is now using more oil every day -- about 20 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Department -- and it costs well over double what it did then.

"The tumor has now grown to where it will require even more radical surgery," says the rumpled 82-year-old father of 10, who carpools 100 miles a day in his Prius. He was the first member of Congress to own one, he says.

Rep. Bartlett is Mr. Peak Oil in the U.S. Congress, which also makes him perhaps the loudest energy-shock spokesman on Capitol Hill. Every few weeks, Rep. Bartlett hauls his thick stack of huge charts -- around 30 in all -- over to the House floor for his after-hours lecture for the viewers of C-Span. In the past three years, he has lectured the nation 42 times on how ebbing oil supplies will bring a big jolt to the U.S. economy.

One of his favorite placards shows "The World According to Oil," with every country's size based on its oil holdings. Saudi Arabia is a goliath, while Europe is barely a speck. Another shows how major oil discoveries petered out in the early 1980s, just as consumption resumed its upward tear.

The lectures have earned him a clutch of followers. He now heads a Peak Oil Caucus of like-minded lawmakers -- six Republicans and eight Democrats. They have sponsored a resolution, still stalled in committee, calling for a "Man on the Moon" project to develop new fuels and wean the nation off oil.

Two years ago, Rep. Bartlett got to meet with President Bush in the Oval Office, where he gave a condensed one-on-one version of his peak-oil talk. "He was polite, attentive," Mr. Bartlett says of Mr. Bush. "He said 'Thank you.' "

Mr. Bartlett often stands apart from his fellow Republicans on the energy front. He voted for last year's energy bill, one of just 26 House Republicans to do so, but only after voting against an amendment to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development -- a top Bush administration objective.

Declarer of Independence

James Woolsey, a Beltway Democrat-turned-Republican, is plotting to go "off-grid" and tools around town in a plug-in hybrid with a bumper sticker that says "Osama Bin Laden Hates This Car."

CIA director under President Clinton and President Jimmy Carter's secretary of the navy, Mr. Woolsey is himself a hybrid: part switchgrass-loving hipster and part national-security hawk who backed the Iraq invasion and considers Saudi Arabia to be a promoter of Islamic extremism.

Mr. Woolsey's mantra, though, is that the U.S. needs to break its dependence on Middle Eastern oil. It's a forlorn quest that goes back decades.

James Woolsey

But Mr. Woolsey is convinced that the U.S. can and must break that reliance. And as Sen. John McCain's top energy adviser, he's taking the quest for "energy independence" straight into the presidential campaign.

Mr. Woolsey says he first got "ticked off" over energy when he got stuck in a gas line in 1973 -- "and I'm still ticked off." What also peeves him are critics who snipe at the call for independence without understanding it.

No, the U.S. can't cut itself off from all oil imports or turn itself into an "economic hermit," he says. "But we can destroy oil's monopoly over transportation."

Cars, trucks and planes gobble up nearly seven out of every 10 barrels of oil consumed in the U.S., the Energy Department says. Mr. Woolsey wants to chop that way down.

A frenetic talker with a shiny pate, Mr. Woolsey insists that America's salvation lies mainly in battery-powered cars and alternative fuels. A McCain administration, he says, would assure that all new cars could use any mix of fuels and would push for large tax credits for plug-in hybrids.

At least he practices what he preaches. Beyond his Prius, Mr. Woolsey has photo-voltaic panels on the roof of his Maryland house -- and even on his laptop case. At times, he boasts, he can go down into his basement and see that he is giving power back to the Maryland grid. Next up: a small wind turbine on his roof and a plot of biofuel-worthy camelina in his yard.

Perhaps because of his own mixed political lineage, Mr. Woolsey is known for bringing odd birds together. His Set America Free Coalition, a group dedicated to weaning the U.S. off foreign oil, runs the gamut from conservative evangelical Gary Bauer to prairie liberals like Tom Daschle, the former senator from South Dakota. Like Rep. Bartlett, he also takes some un-Republican positions, such as opposing oil drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge.

He has a name for the odd coterie he sees congealing around the energy issue: "tree-huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters and cheap hawks." And he considers himself a part of each.

Wolf in the Hen House

Alexander "Andy" Karsner, the Bush administration's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, is having another typical day.

He has just ducked out of a meeting with a clutch of federal utility officials. He's off soon to a high-level session on the growing controversy over food vs. fuel. There are meetings later in the day on efforts to boost the nation's wind-power supply. And outside his office at the Energy Department, all along Independence Avenue, truckers miffed over soaring diesel prices are blaring their horns.

"Yeah, burning gas as they honk around town," Mr. Karsner says of the truckers.

Alexander "Andy" Karsner

Mr. Karsner, a former CEO of energy consulting firm Enercorp., takes a far gloomier view than most within the Energy Department on the challenges the country faces. When he looks over the horizon, he sees slumping oil supplies and soaring demand. "This isn't fusion," he says of the world's reliance on crude. "This is a finite resource."

What drives him, he says, is "the very real future" that his three young daughters face -- a future that he says puts into question "the quality of life and the inheritance of the American dream."

Since he arrived at the DOE in early 2006, Mr. Karsner's main fight has been to push for the quick commercialization of alternative technologies, from solar to biomass and batteries. Despite early opposition within the department, in the past two years he has been the main force behind ramping up the level of grants and loans available to companies bringing new technologies to market.

"Andy is totally focused on action," says Reid Detchon, who runs the energy program at the United Nations Foundation and who otherwise gives the administration an overall "F" for its environmental legacy. "He could have been a place holder," Mr. Detchon says, "but he has just been relentless in pressing a very active agenda for commercialization of renewable technologies."

After just over two years on the job, Mr. Karsner worries that the federal government remains too stodgy to confront what he calls "the asymmetric security threats" posed by the huge amounts of oil the U.S. imports -- and the billions in dollars it ships to the Middle East as payment.

"Every bit of money that goes away is a lost opportunity for money we could have invested here," he says.

Mr. Karsner, who says he will leave government by January, also is realistic about how much more the Bush team can hope to do. "Most of what we are doing right now," he says, "is assuring that our successors will be more successful than we are."

Canary in the Mine

For a man with a disturbing message, Robert Hirsch couldn't be milder. Crisp, perfectly combed, monotone in delivery, the former nuclear engineer reminds one of a retired MIT professor kicking back on his Cape Cod porch.

Robert Hirsch

But Mr. Hirsch has become a prophet of sorts for the country's growing legions of peak-oil converts who know him mainly as the lead author of the 2005 Hirsch Report. The actual title of the 91-page tome, ordered up but then shunted aside by the Energy Department, he says, was "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management."

Jim Slutz, acting deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy, says the study was never meant to represent the views of the DOE and was taken out of context by peak-oil adherents.

The report, the first of its kind commissioned by the federal government, didn't mince words: The U.S. had to move quickly to prepare for an inevitable long-term supply crimp as world oil output begins to slump. "Without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented," the report concluded. "Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."

Mr. Hirsch says he has learned a few things since the report came out.

For one, he has revamped his view that the world would hit a sharp peak in production, followed by rapid output declines. Instead, like many in the industry itself, he says world-wide oil production will stick to a sustained plateau -- driving up prices as demand continues to rise. "We have already been on a plateau for sometime," he says.

He also learned that the Bush administration wasn't very keen to hear his gloomy message on long-term oil supplies. "The message came from DOE headquarters that we could work on ramification issues but not on peak oil itself," he said. There are now signs -- among them the bracing views of Mr. Karsner at the DOE -- that the administration is leaning toward a less rosy view of the world's energy outlook.

Mr. Hirsch's career has covered the spectrum from head of fusion research at what was then known as the Atomic Energy Commission to a senior post in the exploration and production department at oil company ARCO, which is now a part of BP PLC.

But he considers his current work as a private consultant equally important. As he pounds on doors around Washington and across the country, he finds that more and more of them are swinging open. He lectured a large group of intelligence officers from around the world this spring. He has traveled several times to New York to sit down with investment-fund managers. He briefed the energy teams of Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

"There is no question that serious concern is germinating," he says. "It just hasn't taken root yet and begun to grow."

--Mr. King is an international energy reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, D.C

Light Bulbs... (joke)

2008-06-30T19:02:00.000-05:00

How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?

1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed.

2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed.

3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb.

4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs.

5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb.

6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: Light Bulb Change Accomplished.

7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark.

8. One to viciously smear #7.

9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along.

10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

Daily Music Feature

2008-06-22T18:24:00.000-05:00

Houston, We Have an Oil Problem

2008-06-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

Houston, We Have an Oil Problem

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 June 2008, 03:00 CDT

By Steve Huff huff.column@earthlink.net

The other day at least three of my patients could not afford the gas to come to the doctor. On the way home I glumly pumped $44.85 into my Mini Cooper. That night I paid $600 for a plane ticket that used to cost $275.

It was a flight to Houston where my sister lives. An oil town, new buildings had popped up across the skyline, old buildings enjoyed facelifts, luxury services flourished and Chevy Suburbans ruled the road. Houstonians haven't seen a boom like this since 1982.

Clearly, $130 a barrel is not bad for everyone.

With profits at record levels, Big Oil feels little incentive to do anything except find more oil. Beyond petroleum? Renewable energy projects have long since degenerated into forays to the Rocky Mountains to wring out shale.

That, I believe, is where windfall oil profits become reprehensible. Sure, a profit margin of 10 percent is respectable for the average company, but we must remember who we're talking about.

Exxon Mobil's profit margin is a "reasonable percentage" of a number so huge that, according the MSN Money's Charley Blaine, it could rival the gross domestic product of the 17th largest economy in the world (Turkey). Renewable, low-carbon sources of energy ought to find a place in a budget like that.

But they haven't. Yes, it's a free country and a free market. Oil companies are thriving, paying their taxes, pleasing their stockholders. Why should they change?

Answer: Because the planetary gas gauge is heading toward red.

Whether oil production peaked in 1972 or will peak in 2050 we are within a human lifetime of declining oil extraction. We also are on the upswing of booming demand from China, India and other developing countries. Oil speculators may re-speculate and the puny dollar may strengthen, but "easy" oil will disappear in the blink of a dinosaur's eye.

As developing countries clamor for fossil fuels, we should work frantically toward the next best thing: electric, hydrogen, biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol, liquid coal or whatever wins out, based on aggressive, well-funded, impartial research.

Detroit is getting that message, but Houston is not. When Big Business looks to immediate gratification at the expense of future development, it's time for the government to take the reins.

Alas, we have a wishy-washy 2009 budget proposal from President Bush that, in spite of his greenish rhetoric of late, proposes more of the same: increased coal, drilling in nature preserves, reduced wind and solar research, reduced mass transit and reduced funds for weatherization of homes. He's fine with rising carbon emissions through 2025.

In addition we have an ineffectual Congress, mired in such non- starters as gas-tax suspensions, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, offshore drilling and windfall taxes.

Across the ocean, the war in Iraq burns through the equivalent of the Department of Energy's annual budget every couple months. One wonders how vital a role Iraq was to play in Mr. Bush's pre-war energy scenarios.

If we were faced with pure economic pressures I could better understand the argument to let the free market run.

However, far more is at stake. We have grown dependent on countries that are, to put it mildly, unsympathetic to our plight; we suffer the environmental and medical consequences of smog; we are beginning to experience the mayhem of global warming.

