I Think, Therefore I Rant!

Social Security is often called the 3rd rail of politics - touch it and you die. While that is probably true, we still need some politicians to step up and commit suicide because it definitely needs fixed.

First, lets discuss why it needs fixed. I am days away from my 45th birthday as I write this and I have no confidence that I will see a dime of Social Security money when I turn 67 in 22 short years. If I do see any money, then it will be a huge burden on the backs of my children and their peers!

Nearly everyone that I talk to on this subject are under the same impression - no money for us or at least not in relationship to the huge amount of money we will have put into the system.

America is the birthplace of the modern voting experience. Yes, I know ancient Greece voted for their Senators but their was a pretty big gap between then and when the entire government was elected by the people.

But for all of this heritage we seem to have lost the appetite for voting. Our voter turnout for the last couple of elections is pretty abysmal and is shamed by the latest Iraqi election where about 70% exercised their right to vote. The Afghanistan people also had an 80+% turnout when they elected their first President in 2004.

For the US, our elected officials cannot say that they were elected by the majority of their constituents but rather were elected by the majority (or plurality in some cases) of those who bothered to show up.

So why is this? Why don’t we give a s–t?

Why is it that Americans are so afraid of having an ID card? It isn’t like we are not caring a ton of documentation anyway. What is the harm of another card that is required to be presented when we enter or leave the country or when we vote or when we change jobs or enroll in a school?

What is the harm in doing any of this? Most of these locations require the showing of some form of ID anyway and all of those methods are easily counterfeited and not secure. If the method that we are being forced to use now is not secure than we are wasting our time be providing the information anyway - so let’s put something in place that actually works.

US GOVERNMENT: GO AHEAD AND REQUIRE A FOOLPROOF I’D CARD!

Our entire immigration system in the US is broken! We are addicted to low cost labor available from poorer countries. This has been the case since the birth of the country - why should we expect otherwise now?

I am Irish. When my forefathers came to this country they were likely trying to escape poverty and famine in the old country. When they came here, they had virtually no money and they had to work - in fact they expected to work. That is why they came to the land of opportunity!

Many of the canals of the Midwest and the railroads going west were built with the sweat of Irish labor (along with many other ethnic groups). This is a good thing and was the price of success for entering the land of the free and the brave. This condition is what we need to preserve in this country - hard work and moderately fair pay for those that are willing to do it. Lord, knows that we have enough people in this country that DON’T want to work hard but I will rant on welfare at some other time.

I cannot believe the story I just read on the Daily Mall that has a man being publicly flogged 80 times for supposedly having extramarital sex and drinking. This man will physically scarred for life! This is the same country that is developing nuclear capability!

There should be a general uproar and outcry about this terrible treatment. Rock stars should do concerts about the amazing abuse of civil rights (instead of doing Live Aid). I read about the story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=477088&in_page_id=1770

PEOPLE OF THE WORLD - WE NEED TO CONDEMN IRAN FOR THIS TERRIBLE EXERCISE!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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It hasn’t gotten any better since the vicious greed and land grabbing of the mid 20th century. People are fighting and dying over power and greed. This isn’t about ethnic homelands as neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have had a continuous control over these lands for centuries.

People in this region need to work together and understand that everyone needs a place to live and raise their families. They want to be close to their cousins to celebrate important dates. Laws need to be fair that no one is persecuted because of what they worship. Their should be no need to kick someone out of their family farm just because they are on the wrong side of some line drawn by some politician. Who cares!

After the UN partitioned a homeland for the Palestinians and Israel (a plan that the majority of Jews agreed to but some warned that they would be attacked), their neighbors went on a land grab. Almost immediately on the creation of the state of Israel, approximately 21,000 soldiers from 4 different countries invaded Israel with their stated goal of eliminating the new country that was officially only days old. Before long they had about 3 times that many troops.

In the process of attacking, these invading countries essentially occupied all of the new Palestinian state and used that advantage to attack Israel. They essentially destroyed Palestine and controlled the land from their respective countries.

Israel, as a new sovereign nation, had a right to protect itself. It successfully defended itself and in the process repelled its attackers from adjoining land, which essentially meant repelling the the invading army from Palestine.

The United Kingdom and the US (to a much lesser degree) are actually the good guys in the entire Palestinian homeland issue, so the world should give them a collective break.

If you look at history, UK (and a few friends) beat the snot out of the Ottoman’s in WW1. They then broke up this massive land that was under Ottoman rule into states (basically the ones that exist today). Palestine was one of those states, as was Israel. Hurray for UK! Don’t believe me - see the map.

It is interesting that the Israeli - Palestinian problem has achieved such notoriety and in particular that the Israeli state, the United States, and UK have taken such enormous blame over the entire issue. The proposed Palestinian state has as much right to exist as the state of Israel but it is not Israel’s fault that the Palestinian’s have no homeland …

IT IS THE UNITED KINGDOM’S FAULT!
(with a helping from Nazi Germany and others as we will see as I post more on this subject)

Actually the fault truly lies with the Ottoman empire as they were the most recent to occupy the territory (I won’t blame the Greeks and the Romans). The supposed homeland to Palestinians and Jews wasn’t their homeland for hundreds of years - it was under Ottoman rule. So all of the complaining about a homeland is really a little immature - they were both out of power for a massive amount of time (in fact, the Israel nation was gone many centuries ago).