My friend did a great write-up of the Obama's "secret plan" for "universal voluntary service," which can be read here.
Two quick blurbs about the Obamajunge:
Middle-High school age children get to throw in 50 hours per year. College students, many of whom get to pay for thier own education at a state school, get to chip in 100 hours per year, or twelve and a half eight-hour Saturdays. Sign me up!
And what about more "underprivilaged" neighborhoods? Will a youngin' in inner city Oakland be willing to chip in 50 hours if he/she already has to work 30 hours per week to help support their family? How many would even care anyway? This is assuming that, given crime rates in cities such as Oakland, that they are not already engaging in court-orderd community service. But hey, whatever doesn't kill them can only make them more pissed off.
Not to mention, think of the irony! Obama mandating the youth of the nation to engage in unpaid service?
Sorry that the quality of the writing is not quite up to snuff, I have been exhaused of late. I do hope, however, that the sentiment comes across without entirely sounding like an Obamambot-style rant.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Stuff I Loathe
I have not been getting a lot of traffic lately. Sometimes, when I hit on one or two things of importance to someone somewhere I get one or two. The State of Nebraska has visited me a couple of times, and I have even gotten three international hits. So, in an attempt to drive up my ratings, I'm going to give a little blurb about stuff I loathe (since it's wrong to hate). This is a short list...short, but effective.
Lack of courtesy (this is my biggest pet peeve; everyone from those bastards who won't use their turn signals to people who won't say "thank you" for holding a door for them...they can all rot); hippies; burners (Northern Nevadans should know what I mean); UNLV; the City What Shall Not Be Named; the reds; the Reds; the Atlanta Braves; the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; the Denver Broncos; the Boise State Broncos; the Raiders; the Red Raiders; the Dolphins; the Cowboys; mind games between significant others; the Dodgers; UTEP; Texas; Texas; Texas; people who belittle other people because their beliefs fail to coincide; atonality; USC; Jacques Chirac; assholes who drive SUVs or a 1967 Ford pickup with bumper stickers what say "No Blood for Oil," "Obama 08," "Endless War," "Think Green," &c. &c. &c; James Buchannan; Gary Buchannan; canine lymphoma; cholera (been there, done that, saved by Poweraide); teenage drivers; teenage girls who think they can sing; Spaniards; nose flutes; wank jobs who think they're musicians because they can play G, C, and D7 chords on a gee-tahr; saxophones; teenage oboe players; soccer; the word "malignant;" people who say "numero uno" who do not speak Spanish as a native language; (most) democrats; when my cat puts her butt in my face at four in the morning; the Nevada Indoor Clean Air Act...
The list goes on, but I think this is a fair start.
Lack of courtesy (this is my biggest pet peeve; everyone from those bastards who won't use their turn signals to people who won't say "thank you" for holding a door for them...they can all rot); hippies; burners (Northern Nevadans should know what I mean); UNLV; the City What Shall Not Be Named; the reds; the Reds; the Atlanta Braves; the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; the Denver Broncos; the Boise State Broncos; the Raiders; the Red Raiders; the Dolphins; the Cowboys; mind games between significant others; the Dodgers; UTEP; Texas; Texas; Texas; people who belittle other people because their beliefs fail to coincide; atonality; USC; Jacques Chirac; assholes who drive SUVs or a 1967 Ford pickup with bumper stickers what say "No Blood for Oil," "Obama 08," "Endless War," "Think Green," &c. &c. &c; James Buchannan; Gary Buchannan; canine lymphoma; cholera (been there, done that, saved by Poweraide); teenage drivers; teenage girls who think they can sing; Spaniards; nose flutes; wank jobs who think they're musicians because they can play G, C, and D7 chords on a gee-tahr; saxophones; teenage oboe players; soccer; the word "malignant;" people who say "numero uno" who do not speak Spanish as a native language; (most) democrats; when my cat puts her butt in my face at four in the morning; the Nevada Indoor Clean Air Act...
The list goes on, but I think this is a fair start.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Greening with the Patricians
Since the release of "An Inconvenient Truth," we have seen environmental action (or, perhaps rather, environmental attention) move from the fringe to the mainstream, almost overnight. It is not the scope of this quick note to speculate upon the validity of Mr. Gore's evidences, and I will point out that wastefulness in any capacity is a bad thing, be it gasoline, food, scrap iron, &c.
Conservation is good.