By boosting oil production in 10 or 15 years by 1 or 2 million barrels per day, we will merely extend our environmental and climate woes and will create a false sense of energy independence.

Instead, we must focus our resources and enthusiasm on the development of low-emission, domestic energy sources: solar, wind, water and, yes, nuclear. Coal is abundant, but it is carbon. Only when it can be burned cleanly should we increase its use.

Conservation. Americans will curb their energy cravings sooner through prudence, or later through necessity. I'm hoping for sooner. Carbon capping, trading and taxation seem a reasonable way to induce industry to do the same.

In spite of common perceptions, the United States consumes more oil and emits more carbon dioxide than any other country. The next administration needs to work with the next Congress to set an example for the world. Our short-term pain will give way to future generations of improved health, wealth and security.

Huff, who lives in Patrick County and practices family medicine, is a columnist for The Roanoke Times.

A Look into Oil Speculation: Bubble or Long Term Trouble?

2008-06-17T07:24:00.000-05:00

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/16/news/economy/oil_speculator/index.htm?postversion=2008051615

Oil prices: Wall Street's game
Big fund money is flowing into oil markets sending prices to levels never seen before. Is it profiteering or an essential way to ensure supply?
By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- There's no question about it: A new breed of speculator is pouring money into the oil market. What's less certain is whether this new money is responsible for driving up prices or essential to a healthy market.

Many blame record prices on Wall Street investors new to the oil market, saying they're bidding up gas prices to artificially high levels - and soaking drivers.

As oil nears $130 a barrel, some say $10 to $70 of that price is due to Wall Street speculation.

But that's not the whole story. Nearly everyone agrees that speculators have always been essential to a functioning market and that oil prices could be much higher without them.

What's harder to understand is the effect of new speculators flowing into commodities from big-money funds like university endowments, pensions and indexes.

Some say they're a good influence. In addition to limiting demand,they make it easier to sell oil contracts and create a larger market where prices are less susceptible to big swings following individual trades - known as liquidity in financial speak. This camp says $130 oil is justified since demand is rising faster than supply.

Others say big-fund money is making it harder for traditional oil speculators to do their job. This camp says big funds distort traditional models used to predict prices and think $130 oil is a bubble ready to pop.

What is a speculator?
Traditionally, a futures speculator bets on the direction of commodity prices and then guarantees that commodity at that price to a client. This removes some of the risk - and greases the wheels of commerce.

Speculators originated in the food market, and were intended to give farmers a set price in the spring to buy seed, according to Peter Beutel, an oil analyst at Cameron Hanover.

For example, a speculator would offer a farmer $3.50 in April for a bushel of corn to be delivered and paid for in October - these are called futures contracts. The speculator hopes that by October corn will sell for $4, and he'll make money. The farmer can plant his fields certain that he's making $3.50 a bushel.

Conversely, a speculator might bet the price of corn will fall.

He might offer to sell a bushel to a corn bread maker at $3.50 in April for corn to be delivered in October. If corn falls to $3 by October, the speculator comes out on top. The deal allows the bread maker to make long term business decisions, like how many employees to hire.

Without this transparent marketplace, uncertainty would be priced into the product, resulting in higher costs for everyone.

Although the lines between producer, consumer and speculator have been blurred in recent years, this same dynamic is at work in today's oil and gas markets.

"We're trying to get some type of cost certainty," said Brad Samples, a commodities analyst at Summit Energy in Louisville, Ky.

Summit buys energy for clients who use lots of it. One client, Samples says, goes through about $15 million a year in diesel fuel, and it's Samples' job to make sure it gets a good deal at a consistent price.

For Samples, more money in fuel markets means more people willing to sell him a contract. He doesn't think speculators push prices artificially high, arguing that supply and demand support prices.

"All the focus on speculators being the problem misses the point," he said. "The point is: supplies are not growing as fast as demand. You need sharp price growth to bring down demand."

Making the right bet
When Samples buys a contract, he needs someone to sell it to him, usually a bank. To manage the financial risk, the bank will go out and sell that contract to someone else - in other words, a speculator.

Sometimes that person might be someone like George Zivic, managing partner at Almanac Capital, a commodity investment firm.

For him, the influx of big-fund money betting oil prices will move in one direction - in this case up - into the commodities market is a challenge.

Before the new money, price movements were more predictable. For example, in the spring gasoline usually rises in tandem with crude, and Almanac and other related firms would look to make their money by betting on the difference between the two.

This year that hasn't happened - oil prices have greatly outpaced gasoline - and that's made making money in this market more difficult. He blames some of the schism on big-fund money betting oil prices will only go up.

"When you have directional money, it makes the historical relationships distorted," he said. "There's no short term shortage of oil. $127 a barrel doesn't make sense."

Placing blame
Beutel, from the consultancy Cameron Hanover and a former NYMEX floor trader, goes even further in blaming big-fund money.

"We want to see them out, they have no respect for our markets at all," he said.

But Beutel doesn't blame these funds for wanting to diversify their portfolio by investing in oil.

If anyone is to blame, he says, it's the Federal Reserve, which has been predictably cutting interest rates since September to shore up credit markets. When interest rates fall, investors flock to commodities as an inflation hedge.

"The Fed tipped their hand," he said. "[The big funds] were basically told by [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke that this is where the money is."

And if the money is there, why wouldn't the big funds take advantage of it?

"We are following for us what is a prudent strategy to maximize investment returns, said Clark McKinley, a spokesman for CalPERS, California's pension fund for workers in the public sector. "Obviously, there's some unintended consequences."

Not everyone agrees big-fund money is playing a role in driving up prices, starting with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the government's own regulatory agency.

Economists at the CFTC have testified that after studying all the numbers on who is trading what, there is no evidence speculators of any kind are significantly driving up the price of crude.

'You can't just point the finger at speculators," said Michael Haigh, head of U.S. commodities research at the investment bank Société Générale and a former economist at the CFTC. "Fundamentally, the markets are where they are supposed to be."

Haigh said that big-money funds are not just dumping their money onto the market - only betting prices will go up. He and others say these funds are sophisticated investors and take a variety of positions in the market.

Deutsche Bank took a somewhat novel approach in investigating the role of speculative money.

Analysts there looked at the price of commodities that do not trade in a futures market and came to basically the same conclusion.

"The rally in non-exchange traded commodity prices since the end of 2002 has been similar if not greater in magnitude," the bank's analysts wrote in a research note. "We believe this refutes the claim that speculators have been the primary drivers of rising commodity prices during this cycle."

So what's to be done?

Members of Congress, their ears bent by angry motorists paying nearly $4 a gallon for gas, are considering increasing the amount of money investors have to put up front in order to buy oil futures.

Some say this may work, as a lot of the investor interest in commodities is due to the fact that they can essentially gamble with a million dollars worth of oil by putting up $100,000 or less of their own money. In the stock market, they'd need to put up $500,000.

But others say increasing these requirements - known as margin requirements - would merely drive oil trading into less regulated markets where information would be even harder to track.

The motorist organization AAA doesn't have an opinion on what Congress should do. But like many American drivers, they've certainly noticed that oil prices have shot up $50 a barrel since August at the same time that the stock market tanked, while the supply and demand picture for oil remained little changed.

"After Israel invaded Lebanon, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, all of these situations, we haven't seen prices rise to these levels," said AAA spokesman Geoff Sundstrom. "We have to wonder if the foundation behind these very high prices is nothing more than speculation."

Bush Administration throws some crumbs to Plug-In Hybrid advancement...any surprise?

2008-06-17T03:52:00.000-05:00

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/feds-scrape-tog.html

The Bush Administration has shown its support for plug-in hybrids by promising ~~a measly~~ $30 million to get them on the road within eight years, a figure and a timeline some automakers and plug-in advocates say is too little and too long. Getting these cars on the road quickly, they say, should be a national priority with the funding to match.

The Department of Energy made a big deal of the hand-out, announcing it at a plug-in hybrid conference in Washington D.C., but c'mon -- $30 million? To be spread out among three companies over three years? What'd it do -- scrounge change from couch cushions in the Pentagon? Granted, the award brings to $71.3 million the amount DOE has invested in hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology in the past three years, and EV advocates were quick to thank Uncle Sam for the money. But they said it's going to take a whole lot more than that to wean us from oil -- which, by the way, will collect $17 billion in tax breaks during the next decade.

"It's great to see the DOE upping its support of plug-in vehicles and getting the major car companies involved," Sherry Boschert, vice-president of Plug In America, told Wired.com. "Unfortunately, the $30 is a drop in the bucket compared with funding that DOE blows on less viable and potentially harmful options like hydrogen fuel cell cars and corn-based biofuels."

General Motors, Ford and General Electric will share the money, which is part of the $41.2 million DOE is investing in the technology this year. Assistant Energy Secretary Andy Karsner said the funding accelerate development of the cars to make them cost-competitive by 2014 and commercially viable by 2016.

2016? When the Chevrolet Volt and a plug-in Prius could be in showrooms by 2010 and Nissan says it'll ~~skip plugs entirely and~~ give us an EV at about the same time?

Plug-in advocates weren't alone in expressing dismay at the DOE timeline. Sen. Robert Mendez, D-N.J., chastised the agency for not thinking bigger and pushing harder, saying, "The administration lacks a sense of urgency on this issue."

To be fair, plug-in hybrids still face challenges and even Toyota is telling people not to expect miracles. Bill Reinert, the automakers U.S. head of advanced technology, told Automotive News the range may not be as great as people expect. "When we see the (claims of) 100 mile-per-gallon stuff, not everybody's going to get 100 miles per gallon," he says.

They don't have to. Seventy percent of us don't drive more than 40 miles a day. A car that will go that far on a single charge will free most people from gasoline. But even that's a tough goal to meet, and lithium-ion batteries remain the biggest hurdle. Congress has said it will increase research funding in the years to come, but how much is anyone's guess.

Automakers could use nickel metal hydride batteries, which Toyota's been putting in the Prius for 10 years. But Mark Fields, president of the Americas for Ford Motor Co., says battery technology is just one problem. He laid out several others in a speech during the plug-in conference and said it's time for Washington to get involved in solving them.

"In order for us to succeed, we must make this a national priority," he says. "We are doing our part to transform the industry and invest in new technologies. However, in a global environment, a substantial government partnership is required. The governments of Japan, China, Korea, and India are significantly funding the research, development and deployment of plug-in hybrid vehicle technologies. This is a race that we must win."

What would it take to win? David Sandalow, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Clinton Administration official, says we could transform the nation's vehicle fleet if we spent about $18.5 billion over the next decade. He lays it out like this in "Freedom from Oil: How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction":

$5 billion to help automakers retool production plants.
$12 billion in consumer tax credits for plug-in hybrids.
$1 billion to add 30,000 plug-in hybrids to the government fleet each year for 10 years.
$500 million to underwrite warranties on lithium-ion batteries until the technology is proven.

Eighteen-point-five billion. The proposal that Congress shot down this week to tax Big Oil's windfall profits and take away its tax subsidies would have just about covered that.

UPDATE - Post updated 11 a.m. PDT June 16. DOE spokeswoman Jennifer Scoggins tells us last week's funding award is one of several the agency has made in recent years to advance the development of hybrids and plug-in hybrids. The agency allocated $1.4 million in 2006, $28.7 million last year and plans to allocate $41.2 million this year. DOE also has requested $51.1 million to disburse next year.

