53R1A75

Mr. Sestak,

Previously I had lived in the 6th district, and only recently moved into your district. I’m still adjusting myself to the new local and federal political landscape of Malvern, so please forgive if you feel this is misinformed or inaccurate.

I recently heard you speak your opinion and reasoning for voting for the recent “bailout” bill on the 1210AM radio talk show hosted by Michael Smirconish. I felt very disappointed in hearing that you, after hearing from a majority of your constituents, decided to vote for a massive bailout of major banking institutions, against their expressed opinions on the matter.  To understand your perspective on the issue, I also read your press release in regards to your vote on this bill. (http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/pa07_sestak/pr_080930.shtml) And while I feel you are well meaning on your “Yea” vote, in the end, the bill as a package must require a vote of “Nay”.

I understand that it is your privilege and right, given to you by your constituents, to choose in a way that you think best for the nation even if they desire you to vote differently. However in this case I feel you more exemplify the out of touch social elite ruling economic class, than of wisdom, sense, or care for the needs your voting bloc.

As I understand it, now that the Senate has passed some form of this bill, you will again be voting on this bill. I ask that you would reconsider your original choice and vote against a bill that may seem to rebound a part of the economy, but will in actuality only delay the correction to the market that must eventually happen. The longer you delay this correction, the worse it will be, and you, along with your colleagues will be to blame for the mistake you made in medling with what is supposed to be a market free from socialist or communist leaning entanglements from the government.

I would also ask that you consider voting against the new version of this bill returning from the Senate because of these “bribes” placed in this bill. These bribes distort the true nature of what is trying to be done here and no good can ever come of a bad bill being bribed into law in this way. Some of these sections are:

• Sec. 105. Energy credit for geothermal heat pump systems.
• Sec. 111. Expansion and modification of advanced coal project investment credit.
• Sec. 113. Temporary increase in coal excise tax; funding of Black Lung Disability Trust Fund.
• Sec. 115. Tax credit for carbon dioxide sequestration.
• Sec. 205. Credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles.
• Sec. 405. Increase and extension of Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund tax.
• Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
• Sec. 317. Seven-year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility.
• Sec. 501. $8,500 income threshold used to calculate refundable portion of child tax credit.
• Sec. 503 Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.

(From Mr. Andrew Leonard, http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/10/01/senate_bailout_extravaganza/index.html, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008 13:36 PDT)

In addition, from the “earmark sections” and from footage of the Senate on CSPAN, the passage of this bill and the debate thereof is more akin to a three ring circus or mafia crime sydicate, and not the dignified debate of lawmaking that the citizens of this country deserve. Please abstain from adding or voting in favor of these earmarks which are really bribes for votes.

Finally, I have been enraged by what I feel is your outright ignorance of the people you were sworn to represent that I cannot, in good conscience vote for you when you run for your next term in Congress.

Mr. R. Lee Creasy

MSIT Bloomsburg University

BA Drexel University

Image via Wikipedia

I’m not going to vote for Obama, here’s a couple vague reasons why. 1) He’s only been in the Senate for a short time. This makes me think someone is propping him up to run as a figure head. Call me rascist, but I think who ever is propping him up may think it has something to do with the color of his skin and the national pasttime of looking at the cover and not reading the pages. 2) His voting record really isn’t as great as what he talks about in his speaches. He voted for FISA and Iraq. 3) Democrats = socialism in the name of victim hood.

I’m definitely not going to vote for McCain, here’s a couple reasons why. 1) He’s a soldier. In my cursory remembrance of US history, most of our worst presidents were war heros. I’m specifically thinking of the Grant administration. 2) His voting record is probably worse than Obama. He misses more votes than he casts and when he does cast, he actually tries to think about the repurcussions, which brings me to 3) He’s an idiot. He graduated near last in his class, thinks important issues that he isn’t up-to-speed on are funny and still thinks that Czechoslovakia exists.