However, as with any such rapid development in philosophy, a kind of "rage," or "craze" has been born; along with that craze comes a growing belief that one cannot feel good unless they are contributing to the solution. For some people this means attempting to levy feelings of guilt over those who are seen as contributing to the problem, and since we have seen an exponential growth of environmental sentiment, it is a mathematical certainty that there will be a correlating rise in the number of guilt "mongers."
Guilt is bad.
Environmental agendas have been vanguards for the Left for some time now, and this convenient rage (pun intended) fuels their ambitions (again, pun intended) at a critical juncture in time. Along with this, however, is the promulgation of a common stereotype that the Right is out to fulfill their ambitions upon the brow of labor, over the toil of the lower income brackets: that the so-called "common folk" are indentured to the capitalists.
Right is Czarism.
Left is salvation.
Therein lies the problem. At this critical juncture what boils down is that those who can feel good about helping the environment are largely those who can afford to feel good. It is the brow of labor which sweats in these times, and requiring lower income families to purchase more expensive equipment and/or fuel in order to further one agenda merely serves to punish those families. Nominal savings in energy usage concurrent with rising energy prices becomes a wash, and we are left with "feel good" environmentalism wrought upon the toil of the lower income brackets. Chances are that an American scraping by on $22K per year is not going to care a whole lot about how any moose one light bulb is saving, let alone someone living in abject poverty in Calcutta. For many the thought of owning a Prius is a nice idea, but when you can only budget $2K for a used car the economy (and often even the condition) are right out.
Include in this the number of people who believe that rising fuel costs are a good thing...Erik Kirschbaum, for example. These are nice things to say, when one can afford to say them (or, rather, actually live by them) all the while blatantly flying in the face of the problems that these people profess an attempt to alleviate.
Left is Czarism.
Left is popular complacency.
Environmentalism is the fight of the patrician Left, at least as it is currently waged, and to ignore that fact is to ignore a very important feature of this election year. They purvey of themselves to be the caretaker of the downtrodden, yet it is one of their proudest vanguards which is currently leading to many of the economic woes of those who are least capable of paying for it.
Until people are able to deal with the "greening" in a rational manner rather than as a mania, it will continue to be a major, unspoken factor of economic difficulty.
Conservation is good.
However, as with any such rapid development in philosophy, a kind of "rage," or "craze" has been born; along with that craze comes a growing belief that one cannot feel good unless they are contributing to the solution. For some people this means attempting to levy feelings of guilt over those who are seen as contributing to the problem, and since we have seen an exponential growth of environmental sentiment, it is a mathematical certainty that there will be a correlating rise in the number of guilt "mongers."
Guilt is bad.
Environmental agendas have been vanguards for the Left for some time now, and this convenient rage (pun intended) fuels their ambitions (again, pun intended) at a critical juncture in time. Along with this, however, is the promulgation of a common stereotype that the Right is out to fulfill their ambitions upon the brow of labor, over the toil of the lower income brackets: that the so-called "common folk" are indentured to the capitalists.
Right is Czarism.
Left is salvation.
Therein lies the problem. At this critical juncture what boils down is that those who can feel good about helping the environment are largely those who can afford to feel good. It is the brow of labor which sweats in these times, and requiring lower income families to purchase more expensive equipment and/or fuel in order to further one agenda merely serves to punish those families. Nominal savings in energy usage concurrent with rising energy prices becomes a wash, and we are left with "feel good" environmentalism wrought upon the toil of the lower income brackets. Chances are that an American scraping by on $22K per year is not going to care a whole lot about how any moose one light bulb is saving, let alone someone living in abject poverty in Calcutta. For many the thought of owning a Prius is a nice idea, but when you can only budget $2K for a used car the economy (and often even the condition) are right out.
Include in this the number of people who believe that rising fuel costs are a good thing...Erik Kirschbaum, for example. These are nice things to say, when one can afford to say them (or, rather, actually live by them) all the while blatantly flying in the face of the problems that these people profess an attempt to alleviate.
Left is Czarism.
Left is popular complacency.
Environmentalism is the fight of the patrician Left, at least as it is currently waged, and to ignore that fact is to ignore a very important feature of this election year. They purvey of themselves to be the caretaker of the downtrodden, yet it is one of their proudest vanguards which is currently leading to many of the economic woes of those who are least capable of paying for it.
Until people are able to deal with the "greening" in a rational manner rather than as a mania, it will continue to be a major, unspoken factor of economic difficulty.
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