If you do not study history, you are bound to repeat its mistakes…

While I think that it is a wonderful idea for economic and social change.  It needs to happen, but to what extent?  More importantly which set of morals should we change to?

First off, socialism is not the answer.  It doesn’t work on a large scale.  An individual will rise to the top of the chain of command and then will push the country into a dictatorship.  See Cuba, Russia (Both the USSR and currently,) a number of South American countries, and many Eastern European countries as well.

More over, I would pull for less government involvement in the personal lives of its citizens and companies.  While I believe safety regulations and environmental controls are a necessary evil.  Let us not get on a high horse and cripple our ability to let our market driven consumerism operate properly. 

The time for change is know, but how are we to do this with our choices for the fiasco in November?  Our elected officials are supposed to be the best and brightest our country can offer.  These choices we have do not fit into this category even remotely.  So I guess I might as well cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Or might just try to change the world through music and let all creation feel the love in the idea of doing what is best for all.  While it may force a few lazy people to get off thier rugged looking rumps and do a hard days work.  Surely everyone can do something to help there fellow man.  All it takes is a little bartering to cover the basic needs of a person.  Together we could make this work.  Unfortunately, I think I’ll probably just be writen off as a hippie nut, but oh well.  I’ll be here doing my thing until I can’t do it anymore.

I have had gay friends all my adult life. I have been comfortable with homosexuality for a long time. A few things lately have made it clear to me that a lot of people have very little understanding of homosexuality. I want to make a few points clear.

People are born gay or straight. Many people grow up hiding their sexuality for various reasons, but the fact that they announce they are gay after they are adults, or even after they have had spouses and children does not change the fact that they were gay when they were born. They don’t get converted or victimized into it. Nor do they choose it. It is a very difficult thing they usually struggle with for years before they admit it. They choose when they call themselves gay, but not when they are gay.

This is extremely difficult for many to deal with because it means God created gay people as gay and yet, we are all told God hates homosexuality. To believe people are born gay is to believe that God is a liar or something. What do you do?

The answer is that we live in a very different time than when the Bible was written.  Some things are as true today as they were 4,000 years ago, but many things are not. We don’t take laws set down by God concerning donkeys to literally apply only to donkeys. Things change. In this case, we now know that homosexuality is an inherited trait as much as red hair or black skin. They didn’t know that a couple thousand years ago. Times change. Things change. We have knowledge they didn’t. It doesn’t nullify God’s Law, it amends it. And it gives us the chance to be more righteous and good than the saints and the prophets.

The good news is, homophobic men don’t have to worry any longer that they will turn gay from a hit on the head or perhaps a drunken fling with another gay. You’re straight, get over it.

A lot of very dumb things are perpetrated because of this lack of understanding. Many people are trying to limit knowledge of homosexuality as a means to limit homosexuality itself. They think that if people know about it, it creates it. The truth is, people are gay, and some know what they are and some don’t. When they find out that what they are is gay and there are millions of other gay people, they are relieved and announce what they have always been. To the paranoid outsider they imagine that the knowledge created the homosexuality. That’s as true as finding out that there is something called hiccups and realizing you have them and they are normal. Knowing about hiccups didn’t cause hiccups, it gave it a name and a context.

This is the issue of our time. It is the Jim Crowe era for gay people. They can’t have the legal protections and rights others take for granted. They are ridiculed without consideration. They are mistreated. They are discriminated against. They can work their entire lives with a partner and end up with no rights to share in their life in terms of inheritence, etc. as they would were they straight and married. All these things happen because of the way they were born. Same as skin color. They had no choice and would likely have made a different one if they could. And so they are mistreated because of how God made them.

Be glad you were not born gay in these times. Just as there was a time when simply being born black in this country was going to be a struggle against society, today, being born gay makes you an instant victim.

And much as in those segregation times, the people who have the strongest feelings against gay people, have not been around them. My growing up with black people in my schools and churchs and as my peers and friends made it impossible for me to be a racist as my parents generation was. Having many gay friends lets me see how normal it is and I can’t imagine a reason to treat them as less than equal humans and citizens. But for those who live where no one dares come out of the closet, they are free to continue to imagine that gay people are some monster to be fought. It’s the same way in the all white counties of this country where racism continues to be passed down without being contradicted by the existence of people of color in their lives.

