Archive for the 'Politics' Category

What Would YOU Do With $50M

Marty January 24th, 2005

Okay, the guy won the election and deserves to have his inauguration and inaugural ball. That’s fine. But doesn’t anyone in his administration see ANYTHING wrong with spending over $50 million for this thing? I’ve been laying off ol’ Dubya for a bit now, although he has done nothing to make me feel any more comfortable with him winning in November. In fact, I’ve only seen more of the same and that scares me.

But this is just ludicrous. FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS. Think about it - this is the same administration that only committed $10 million to the Tsunami relief at first, but had $40 million ear-marked for a party for lobbyists, politicians and the well-connected (yes, I know that they have donated a bunch more - but impressions still count). I can think of a hundred things that it would be better spent on. Sure, go ahead and blow a cool million on your party - I still think that’s a bit much but if you are hosting dignataries from around the world, at least it is somewhat understandable. But $50M? What about our troops and their need for supplies? What about the cuts to funding for urban renewal projects? What about the budget shortfall of the Park Service? What about kicking some of that money into alternative fuel development research.

No, it’s obviously better spent providing entertainment and dinner to the people who supported the President in his bid to further screw up this country. But let’s just say MAYBE we had ear-marked it for something else. What else could $50 million have got us?

  • It could give the Forest Service the $12M they need to meet their budget, and still have enough to fund energy research to the tune of $38M
  • It could provide food and shelter for $1.78M homeless people in the U.S. (Lewin Group Report, 11/19/04)
  • It could buy more than 100,000 kevlar body armor vests for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (based on an estimated $500 per vest).
  • It could pay to hire 900 new police officers for cities around the country (based on average pay of $55,613 - U.S. Census Bureau, March 2003) or for 1,377 new firefighters at an average salary of $36,309 (source: Salary.com)
  • It could provide $1.67 to every poverty-level individual in the U.S. (source: U.S. Census)
  • It could pay for 75% of the additional fire-fighting equipment requested by the Forest Service to fight the wildfires it has seen increase every year since 2000.
  • It could give 600 Enron employees back their average losses ($83,300, according to IBEW.com) or give all of the 12,000 employees $4167 of lost money back. After all, how much of that money came from Kenneth Lay, Dubya’s #1 contributor for his first campaign?

Don’t those all sound like better causes than a big party for a moron?

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Weekend Photography

Marty January 18th, 2005

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to take some time to do some photography. And I actually managed to get a few good shots.

I'm a little chickadee... It's mine ... all mine Downy Woodpecker on a Log Feeder #3 Junco #3 Hey, where did all of the birdies go? Checkin' the menu

I’ve been meaning to put my birding list online, but haven’t had the chance. One of the ideas that I had (and my wife wants to do as well) is try to have pictures of as many of the species that we have seen as we can. Obviously, getting photos of some of the Fijian birds is probably impossible if we haven’t already gotten them, but we CAN get the local varieties. Look for it soon.

In the meantime, I had a very social chickadee posing for his picture. I got about a half-dozen shots of him, but this was the best one, despite the branch in the way. Similarly, the juncos are back for the winter. Our yard was crawling with them, so I had a lot of shots of them, looking for the perfect ones. This was the best, although I had a couple great shots of them. Our Carolina wren has been coming daily, and while not exactly posing for pictures, he doesn’t seem to mind them, either. I got another good shot of him looking up longingly at that corn log, and a pretty good shot of him on our outdoor furniture (both can be seen on my Flickr account).

I had a great Downy woodpecker shot at the end of last year, but really wanted one on the log feeder we have - and I got four decent ones (this was the best). But the highlight of the weekend was the shot of the Cooper’s Hawk that I got within 15′ of. Unfortunately, I was using my wife’s D70, and fumbling with the controls and only got 4 opportunities for pictures. 2 sucked, 1 was further away and this one was slightly blurry. But still not a bad shot, in my opinion. And the squirrel. Well, just thought it was a funny picture.

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New PC

Marty November 10th, 2004

A few days ago, I heard one of those sounds that you know can’t be good coming from my computer. At first, I wasn’t sure whether it was the fan or the hard drive, but later decided that it was the fan. Still, I quick tap to the back of the cabinet seemed to fix it. It happened again last night, so I cleaned out the dust and everything seemed normal.