Crude Awakening

2008-06-11T06:34:00.000-05:00

With gas at $4.00 a gallon, what is your theory on what has caused the cost of fuel to rise so dramatically?

1. Oil companies (and OPEC) are understating their proven reserves volume to create an artificial bubble in the commodities market - thus greatly increasing their own profit margin.

2. Poor dollar performance along with increased demand from China and India are causing speculative traders to reinvest heavily in crude to greatly increase their profit potential.

3. World oil production has reached peak status and have began the decline period of the bell curve. Increased demand met with a diminishing world supply will bring forth the fall of modern society.

4. It's all the government's fault.

Here We Are Now... Entertain Us

2008-06-07T09:46:00.000-05:00

I watched a bio of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain a few nights ago called "About a Son - Kurt Cobain. The movie was a handful of tape-recorded interviews Kurt made, about a year before his suicide, married up with some beautiful cinematography of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. It was quite an interesting film, but it got me thinking:

The year was 1994. The moment is etched into my memory still, to this very day.
I was working for a department store in the mall. Gottschalks, I believe. I had gone on break that morning and sauntered up to the lunchroom on the administrative floor. I remember looking though the refrigerator for a pop when I heard a news anchor on the television announce what I saw to be the end of the last great music revolution. Kurt Cobain's body had been found in a greenhouse on his property. Police were calling the find a suicide.

Something died in me that day. Now it wasn't that I was a Nirvana fan because I wasn't. In my opinion, they had some really good songs and I had a fair amount of respect for Cobain's songwriting. Although I liked most of the Nevermind album, the band's loud-quiet-loud sound always seemed to me to be much to similar to Frank Black's trademark Pixie's sound, and while Kurt's angst filled lyrics may have earned him multitudes of like-minded fans, it seemed to me to be nothing different than anything else that was popular at the time. In fact, I always got the feeling that Kurt was trying to sell his soul using reverse psychology on his listeners. He was a billboard for anti-commercialism and the rejection of all things popular. Yet for what it was worth, Nirvana was the most popular band of that era and Kurt had no problem cashing those fat Geffin Record paychecks once the band broke.

What I realized in that moment, was that, like Hunter S. Thompson had once written about San Francisco at the end of the 60's, Nirvana had been the high water mark for the alternative music scene of the 90's. Kurt Cobain had unwittingly become the poster child for all of the rage that Generation X, the children of Reaganomics and the Cold War felt. He had become a mouthpiece for the cynicism and anger that our generation felt at that time. We grew up in the 80's, watching the Wall St. yuppie set get rich. Excess was encouraged and greed was good. Then, as Bush 40 took the reigns and inherited an economy troubled by Reagan overspending, we watched our country slip into recession right as we were being birthed into adulthood. Some felt not unlike the baby on the cover of Nevermind, newborn and swimming after that almighty dollar.

This was the catalyst for the alternative movement of the early 90's. At the time, hair metal, in all of it's pomp, glory and materialism, was king of the airwaves. Popular music was the consistency of cotton candy; it was fluffy, light, sweet and lacked any true substance.

From out of nowhere, it seemed the music changed overnight. I remember Nevermind was the album that was at the crest of that wave. These three misfits from Aberdeen erupted with Smells Like Teen Spirit, a song that reflected on the high school world with venomous sarcasm. We had never heard anything like this being played on mainstream radio.

Nevermind was black gold in the minds of record executives. Who knew that kids would have so much antipathy and resentment towards popularity, commercialism and the materialism? Were these the same kids that not one year ago were singing along to Girls, Girls, Girls and Nothing But a Good Time… teasing and spraying their hair into place… wearing spandex and bleached jeans?

Like oil tycoons hungry after a strike, we began to see the alternative genre quickly become mainstream, thus not really alternative anymore at all. Record companies were signing indie bands left and right, hoping for the next Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins or Pearl Jam. Festivals such as Lollapalooza grew out of the culture and flourished for a short time. Even Woodstock was brought back, although the $8.00 bottled water made it obvious that this wasn't a peace-loving, tree hugging hippie fest as it was in the 60s.

This was the real difference in the beauty of what occurred in the music world of the late 60s and what was sold part and parcel by the labels in the early 90's. While I believe that the anti-establishment and independent views of many of these bands were honest and true, the commercial establishment along with corporate media such as Rolling Stone and Spin turned the movement into a product, mass produced it, and sold it to the angry masses.

In 1994, Cobain killed it all.

Maybe he pulled the trigger because of his unending stomach pain. Maybe he did it because he couldn't cope with his drug addiction or feared the path of fatherhood he found himself on. Maybe he just couldn't stand Courtney anymore. Perhaps he was simply uncomfortable with the pedestal he had been placed on by so many people he didn't know, and undoubtedly cared nothing for.

Or maybe he opened his eyes and saw the irony of the whole situation.

Well…whatever, never mind.

Friday Five - Childhood Entertainment

2008-06-06T10:43:00.000-05:00

http://fridayfivegroup.multiply.com/journal/item/30/Friday_Five_Prompt_for_June_6_2008_Childhood_Entertainment

First of all, I must say that my parents were not loaded with money so we kids created entertainment wherever we could, for the most part. There are a few things that stand out though.

1. Star Wars Figures - I remember after Return of the Jedi came out, having this intense love affair with everything Star Wars. My friend Chris and I would get together on weekends after school and set up scenes with our Star Wars figures. Chris had a few of the harder to find characters. One day we chose to recreate the Sarlac Pit scene from Return of the Jedi. We took a pie plate and cut kind of a star shape in the center..then buried it in the sand. We would set up the sail barge along with the figurines right next to it and stage the epic battle from the movie. It was a blast watching Boba Fett fly through the air and then land in the fake pit...to be fake devoured for 1000 years.

Later in my childhood we got into GI Joes as well. But other than shooting at them with BB guns and blowing them to smithereens with M80s, they weren't quite as fun to me.

2. The Roller Rink - I don't know about you, but I grew up in a rather small town in the panhandle of North Florida. At the time, there was one McDonalds, one Burger King, a DQ (or local equivelent). In a nutshell, there wasn't much to keep a kid busy, although a day at Twin Hills Park could be mildly entertaining.

Mid-childhood, Crestview opened a roller rink on the west side of town. Suddenly that became the kid hangout to be seen at. Not only could you speed skate to hits like, "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" and "Feel for You"...but they had an awesome arcade with Donkey Kong Jr, Pac Man and other sweet 8-Bit games. Then there was the Hokey Pokey...you put your left foot in..you put your left foot out...

Back then there was no such thing as rollerblades. Most kids rented these ugly tan skates with dorky orange wheels..while the rich kids had parents to buy them nice professional type skates with sweet polyurethane wheels. These were also the skates of choice by the rink regulars...those older kids who could skate frontwards and backwards at near the speed of sound. To them, skating was a lifestyle...and a form of art.

3. The Commodore 64: I could never talk my parents into buying me an Atari 2600. I think they saw it as just a dumb game machine. However, I was successful in talking my dad into buying me the computer to end all computers one Christmas.

The Commodore 64 was this beige box with a keyboard built into it. You could hook it up to your television via an RF adapter. Most of the early games came out on tape. Yes, cassette tape. I believe the system with a tape drive would run you some $400 at the time. Of course, my parents bought just the computer at first. I would spend hours typing in lines of BASIC code out of the back of C64 magazines, to create primative and boring games or programs. A year or two later, when prices dropped, I got a floppy drive for my C64. The floppy drive was a gift from the Gods. My friends and I would congregate at one of our houses after school and throw copying parties. Soon, I built up a library of over 200 games on floppy. The C64 games were excellent compared to their 8-Bit counterparts. Plus they were hackable.

4. Ninjas - Somewhere, I have a picture of me..about 9 years old..wearing this white ninja outfit..complete with hood. My sister and I used to play ninjas out in the yard and around the neighborhood, using sticks and branches as swords. Somewhere, I think I still have some throwing stars. I never learned to use the nunchucks though.

5. Arcade games - I got hooked on arcade video games at an early age. They were like crack to me. I guess that's why my son is so hooked on console games now. Sigh..they have it so easy these days!

I used to have to ride my bike a half of a mile to the laundry mat to play Star Wars or Donkey Kong.

I also remember stealing change off of my parents dresser a few times... running down to the local convienence store, and blowing it all on Ms. Pac Man. I never did make it to the final scene though. Malls arcades were like Vegas for kids... hundreds of games... so many opportunities.

Finally, a Republican that GETS it...

2008-05-28T08:32:00.000-05:00

I know I said I was done with politics, but I heard this last night on Hannity and had to bring it up. I come off as liberal to a lot of people, and that's fine with me...but I do have strong roots in conservative idealism. My problem with Republicans currently, as I've oft stated, is that they have forgotten what they are supposed to believe in.

Barry Goldwater must be rolling over in his grave right now.

Republicans Are in Denial

By TOM COBURN
May 27, 2008; Page A21

As congressional Republicans contemplate the prospect of an electoral disaster this November, much is being written about the supposed soul-searching in the Republican Party. A more accurate description of our state is paralysis and denial.

Many Republicans are waiting for a consultant or party elder to come down from the mountain and, in Moses-like fashion, deliver an agenda and talking points on stone tablets. But the burning bush, so to speak, is delivering a blindingly simple message: Behave like Republicans.

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn't good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and "compassionate conservatism." If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof "governing" majority, the goal of "compassionate conservatism" was to spend our way to a governing majority.

The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

Compassionate conservatism's starting point had merit. The essential argument that Republicans should orient policy around how our ideas will affect the poor, the widow, the orphan, the forgotten and the "other" is indisputable – particularly for those who claim, as I do, to submit to an authority higher than government. Yet conservatives are conservatives because our policies promote deliverance from poverty rather than dependence on government.

Compassionate conservatism's next step – its implicit claim that charity or compassion translates into a particular style of activist government involving massive spending increases and entitlement expansion – was its undoing. Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor's possessions. Spending other people's money is not compassionate.

Regaining our brand as the party of fiscal discipline will require us to rejoin Americans in the real world of budget choices and priorities, and to leave behind the fantasyland of borrowing without limits. Instead of adopting earmarks, each Republican can adopt examples of government waste, largess and fraud, and restart the permanent campaign against big government.

Republicans can tear up the "emergency spending" credit card and refuse to accept any new spending whatsoever, including for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, until Congress does its job of eliminating wasteful spending. The federal budget contains a vast unexplored area of offsets. My office alone has identified $300 billion in annual waste. Borrowing from the next generation when we haven't done our job of oversight is unconscionable.

Regaining our brand is not about "messaging." It's about action. It's about courage. It's about priorities. Most of all, it's about being willing to give up our political careers so our grandkids don't have to grow up in a debtor's prison, or a world in which other nations can tell a weakened and bankrupt America where we can and can't defend liberty, pursue terrorists, or show compassion.

John McCain, for all his faults, is the one Republican candidate who can lead us through our wilderness. Mr. McCain is not running on a messianic platform or as a great healer of dysfunctional Republicans who refuse to help themselves. His humility is one of his great strengths. In his heart, he's a soldier who sees one more hill to charge, one more mission to complete.

