Monday, September 29th turned out to be Black Monday, in part driven by the House of Representatives voting down the bailout plan for the financial sector. The vote, 205 for and 228 against can be seen here. Of interest, all Republican 7 GA House reps. voted against the bill, whereas in Arkansas, 6 of 7 House reps (both Democrat and Republican), voted for the bill. In the end, the numbers fell as follows:
For:
Dems: 140
GOP: 65
Against:
Dems: 95
GOP: 133
While I am not well enough educated on the subject to say if I am for or against the the bailout plan, I am fairly certain I am confused if this is a Republican initiative or a Democratic one. I know George W. Bush keeps on pushing for the plan, and so is the Democratic Senate leader Dianne Deinstein. Then again, this sure smells like a compromise by both parties, yet it appears by the voting that the GOP has agreed to not compromise. Whatever the case the Standard and Poor's index took the biggest dive since I was in 1st grade, 1987.
Hopefully the rest of the week will go better for all involved.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Thank You Maureen Dowd
I know a lot of you frequently read Maureen Dowd's column in the NY Times. Just in case you missed this one, go ahead and take a peek. It is depressingly funny.
I must quickly add to the column link by saying that I walked into an eye opening conversation over the weekend. We were at a party for the girlfriend of one of Nat's coworkers and at one point I walked into a conversation between a Coast Guard reservist, a pediatrician, a food industry person that went to the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and a commercial real estate lawyer. The reservist is a republican, while the other 3 are self proclaimed Democrats.
When I walked into the conversation, the lawyer was defending Obama, while the other 3 were attacking Obama for being "too liberal" and for wanting to tax the wealthy too much. The pediatrician was strongly lamenting how she hated writing her quarterly tax checks to Uncle Sam, while the reservist kept on talking about how he is tired of giving "hand outs" to the lower income folk, while saying the problem with people in the US is that there is a feeling of "entitlement."
While I have heard some of these statements before I was surprised to hear them from registered Democrats. The comment about Obama being "too liberal" stroke me as a joke at first. Too liberal? Really? Apparently Obama's fault is that he talks too much about wanting to change things. In other words, Obama's problem is that he looks at the future and talks about a better nation. That, my friends, is not acceptable since he will not be able to accomplish any of the things he talks about.
Obama is also too liberal because he wants to increase taxes on the people that make way more than the average American ($38,651.41 in 2006). Yes, taxing %40 of your income stings. Yes, government programs can be wasteful. Yes, people abuse government programs. But the thing is, if you tax 40% of the income to someone making a million, they still have $600K. I am no expert here since I make below what the average American makes, but I think most people can live fairly comfortable with that much money. Plus, in exchange for $400K in taxes you get to live in a great country with great social programs like the military forces that keep the country safe, fire and police protection (yes, they are both social programs!), subsidized postal service (go live in a developing country that has no working mail and we can talk about the USPS), public schools, and so on. Don't we all think we are better off having governement provide some of these services? Do we really think that if the government did not tax that nice people would take over and provide these services?
As for the comment of "hand outs" and "sense of entitlement", I have two things. One, I think people that grow up in wealthy families can take for granted how much easier it is to do things like go to school, high school and college, since you don't have to worry about putting food on the table because your folks are working minimum wage jobs. You can call it a "hand out", I call it giving a hand to people that have fallen on hard times so that some day they can in turn give a hand to someone else, perhaps by raising their income and paying more taxes to support social programs for those in need.
As for the sense of entitlement, I think people should feel that if they live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world they should be entitled to, perhaps, a decent education. Why is it a bad thing to feel that if you live in a civilized nation that you should be entitled for your kids to go to a decent school? How about health care, should we not feel entitled to not dying because we cannot afford to save our life? I am not saying that because I feel entitled for something I am going to stop working any harder.
I always thought that one of the great quality about this country is that people cared for the improvement of the nation above the individual. It was this notion of nation before person that pushed USA ahead of all nations in the world. Yet, when I hear people saying that a candidate is "too liberal" because he is idealistic, it just kills me. I can only hope that I lost something in translation.
I must quickly add to the column link by saying that I walked into an eye opening conversation over the weekend. We were at a party for the girlfriend of one of Nat's coworkers and at one point I walked into a conversation between a Coast Guard reservist, a pediatrician, a food industry person that went to the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and a commercial real estate lawyer. The reservist is a republican, while the other 3 are self proclaimed Democrats.