In fact, with all the grumbling I do, I’d make a good case that the government should be overthrown for being criminals and not being subject to the laws they create and generally ignoring the will of the people. But I digress. I feel like my first two paragraphs were pretty good and I’m neither judge nor jury, just a humble subject, so I won’t go on.

I may subtitle this post: “Things That Happen When You Have Nothing Planned”.

I love the conversation when you meet up with a friend: “so what do you want to do?”, and the reply: “ehh, nothing, you”, “yeah, I don’t know”. With my group of friends this conversation invariably ends in one of several ways: TV, Videogames, or Jam Session. It was after one of these conversations with a larger assembly of my friends we began to play beats from a keyboard and battle rap each other. This may seem like a totally legitimate course of action for some people, but a closer look at the social make up and musical taste of our group would reveal, without a doubt, that rapping is not on the top of our “fun things to do” list.

However, we ended up rapping against each other, with each other, and around each other. It was hilarious. We rapped about school subjects like geography and science as much as we rapped about the funny growth on my nose or each other’s sexual preferences.

So, to that unexpected fun burst of creativity i have found some fun links for improving the battle rap skills of those around me. Read these and take heed. Though it may not happen often, battle rapping may soon become a regular member of our “bored-time” repertoire.

1. How to SURVIVE a Battle Rap
2. Learn your flocabulary
3. Wiki on freestyle wrapping

I feel like I’m getting old. Well, at least out of touch with older gamers and younger gamers. I just read an article here in ars pointing out how freaking awesome nintendo wii is doing in sales against other platforms. Now I know it’s a stretch to take an article about game and system sales and relate it to age. I’m a little too lazy to go into all the facts and figures, but essentially I see the Wii as the system for kids and adults who missed the original gaming “thing”. So when I see all these people buying rehash games like Smash Bros and Mario Kart, I think dang, I’ve really been there done that. My experience with those games was “screw it, I’m sticking with the game cube controller” (well, Mario Kart might be the exception to that, but seriously, EVERY GAME THAT DOESN’T USE THE WII MOTE IN A SIMULATIVE WAY HAS BORED ME TO DEATH AND I’VE RETURNED DIRECTLY TO THE GAME CUBE CONTROLLER). Not to mention games like Mario Party that I’m positive will cause rampant wrist problems due to meaningless repetitive motion. And then I think about my dear, sweet XBOX 360 that I’ve had for little over a year. Let me just point out what I love about it. (in no particular order, enumerated for counting purposes only.)

1. XBOX Live and the multi-player frag fests that ensue
2. XBOX Arcade (I’m a sucker for N right now)
3. XBOX media downloads, for you know, when I’m REALLY REALLY FREAKIN LAZY.
4. The possibility that that thing is the only box I need under my TV
5. Gears of War
6. Katamari Damashi
7. GTA (I have all of the old ones for XBOX as well as IV)
8. Midnight Club

Though I have to admit some of these are not unique to XBOX (but some of them are not on the Wii at all, though Damashi SHOULD BE)

So in a much needed conclusion, the Wii has yet to offer a series of games that would make me give up my 20 button controllers, and I feel like I’m in a strange Generational loop caught between the young and the old.

I want you all to know, I almost didn’t post this. But then I thought, “self, this is not your life.” And I thusly decided to reveal to you the secret innermost workings of the internet. It is, manbabies.com. Yes, you heard me correctly. Now when you visit this site try to image yourself in one of those pictures. And from now on, consider how you compose your facial features in a picture. Because you never know when someone may swap your head with a baby’s head. Just sayin’.

In an article at the daily galaxy, there’s an interesting idea postulated that perhaps the next space war is between software companies. I would agree. HAL 9K anyone? I mean we meandered through the days of WIN 2K, I just figure it’s the next logical step. But I digress. I think previously, I linked to google sky. It’s a fun program right up to the point where you sit down and try to figure out exactly where you are in the sky. That’s the trick. You’re behind you. Oh nevermind. It’s an interesting article. Go read it.