Friday Five - Best Movies (and worst)

2008-05-23T08:06:00.000-05:00

1. American Beauty. I can't put into words how much this movie moves me every time I watch it. It's not a spectacle. It's not over the top. There are no real special effects. But the true meat and bone of American Beauty is the concept that no matter how hard we try in life, attaining perfection is a near impossibility.

For Lester Burnham, perfection was going back to his teenage years, driving the cherry hot rod, dating the cheerleader. Now in his 40's, his life had become estranged from everything he wanted it to be. For his wife, Carolyn, perfection was success. For their daughter, it was simply love and attention.
The last five minutes of this movie are spellbinding...

2. La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful)

I caught this gem on DVD a few years back. Roberto Benigni put on the performance of his life in this story of a Jewish Italian bookstore owner who finds the love of his life only to be forced into the Nazi prison camps with his son. I love this movie because despite the horrible things that are happening around Benigni and his son in the death camps, he never stops smiling and creates an elaborate 'game' with his son to shield him from the horrors of what may happen to them. The film is a throwback to the classics of the 40's and 50's and the cinematography is breathtaking.

And in the end, his son wins his tank!

3. Donnie Darko

(from a blog in 05) I watched Donnie Darko again the other night. I had seen the movie about a year ago (a library rental) and had a hard time grasping the concepts and plotlines of the film. This time, it seemed to make more since.
The story is somewhat like Back to the Future, although there are no DeLoreans, mad professors, Calvin Kleins in this tale. The plot is centered around the life of a teenage boy named Donnie Darko (a name, not so accidentally, reminiscent of a super hero). He lives in the typical nuclear family. His mom is authoritive and his father throws discipline to the wind. They've put Donnie in pyschotherapy and on medication to cure him of his problems, however, his problems take on a life of their own. He begins to be visited at night by a strange guy in a macabre bunny suit, looking something akin to Bugs from Hell. The Bunny, Frank, leads Donnie off one night, leaving him asleep on a golf course. Donnie returns home the next morning to find a stray jet engine had demolished part of his house, more specifically, his room. By some strange twist of fate, or maybe the hand of the unknown, he had avoided death.

Okay, so this is where the story gets weird... although some people may think that following a six-foot tall bunny around in the middle of the night is pretty strange as it is. Frank gives Donnie a prophecy of sorts. He's told that the world will end in 28 days (Frank actually breaks it down into minutes and seconds). Somehow, a tangent universe was created when the jet engine landed in the Darko House. The Government couldn't figure out where it came from as there was no record of any jets losing engines... so our Donnie becomes the chosen one, much like Neo from the Matrix. His job, his purpose, is to save the world from utter destruction by somehow closing the tangent universe putting the world back into it's normal timeline. Frank, along with others around him, become unconcious guides to help him complete his mission. A mission that very well may spell the end of Donnie's existance.

*spoilers ahead.... red alert!*

There are a few things that make the story confusing. When is Donnie in the real world and when is he in the tangent universe... or has the tangent universe become reality at the point of the engine (or artifact) appearing? Does the real world reappear during the span of time between the halloween party and the whole cellar door incident with Frank and the bullies? Who is the short mexican chick and why is she in the movie? Is Smurfette really a who-ah?

Anyhoo... I'll have to ponder these thoughts...

4. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Peter Jackson's final bookend to Tolkien's masterpiece is to say the least, breathtaking. Of the three movies, Return of the King remains the bedrock of the trilogy, and I don't think that a better finale could have ever been put on celluloid (or digital film, these days). When it comes down to it, the central theme of LOTR is how the smallest of all can change the world with the heart of a hero.

5. Jacob's Ladder

This movie has been in my top five since the first time I saw it in 1991. At the time it wasn't a blockbuster and the film's reviews were lukewarm for the most part. What I love about the movie though is the nightmarish quality that director Adrian Lynn brought to an already bizarre script. Jacob Singer (played masterfully by Tim Robbins) is a Vietnam vet who has his ability to distinguish between the real world and the demon filled hallucanagenic reality of his sub concious. In one life he lives as a post man, with spicy Elizabeth Pena. For some unknown reason, he begins seeing demonic manifistations in his everyday life, such as a bum on a subway with a tail, or an old nurse at the V.A who seems to have the stumps of horns underneath her hat. He soon sinks into a pit of fear and paranoia which drives him to search out the source of his visions. As confusing as that may seem, he also finds himself flashing to another existance, where he is happily married to a beautiful wife and has two loving children. The youngest, Gabe, is his little angel, in more ways than one. He also finds himself back in Vietnam, strapped to a gurney, his intestines seeping out of a hole in his abdomen.

What Lynn does so well in this movie is that he weaves the three alternate realities into one cohesive story, and while the movie does stray off topic a few times (about government conspiracies and secret military drug tests), the characters are well defined and at times extremely frightening. The special effects, apparently produced with hand held cameras on the cheap, are particularly well done - and are placed sporatically through the film like easter eggs that you stumble upon when least expected. I found the faceless vibrating man especially creepy.

The creators of Silent Hill used Jacob's Ladder for inspiration in creating their video game as well. This hospital scene is a good example. This is probably our future under socialized medicine.

This is a pessemistic blog. You have been warned.

2008-05-18T07:45:00.000-05:00

Some of you more conservative types may be offended at what I'm about to say... but I want to personally THANK you people who voted George W. Bush into office again back in 2004. THANK you for the $4.00 a gallon gas prices and a dollar that's worth CRAP. THANKS for tax cuts that really only benefit the well off yet are being PAID FOR with our INCREASING debt to COMMUNIST CHINA! THANKS ONCE MORE, for this UNENDING war in Iraq that will end up costing MY SON TRILLIONS during his adulthood! Thanks for all the jobs lost to India and stagnant wage increases! Believe me, I could go on!!!

Think about those things when you go to the polls this November. The right wing talking heads WANT the issue to be about a supposedly racist pastor (who, by the way, ISN'T running for President) and other issues that ARE NOT ISSUES. They want you to believe that the billions that have been wasted (ie. squandered) in Iraq have made America safer. They tell us that if we didn't fight them over there, they would be attacking us here. Think about that for a minute. It sounds like if we didn't attack Iraq, the SS Osama would be steaming accross the Atlantic with a fleet of terrorists in tow. Seriously. Al Qaeda cannot simply come to America and attack it. They can infiltrate America as they did before...which is why WE SHOULD BE USING OUR MONEY AND TROOPS TO BOLSTER HOMELAND SECURITY! DUH! As for the terrrrrists in Iraq... well.... they weren't there before we invaded.

So think about these things before going and voting Republican again. What the hell has happened to the Republican party???? What happened to fiscal conservatism in general??? Did it die with Barry Goldwater?

I'm not saying that all Republicans are bad here... I'm just saying that our current administration is sucking a cock called cronyism and has failed us as a people.

Retirement Planning for 2008

2008-05-01T03:34:00.000-05:00

RETIREMENT PLANNING FOR 2008

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now
be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have
$36.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank
all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND,
You would now have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink
heavily and recycle.

It's called the 401-Keg Plan.

Universal Health Care

2008-04-25T10:57:00.000-05:00

This was once a hot button issue, but the discussion has died down recently to make room for debates over Barack Obama's preacher, Hillary Clinton's dirty campaigning and well, quite frankly, not much about McCain. Still, to many of us Americans, this IS an important issue, especially now that more of the middle class' hard earned paychecks are going into our gas tanks and money is getting tighter.

Both Democrat candidates have introduced proposals for government ran health care. Hillary's system forces everyone to be insured one way or the other, while Obama's plan makes buying into a national system optional, and allows individuals to continue to use private insurance. His plan also creates standards to which private insurers must meet in order to continue business as usual.

McCain's proposal focuses more on reform. His plan also has utilizes standards and forcing more competition in the health care arena - something that is needed. There are currently five major insurers in the US. The lack of competition creates an environment in the industry that is ripe for corruption and price fixing. His plan also states that the uninsured should have access to health care as well, which, in my opinion, makes the plan universal as well since that cost will come out of our tax dollars.

What would you propose gets done with health care? Do we simply ignore the issue and allow premiums to rise at twice the rate of inflation? Do we adopt a system that covers everyone? Do we adopt a system that covers those who want it? What is your opinion?

Teen Be Gone

2008-04-23T13:13:00.000-05:00

I need one of these for when I go to the theater and a bunch of bratty teenagers in front of me decide to talk through the whole movie!

NEW YORK (AP) -- A wall-mounted gadget designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults is infuriating civil liberties groups and tormenting young people after being introduced into the United States.

The Mosquito, which targets loiterers, projects a shrill noise audible only to teens and young adults.

Almost 1,000 units of the device, called the Mosquito, have been sold in the United States and Canada after the product debuted last year, according to Daniel Santell, the North America importer of the device sold under the company name Kids Be Gone.

The high-frequency sound has been likened to fingernails dragged across a chalkboard or a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear. It can be heard by most people in their teens and early 20s who still have sensitive hair cells in their inner ears. Whether you can hear the noise depends on how much your hearing has deteriorated: How loud you blast your iPod, for example, could affect your ability to detect it.

"It's horrible, loud and irritating," said Eddie Holder, 15, who sprinted from his apartment for school one morning covering one ear with his hand to block out the noise. The device was installed outside the building to drive away loiterers. "I have to hurry out of the building because it's so annoying. It's this screeching sound that you have to get away from or it will drive you crazy."

The device has roiled civil liberties groups in countries where it's in use, including England, Australia and Scotland. England's government-appointed Children's Commission proposed a ban. That group describes it as a weapon that infringes on the basic rights of young people and claims that it could have unknown long-term health effects.

The $1,500 device has also been challenged in some American cities and towns that have proposed installing it, with some criticizing the tactic as needlessly cruel.

Santell said the noise can be heard by animals and babies but is bothersome only to children older than 12 and becomes unbearable after several minutes, making it a perfect teen-repellent. The same sound is used as a cell phone ring tone by deaf adults and is a popular download on the Internet.

The town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, banned the device last year after a movie theater owner installed one.

"There was an outcry, and people didn't like the idea of torturing kids' ears like that," said Ronald Dlugosz, a town official. "People here don't tolerate that kind of stuff."

Milford, Connecticut, faced similar resistance when the city announced plans to install the Mosquito in a park. It increased police patrols instead.

Elsewhere, there have been few or no complaints. A mall in Maryland announced plans to introduce the buzz to disperse skateboarders, and officials and police said they haven't had any outcry. A school district in Columbia, South Carolina, recently installed one on the grille of a school vehicle and another in a parking lot where students gather after high school games, with no complaints.

"We'd have crowds gather in parking lots, and there'd be the usual trash talk, then you'd have fights," said Rick McGee, the school district's emergency services manager. "Now, there's no confrontation at all; they just get aggravated and leave within a few minutes."

Santell, the device's marketer, said most of the company's inquiries are from major corporations and government agencies looking for a way to protect private property. Overseas, complaints arose when the device was projected into public spaces, like sidewalks.

Santell said it does not violate any noise ordinances but added that the company will soon be selling the same product with a higher "power," or decibel output, that will be sold only to government agencies.

Carmen Ramirez, superintendent of the New York apartment building where Eddie Holder lives, described it as "a miracle."

"We used to have young men here all of the time, bothering people in the building and doing illegal things," said Ramirez, 50. "As soon as we put it up, they were gone, and they haven't been back. If they return, we'll just put up more."