     It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything logical and sensible, so here goes…

     While everyone goes on the Hybrid trip, paying astronomical prices for cars with no real fuel savings, some of us hang on to older cars from the 80’s which have real fuel savings without the need for all the extra garbage.  Cars like the Pontiac Sunbird/Chevrolet Cavalier with the 2.1 OHC engine, or even the Subaru 1600DL, still get 40+mpg on the interstate.
     Yes, they really do.
     My 1984 Sunbird, for instance, consistently ran at about 42mpg and the OHC made it a nice, quick car.  Meanwhile, the old Subaru consistently ran up to 48mpg. 
     With kick-ass gass mileage available with older cars, why bother with a hybrid?

     The fact is, as far as Automobiles go, very little has happened since the 1980’s except to make vehicles more complex.  Despite the Government’s cries about efficiency, and even tax relief for high-mileage vehicles, gas mileage has done nothing but suffer.
     Meanwhile, our dependence on foreign oil has increased exponentially.  Why should we continue to subsidize the economies of a chosen few in foreign nations when we could easily reduce our dependence while increasing our innovation and exports?

     There have traditionally been two barriers: Political and Economic.

     Our artificially inflated economy in 1990’s and our Government’s subsequent “lifestyle of excess” bear a substantial portion of the blame, as we simply made too many under-the-table deals with foreign countries.  
     As a case in point, China, for instance, continued to have Favorite Nation status.  Mind you, this was absolutely necessary to make it a viable and reliable country for low-cost, high-quality manufacturing like its predecessors, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.  However, the strong increase in the Chinese economy came at the expense of other Asian economies.  Proof of this is shown in the economic collapse in 1997, and the subsequent recession which struck all other APaC nations in 2001.  Meanwhile, tax and import subsidies, cuts and rebates for domestic corporations purchasing Chinese products have continued, while China continues to produce the “same old, same old” products cheaper than we can manufacture them at home.

     Economically, with our own post-9/11 “lean times,” many domestic corporations have adopted the attitude that research and development of new technologies is too risky, and thus continued to attempt to make innovations geared in familiar directions with familiar technology.  Using familiar technology (with cheaply acquired foreign components) has allowed for more modular designs, thus reducing the amount of labor, manufacturing and maintenance costs in our domestic auto factories.  For corporations, this spells profit even when their economic future is unclear.

     In this video, Amory Lovins comes up with some seriously compelling ideas.  It’s a long one, so grab a snack:

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMTCNOlozTA)

     It’s really compelling stuff. 

     And, besides, something like this should even make the Moonbat segment of the global warming argument happy.  But then again, they’re usually really easy to get calm once you know which buttons to push. 
     I mean, dinner with E.T and a roll of Reynold’s Wrap can go a long way.

     I’d like to propose a new Holiday.

     Let’s let February 20th be the new, annual “Quit Trying to Make Fill-In-Your-Name-Here Have a Bad Day Day.”  (e.g. “Quit Trying to Make Mark Steel Have a Bad Day Day”)

     That would be cool.  One day, where nobody’s trying to screw up legal processes, steal from, yell at, scream at, libel, slander, backstab, screw over or generally just act asshats to everyone else in the world.

     Sounds like a cool thing, doesn’t it?

     But man … on a day like that…

     Government, Comcast, and most motels would cease to function.

     Moonbats and Asshats were certainly rife on Super Tuesday. 

     For weeks to come, we’ll keep hearing political commentary from people who have about as much grasp on politics as Pope does on WWII History. 
     *cough*

     As I was voting with a change of Address and voting venue, I was at the polls for quite a while watching and listening to people.  It’s an adamantly blue-collar, pro-union district, so naturally there are a lot of blue voters, especially of the “Damn Yankee!” variety — the type who get “Damn” attached to the beginning of their titles because they won’t go home.  *snicker*
     So I began to take notes of some of the conversations I overheard while waiting…

“What do you mean Democrat or Republican?  How should I know?  I wanna vote for Obama.  Is he a Republican or a Democrat?”

     Words cannot begin to describe my disdain for this particular style of voting.  As surely as there’s lonely brain cell left to rattle around in a nearly empty skull, you should know something so basic about the person you’re giving your support to run the country.

