I Think, Therefore I Rant!

There has been quite a bit of complaining that the current stimulus bill that was just passed by the House and is going to Senate is filled with pork and special spending projects. This is a silly complaint – of course it is!

The bill is a spending bill.  It should be loaded to the gills with pork.  That is what spending bills do – they spend money.  In fact, it should have so much pork in it that a reasonably religious person of Jewish descent should run for the hills!

Of course, it shouldn’t have silly things in it like contraceptives.  That does nothing for the economy despite the silliness of Ms. Pelosi.  But it should be filled with pet projects from every mayor and county commissioner in the land.  If the mayor of a 20-30,000 citizen city CAN’T get a million or two out of this bill – they should be run out of town!  In case there are any mayors or governors out there that can’t figure out what to ask for that they can spend money on RIGHT NOW then I made a list of projects that they should consider.  

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As I write this, George W. Bush is only a few days away from the end of his 8 year Presidency.  Earlier, I had graded Mr. Bush on a variety of major factors but I felt that I left off a huge number of things that he and his administration did or did not do.  This list is the result of trying to be more inclusive.  Many items on this list are actions by the Mr. Bush and his administration and some of them are inactions.  

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For the last three posts we have been exploring the claim that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever.  Some say that he is the worst, some say he is in the middle of the pack but just about everyone agrees he is not the best ever.  This post continues the job of grading W on the various issues that he faced in his two terms of office.  See the previous posts to get the background for where we are now.

Iraq occupation – D – same as Afghanistan.  A lot of good but the job is not done so W can’t get better grade until the job is done.  He can’t get better than a C ever since he messed up so bad by putting Bremer in place – Bremer’s decisions really messed up the nation for several years.  I think that history will eventually say that the US did better in Iraq than just about any other takeover of a foreign nation (Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Georgia, Poland, etc) although that is a terrible standard to compare us to.  

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I own a first generation iPhone. While I have considered buying a new 3G version, I really don’t know why I should spend more money. I am very happy with the speed of my present phone as it does email and newsfeeds plenty fast.

The really great thing about the new operating system of the phone is the cool apps that are starting to come out. For instance, it has a FREE WordPress management tool and I am using it to write this column.

I will write more about my iPhone in the coming days. Subscribe to my feed to follow the discussion.

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I am amazed that this is not being made a bigger issue.  I guess Obama is paying everyone off with his millions of dollars so that they don’t talk about his millions of dollars.

Obama promised that if he was nominated, he would use public money for his campaign.  Now he is backing out of that promise and is going to forgo those restrictions so that he can outspend John McCain by what some think will be 5 to 1.

Obama will run the richest campaign ever for the office of the US President!

While I have a hard time saying that people can’t give money to their favorite candidate, I do have problems with massive amounts of money being used to “buy” the campaign.  Never before has the disparity between candidates been so massive.  John McCain will only have 84M from the government to spend on the election and Barack Obama will be able to spend as much as he can raise and estimates say that could be 300-400M!  

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I regularly listen to KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” on my iPod. While I enjoy the intelligent discussion I think they should rename the program to “Left, Very Left, Ultra Left, and Pretty Far Right”. The show now has a blog so I think it is fair to chastise them a little and condemn them for not being as open as they claim that they are – if they disagree they can say so on their blog.

Tony Blankley does an excellent job of holding down the right. His opinions are typically well thought out and his intellect does a decent job in offsetting the radical left. My biggest complaint is that he always seems to have predicted everything and wrote about it months ago and it is amazing that us mortals have only just now got to where he has been for a long time. It appears that, in his opinion, if we were just smart enough to read his column every week we wouldn’t have any problems in the world.  

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For the last 2 posts, I have explained that social security is in real trouble and should be euthanized. Now I will explain how to do it in the most fair and compassionate way possible.

Our current generation of retirees (and soon-to-be retirees) needs to be protected in this whole process. Therefore my plan doesn’t require them to make any sacrifices. They had a contract with the US government and we need to keep that contract. So the first step of the process is that anyone 58 and over receives all of the benefits that they are currently supposed to receive.

The second step of the process is that since everyone that is 57 today has ten years to prepare for the change, they will receive 10% less than what they were supposed to receive as of today. They need to start saving to prepare for that day and stop looking to the government for a complete handout that is not going to happen. Besides, 10% is not that big of a sacrifice.  

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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.  

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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.  

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So why don’t iPods support WMA and similarly, why don’t other devices support AAC (Apple’s format)?

The why is simple. WMA is the format that many companies (e.g. Yahoo) use in their stores to sell music. WMA is developed by Microsoft and it is a competitor. Is it a better sounding format? For the most part, no it is not – the formats are essentially tied in audio capability for the average listener and the average audio speakers.

So it is a competitive issue. Apple makes the best device on the market with something like 90% market share. They don’t like Microsoft, so they don’t play nice to Microsoft. It definitely is not a revenue issue for selling songs on iTunes since at 99 cents per song, Apple isn’t making a lot of money on the songs. They do make a bunch of money for every iPod that is sold though.  

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