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union said the organization does not have a position on the issue. But James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Boston's Northeastern University, said that putting crowd-monitoring devices in the hands of private businesses and citizens is "dangerous."

"There is a significant problem with giving people a tool like this and empowering the public to take over the tasks of law enforcement," Fox said. "It can certainly be used in a way that's inappropriate, and without a doubt, it will be."

Nobody at Holder's apartment building could say where the loitering kids had gone after the Mosquito was installed.

Funeral for a Friend (9/2007)

2008-04-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

I'm letting go of you. Finally.
I thought it would be different, I really did.
A year flowed by under my unmoving feet.
A year of self discovery, self preservation.
Self indulgence and sometimes self pity.
Still pieces of me remained motionless.
A door closed and reopened elsewhere.
I stepped through.
I waded through the heartbreak and remorse.
Jealousy was lost, but the anger and hatred remained.
Until now.
I'm letting that, go.
This is where my universe has shifted itself to.
I once told you I would be your beacon.
That you could always follow me home if the waves became insurmountable.
The light has been turned off.
For my own well being and to be fair to those I now love.

I am so sorry.
You are on your own.

Sand Beneath Her Toes (2003)

2008-04-16T12:05:00.000-05:00

she closes her eyes and imagines her life
beneath palm trees that dance on an ocean breeze
and endless blue skies
the clouds that reside
dance in her head where memories lie
of lighthouses and heavy storms
comfort her when she is alone
and loneliness is unforgiving
and emptyness is unrelenting
and happiness is as easy as just
dreaming of the sand beneath her toes
and she's the only one who knows

Beer and a Few Crumbs of Bread (4-1994)

2008-04-16T12:01:00.000-05:00

the sun gently slips behind the january mountains

leaving the sky to fend for itself

against the harsh, black, moonless night

i, myself, a bystander

watch from a hill high above the oilfields

and smoke a Marlboro

gathering my makeshift thoughts

and trying to grasp some

sort of perspective of myself

sometimes i feel crowded...

that there's just one too many kooks

aboard this square yellow bus

sometimes the clown is driving

with his self-depreciating humor

but the smile he wears is painted on

he hides behind it and

sometimes I glimps it

as a single tear runs down his

white cheek

splashing harmlessly against his

grey faded lapels

at other times it is the demon

who smiles devilishly and

who delights in steering us

slightly askew

seemingly intreagued by the suffering

of others at his own gain

when he is driving

we all duck and cover

then sometimes the intellect drives

and takes us on a cultural tour

of life that surrounds us

as he feigns concern

at the plight of the less fortunate

but he knows he is just a myth

and fear will always

keep a tight reign on his thoughts

but fear doesn't ever drive

he only sits in the corner of the bus

alone

with his .357

and the rest of us wonder

when he'll snap like a twig

and just start shooting

i have amused myself

and i stamp out the cigarette

and crave beer and some crumbs of bread

Machina

2008-04-16T11:58:00.000-05:00

too far gone to care... i want to but i don't dare

the drone of machinery envelopes me

in cold metallic wings

too numb to feel

too blind to see

too dulled to need

sudden exctacy

biting hooks tear open skin

exposing insects deep within

gnawing on my strange disease

a simple request - give this to me

don't offer stolen hope

i only want to sear

if there's eternal darkness

it isn't far from here

Under Darker Skies (1-5-1994)

2008-04-16T11:55:00.000-05:00

Estranged emotions, held in check

Twisted understanding, bleached in the sun

Bubblebath of memories, so appealing, so inticed

I will hold my breath, behind this shaded guise

Release the catch, hold my aim

Steady as the crow flies, under darker skies

There was a time, not long ago

I could see, my own face

In a different light, gently smiling

There was a time, now I've passed behind

Bear the weight, hold the shame

Steady as the crow flies, under darker skies

It's me or me, one of us will go

Decisions final, released before me

I don't belong, don't fit in

Don't live here, just visiting

Pull you down, end the game

Steady as the crow flies, under darker skies

Three Wooden Matches

2008-04-16T11:53:00.000-05:00

Thank God I don't have these sort of dark flashes anymore!

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

in my pocket, the one on the right

i carry three wooden matches

i take the first

and strike it agaist the wall

to light my cigarette

and discard it

watching a small puff of smoke

escape from it's charred tip

the second match

lights a picture

of her

the flame rides a wave of blackness

until i can no longer see her smile

and after a bath of gasoline

i light the third

No. 68 (5/20/06)

2008-04-16T11:44:00.000-05:00

lover... where are your eyes wandering too?
you know now i'm wondering too
has my relevance escaped you?

lover... you want that i should see past
this diversion until it's passed
and trust that this is nothing to...

concern myself
about
but the more you
give away
is the more i
live without
will there be no crumbs
left to stay around for... now?

lover... i hope that you understand
we all draw lines in our own sand
that are easily erased by time

lover... i can just huddle in fear
and watch your visage disappear
let my eyes follow the contrails you left behind

it's just a game
we play
to keep the flame
from fading out
but newness always
walks away
so would you so easily trade away
what you will have to live without?

we can share our lives
as whole numbers
or divide them into fractions
but i can never settle down and be
the 68th distraction
that keeps you somewhat centered
in a life that is broken and splintered
while you decide if i'm your lover
or no more than a brother
to you

so just look away
i'll be right here in the corner of your eye

Opiate (1-2-1994)

2008-04-16T11:40:00.000-05:00

inside thse four grey walls

i dream

sweet, warm images

not the truth, but only what i wish was

steadily looking deep

into your eyes, your soul

where your feelings sleep

waiting to be swept up

so i come open

defenses down

as we hold each other - close

closer... melding together..fission..explosion

and then i wake, brutally

the repercussions still echoing

etched into my memory cells

leaving me cold and hungry

shaking like an addict

without a needle to satisfy

to sooth me, to cover me

an opiate for my mind

Ghosts (8/2006)

2008-04-16T11:38:00.000-05:00

Trade away an unknown fate

For sure existance without wait

Time meanders like a child

Lost, confused, not reconciled

When hands of silence grip the air

A million thoughts fall from a stare

And lose themselves inside a place

Where hope is bitter to the taste

Like a wave that will not fold

A dream forgotten, a lie untold

A sillouhette of memories past

A ghost in spaces shadows cast

Life is just a dream that we are all in love with

Unfinished...

2008-04-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

I watch you from the corner of my mind

Drifting by like a vapor cloud

That I could never capture or take in

You leave my words hanging in mid-air

Suspended in time and space

Like a funny comic thought balloon

From somewhere in the Sunday paper

Only followed by three conspicious dots

For they are unfinished...

Monster (1-20-1994)

2008-04-16T11:30:00.000-05:00

she says she's happy out on her own

she smiles and tells me she's starting to bloom

but beneath her still voice the monster has grown

it slowly consumes her when she's all alone

ripples and whirlpools surrounding her head

treading the currents the best that she can

but fear is a riptide that pulls from within

she's being slowly sucked under again

a rainbow of colors emptied out on her bed

"i've got a prescription to leave here." she says

and why would you exit with so much to lose

"i hate myself." remains her only excuse

and i've tried to sweep it under the rug

avoiding her questions with only a shrug

and somehow i feel that i am to blame

she has a full house but she's quiting the game

Multiculturalism - Who Should Have to Adjust?

2008-04-12T08:12:00.000-05:00

First of all, I hope this blog doesn't come off as 'racist'. That isn't it's intent. The ethnic group I am blogging about has much to be proud of, and personally, some of the hardest working, most family dedicated people I know are Hispanic. I use this group as an example. One could draw the same conclusions, from a religious standpoint, to current trends in the American Islamic communities. I may be looked at as a liberal on certain issues, but this is one that I definitely fall into the conservative camp on.

I got into a little bit of a debate with Lilly this morning on the telephone over multiculturalism in America. The topic came up when we were discussing taxes oddly enough. I made the comment that as someone who had lived in Southern California for many years, I had some negative feelings towards the growing immigrant population, specifically in that state. I'm not going to bring up citizen status here, as undoubtedly many of these people are here illegally, but many are not. That is another whole discussion entirely.
My irritation lies in the perceived failure, at least as I see it, of said immigrants to assimilate themselves into the English-speaking American society. I have no problem with people legally immigrating to the United States. The problem is that it seems like when they move here in such numbers, as the Mexican-American population has, they don't attempt to learn the language or customs of their new home, nor, do they attempt to help, and sometimes even, allow, their children to adapt. Because of political correctness, the state has made it that much easier for them to continue to segregate and ostracize themselves from society. The state must print all legal documents in English and Spanish, which costs taxpayers money. The state must hire multilingual workers for most jobs that require working with the public. Schools must take on the burden on more and more ESL classes for children, as the parents are unwilling to teach their children English, but continue to speak Spanish in the household.
Now all this works out wonderful for the hispanic community at large. They can move here, enjoy the benefits of higher wages and a more bountiful standard of living, yet not have to do anything to mesh with the established society.
On the other hand, those of us who grew up in the state and have paid taxes with the sweat off of our backs get screwed. More and more jobs require the ability to speak Spanish as well as English fluently. Our tax dollars get funnelled into paying for extra paperwork, extra employees, extra hassles at the DMV. I worked in retail for a few years and found myself chided by some Mexican-Americans because I couldn't understand them enough to help them out. Even now, part of my current job entails calling restaurants on the west coast and troubleshooting data connection devices (modems, DSL lines ect) with the store managers. One out of every four calls I make to Southern California ends up being a huge hassle, due to the communication barrier. The funny thing is, I do know a few words of Spanish. For instance, if I'm asking a manager 'how many' people were on the clock that day, and they can't understand the phrase, I'll often ask, "Cuantos 'hourly labor'?" Then the person at the other end assumes I speak Spanish and stops attempting to speak English. This is something I've learned to avoid doing now.
In my opinion, the laws and culture of California has made the immigration population lazy, and not forced them to adapt to America or it's culture. The more this is allowed, the more demands will be made by that population that we, the hosts, adapt to their culture and language. I just do not think this is right.

Now Lilly's take on all of this is that she believes the situation gives me, the American, the responsibility to better myself by learning a new language. She feels that it gives us incentives to up our learning and better integrate ourselves in an ever growing multicultural society. I shouldn't be focused on the jobs I am losing to less qualified Spanish-speaking individuals, but I should focus on taking advantage of the situation by learning Spanish, thus upping my value greatly as an employee. While I see her point here, I can't get past the fact that I'M THE ONE WHO HAS TO ADAPT!

I had a friend who's parents were immigrants from Macedonia. They moved here in the early 70's, knowing not a lick of English. They grounded themselves in New Jersey and found themselves poorly paying jobs (factories don't care about your native tongue). They learned to speak English and moved on to better jobs. The father went through citizenship classes and eventually passed the citizenship test. The mother, while she still is considered a resident alien, speaks English well enough to get by and has never expected the government to provide translation tools or to accommodate her because of her native tongue. They did what they had to do to fit in with society around them, and thus make a good life for themselves. They are now living in Dublin, OH... one of the richest 'burbs of Columbus. Looking at them, I know that immigrants can assimilate themselves, they just need to have the drive to do so.

What is your take on this?