The New York Times must always be patting itself on the back for naming their “BITS” section. I mean come on, who comes up with all those clever little acronyms. However, they do have an interesting, not so assumptive article about a media giant mfer who is now without express permission, as a part of their “service”, going to log EVERY WEBSITE THEIR USERS GO TO and sell that information to an advertiser. In Karl Marx language, they are flexing untapped capitol created by their users to create more profit. Now, I’m a business likin’ kind of guy, so I don’t mind profit too much. But I do particularly care about personal information. Who is to stop them from selling to the highest bidder? What if that bidder was the US Government? Would you like it then? What if the ad company was simply a shell company created by the government to legitimately purchase private information without the oversight and overbearing (dis-)approval of the public? This is dangerous folks, and it should not be allowed.

Finally, my google dear hearts (also cutthroat advertisers) have integrated their photo service and wikipedia directly into google maps. I recommend you all check it out. It’s a lot of fun.

Politicians won’t save the world. They sure as rain and dirt makes mud won’t save our world of crumbling finances and overwhelming debt and perceived lack of choice and perceived lack of opportunity. You know who will help you? Your neighbors. Change the culture first and you will change the nation.

PEOPLE! I’m tired of you thinking that one particular candidate is somehow a panacea and is not scrutinized to the 1 millionth degree. I just finished reading the text of a new Obama tv ad. Its a pretty interesting little scuffle between he and Madame Clinton. He says, “I don’t take money from lobbyists.” She says, “Duh! That’s because you caint - its illegal.” He says, “You whore! All you do is spew trash from your mouth! At least I voted to raise taxes on the OIL SOB’s.”

Ok ok, so that last part isn’t really verbatim, but you get the point. The article continues in an interesting fashion though. Noting that this has basically been Obama’s point all along - that the Clinton era is over, and he understands “the people”. But I would like to point out the paragraph that caught my attention. Yeah, the last paragraph, the one I usually don’t read. He may not take money from lobbyists, but he certainly isn’t averted to taking money from people in or related to the oil industry. Now I’m an equal opportunity hate-monger, so I only really bring this up to say:

See they’re all crooks and liars. Not one of them can be trusted. That’s why they sign a contract with us, “the people.” But when that contract isn’t upheld or taken seriously, well, you get abusive serial crooks and liars.

Since I’m on such a crazy political rampage, I thought I might just include this little note I found lying around reddit. Its by Dr. Ron Paul. Look, it should be obvious at this point that the Government had a little more than something to do with the current market scares and down-trends. Albeit most of the blame still has to be put on really really bad risk management on the part of the banks (something I like to call greed). But I like to look at more from a perspective of: “and you still want the government to control — insert target of gov’t program here –!?”

Also I would like to point out that the other aspect of the government involvement may have been more directed to PROTECTING it’s citizens from bad lending practices and not PROVIDING HOMES FOR THEM.

I think I would title this of Marx and Socialism.

Recently I was listening to one of those evil conservative talk show hosts when I heard one of them call Barack Obama a Marxist. It was in reference to the debacle concerning his pastor in which he distanced himself from the beliefs of the congregation to the extent that you couldn’t really call him a racist (which I do, his pastor as well, maybe more on that later). But, on the other hand you had to ask yourself how do you exist in a cultural environment such as a church and not take away anything from it. Barack may not be a racist because of the church he was a part of, but he certainly is Marxist.

Certainly that is a broad and sweeping generalization that needs some explanation. Let me first say that I am only an observer. And like any observer I have a cultural background and the biases that follow it. Also, I believe that the other candidates are generally Socialist as is our current congress and attitude towards governing. Now Socialism is essentially a small branch of Marxism or at least is a distant cousin. So I see Marxism as an extreme and blatant position. Whereas I see America currently involved in a sort of accidental socialism that develops once the voting public realizes that they can vote to be paid for not working and once the politicians realize that the can make a living being a politician as long as the people are pacified.