“Oh, god, you know I’m a Democrat.  Republicans are stupid.  Hey, do I have to sign my name here where it says?”

     I thought to myself, “No, just put an X, dipshit.”

“The only reason you won’t support Cinton is because you’re a man!  I am sick to death of all the latent misogyny by the patriarchal anti-Clinton camp!”

     No, apparently she wasn’t quite “sick to death,” as I could still hear her.  It’s funny to me how it never occurrs to some people that it’s Hillary-bashing, not Woman-bashing.  Which brings me to next part:

“You won’t vote for Obama ’cause you’re a racist!”

     Umm … Ok.  Of course, the same guy came out and said:

“Man, I voted for Hillary.”

     *shakes head*  So, uhh… He’s a racist?  And proud of it?

     Which brings up another:

“I scrolled to Obama and hit Cast Ballot.  And the screen came up and said ‘Thank you for your vote.’  I think I messed up.  Can I do it again?  No?  Man, you all are racist!”

     Ya know… I just… How the… Why… *shakes head*

     On a similar note:

“Uh, it says to press the Enter button.  Is that the big green one that says Enter?”

     I thought about saying, “Nah, it’s the big red one that says, ‘Cast Ballot,’” but since the last guy who made that mistake nearly went postal, I decided to just stand there and shake my head a while longer…

     Finally, with my Failsafe paperwork approved, I was able to rejoin the line and make my way up to the registry official.
     “Democrat or Republican?” the official asked the guy in front of me.
     “Republican,” he whispered as quietly as possible.
     “REPUBLICAN?” the official yelled.
     “Uh, yeah, yeah,” he whispered, glancing nervously towards the jeers from around him.
     He signed his name.  He walked, with an, “Excuse me,” through the crowd and over to the Voting Booths.  He cast his vote.  He walked out.

     When it was my turn, I did the same.

     But I still wonder where all the animosity comes from.

     If having different opinions is so bad, then why bother voting at all?

It obvious to me that a bunch of trained monkeys devised the way we vote.  There is a certain about of space you must be away from the polling place to complain, compare, or contrast what exactly you are voting on.  You must be said distance away from the other constituent while they cast their ballots.  Last, but not least, you must stand in this bread line to vote for the asshole that you didn’t want to see in office anyway.  After all, your candidate didn’t have the staying power to go all the way.  He came, he went, and subsequently went to sleep, just like the dyke’s idea of a stereotypical man (which includes Hitlery, since you know with socialist ideas like that she has to be hung like a moose.)

By this same rationale the voting process is no better that the crappy politicians we flock to elect every chance we get.  Simply put we desire the change they promise.  Meanwhile they will never own up to the fact that they can’t change everything we would like.  Surely, we may be able to try and elect at the very least someone who won’t screw the country up too bad or try to appear electable for monetary gain.

With that said, I am starting to wonder if I should have just let go of my civic duty and stayed home, but I digress.

(Where Bright Red = “Oh, HELL no!” and Bright Green = “For shizzle”)

     Note there are no bright greens. 

     ’nuff said.

Note: Adapted from MSNBC’s Candidates vs. Issues Matrix

In our lovely world of the internets, full of mountains and mountains of pornography, it is nice to see that some still have a sense of humor.  Today, when children are having children or people have them out of wedlock (thanks Mark), and I have to work to support them,  I am glad to see that the condom has not gone out of style and is versatile and can be used for many things as shown in the following video.

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtNndVomxcs)

(tip: thanks to B.J. Hitchcock for the clip.)

And just in case you weren’t convinced to use a condom or some other method of birth control before…

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWkZ_StRjU0)

Now with your help, we can be one step closer to a balanced budget!

     Just say “No!” to hotlinking.  It’s a bad habit.

     This has been our hotlinking image for a long, long time:

     Nobody wants to see that, now do they? 

     Rob Ullman over at Atom Bomb Bikini, after being contracted to caricature the campaigning Clinton, quickly crafted this bit of cartoony goodness:

     [ Side Note: How's that for aliteration, Sam?  I feel empowered! ]

     Why, seeing Photo vs. Caricature, it’s rather clear where the inspiration came from, isn’t it?

Tip: Doug @ Reality Me!

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