Skybus(t)

2008-04-05T03:28:00.000-05:00

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5677117.html

Skybus announced last night that they were ceasing all operations as of Saturday April 5th. The Columbus based carrier was less than a year old and touted a limited amount of $10 fairs on every flight. They join Aloha Airlines and ATA in the low cost carrier graveyard. Skybus blames decreased consumer spending along with skyrocketing fuel costs for the decision.

I blame poor business decisions on the part of the airline management as well as the City of Columbus for the failure. When Skybus first approached the City of Columbus with it's business plan, I was worried that the whole thing could end up a disaster. The airline wanted to offer flights throughout the country on a first-come, first-serve tier level. That is, the first 10 seats of every flight went for $10 ($20 after taxes) one way. This included flights to the west coast. Then the prices went up to $25 for the next 20 or so, $50...ect. The airline would fly only to regional airports and board passengers old-school style via the tarmac instead of using a jetway. Skybus would sell advertising on the outside of the airplanes and snacks and food on the inside. You would have to buy your lunch from the airline - no outside food was allowed. There were no connections with Skybus. If you had to connect to another flight, it meant waiting on your bags at retrieval and physically moving them and rechecking them at another gate.

The airline also paid sub-standard wages to it's pilots, crew and airport agents. Consequently, there was always an ad in the Dispatch for new employees. I imagine the turnover was pretty high.

The biggest loser, along with ticket holders and the 450 employees that are going to lose their jobs, is the City of Columbus and Mayor Coleman. The City and Airport Authority sunk an unprecedented amount of money and tax breaks into luring Skybus to hub here.

In an effort to attract the airline to the city, as well as support its growth early on, the city of Columbus, along with the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, had offered incentives totaling over $57 million. These incentives included a twelve-year tax credit, promised airport improvements, business loans, and marketing support. Most of the incentives were performance-based, which required Skybus to create 1000 jobs and complete other milestones to receive the incentives.^[30] Incentives such as airport improvements, however, were already completed. When Skybus began operations, they took advantage of $11 million of improvements to their gates in Concourse B at Port Columbus. (Wikipedia)

So in an effort to lure business here, Mayor Coleman and the City took a gamble on an airline start-up with a shaky business plan that relied on misleading advertising and the public's willingness to be inconvenienced in exchange for cheap travel. As I understand, Skybus did not even have a customer service line. All transactions and correspondence was internet based.

Step back and the bigger picture for the airline industry looks bleak. The Delta/Northwest merger went south, and now Delta is upping ticket prices and cutting jobs and salaries in an effort to remain solvent. Fuel prices continue to increase as oil reaches $110 a barrel. Along with fuel costs, ticket prices will continue to increase yet airlines will be forced to compete for the public's money. The resulting price war is going to be a lose-lose for the public and the airline industry. We will have less airlines to choose from and they will either consolidate and raise prices or simply go out of business all together.

On a personal note, Lily, who is coming to visit me here in May, was booked on Skybus flying out of Portsmouth. Now she has to fight with her credit card company and Skybus to get a refund. Luckily, she's already found another flight with Southwest. At twice the price. Her inconvenience was minor compared to those ticket holders who have flown out on flights but not used their return tickets yet. Those people are really getting screwed.

The Right to Life

2008-04-01T08:44:00.000-05:00

Why is it that the majority of pro-lifers (correct me if I'm wrong here) are also pro-death penalty? All crime and punishment aside, doesn't sticking a needle into a man's (or woman or teenager) arm and purposefuly terminating his existence achieve the same net results as terminating a pregnancy..ie. one dead human being (or viable fetus, zygote, however you view it)?

For the record, I support the death penalty. However, I have to call out the hypocracy here. The first arguement to be made will be that babies are innocent and convicted deserve to die based on poor choices that have effected others. This may be true, but there have been many cases recently of death row inmates being falsely convicted and imprisoned, only to be vindicated through DNA evidence. The state of Illinois recently recended it's death penalty because of cases as such.

If you truly live by the Ten Commandments, how do you get around 'Thou Shall Not Kill'? I don't remember hearing about a * being on those tablets next to that statement...

My Family is Bigger than Your Family!

2008-03-30T07:03:00.000-05:00

Okay. I realize I'm probably going to offend some people with this blog but keep in mind I'm making blanket generalizations here based on my personal observations as a single father of one wonderful child.

Last year, while driving around in by old haunt of Bakersfield, CA, I noticed a new 'infestation' that seemed to effect one out of every three or four SUVs or Soccer-mom vans in town. They seemed to all have these little stick-figure family stickers on the back, which, I assume is supposed to be a cutsie little kindergartner's portrait of the family inside the vehicle. These stickers seemed to have spread like a plague through out the family values type community, much like those awfully annoying "Baby On Board" signs that infected millions of car windows during the Reagan years. The plague hasn't seemed to stretch to the mid-west as of yet, but I'm sure sooner or later it will catch on...

I guess I shouldn't think anything of these..except that to me, anyway, they seem to put forth the idea that our only purpose in life is to breed more children into the world. In fact, the more bambi-nos you can pop out, the more stickers you can score for the back of your SUV.... kind of like how football players get a star on their helmet for a scoring play, or WWII airplanes had Japanese flags painted on the side for every enemy pilot they put into the drink.

Then I got to wondering... how would the family values community react to seeing a sticker like this?

In short, I have nothing against families or stick-figure stickers, but when I was growing up a rascally youth in rural Florida, when I wanted to prove how big my dick was, I simply pulled it out. Go figure.

Morning Coffee

2008-03-29T06:06:00.000-05:00

What do you prefer? I used to do Maxwell's House but I had an ex that worked at Starbucks who got me hooked on their expensive yet tasty coffee for the longest time. Now it's back to can coffee because of the costs. What do you prefer?

Pandora

2008-03-26T08:01:00.000-05:00

American Politics need a 3rd Party

2008-03-22T06:36:00.000-05:00

As the divide between the left and right becomes wider, those of us left hanging in the middle are beginning to feel torn between two polar political parties that do not represent the needs of the majority of average Americans. The Democrats and Republicans have sold out to special interests and corporate America. Between Republican's misuse of the military establisment and the Democrats misuse of public tax funds, it seem like most of our opinions and views simply do not matter.

I believe we need a third party, one that represents the center of the political spectrum. I did a little research and found that a centerist party does exist now, being founded in 2005. Check out the site for the Moderate Party. After reading through the party's platform, I feel I could get behind these ideals. The key is getting more support.

http://www.modparty.net/

Party Platform

A number of moderates around the country have been working together on a Platform for the Moderate Party. This draft Platform is a work in progress that sets the framework for an innovative and evolutionary new political party. The Platform is responsible on fiscal issues and inclusive on social issues.

A final Platform will be developed at a later time, ideally at the Moderate Party national convention in 2008. If you join the Moderate Party and have comments about the Platform, we ask that you record them for future discussion.

Government Spending and Taxes

The Moderate Party supports lowering federal spending and paying down the national debt without compromise to individuals, families, and seniors of American citizenship currently in need of Federal assistance.

The Moderate Party supports a simplified tax code, including the Fair Tax or Flat Tax.

The Moderate Party supports closing tax loopholes for corporations.

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International Relations
The Moderate Party believes that the United States must return to its primary role as international peacekeeper.

The Moderate Party believes that although the United States may disagree with other nations' politically and/or socially inhumane ideologies, where those nations have not directly threatened American security, we do not have the right to preemptory invasion.

The Moderate Party believes that the United States must seek economic and diplomatic recourse in bringing corrupt and inhumane governments to justice before the world court, resorting to military recourse only in coalition with other nations in an action sanctioned by an international governing body.

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Defense
The Moderate Party supports a strong national defense. The safety and security of the United States is of utmost importance, including securing our borders.

The Moderate Party supports thorough, verified intelligence to ensure a strong defense.

The Moderate Party supports sensibility with regards to defense spending, including, but not limited to, the following:

Maintaining a balanced defense budget.
Auditing federal contracts as necessary to ensure proper billing.
Avoiding conflicts of interests in awarding government contracts.

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Environment
The Moderate Party supports protection of our environment to ensure clean land, fresh air, and pure water for ourselves and for future generations.

The Moderate Party opposes sprawl development by encouraging smart planning, livable neighborhoods, and historic preservation.

The Moderate Party supports alternative sources of energy that can individually or collectively meet demand and are also environmentally responsible.

The Moderate Party supports public transportation to lessen dependence on the automobile and improve the quality of our land, air, and water.

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Religious Freedom
The 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution mandates the separation of church and state. It is also supported by the 18th Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The results of this separation for our country has been a vigorous religious life coupled with a relative lack of religious persecution.

The Moderate Party supports the separation of church and state as the guiding principle that truly guarantees and enables religious liberty for all Americans.

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Firearm Responsibility
The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution states "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The Moderate Party supports the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.

The Moderate Party also recognizes that any firearm ownership requires responsibility for the same. In recognizing this responsibility, we believe:

That education in the proper and safe use of firearms is fundamental for all new and underage firearm owners. We therefore support legislation that encourages citizen education in firearm safety and use.
That both firearms dealers and gun owners have a responsibility to prevent firearms from getting into the hands of criminals. We therefore support legislation requiring background checks on all firearm purchases.
That firearms dealers and private individuals who distribute arms to those citizens deemed unfit for ownership because of prior felony conviction, declared mental incompetence, or deficiency in education on proper firearm safety and use, are in effect acting irresponsibly. We therefore support legislation penalizing those firearms dealers and private citizens who act in such an irresponsible manner.
That parents, as the primary role models and shaping forces in the lives of their minor children, are accountable for the actions of their minor children. We therefore support legislation that holds responsible any parent or guardian who allows their minor children illegal access to their firearms.

Finally, the Moderate Party supports the enforcement of those laws currently in existence that penalize citizens who use firearms in the commission of a crime.

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Women's Reproductive Rights
The Moderate Party supports a woman’s right to choose, but is hopeful that the decision to go forward with the termination of pregnancy would be made only under the most extreme circumstances such as rape or incest, or if the life of the mother is otherwise in danger.

The Moderate Party does not support the termination of pregnancy in the third trimester except under circumstances in which the life of the mother is otherwise in danger.

The Moderate Party supports the minimization of pregnancy terminations through education (to include birth control and abstinence) and through greater access to birth control.

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Recognition of Unmarried Partners
In agreement with the principles expressed in the Moderate Party's philosophical statement:

The Moderate Party supports the creation of civil unions to provide economic and familial benefits to mutually consenting adult couples.

The Moderate Party opposes any Constitutional Amendment which sacrifices legal recognition of the committed relationships of consenting adult couples on political, economic, or religious grounds.

Although we understand that the federal government must at times, in the interest of the American people, pass legislation limiting our personal liberties, we feel this legislation should only be passed through laws and the government should never use the constitution of the United States to restrict personal liberties.

Cuyahoga Board of Elections May Prosecute Vote Jumpers

2008-03-22T05:08:00.000-05:00

CLEVELAND (AP) — The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is investigating whether any Republicans broke the law when they switched parties in the March 4 presidential primary, apparently to back a weaker opponent for GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

The board expects the results of the investigation March 31.

The board wants to know if voters lied when they signed statements pledging allegiance to their
new party.

About 16,000 GOP voters crossed over to vote for Democrats in the primary.

It’s not clear whether the board will try to prosecute voters.

