The Mid Feb Blog
Welcome to another week within Bogworld. Sometimes I wish Bogworld was a real place. A place where reasonable people laughed at and disregarded the rantings of idiots. A place where news was fact based. Why are these things too much to hope for in the real world?
Case in point: I had a Facebook political battle with a Republican this weekend. A friend of mine posted something a kin to the paragraph above but with the addition of “Its time the Republicans rename themselves the Grand Obstructionists Party just so there would be some truth in advertising. A Republican leapt at the chance to debate the issue. Saying that the Republicans are not obstructing anything and that this kind of thinking was a Liberal excuse for Obama’s failed policies.
Okay. First off, lets revisit all our junior high school civics classes. The President can propose things but it cannot become the law of the land unless Congress votes it through. So since the Republicans have been voting as a solid unwavering negative group against anything proposed by the President or the Democratic members of Congress, I am pretty sure, by definition, that makes them obstructionists.
The Republican then went on to use an Obama proposed bill as an example. He said he “had been a small business owner for two years and had not seen tax benefit one from this bill.” Ummm. Obama has been President for only one year and the bill he quoted is awaiting a vote in Congress. It has not gone into effect yet. The bill does propose significant tax relief for small business owners. The Republicans appose it because... Well its a democrat created bill... So here is something that would do precisely what Republicans have been loudly begging for. The Conservative media has so convinced their audience it will fail that some Republicans actually believe it has already failed. If this is not being obstructionist, what is?
The blogger tried to counter the reasoning by saying we cannot blame Obama’s mess on George Bush any more. The hell we can’t. The Bush administration put this country into a financial and political nose dive into deficits never before experienced. We can and rightfully should blame the Bush administration for many many years to come for the mess they left all of us. No President, Republican or Democrat would have turned things completely around in one year.
And what is the alternative? The Republicans love to say there is too much government involvement. They are criticizing the spending the Obama adminstration has been doing (where were they when the Bush administration was spending us from an all time surplus into the worst nation debt we’ve ever had?). But what is the alternative?
If the government did not intervene where would things be today? Yes, unemployment is still a problem but its an undeniable fact that most of the other indicators of a strengthening economy are back.
True as that is, you wont hear about that on FOX News or Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.
Stephen Colbert said it best. The truth has a clear Liberal bias.
Now I am not going to say Liberals have all the answers either. But Progressives (I like that term a lot better) have a tendency to think and vote independently. We actually disagree with one another. We actually break from the group to find out things for ourselves. And that makes Progressives better. The pack mentality the Conservatives have only works when they are dealing with reality and thanks to Limbaugh and O’Reilly and FOX news they have not been dealing with reality in quite some time.
Case in point: In the recent speech Sarah Palin made before a gathering of Tea Party people. She smugly asked, “So all you Obama supporters, hows all that hopey, changey stuff working out for you?” As if hope and change are somehow bad things.
Should NBC have shown the video tape of the death luge?
Yahoo news had a blog this weekend asking the question “Should have NBC run the actual video of the young Luger accident that resulted in his accidental death?” Ironically enough Yahoo’s article appeared underneath a still image of the luger a split second before dying. That’s right. The online editorial asking whether or not NBC should run the death video featured the death still photo.
Geez.
I think its tragic that anyone dies in a sport. But take a look at some of these sports. Holy crap, even figure skating could result in a fatal laceration or serious head injury. The Winter Olympics... Like it or not... Is somewhat of a death defying stunt festival for medals. The fact that they don’t have more deaths is somewhat of a minor miracle.
What part of Luging did anyone think was remotely safe?
Rotten Tomatoes
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I am a frustrated movie reviewer. I think probably half the bloggers out there on the net are. Next time you get a chance to tune into the Rotten Tomato review show on cable or on the internet, do so. Its the kind of review show all of us who review movies on the net how it should be done. The show is hilarious, irreverent and yet still manages to express a real love for movies. Check it out on Current or on Hulu.
Al Gore Was Wrong?
If you have spent any time near right wing radio or television lately (I have because its a great place for comedy material) you would hear lots of commentators proclaiming the harsh winter weather hitting the east coast this past week is absolute proof that Al Gore was wrong about global warming.