Karl Marx did not write an application of Marxism book. He simply outlines the class struggle created by the idea that profit is simply not paying workers for the value of their product. Therefore, the reality of Marxism is far different then they application. As my brother says, Marx was just smart, most of the capitalists that are famous in the US were apt students of Marx. In other words they read Marx’s theories and actually used them to make a ton of cash. So we see Marxist theories taking life in capitalism and not Socialism or Marxism.

I believe there is a reason for this. There is one framework truth that I adhere to arrive at the idea that Marxism and Socialism actually remove freedom from the lives of people and in fact result in far worse class struggles. That is the idea that man is essentially evil. We start corrupt and we fight to become less corrupt. Why does that matter at all? In fact, I’m not even sure that Marx ever assumed outright one way or the other. However, it leads me to my next point which is that because man tends towards acts of evil, man must be governed. The point of the government is not power or control or redistribution of wealth but the protection of the people. While there are people who struggle against acts of evil to lead good, decent and productive lives, there will always be those who succumb to it and willingly harm those around him. So essentially, no matter what shape or size, there will always be a need for a government.

At its very best philosophical peak, Marxism completely removes the government in Communism. In Communism, the workers control the resources, the means of production, and the means of distribution. Socialism is on the path to Communism where the workers take over the government and organize a system by which all are owners and all are workers. Eventually this new government simply has no use and fades completely away.

In practical reality, the road to communism dead ends at socialism. The working class becomes the ruling class and sets forth production standards that remove incentive and choice from the individual. And because there is no longer any “market” for jobs there is no choice. You will be born into job x and you will stay in job x. There is no vertical movement, no lateral movement, and there will always be a ruling class. If that ruling class is benevolent, the people will be taken care of and will at least lead good lives. If however, the ruling class is evil - see my first assumption - the people and therefore the workforce will deteriorate and will cycle again to become a new revolutionary working class. And this cycle of classes replacing each other will continue on and on.

I hope you were able to bear that little foray into my ideas on political theory because this is about our government and its potential leaders now campaigning for the public’s permission to lead our nation. In at least two of Barack’s speeches and every single one of his advertisements he is creating a class divide. He says that the workers are being treated unfairly and being abused by the companies who employ them. His answer is to tax the companies, “make them pay” and uplift Joe Everyman to financial stability. But I say to you that this will only increase the class divide, enlarge the government and remove the choices you have to move forward or sideways in the economy.

The key is choice and freedom or perceived freedom of choice and government control. The constitution was created as a contract between a government setup by the people, and the people. It firstly and correctly identifies that people need to be governed. It secondly identifies corruptive power. It then sets up the mechanisms by which the government may be limited to the will of the people and then may not take advantage of the people. Through this the people have the choice to live as a worker or a business owner. That through no one else’s meddling, you can earn money by creating resources that you control or by working for a company and being paid less than your value.

The idea that the government can solve the problems of the people is silly. Protection is not provision. To confuse the two can only lead to an inflated economy and inflated government. That is what we are seeing now. The government needs a reformation. The judicial branch has been too slow and unresponsive in protecting the people from the laws that hurt them by not upholding the contract we’ve signed with the government. We have an executive branch that tortures, lies, kills, threatens, and spies on the people who elected it. And finally we have a legislative branch that does not create laws that protect people but instead creates laws that wins them popularity so that they can be career politicians at the whim of lobbyist and corporate sponsors.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain are not that reformation.

I’m going to subtitle this post: The most important question. But that probably is too artsy, light-hearted, vague and airy for what I’m about to talk about.