A 2-2 party-line tie by the board to pursue violators would have to be broken by Secretary of
State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat.

Brunner “has not been contacted by anyone regarding the prosecution of alleged improper ’crossover voting’,” spokesman Jeff Ortega said in an e-mail.

Any prosecutions in such cases would be up to local prosecutors or, if they decline to pursue it, the Ohio attorney general, Ortega said.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, a Democrat, said he hasn’t seen evidence of wrongdoing by switchers and was skeptical a criminal case could be made.

“If any evidence is presented to us, we’ll review it. It’s going to be very difficult if not impossible to make a case against a voter who has switched parties,” he said Thursday.

Bob Bennett, the Ohio Republican chairman, called the investigation “an embarrassment to the Democratic Party and an absolute irony that a party that claims to empower voters is now moving to prosecute them.” He said the investigation was a waste of time and money.

Sandy McNair, a Democrat and member of the county elections board, had sought the investigation to hold voters accountable for switching.

Last week The Plain Dealer, which reviewed voter records, said more than 16,000 Republicans in mostly Democratic Cuyahoga County changed parties before voting in the primary.

Some local Republicans told the paper that they had changed parties only to influence which Democrat would face McCain. One switcher, in signing the pledge to back the Democratic Party, added, “For one day only.”

That kind of comment could indicate a party switch was insincere, McNair said Thursday. The elections board review now under way involves a Democrat and Republican checking party change records for any similar anecdotal evidence, McNair said.

The board has a responsibility to look into possible criminal wrongdoing, he said.

Lying on the signed statement is a fifth-degree felony, punish able by six to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

The secretary of state’s office has no figures statewide on party switchers in the primary, but overall the number of voters surged more than 76 percent in the hotly contested Hillary Rodham Clinton-Barack Obama primary and 11 percent in the nearly decided GOP primary.

There were more than 2.2 million Democratic votes for president in the primary, up from 1.2 million in 2004, when the campaign for the nomination won by John Kerry lacked the drama of the Clinton-Obama competition.

You Are Your History

2008-03-20T09:15:00.000-05:00

You Are Your History

You probably noticed early on in life that other people see the world differently to you. They must do, because most of them do different things to you.

However, they have broadly the same equipment and the same world to observe, so where's the variation?

The variation is, of course, internal. As Hume suggested over 300 years ago, humans develop by noticing patterns in their surroundings, they form useful habits as time goes by so that they don't have to concentrate on the detail of everything they do.

For example, when you learn to drive you have to concentrate loads at first, but then it comes naturally and you can drive almost without consciously thinking about it at all. In the same way you learn to walk and a thousand other things. The same is true of not just physical skills, but anything you habitually do, such as basic conversation and how to react to certain events.

The way in which the mind learns is by significance and repetition. Thus if something happens that you consider important enough and it happens often enough then you will form a new habit or change an existing one.

For example, if your boss is rude to you every morning for a week, you'll form a habit related to that, perhaps to avoid them.

Maybe you get a new boss; trouble is, old habits die hard and your interactions with this new boss will be (at least initially) coloured by your old habits until a new habit is established.

Now if you spent fifteen years at school being bullied then you have habits (e.g. defensiveness, aloofness) that will be much more difficult to shake, simply because the repetition ingrained the habit more deeply.

The effects this has are both positive and negative. We know from 'How you see the world: representative realism' that your mind interprets the world, so if you change your mind by learning something new you can change your perspective of the world (recall how your perspective of relationships was changed once you learnt about sex! Imagine being able to revolutionise your outlook on anything in the same way).

The negative is that other people literally see the world differently to you. You cannot see it how it is from their perspective, because although you share similar sense organs, you do not have their history with which they make sense of the world. This isolates you to a certain extent from everyone else.

Pascal's Wager (from Wikipedia)

2008-03-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is the application by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal of decision theory to the belief in God. It was set out in the Pensées, a posthumously published collection of notes made by Pascal towards his unfinished treatise on Christian apologetics.

The Wager posits that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists than not to believe, because the expected value of believing (which Pascal assessed as infinite) is always greater than the expected value of not believing. In Pascal's assessment, it is inexcusable not to investigate this issue:

Before entering into the proofs of the Christian religion, I find it necessary to point out the sinfulness of those men who live in indifference to the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and which touches them so nearly.

Variations of this argument may be found in other religious philosophies, such as Islam, and Hinduism . Pascal's Wager is also similar in structure to the precautionary principle.

The Wager is described by Pascal in the Pensées this way:

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....
..."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."
Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. "That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.

Pascal begins with the premise that the existence or non-existence of God is not provable by human reason, since the essence of God is "infinitely incomprehensible". Since reason cannot decide the question, one must "wager", either by guessing or making a leap of faith. Agnosticism on this point is not possible, in Pascal's view, for we are already "embarked", effectively living out our choice.

We only have two things to stake, our "reason" or "knowledge", and our "will" or "happiness". Since reason cannot decide the issue, and both options are equally unfounded in reason, we should decide it according to our happiness. This is accomplished by weighing the gain and loss in believing that God exists. Pascal considers that there is "equal risk of loss and gain", a coin toss, since human reason is powerless to address the question of God's existence. He contends the wise decision is to wager that God exists, since "If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing", meaning one can gain eternal life if God exists, but if not, one will be no worse off in death than if one had not believed.

Pascal recognizes that the wagerer is risking something, namely his life on earth, by devoting it to one cause or another, but here he uses probabilistic analysis to show that it would be a wise wager, at the even odds he assumes, even if one were to gain only three lives at the risk of losing one. Considering that everyone is forced to wager and the potential gain is actually infinite life, it would be acting "stupidly" not to wager that God exists.

The possibilities defined by Pascal's Wager can be expanded more fully, though it should be noted that Pascal did not address the last two possibilities explicitly in his account, nor did he mention hell.

You live as though God exists.
- If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
- If God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.

You live as though God does not exist.
- If God exists, the text is unspecified, but it could be implied that you go to limbo, purgatory, or hell: your loss is either null or infinite.
- If God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.

With these possibilities, and the principles of statistics, Pascal attempted to demonstrate that the only prudent course of action is to live as if God exists. It is a simple application of game theory (to which Pascal had made important contributions).

Another way of portraying the Wager is as a decision under uncertainty with the values of the following decision matrix:

	God exists (G)	God does not exist (~G)
Living as if God exists (B)	+∞ (heaven)	−N (none)
Living as if God does not exist (~B)	?? (not specified, perhaps N (limbo/purgatory) or −∞ (hell))	+N (none)

Given these values, the option of living as if God exists(B) dominates the option of living as if God does not exist (~B). In other words, the expected value gained by choosing B is always greater than or equal to that of choosing ~B, regardless of the likelihood that God exists.

The Matrix and Philosophy - Red or Blue Pill?

2008-03-19T19:23:00.000-05:00

In the Matrix, which pill would you take, the red or the blue?

The question of which pill to take illustrates the personal aspect of the decision to study philosophy. Do you live on in ignorance (and potentially bliss) or do you lead what Aristotle called 'the examined life'...

The Matrix is a film filled with religious and philosophical symbolism. The plot supposes that humans live in vats many years in the future, being fed false sensory information by a giant virtual reality computer (the Matrix). The perpetrators of this horror are machines of the future who use humans as a source of power. Humans are literally farmed.

The central character of the film, Neo, is presented to us in the opening part of the film as a loner who is searching for a mysterious character called Morpheus (named after the Greek god of dreams and sleep). He is also trying to discover the answer to the question "What is the Matrix?"

Morpheus contacts Neo just as the machines (posing as sinister 'agents') are trying to keep Neo from finding out any more. When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question "what is the Matrix?" (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

The film as a whole and especially the choosing scene is deeply compelling. Why is the choice between what you believe you know and an unknown 'real' truth so fascinating? How could a choice possibly be made? On the one hand everyone you love and everything that you have built you life upon. One the other the promise only of truth.

The question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these circumstances. The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth pursuing. The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit, of things we believe we know. We are comfortable, we do not need truth to live. The blue pill symbolises commuting to work every day, or brushing your teeth.

The red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to answer the question, you can gamble your whole life and world on a reality you have never experienced.

However, in order to investigate which course of action to take we need to investigate why the choice is faced. Why should we even have to decide whether to pursue truth?

The answer in short, is inquisitiveness. Many people throughout human existence have questioned and enquired. Most of them have not been scientists or doctors or philosophers, but simply ordinary people asking 'what if?' or 'why?' Asking these questions ultimately leads us to a choice. Do you continue to ask and investigate, or do you stop and never ask again? This in essence, is the question posed to Neo in the film.

So what are the advantages of taking the blue pill? As one of the characters in the film says, "ignorance is bliss" Essentially, if the truth is unknown, or you believe that you know the truth, what is there to question or worry about?

By accepting what we are told and experience life can be easier. There is the social pressure to 'fit in', which is immensely strong in most cultures. Questioning the status quo carries the danger of ostracism, possibly persecution. This aspect has a strong link with politics. People doing well under the current system are not inclined to look favourably on those who question the system. Morpheus says to Neo "You have to understand that many people are not ready to be unplugged, and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it."

The system also has a place for you, an expected path to follow. This removes much of the doubt and discomfort experienced by a trailblazer.

Another argument on the side of the blue pill is how does anyone know that the status quo is not in fact the truth? The act of simply questioning does not infer a lack of validity on the questioned. Why not assume that your experience is innocent until proven guilty? Just accept everything?

So if the arguments for the blue pill are so numerous, why take the red pill? Why pursue truth even though it may be unpalatable and the journey to it hard? In the film, Neo risks death to escape the virtual reality and discovers a brutal reality from which he cannot return. As he discovers the trouble with asking questions is that the answers are not necessarily what you want to hear.

To justify taking the red pill we might ask what is the purpose of an ignorant existence? Further still, what is there in merely existing? Simply existing brings humans down to the level of objects; they might have utility or even purpose, but where is the meaning? Existence without meaning is surely not living your life, but just experiencing it. As Trinity says to Neo, "The Matrix cannot tell you who you are."

Given the potential disadvantages of choosing the red pill, the motivation for discovering the truth must then be very strong. The film makes much of this point. Trinity says to Neo "It's the question that drives us, Neo." and Morpheus compares the motivation for Neo's search to "a splinter in your mind - driving you mad." The motivation for answering the question is obviously strong as the answer will help us to find the meaning in our lives.

What we are looking at here is the drive to answer a question, but the key to this is what drove the question in the first place. The asking of questions about our environment our experience and ourselves is fundamental to the human condition. Children ask a seemingly never-ending stream of questions from an early age. It is only with education and socialisation that some people stop asking these questions. However, we remain, as it were, hard-wired to enquire.

This is an inevitable consequence of consciousness. A being with a mind, conscious of itself and its existence, experiencing a reality, needs to organise the data that it receives from its senses. Simply observing and recording does not allow for consciousness. It is what we do with that information that allows us to think. In order to process and store the vast amount of information received, the human brain attempts to identify patterns in the data; looking for the patterns behind what is experienced. This is asking questions of the sensory information, and requires reasoning. By definition a conscious mind seeks to know. Knowing something requires more than just data, but intelligence or reasoning applied to that data. To attempt to obtain knowledge we must therefore question the data our mind receives; thus, consciousness questions.