**CRASH!** Suddenly, my computer locks up and I hear the gutteral death throes of my hard drive. NOOOOOO!!!! I turn the computer off, let it cool down and try it again. After a quick disk scan, the computer booted up and was working properly, but I knew the prognosis - I would need an immediate disc replacement. If I could just get it to last long enough to buy a new Hard Drive so that I could move my data over, everything would be fine.This morning, I foolishly decided to check on the computer - and now it won’t boot. It gets to the WinXP loading screen (yes, I’m a Windows user - flame away), and then shuts down completely. Not the power
- because I still have power to the keyboard and monitor - but just to the PC. Now I’m scared. If the hard drive has fried, I’m going to need expert help to get my data back, and despite the fact that I have been backing it up fairly regularly, there is still about a month of work on there that would be unrecoverable.

But the worse thought (or better, depending no perspective) would be that the problem is my processor, my motherboard - or both. In that case, I’ll be able to at least salvage my data, but that means a new PC to be bought. NOT the expense I was planning on making.

Update: Unfortunately, the hard drive is (probably) fine - my processor and mother board went. On the plus side, it means that I get a new PC, although I am skimping a little bit right now to save some money until I have that whopping ‘free turkey’ bonus check. I can always get the advanced graphics board and the flat screen after Xmas. To start with, I’ll have a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, 48x CD-RW and 16X DVD-ROM to get me through reinstalling EVERYTHING I had. But it will be a better video card than I had, a better sound card than I had, and more hard drive and RAM than I had. It’s a start. But my wife is going to kill me as I get the itch to finish it off…

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No News, Just Links

Marty November 4th, 2004

I’m out of venom, but here are some amusing links…

Dumbfounded

Marty November 3rd, 2004

I’m in shock. I’ve thought of a dozen headlines for this post, and not one of them seems to fit completely. “What the f#$k were they thinking?”, “There Goes the Nation” and “Soon to be martytdx.ca” all came to mind but I didn’t do it. I’m in shock. Sure, I thought that something like this could happen, but I thought - I had hoped - that there would be enough thinking people out there that it wouldn’t.

I don’t know who to be angry at more - there are so many choices:

  1. The Uninformed - It was clearly an uninformed majority out there voting - and if there are any conservatives who happen to read this and disagree, stuff it. It’s been shown that there are plenty of Bush voters who still think that Saddam Hussein attacked us with WMD on 9/11. The stats don’t lie.
  2. The Party Voters - the fact that there was no movement between the so-called “red states” and “blue states” amazes me, and tells me that there are just too many people out there who are herd
    animals. And like most herd animals, they have been led to the slaughter. That goes for both parties, by the way.
  3. The schysters - you know who you are. Okay, so you didn’t manage to throw this election, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. Sham lawsuits, illegal disposal of voter registrations, and why the hell does someone NOT working for the polling place get any right to determine if the voter is valid or not?
  4. That dumb person - and you know who you are - that actually thought that she should vote for Bush because ’she liked Laura Bush better than Teresa Heinz Kerry’. WHAT?!?!? Since when are we voting for First Ladies?
  5. Sure, Kerry wasn’t going to be the best guy for the White House, but he was a hell of site better than the dumbass we have managed to elect again. And the reasons that people are giving for voting for him are ludicrous - his morality?

C’mon, this is the guy who has been the face of an administration that has lied so much if he were Pinocchio, E.T. would be getting a prostate exam at home. Granted, we won’t be catching him doodling the interns, but that’s because he would have to get out of bed with the oil industry, the polluters and the big coporations - and we know how they are.

He’s brought corporate corruption up to an art form, and now we’re going to have to see it continue. How many more former lobbyists are left to hire into cabinet positions? What’s next - Kenneth Lay to head the SEC? Perhaps we can have a “Top Destroyer of the Environment” award that earns the number 1 polluter a chance to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior for a week.