When I walked into the conversation, the lawyer was defending Obama, while the other 3 were attacking Obama for being "too liberal" and for wanting to tax the wealthy too much. The pediatrician was strongly lamenting how she hated writing her quarterly tax checks to Uncle Sam, while the reservist kept on talking about how he is tired of giving "hand outs" to the lower income folk, while saying the problem with people in the US is that there is a feeling of "entitlement."
While I have heard some of these statements before I was surprised to hear them from registered Democrats. The comment about Obama being "too liberal" stroke me as a joke at first. Too liberal? Really? Apparently Obama's fault is that he talks too much about wanting to change things. In other words, Obama's problem is that he looks at the future and talks about a better nation. That, my friends, is not acceptable since he will not be able to accomplish any of the things he talks about.
Obama is also too liberal because he wants to increase taxes on the people that make way more than the average American ($38,651.41 in 2006). Yes, taxing %40 of your income stings. Yes, government programs can be wasteful. Yes, people abuse government programs. But the thing is, if you tax 40% of the income to someone making a million, they still have $600K. I am no expert here since I make below what the average American makes, but I think most people can live fairly comfortable with that much money. Plus, in exchange for $400K in taxes you get to live in a great country with great social programs like the military forces that keep the country safe, fire and police protection (yes, they are both social programs!), subsidized postal service (go live in a developing country that has no working mail and we can talk about the USPS), public schools, and so on. Don't we all think we are better off having governement provide some of these services? Do we really think that if the government did not tax that nice people would take over and provide these services?
As for the comment of "hand outs" and "sense of entitlement", I have two things. One, I think people that grow up in wealthy families can take for granted how much easier it is to do things like go to school, high school and college, since you don't have to worry about putting food on the table because your folks are working minimum wage jobs. You can call it a "hand out", I call it giving a hand to people that have fallen on hard times so that some day they can in turn give a hand to someone else, perhaps by raising their income and paying more taxes to support social programs for those in need.
As for the sense of entitlement, I think people should feel that if they live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world they should be entitled to, perhaps, a decent education. Why is it a bad thing to feel that if you live in a civilized nation that you should be entitled for your kids to go to a decent school? How about health care, should we not feel entitled to not dying because we cannot afford to save our life? I am not saying that because I feel entitled for something I am going to stop working any harder.
I always thought that one of the great quality about this country is that people cared for the improvement of the nation above the individual. It was this notion of nation before person that pushed USA ahead of all nations in the world. Yet, when I hear people saying that a candidate is "too liberal" because he is idealistic, it just kills me. I can only hope that I lost something in translation.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Pirates
My pirate name is:
Dirty Harry Kidd
You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Putting the fear of the Barracuda
In case you missed it, and I am betting the answer is no unless you leave outside of the US, John McCain announced his running mate for the presidential race, and her name is Sarah Palin. I am linking three stories to the announcement, one from BBC news, NY Times, and Wall Street Journal.
I think it is easy to see that McCain was going for the vote out women constituents, especially those Hillary supporters that are lamenting her losing to Obama. And as a pure observer in this, since I cannot vote in the election, I will say that on first glance there seemed to be a bit of panic in the voice of several Democrats I know. That said, as the dust from the announcement settles, I doubt that this will end up being as good a move as the GOP was thinking. As stated in the articles linked above, McCain's ability to target Obama for his inexperience in foreign affairs is bound to be weakend by his choice for a VP. Then again, I didn't think people would re-elect a man that sent the country to war under false pretenses.
I think it is easy to see that McCain was going for the vote out women constituents, especially those Hillary supporters that are lamenting her losing to Obama. And as a pure observer in this, since I cannot vote in the election, I will say that on first glance there seemed to be a bit of panic in the voice of several Democrats I know. That said, as the dust from the announcement settles, I doubt that this will end up being as good a move as the GOP was thinking. As stated in the articles linked above, McCain's ability to target Obama for his inexperience in foreign affairs is bound to be weakend by his choice for a VP. Then again, I didn't think people would re-elect a man that sent the country to war under false pretenses.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
100 posts
I doubt anyone is reading the blog, after all it has been almost a month since I last posted anything on here. Anyway, today I am using the 100th post of the blog to talk about my horrendous relationship with Toshiba laptop computers.