Its been in the news a lot. Obama & Wright. Dear me! How the media loves controversy because the culture supports it. And by “it” I mean, personal slanders and such trash that would only befit to amuse the mind of a good American. This line of conversation is such filth that several news sources have blatantly lied or misrepresented facts to try and pin Obama in the congregation at the time of the sermons. And don’t even get me started on the 5 or so (if even that many) 5 second sound clips. I want to have all these news reporters’ and politicians’ audio from all of their collective careers of everything they’ve ever said publicly crammed into just 25 seconds that will then judge the weight of their soul. Everyone, myself included, would fail and surely be damned to hell, not mention be declared anti-American, anti-semetic, rascist and bigoted. That’s the state of humanity, we’re imperfect.

But still there’s an argument that Rev. Wright is rascist and anti-american. Recently my brother sent my family a link for reading during an online conversation on the subject. I found a very revealing part at then end after the usual rebuttal/accusatory/observational think piece found en masse on the internet these days. While the bulk of the article went about (in general) comparing and contrasting white evangelical leaders and their political figureheads to the Rev. Wright and Obama, in the end there is a quote from Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer that caught my attention.

When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

The writer goes on to follow through with this point. I cannot disagree with this seemingly blatant racism in politics. But what has been unsaid by any thinking voice on the topic (that I am aware of) is the distinct tone of what is being said.

This question must be asked, but cannot be asked by those in the media. The question is this:

When the punishment and destruction of the nation is called for by it’s religious leaders, and it’s rulers and principalities must face certain punishment and destruction for their sins, for the sins of the people, and the sins of a culture that has largely turned its back on a God they beg blessings from in word only, is the sin they are blaming this for the sin of a man sinning against his God, or the sin of a man sinning against another man?

Some may say this is the same thing, and in most cases I wouldn’t disagree. But in my opinion, most of what I’ve heard from Wright (in gross summary) is WHITE MAN HAS SINNED AGAINST BLACK MAN and BLACK MAN MUST/WILL BE AVENGED by God. Perhaps in God’s eyes this is true, but man is not God. Jesus’ gospel was colorblind. If I am truly to believe that then I must be very honest when I ask this question. Who is being sinned against that God would obliterate a nation? For a man, preacher or lay, to claim that the bearer of those sins is another man, it is simply wrong. On the other hand, claiming destruction upon, and damning America because we have given our love to another, forsaking our first love is totally true and accurate. We will reap what we sow, but we will reap whether we are white or black.

Another tasty Friday post! This time with 100% more entertainment and not-serious posting. But its got some serious stuff to. So, on with the fun!

Congress, congress, congress! If you’re pissed about the war, overthrow congress and get rid of your rep and senator. They have the power to declare war and have lamely gone along with Chairman Bush’s illegal war this whole time. Now they are busy not doing the peoples will yet again with two major issues on the table. The spy bill that would free telecoms from being responsible for protecting their clients privacy and the tax cuts that the economy needs (as opposed to the paltry 600$ I’m getting this year). If you want to save the economy 1) convict Bush of an illegal war, and remove our troops from any military base not on American soil (also illegal), and 2) make earmarks illegal.

Ok, now after oversimplifying those issues for the sake of laziness, here’s some more fun stuff. Check out google sky. If you think space is overwhelming, just wait till you try and figure out what the heck you’re looking at on there.

Speaking of space, I just finished 2001: A Space Odyssey. All I can say is… if we didn’t have to waste so much money on the military we too could have been busy finding big monoliths on the moon that turn us into babies and send us back to earth… in 2001. I don’t need to mention what actually happened. P.S. The last time anyone was on the moon was 1972.

Now, not many of my friends care too much about this, but anyone who knows I like anime knows that one of my favorites is Appleseed. This week I finished watching the sequel, Appleseed Ex Machina, and I can honestly say that it is my new favorite anime film. Its got all the great anime qualities (big eyes, hot chicks, huge mecha, zombies, destruction… this is starting to sound like a crappy action flick… you get the point, well, except for the on-going discussion of the dilemma between cyborgs, bioroids, and humans… that’s pretty engaging on an intellectual level) plus really wonderful 3d rendering. I will most likely be purchasing this dvd.