So the metaphor of the journey to truth that Neo takes is complete. The journey starts with a question, there is a search for the answer and the answer may be reached. This shows us that the journey does not start with Neo choosing between the pills, or with ourselves deciding whether to question. The act of asking the question is itself the starting point as the aim of asking the question is to seek truth and knowledge.

We have established that consciousness is aware and seeks knowledge and that thus the conscious mind must question. To question is to seek the truth and start on the journey to knowledge. Therefore the choice between the pills is surely made for us. The fact that we are conscious appears to require us to take the red pill.

However, this can be simply countered by someone who would prefer to take the blue pill. They may wish to seek the truth in a different way, or in a less mind jarring set of circumstances. They can choose the blue pill and not deny their consciousness, but to stop seeking the truth entirely would be to deny their consciousness.

Thus we are philosophically driven to seek the truth and the act of questioning whether to seek it is in itself seeking the truth. As conscious minds we will always seek the truth. However, the choice over the red or blue pills is not solely a choice between whether to question or not, it is a personal choice on the method of discovering the truth.

The Division Bell

2008-03-18T06:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I got into a heated arguement with a former Multiply contact on someone else's blog. This isn't the first time this has happened with her. A few weeks back, I made the mistake of trivializing an idea on one of her blogs and was ruthlessly attacked for it. Why the hate? I'm not entirely sure, but after yesterday's exchange, I can only assume it is because I am politically to the left of mainstream, and because I've verbally spoken out about issues with Christianity.

This is a person who has many times stated that political correctness is killing our country. I agree with her on this statement. I've never accepted or went out of my way to be P.C. with people, although I do try to be respectful. What she doesn't realize, is that by expecting me to censure my views about Christianity, she is in fact expecting me to be politically correct. It's always ironic when you become what you hate.

It seems to me that there are some out there that are looking for the division bell. They surround themselves with like minded individuals so as to insulate themselves from what they view as evil opposing viewpoints. Like the savage boys in William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies, they seperate themselves from reason and logical debate and embracing isolationism within their peergroup of like minded individuals. Is this behaviour the natural instinct of humans or have we evolved enough to learn to listen without prejudice? I, for one, choose to listen first. There are always more than one viewpoint and nothing in life is absolutely black and white.

I don't know if this will work...but I'd be willing to try it.

2008-03-18T05:43:00.000-05:00

THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' GAS FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON.

This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this please.

Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May!
It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!

I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by next summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action.
The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas

It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.
BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can Really work. Please read on and join with us!

By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.49 for regular unleaded in my town, Seattle.

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.

The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit
someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas.

But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL.

If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) .. and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers .
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it.....

THREE HUNDRED MILLION

PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all!

(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am. so trust me on this one.

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you!
Acting together we can make a difference.

If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Please keep this going...

Threes

2008-03-11T10:20:00.000-05:00

Three jobs I have had in my life:
1. Account Analyst
2. Burger Flipper
3. Appliance Delivery Driver

Three movies I would watch over and over:
1. American Beauty
2. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
3. Donnie Darko

Three places I have lived:
1. Crestview, FL
2. San Luis Obispo, CA
3. Westerville, OH

Three TV Shows that I watch:
1. House
2. Family Guy
3. The Office

Three places I have been:
1. Wales
2. Spain
3. Seattle

Three of my favorite foods:
1. Hawaiian Pizza
2. Burritos
3. Sweet and Sour Chicken

Three places I'd rather be right now:
1. California
2. New Hampshire
3. Seattle

Three friends I think will respond:
1. Dunno
2. Dunno
3. Dunno

Three things I am looking forward to this year:
1. May
2. June
3. Moving out

Now, here's what you're supposed to do - and please do not spoil the fun...

Copy and paste this on your blog page. Delete my answers and type in yours. Give it the same title I did on my page.

Hopefully people will learn a lot of unknown little facts about you, and you about them.

Simple Homemade Remedies

2008-03-11T08:54:00.000-05:00

AMAZINGLY SIMPLE HOME REMEDIES

1. If you're choking on an ice cube simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat. Presto! The blockage will instantly remove itself.

2. Avoid cutting yourself when slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold while you chop.

3. Avoid arguments with the Mrs. about lifting the toilet seat by using the sink.

4. For high blood pressure sufferers: simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins Remember to use a timer.

5. A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

6. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives, then you'll be afraid to cough.

7. You only need two tools in life - WD-40 and Duct Tape. If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape.

8. Remember: Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

9. If you can't fix it with a hammer, you've got an electrical problem.

Hillary Would LOVE to Run a Clinton/Obama ticket... one little problem though...

2008-03-09T18:11:00.000-05:00

The Swamp

How Clinton camp justifies Obama VP but not CinC

by Mike Dorning

Does Hillary Clinton believe Barack Obama is good enough to be a heartbeat away from the presidency but still a second-rate choice for commander-in-chief?

As Clinton’s campaign simultaneously questions Obama’s readiness to be commander-in-chief and enthusiastically promotes him as a vice-presidential choice should she win the nomination, a Clinton surrogate this morning made the unusual argument that Obama is “qualified” to be a heartbeat away from the presidency but still falls far short of Clinton’s readiness for the job.

Tim Russert, moderator for “Meet the Press,” bored in on the seeming inconsistency in questioning Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, a surrogate who appeared on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

While the Clinton campaign’s recent rhetoric suggests that Obama may not meet the standard of readiness voters would expect in a commander-in-chief, Rendell argued that Obama is in fact “ready” for the job.

Still, according to Rendell, his candidate’s "dream" vice-presidential pick is “not nearly as ready as Hillary Clinton is, there's no question about that.”

Here is the exchange:

RUSSERT: Would--do you think that Barack Obama would be acceptable as vice president?

RENDELL: Acceptable? I think it would be a dream to Democrats all over this country. Personally, for me, it would be a great ticket. I mean, I'm going to fight hard for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, whoever the candidate is. But put them together and I think it would give America a rare opportunity to experience something just incredibly wonderful.

RUSSERT: So, if you believe he's acceptable as vice president, one heartbeat away from the presidency, you believe that Barack Obama is qualified to be commander in chief.

RENDELL: I think he's qualified. I don't think he's as good a potential commander in chief right now as Hillary Clinton is. But I certainly think he's qualified. And I will work my heart out for him if he's our nominee, just as I know Tom will work his heart out for Senator Clinton if she's our nominee.

RUSSERT: It--that seems to be in conflict with some things that you have said and what Hillary Clinton has said. On Wednesday you sent out a statement from the Clinton campaign that says, "We want a president who's ready, not one we hope will one day be ready," suggesting Barack Obama is not ready. Hillary Clinton said this on Monday. Let's listen.

(Videotape)

CLINTON: I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.

(End videotape)
RUSSERT: And she went on to offer these observations about a threshold for commander in chief. Let's listen.

(Videotape, Thursday)

CLINTON: I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander in chief threshold, and I believe that I've done that. Certainly Senator McCain has done that. And, and you'll have to ask Senator Obama with respect to his candidacy.

(End videotape)

RUSSERT: So, Governor Rendell, if Barack Obama's qualified to be vice president, he has crossed the commander in chief threshold. Correct?

RENDELL: Well, I, I think he's ready. He's not nearly as ready as Hillary Clinton is, there's no question about that. But, look, make no mistake about it, he's a talented, dynamic politician and, and a, and a good senator, and I think he would make a fine president. Again, is he as experienced and as ready as Hillary Clinton? Nobody is. Tim, I've been talking to Democratic candidates since 1980, and Hillary Clinton is the best-prepared candidate I've ever talked to. Far better prepared than Bill Clinton was in 1992.

RUSSERT: But if, in fact, there's a possibility Obama may be the Democratic nominee, would it be better, in the interest of the Democratic Party, that the Clintons not suggest that he hasn't passed the threshold to be commander in chief?

RENDELL: Well, sure. Look, there, there's rhetoric in a campaign on all, on all sides, and I, I think the, the issue should be framed as ready compared to Hillary Clinton. And, and that's the way I would frame the issue going forward. To me, there's no contest. I don't think--it's not Barack Obama's fault. I think almost any of the other candidates would have fallen into the same category, ready but not as ready as Hillary Clinton.

Posted by Mike Dorning on March 9, 2008 2:21 PM | Permalink

Maybe Clinton's aids haven't reminded her of the fact that SHE IS THE SECOND PLACE CANDIDATE currently. In fact, if anything, Obama should be saying that perhaps Hillary would make a great VP. I don't see that happening though... Obama has a bit more class than she.

Meanwhile, in YouTubeLand:

Ron Paul calls it quits...

I admire the guy's determination and agree with many of his political ideas, however, without the help of BIG MEDIA you just aren't going to get a ticket to the White House. At least not by way of YouTube videos and conspiracy theories.

All the more reason for Albino to take a 'bye' week and some much needed R and R.

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Watergate Summer: Steve Jobs Gone....RIP.

Stay Hungry

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Fix You

Wishlist

The Twin Demons of Fear and Insecurity

So Much to Say

Driving through Chi-Town

So glad we made it, till' when it all got good. =)

Twenty twenty twenty four hours to go...

One More Day

Time to Redecorate

Pearl Jam - Unthought Known

Goodbye Office Space: The Shrinking American Cubicle

All Those Yesterdays...

The Ridiculous War on Drugs

Willie Nelson Busted for 6oz of Weed

Ideological Drift

A Note on the Midterms: History Always Repeats

Christine O'Donnell's 90's MTV Anti-Masturbation Campaign

Ron Paul Vs. the Sunshine Patriots

The Mosque somewhat vaguely near Ground Zero

Phrase of the Day: Coffee Vomit

Chris Matthews gets pwned by Ted Olson on Gay Marriage

Freedom of Religion (Christians and Jews only)

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Mosque Plan Clears Hurdle in New York (August 4, 2010)

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Pearl Jam - The Fixer: A personal interputation

An Open Letter to Conservative America

Cheney likely ordered 9/11 forgery, CIA official admits

82% of Americans Want Major Health Care Reform

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NC man loses his job over refusal to honor Jesse Helms...

Another homophobic politician, caught sleeping with the enemy...

Anti-Gay Alabama A.G. Caught Being Gay

Did Bush hit the WAY BACK button?

Why I Have Anti-Corporate Views

Four Voices On Energy YOU Should Be Listening To...

Light Bulbs... (joke)

Daily Music Feature

Houston, We Have an Oil Problem

Houston, We Have an Oil Problem

A Look into Oil Speculation: Bubble or Long Term Trouble?

Bush Administration throws some crumbs to Plug-In Hybrid advancement...any surprise?

Crude Awakening

Here We Are Now... Entertain Us

Friday Five - Childhood Entertainment

Finally, a Republican that GETS it...

Republicans Are in Denial

Friday Five - Best Movies (and worst)

This is a pessemistic blog. You have been warned.

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Universal Health Care

Teen Be Gone

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Sand Beneath Her Toes (2003)

Beer and a Few Crumbs of Bread (4-1994)

Machina

Under Darker Skies (1-5-1994)

Three Wooden Matches

No. 68 (5/20/06)

Opiate (1-2-1994)

Ghosts (8/2006)

Unfinished...

Monster (1-20-1994)

Multiculturalism - Who Should Have to Adjust?

Skybus(t)

The Right to Life