A couple of years into grad. school I bought a Satellite Pro laptop to replace the aging Gateway laptop I had carried around in undergrad. The Satellite Pro A65 was a bit on the hefty side, but it was a decent laptop. As a grad student, spending $1200 on a laptop was no easy task, but I enjoyed having the flexibility to take all my work files with me. That laptop lasted a year and 1 month. 1 month past warranty the battery leaked battery acid onto the motherboard and completely killed the laptop. I was able to recover most of my files by purchasing a USB hard drive case and spending some quality hours on Google finding out how to take ownership of my hard drive (let's just say that if you have a profile in Windows that is password protected you cannot just go back and get to files under My Documents).
So, about 3 years ago, November of 2005 to be exact, I stupidly replaced my acid-leaking Toshiba with........another Toshiba, this time a Tecra A4. Now, I should rationalize my purchase by saying that a good chunk of the decision came down to me getting good financing from Toshiba, while the folks at Dell wouldn't. I loved the laptop. Compared to the bulky Satellite Pro, the Tecra was sleek. Besides, I loved the all black keyboard and case and the silver lid. Not too fancy a laptop, but it looked efficient and rugged.
One thing I did learn from Satellite Pro fiasco was that you should get the extended warranty with your laptop, which I did. So, a year and a half into my Tecra A4, the freaking hard drive dies. And I mean dies. The computer thought the BIOS was password protected, when it wasn't. After talking to the Toshiba folks, who were quite responsive and nice, I brought the machine in to a Toshiba service center where I was informed my hard drive was dead and a new one was provided as part of the extended warranty agreement.
This leads to today. On the tail end of a horrible scince day, my laptop crashed. I plugged in my USB key to transfer some files and the thing would not restart. I spent a solid 3 hours of my afternoon getting to the point where I could simply start the machine in Safe Mode so that I could backup as many files as possible. Luckily I have 2 months left on my warranty so I called the Toshiba folk who promptly told me I should try to wipe my HD clean and that if that fails I should call them back so that I can take the computer in to a dealer.
All in all, good times with Toshiba computers.
A couple of years into grad. school I bought a Satellite Pro laptop to replace the aging Gateway laptop I had carried around in undergrad. The Satellite Pro A65 was a bit on the hefty side, but it was a decent laptop. As a grad student, spending $1200 on a laptop was no easy task, but I enjoyed having the flexibility to take all my work files with me. That laptop lasted a year and 1 month. 1 month past warranty the battery leaked battery acid onto the motherboard and completely killed the laptop. I was able to recover most of my files by purchasing a USB hard drive case and spending some quality hours on Google finding out how to take ownership of my hard drive (let's just say that if you have a profile in Windows that is password protected you cannot just go back and get to files under My Documents).
So, about 3 years ago, November of 2005 to be exact, I stupidly replaced my acid-leaking Toshiba with........another Toshiba, this time a Tecra A4. Now, I should rationalize my purchase by saying that a good chunk of the decision came down to me getting good financing from Toshiba, while the folks at Dell wouldn't. I loved the laptop. Compared to the bulky Satellite Pro, the Tecra was sleek. Besides, I loved the all black keyboard and case and the silver lid. Not too fancy a laptop, but it looked efficient and rugged.
One thing I did learn from Satellite Pro fiasco was that you should get the extended warranty with your laptop, which I did. So, a year and a half into my Tecra A4, the freaking hard drive dies. And I mean dies. The computer thought the BIOS was password protected, when it wasn't. After talking to the Toshiba folks, who were quite responsive and nice, I brought the machine in to a Toshiba service center where I was informed my hard drive was dead and a new one was provided as part of the extended warranty agreement.
This leads to today. On the tail end of a horrible scince day, my laptop crashed. I plugged in my USB key to transfer some files and the thing would not restart. I spent a solid 3 hours of my afternoon getting to the point where I could simply start the machine in Safe Mode so that I could backup as many files as possible. Luckily I have 2 months left on my warranty so I called the Toshiba folk who promptly told me I should try to wipe my HD clean and that if that fails I should call them back so that I can take the computer in to a dealer.
All in all, good times with Toshiba computers.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Lesson of the Day
I have been eating corn on the cob the same way since I can remember. That is, I douse the cob in lemon or lime, add a pinch of salt, and finish it off with a healthy sprinkle of chili powder. Today, I learned that chili powder and red pepper (cayenne) are not one and the same. While you can add a bunch of chili powder to the cob and not feel much of the heat, if you add a heap of cayenne you will be asking your dearest wife why it is so damn hot in the room and why is your mouth on fire. That said, I kind of liked the cayenne.
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