I have angina over this - I’m not sure how bad it is going to be, I just know that it’s going to be bad. Here’s what I see coming:
1) Oil Drilling Disneyland » Expect whole-scale drilling in ALL of our national parks. They’re open for business, Exxon. Oh, and that air you breathe and water you drink - you don’t mind a bit more chemicals, do you, three-eyes?
2) Woe to Roe » It won’t happen immediately, but the moment on of the less conservative Supreme Court Judges leaves, kiss your right to your body goodbye.
3) Ewww, you’re gay….» I’ve always thought this hub-bub over the gay marriage was a bit ridiculous, but I also thought it was a STATE issue. If you want to ban ‘marriage’ between gays, at least give them the rights under another name. However, I foresee a strong possibility of the first Constitutional Amendment that removes rights instead of adds them. Oh wait, the second. The other was prohibition. How did that work out?
4) Stupid Americans » We’re going to go from “We like Americans, we just hate your goverment” to “You Americans are morons. A pox on thee - oh, and can you hold this bomb?”
5) Draft? We don’t need a draft - you just can’t leave » Mark my words - there won’t be a draft. We’ll just have a bunch of unhonored contracts and forced re-enlistments of the military. Unless, of course, those tactics eventually disenchant those new recruits so much that we have no choice. After all, there are at least a half-dozen other countries with oil…
6) Enron was a test » Kenneth Lay was an amateur. You want to see REAL abuse of the system, wait for Dubya II: The Stealquel. Jobs will disappear, products will still be crap, but there will be another 1,000 millionaires ready to line up behind Bush (for quick bend-over and accept my thanks moments).
7) Boom. » I hate to say it, but I think Bush’s tactics are going to lead to another significant attack. Hell, he can’t keep the borders controlled in the state he lives in half the year - how is he going to protect us?

That’s it. I can’t take it any more. If you need me, I’ll be in Vancouver.

Darned Upgrade

Marty October 28th, 2004

Well, I tried to upgrade to WordPress 1.2, and it killed the blog, so I’m back to the old version for now. I might consider loading the newest version directly from WordPress instead of through my ISP, or I might try out MT - which seems to be a bit more versatile. Anyone out there have a preference?

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1 Week to Go - New Blood or Same ‘Ol, Same ‘Ol?

Marty October 25th, 2004

Well, it’s the beginning of the week and it was a good, long weekend. Got some stuff done around the house, finally got some work done on a new homepage (debut in 1-12 weeks, depending on the rest of my time), got our puppy a little more healthy, and watched the Red Sox beat the Yankees (not that I like the Sox, but I HATE the Yankees). Unfortunately, Penn State’s offense was exceptionally flacid this weekend, and the Cowboys got crushed, but you can’t have everything (or any hockey, it appears).

Over the weekend, I came up with a couple of quick bumper stickers I would like to have out there - you can download them here and here. At this point, I’m sick of the hype, sick of the commercials, sick of the accusations and labels and other crap. Just give me the darn election. Is that so hard to do? Okay, end of election diatribe.

New Pictures »
Did some scanning this weekend to organize my recent work. Here are some of the best:
Titmouse grabs a treat survivor

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Blah, Blah, Blah

Marty October 14th, 2004

Well, debate #3 was a joke. Not only did they only answer questions when they felt like it, but they used the same rhetoric and party line that they have for the first two. When new topics were brought up, the same staid answers were given. I could have made a movie of this debate by using clips of the first two. Even when they departed from the ’script’, the answers were more often than not ridiculous (Kerry’s reference to Cheney’s daughter, his Soprano’s line and Bush’s complete rewriting of the Roe v. Wade question). I would have LOVED to hear them speak to the environment, but other than Bush’s ridiculous “I think I’m a pretty good steward of the environment” comment in debate 2, there was nearly NOTHING about it.

• links o’ the day •

Debates, Round 3

Marty October 13th, 2004

The final debate is tonight, and I’m trying to not get as worked up as I usually do. So in that vein, I’m taking a different tact - I have a bottle if Kwak beer to hold me through the debate, while the wife will be having a vodka tonic. And to make our viewing pleasure that much better, we’re going to play a drinking game (it should be noted that Kwak’s ABV is 8.0%, so it’s isn’t as unfair as it sounds). The rules:

wonkette

**Other Links**

Of Candidates and Other Humorous Drivel

Marty October 11th, 2004

Man, I haven’t seen this much name-calling since that fight between Bryant Hampton and Bee Gee Chudnofsky in 4th grade. You’d think that two guys vying to be the leader of the free world would have a little more class than this … but who are we kidding. They’re politicians which are about as low a class of people as you can go (plus or minus lawyers, of course). And yet, there are people who are still undecided at this point on who to vote for. I mean, I can understand not wanting to vote for EITHER, but to be undecided seems a bit ridiculous. It’s kind of like deciding whether you would want to breath air or toxic gas (which candidate is which would be your decision) - it’s pretty clear cut depending on your view. It’s the evil-doer or the flip-flopper, the war monger or the purple heart flaunter, the environmental terrorist or the tax executor, the Botox Candidate or the Go Toxic Candidate.

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