Pro-Partisan

So...I like many others, have been witching things unfold (read:unravel)today, and reading alot about how this person or that person should stop being so damn partisan..."This is not the time for partisan politics" seems to be the cry of partisan politicians everytime they support something that they think it is somehow inconcievable that not everyone would support. We seem to have picked up in the argument as well.
This is not going to be a real popular opinion, but i think it is exactly the time for partisan politics. I am very sorry if Wall St. is panicking, but if Congress does not get this right, things are going to get a lot worse than the Dow being down 800 points. The stock market is by nature volatile and reactionary as evidenced by the 700 point drop and subsequent recovery this morning before the House ever voted.

The last time the White House asked Congress to just close their eyes and sign something without reading and arguing it, they gave the President the right to spy on Americans as well as the right to suspend habeus corpus for an American citizen for the mere suspicion that they may have had coffee with someone whose uncle is an extremist. Parts of the Patriot Act are good and necessary, but that does not excuse the "rubber stamp" mentality that Congress has allowed themselves to be reduced to so often. Just as it is inexcusable for our government to simply turn over $7000,000,000,000 without having a bit of a fight about it. If they can get it together and do something in the next week or so, it is going to be hard for investors, but if they screw this up further, it is going to get a lot harder for me, my son, my parents, my sister...etc. So Wall St. can just get to the back of the line for once.

...and not for nothing, but when i see people in these forums hurling insults back and forth based on political stance, while we all demand that Congress be less partisan, it is kinda difficult to take seriously.

I resign

Ok, so I am officially considering possibly resigning my commission as a user of the internets...at some point.

Heres the thing. I LOVE debate. I like to talk to smart people who disagree with me. It is just a little part of me that I happen to enjoy, and while it may annoy some people, I think most can roll with it and either feed it or just ignore it.

Has anyone else noticed that it is nearly impossible to do this on the internet?

Stay with me here for a minute. When you are in your car, and someone pulls one of those moves in traffic that everyone loves so much...Like the "speed up so you can't merge maneuver" (my personal favorite)...Carefully monitor your reaction.

My point is is that if you were walking down the street, and someone walks out in front of you and slows down, it is not likely that you will speed up, and as you walk by them flip them off and yell "ASSHOLE!" Put someone in a car however, where they have a feeling of isolation and protection, and they may say something that they would not say face to face.

Now, the Internet.

You can not go to any website that has an un-regulated section for leaving comments, that is not subject to rampant and repeated "flaming" of individuals whose sole crime was expressing an opinion.

Experiment time. I am going go find a website with comments, and return with an example of this. You have my word that I will be honest about how long this takes...brb.

..........

Ok, well it turns out that that stuff is not as easy to cut and paste as I thought. also the amount of time I would need to spend on redacting garbage that I do not want on this site...whew, anyway. Just please remember it is ok to disagree with someone without dehumanizing them. Take care

Springtime on the Trail

Ah...It is April in America. The sun is shining (sorry Missouri), the birds are chirping, Dick Cheney has seen his shadow and has emerged from his Apocolypse Cave to feed on our darkest secrets....and everyone already hates all of the people that may at one point be President.

Dennis Miller said one time that (and I am paraphrasing here..unless I nail this quote, then I am quoting him directly...here it goes) "you used to vote for the guy you liked the the most, then people started voting against the guy you disliked, now people just vote for the guy that they disliked the least".

I think it is important that we know alot about the next person that is going to lead our country. But I also think that needs to be tempered with a little bit of common sense. I do not think that we should Any of these people accountable for every vote that they have ever made in the Senate, it is just too impractical. As poor run a campaign as John Kerry had four years ago, I think he got kind of shafted by the whole voting for this, or against that thing.

For example, right now there are 26 bills in Congress relating to defense appropriations. One of the things that people attacked Kerry on was the fact that in his 20 years in the senate he had voted against 150 different defense appropriations bills. Well if we had only 26 defense bills every year, and keep in mind it is only April, then Senator Kerry would have had the opportunity to vote on 520 defense related bills, which means a "yes" vote on 370 of them.

MY point is, these people need to be scrutinized, but maybe if we focused a bit more on what kind of leader they will be, instead of a "perfect" voting record, we would not need to have a year and a half long election, and our government could govern instead of run for office.

I propose a lengthy questionnaire for presidential candidates, with questions like "who would win in a fight, Pacino or DeNiro?" or "What is the first thing you think of when you here the word 'Putin'?" we would find out alot more about these people...

I am accepting questions now.