They aren’t saying much about the snowless, unseasonable warm weather on television every night in Vancouver where event organizers have had to resort to artificial refrigeration and man-made snow to try to counter the unusually warm conditions.
But apparently to the Conservative talking heads, if it doesn’t happen in the Washington/New York area, it isn’t really happening.
Of course people who actually know “global warming” is actually an over simplified term used to explain global climate change have reams and reams of documented proof that this is a recognized scientific fact in all real science communities (excluding the ones hired by FOX news to say otherwise... They also hire out to tobacco companies to say cigarettes are perfectly healthy in court cases). The term refers to an overall average warming and the lessening of the ozone level to protect us from the sun’s ultra violet rays. The same rays that are melting the polar ice caps (NASA has some great video of this by the way but first you would have to believe the earth is round). The mass effect being we are all experiencing more and more severe weather.
Urban weather reports now contain warnings about whether or not its safe to breathe outside. The average person turns red as a lobster after being exposed to the sun for 30 minutes without sun screen lotion on. Polar bears are drowning because the gaps in the norther ice pack have become so large for the first time in history ships can navigate from America’s east coast to the west coast via the north pole route.
But conservatives want you to believe Al Gore is wrong because it snowed in New York... In the wintertime... Sigh...
We Are The World
You know the old saying; “There’s nothing like the real thing.” Well thats how I feel about the new version of We Are The World. Don’t get me wrong. I love that a bunch of artists got together to raise money for disaster relief in Haiti but how about doing a new song? These are talented musicians, right? I’m guessing there are a few song writers in the bunch that could have penned something pretty inspiring too.
And they used the auto-tuning effect throughout the whole new version. Auto-tuning is a cool effect now and then but its becoming so engrained in current pop music it makes me want to tear my ear drums out. It just makes me think C3P0 recorded a song! Its just wrong. It gives talentless pretty people who cannot carry a tune in a back pack an excuse to record music. The world does not need more talentless people recording music.
Another Printer Bites the Dust
Is it just me or are computer printers increasingly cheap pieces of crap? I have gone through no less than three printers in the last five months. I wont name names but the recent one rhyned with Pewlett Hacker. I think most of us these days really don’t use printers all that much, but when we need one we really need one. The printer that just died on me last night was a problem from the start. I should have returned it to the big superstore where I bought it when the original set up took three installs of the same software. Software that did not come with the printer itself but was needed in order to use the printer. I downloaded this software three times, installed it three times and with every attempt I would get one but never all of the features of the printer to work. I probably should have returned it when Pewlett Hacker’s best route for customer support was through email and it took them more than a week... A WEEK... To answer the email I sent them requesting some assistance. But I am a geeky tech guy who likes a challenge. I found work arounds and patches that got the thing to operate. And then in the course of the following months, I probably used the printer six times. SIX TIMES. Thats means I paid about $10 per sheet of paper it successfully printed. Last night when I really needed it to work to print up some tax forms, the machine would pull a whole stack of paper through its rollers and spit it out and then tell me the printer was out of paper. No matter how big or little I made the stack of paper in the feed tray, it would pull it through without printing and then say it was out of paper. It did this about five times and then went dead. Lights out. Display out. Dead. I’ve had houseplants live longer than this printer... And if you know how I neglect house plants you know thats not a good thing.
I am going to try to live paperless for a while. None of the recent printers I have had (Podak, Mepson, nor Pewlett Hacker) have gotten me very far for the money. Heck if I scraped together all the money I spent on cheap printers and ink lately I could have probably have gotten a really nice laser printer.
Visitor Comments
- patricia -
http://www.videorolls.com/watch/Top-5-Movie-Dads-of-All-Time-Rotten-Tomatoes-Show -
June 11, 2010, 3:58 am
Add A CommentI also always with pleasure read Rotten Tomatoes and like all the shows they arrange.
Ad for your site, I like about it the variety of topics you cover: from politics to entertainment. This is very appealing and always a pleasure to read you.
Add A Comment