Rick Perry: Oil spill may be ‘act of God’ – Jake Sherman – POLITICO.com

Why on earth should we pull the birds from the gulf and wipe them clean when clearly our creator intended them to die a death of suffocation from crude.

I hardly think God’s hand was anywhere near putting a rig off shore and drilling into the earth. Maybe if the proceeds were used for good rather than the continued plunder of our natural resources to line the pockets of the few.

Come on. You do know that Exxon made over 6 Billion dollars last year and paid NO U.S. federal taxes right?

Now, I’m not a proponent of stopping all of off-shore drilling but each state should have the right to determine this for themselves. If California prefers no drilling off their coast, let em. If Governor Rick Perry would embrace the whole Texas coastline be covered in black as homage to the Heavenly Father, that’s the Texas right too. The Federal government should stay out of this issue.

There are people who will continue to argue that Arizona is within its rights to pass laws against illegal immigration. While I don’t think that illegal anything is moral or should be condoned, the truth is that when laws are broken there are various ways of dealing with that. For drug addicts, some state laws require medical rehabilitation. Not a bad approach. It’s humane, and it keeps our prisons from being clogged up with people who may have physical addiction issues rather than truly criminal intent.

For illegal immigrants too we need to find a humane approach to dealing with this problem. Deportation should always remain an option. But the manner in which we look at these individuals should be dealt with case x case. I say this because one of my friends is the daughter of an illegal immigrant. She was unaware of their status until recently. She grew up here in Texas, went to public school. Her father has worked most of his adult life here. He unfortunately has been using a false identification and social security. He has however worked. He has bought a home. He has paid property and payroll taxes. He has supported his community through the PTA, and being a otherwise law abiding citizen.

Recently he’s been discovered and is scheduled for deportation after living here over 40 years. It’s sad, because while I understand he’s broken the law, when I look at some of other offenders in our society there doesn’t seem to be parity in the way infractions are handled. I mean, I would trade this hard working, otherwise-law abiding person for some of the crack heads who were born here, who mooch off society and the tax payers. Could we deport one of them in his place? That seems like a good idea.

This notion that some folks have that ALL illegal aliens are bad people who, by the very nature of their illicit entry into this country, are law breakers who deserve to have the book thrown at them. Many of them are just folks who want the same thing citizen Americans want for their children – access to good schools, access to decent medical care, and hope for a brighter future. Many of them teach their children to be good citizens, to love their country, to pay their taxes and the like.

The notion that we should be able to challenge individuals to prove their citizenship in any form will give us all reason to pause for concern. This is not just scary big brother talk. This is a preliminary step to a national ID card. After seeing how I can have difficulty operating in society for just a day by forgetting my license or ATM card, I dread the thought of a government that could issue (or suspend!) a card which would be vital just to move around society. This is a seriously dangerous progression in our society. Aside from the arguments about whether a state can enforce a federal statute, etc. it’s just a bad evolution.

I hope people really examine these issues. I don’t oppose a boycott of Arizona. Truth be told, I don’t know that save the Grand Canyon, there’s any reason to visit, or do business there in the first place. But, I support them to sort out these issues as state citizens themselves. I just find it sad that they don’t value folks in their midst whose intentions might actually be honorable but for lack of legal entry into this country could be singled out and harassed while some “citizens” in our midst deserve our attention and ire.

http://www.youtube.com/v/6chiuYoQOhM&hl=en_US&fs=1

Oh, remember back when. I’m not speaking to all of you at this point. Only folks like Rob and I. We who started our very first foray into the the cultural shift of home computing with our very first computer, back in 1992. An APPLE.

Back then Apple was just a very minor player – minuscule in fact. We might not have invested in a computer that had almost no software available for it had it not been for an award from an employer that was in the form of this tiny little lap top. This laptop was so small the HARD DRIVE was just 40 MB. I think I might have e-mail files with attachments that large!

This was when the Internet was new and e-mail with sophisticated attachments, Java script, pdf files, video blogs, hell – blogs themselves – none of those existed.

We liked our little apple. Grandpa rough was amazed at what it could do, and by comparison to today’s computer in our home, it couldn’t do squat. It essentially was a glorified word processor. But, we marveled none the less. As time passed we soon joined the throngs of consumers who flocked to technology shows (do they even have these anymore?) and perused isles of CompUSA (also out of existence) and shopped for computers. There was no “Apple store”. Apple’s share of the market was so small as to practically make it an ‘underground’ market.

You had to search to find the hard ware, and search equally hard to find compatible software. Our friends who had all only recent discovered home computing and the proliferation of the PC scratched their heads as we attempted to explain why we were reluctant to jump on this same band wagon. We liked our Apple. It was different, it was innovative it was “intuitive”.

While our friends called us for technical assistance, most of which left us perplexed as it sounded like a different language – we wondered why everyone didn’t have an Apple. They were so simple, they required none of this in depth, challenging-for-the-day installations and worse, de-installations and viruses were only just becoming a new scary idea.

Apples were immune.

Now, nearly 20 years later. Our wish has come true. Well, mostly. Not “everybody” has an Apple. But, one by one, we’ve seen friends and family convert to the way of thinking that embraces a product that is simpler, more intuitive to use, is genius in the area of multi-media manipulation and this was all before the advent of Itunes and the like. Companion products like iPods and iPhones and now the ill-named iPad, all have created a cascade and exponential effect that no one could have imagined.

So, now it’s a different world. We all speak the same language when we talk about “apps” and “syncing”. And, that’s good. But, I’m wondering if the thing that I liked most about my apple, that intangible that I was never able to identify until now, has gone away.

That would be I was “unique”.

I wasn’t necessarily smarter than anybody. I wasn’t a visionary, or a psychic. I wasn’t a braniac or any other manner of genius that allowed me to float above anyone else, but — I was different. I felt like I was part of a secret club that no one else knew about. We had a secret handshake.

In groups and discussions when folks were belaboring the challenges that came with home computing. The constant barrage of updates and outdates, incompatible peripherals, networking issues, crashes and rebuilt motherboards, and on-and-on. We sought out the members of the parties that didn’t seem to be jumping in on the bitch-fest and we would meet eyes. We’d grin and know – that we had identified another one. A minority like we who knew we didn’t experience most of these issues. We just had a computer that plugged in, with printers and other devices that also just plugged in and it all worked. No drama. No problem.

Those days are gone. At least the exclusive club part. And as a result, Apple is no better a company. It’s now a behemoth that attempts to continue to capitalize and exploit it’s “cult” status. Like it’s still a secret club that cool people belong to. Um. Not so much. With half a million iPads alone sold in the first month, the numbers Apple moves in hardware is staggering.

It’s more and more difficult for them to portray themselves as the picked-on underdog of the computing world. Their Rodney Dangerfield bit of not getting any ‘respect’ has worn thin.

I’m reminded of this now when my iPhone won’t do a simple thing like send text messages to more than 10 people like my 3-generation-ago sanyo phone could do. Somehow when talking to the tech support people at apple, it’s not the same friendly corner-store kind of experience it used to be.

In fact. I want to reach through the phone – grab the 20 something on the other end and scream, “I’ve been supporting this line of products and company since you were in diapers!!!”. Somehow that wouldn’t quite be satisfying though. Like Barbara Mandrell used to sing.. I was Apple, when Apple wasn’t cool… (isn’t that how that song goes?).

Now, if Apple could find a way to identify the TRUE Apple fans, the originals, and give those folks the same cult feeling they had when they pulled their first 40 MB hard drive lap tops out of the card board box in 1992. Now, that would be something.

Happy sober Wednesday. 🙂

These just arrived!

Happy sober Tuesday. Love ya

Well, it’s actually only been formalized. We’ve all known for sometime that corporations have been funding political campaigns for sometime. Whether we’re talking about Unions or Churches, or formalized businesses, small or large, incorporated or LLC’s. They all do it.

The Supreme Court decision which conveys this though as permissible might be a huge misstep for all Americans. Just at a time when we’re on the precipice of another financial downturn, the court takes this step to further undermine our confidence in our financial system, our legal system, our political system and ultimately our country.

I say this because by formalizing the right of corporate America to pour (additional) money into political campaigns the power pendulum has further moved to corporations OVER individuals.

Think about that for just a moment. This is another step in our countries movement to provide corporations with the same rights as individual citizens.

While a corporation is made up of citizens who work and run it, it shouldn’t be viewed as an entity with the right to life. Capitalism in fact demands that the death penalty be imposed on it if it doesn’t meet up to it’s obligations to serve its constituencies, customers and share holders.

After the most recent Supreme Court decision, the individual constituent, mom and pop America will never be able to walk into a congresspersons office and gain an audience that will hold as much weight as say, Apple, General Motors, or Chevron-America. Who’s appointment would you cancel if you only had time for one?

No. Mom and Pop America are screwed. Even Political Action Committees and grass roots organizations will never hold the clout, financial, political, media as NBC, IBM or Exxon-America. The sad thing is – these corporations ARE Mom and Pop America. We’ve disguised it of course, with fancy financial schemes and offerings but where does the money for your 401k go? Well, right to Westinghouse, American Airlines and Shell Oil-America of course. In the form of mutual funds we all invest in these companies. They take our money, with the promise to grow it. By the time we retire, or so the theory goes, we have a nest egg to which to supplement our Social Security, which in itself isn’t a guarantee of existing by the time many of us reach the age of retirement.

But what happens if the corporations squander all their money and go bust? Well, don’t worry. Mom and Pop America will bail them out. Under fearful terms like “too big to fail” we couldn’t possibly let all those investments go out the window. But, by giving corporations carte blanche to go ahead and squander that money on trying to buy influence, they have essentially given the green light to the erosion and ultimate destruction in the faith of the American financial system.

So, I give you my money over the years through my 401k and you squander it. That’s ok. Now you’ll take a bail out through my taxes. It appears, almost as I’m paying TWICE and never really have a guarantee of ever seeing a return. Because the typical American investor, not unlike the typical American voter is too disillusioned and to apathetic to actually follow the trail of money it’s not likely AIG-America will ever be accountable for all that money. No, Wells Fargo-Americal will never really have to make a full account because now they’ve just purchased a chunk of where the real power lay, in the U.S. Legislature.

Do you really think they will regulate themselves to prevent themselves from gaining access to money and influence that would thwart their own re-elections? Far from it. They’ll schmooze Macy’s America and if it all comes crashing down, Mom and Pop America will just have to come up with the funds.

After all, Bank of America will be OK. So will the Insurance congolerates. The true catastrophe may lay ahead. In a system where corporations, take our money and give it to legislatures, who will now protect corporations OVER individual citizens there’s no incentive for the single voice in America.

The legislative agenda, the direction of the country and in fact the very electoral process itself will now be decided in block rather than vote by vote. If you thought the American single voter was disillusioned and detached before – just wait a few elections cycles. All this bodes bad for America. Well… unless you’re McDonalds – and you’re floating your guy Ronald for president. On second thought how could that clown be any worse than the ones sitting on the Supreme Court?

Chester the cutest dog ever

C!

C!