Why The Next Four Years Give Me Hope

For once in a long time I think we will have a president who listens to the knowledgeable people. One who, when solving the economic problems, will listen to all economists, not just the vocal few, who, when attempting to improve health care, will listen to insurance companies and doctors who understand the system. He will not listen the way bureaucrats listen, i.e. he will not attempt to assign blame or attempt to cover his ass. He will make the decisions that will work. Barrack Obama is change and we can believe in him.

Barrack Obama strikes me as very similar to another skinny man from Illinois, whom also became a great president. I am speaking of course of Abraham Lincoln. Both men were/are well educated and well spoken. However while Abraham Lincoln was unfortunate enough to experience a dividing affect on America, I think that Obama will unify us as a country. He will be able to stabilize this country and this economy. He will be able to see past all the bullshit people say about the war, health care, and energy and he will be able to make the right decisions. He has the charisma that people need to comfort them and the intelligence required to lead them.

It’s not that John McCain is a bad man or a dumb man. He is just the same man that we’ve had for the past couple presidencies. People change and so must presidents. McCain only appeared to shoot himself in the foot because he couldn’t compete with Obama’s methods. Obama accurately represented the yuppies. He knew how to reach that group better than ever. The young demographic is highly idealistic and highly motivated. The main reason I think most had not voted in the past is because simply no candidate represented them. Obama basically came along and said I hear you, I agree there is a problem and I will do my best to fix it. He reached out to them we saw the importance of the internet he appeared modern and open minded. other politicians try and cover their asses and get a few votes from every demographic. Obama chose a select few demographics and sided with them. Look at the electoral division. Obama got most of the states with major urban centers NY, IL, CA, PA, etc. The only reason he won Colorado is probably because of the Denver-Boulder area.

McCain supporters need to look past all the much that was slung during the campaigns and accept that Obama is not a socialist or a terrorist. His plan for economic reform redistributes wealth. His plans are not socialist he is using taxes to encourage behavior, that is no more socialist than McCain’s plan. Other claim Obama has not been tested. What exactly does that mean? McCain has run for president multiple times and he was found wanting. How much testing had our founding fathers undergone? They were influential people who had never actually run a country before. Others have issue with Obama’s “elitist” nature. Yes Obama grew up in Chicago not some small town but then neither did McCain. Yes Obama is not a simple man; he is not Joe the plumber or Bob the whatever. He is a leader. I don’t want a plumber in the white house I want an extraordinary man; I want the best this country has to offer.

Political Controversy: Gun Control

My opinion: All guns should be allowed. I just don’t think that allowing legal firearms causes enough damage to warrant their ban. If we ban all guns and allow police to carry weapons then only people who will have guns are the police and criminals and if that happens, it won’t belong before the two become indistinguishable. The police will have such a power imbalance compared to normal people that you are bound to get corrupt cops. When corruption gets bad then even the good cops become a little corrupt. In the end pretty much only criminals will have guns.

Even if the cops somehow resist the power the guns has, then any petty crook that has a firearm is almost certain that his victim will be unarmed. If they enter a home and hold the occupants hostage, they know the resistance will be minimal. At this present time that is the most likely way to get shot. Most people (not backed up by statistics) keep their guns in their homes, locked or hidden away. As it is most weapons obtained by career criminals are illegal, so it isn’t that hard to obtain a weapon illegally.

Emil Dechebal Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr

An assault weapon ban seems reasonable, because they are a bit unnecessary. However if some one needs an assault weapon to commit a crime they aren’t going to purchase it legally it’s too easy to trace. Take the in the famous North Hollywood Shootout, the two perpetrators, Emil Dechebal Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr bought the firearms illegally from some one who obtained them at a gun show. So it’s not so much that anybody would need assault and automatic weapons, but some people enjoy having them for legitimate reasons e.g. collecting and range shooting. My personal belief is that unless something poses a significant threat to some one else’s life or property it should be allowed and I do not believe that assault weapons in themselves pose a significant threat.

However I do want to say that there should be heavy controls on assault weapons: heavy taxes and waiting periods. The taxes should go to law enforcement and the waiting periods allow for a background check both would be more so than say shotguns and handguns. We have the constitutional right to bare arms so if you are going to restrict that right you better have a damn good reason.

The main thing that you need to understand about this is that I believe that those gun toting redneck militia nuts have a point. The government is run by people they decide who to vote for and ultimately how much power that person has. The majority of people in the US are idiots, racists, and/or, close-minded religious nuts. With in that demographic there is a lot of fear, which leads them to believe politicians who clam they need emergency powers, which then leads to a fascist police state. So not only do I believe that these militias have point but also that restricting guns, in a way, creates a need for those guns. I would like to make it clear that I do not agree with the methods of most of the militias nor their extreme nature, but I do agree with their central belief that the government needs to be held to the standards dictated by the constitution.

Updates: (Last updated 11/09/2008 5:30pm CST)

response to a comment by the lion

Making things harder for criminals is a good thing but my point is that it isn't really making it harder. Career criminals are the main users of assault weapons and they obtain them almost entirely through illegal means. So maintaining a controlled legal method of obtaining them isn't really dangerous.

Given the current state of affairs in the this country if you execute an outright ban of firearms then given a generation plus maybe a few years I believe you will start to see abuse from police (provided police regulation remains the same). This is based on the belief that power corrupts it just takes time.

The problem with predicting the affects of gun crimes is that the statistics behind them are complicated. I think a good allegory to the long term affects of gun bans are the local gun ordinances. In a town near to where I live, they enacted a restrictive gun ordinance in the town and over the next two years crime rates rose. If you ban hand guns then yes for a few years it will be hard to obtain a gun but given time illegal channels will develop and the ease will increase. The affects of gun bans are long term and take time to develop. I'm not saying the what I propose as examples of the bad effects are certainly going to happen but that they can happen.

I would love to see where you are getting your information about these countries with bans by the way. I have had some difficulty finding clear statistics about the nature of crimes in the countries with gun bans. I have heard it three ways for each country: negative affect on crime, positive affect on crime, or no affect/unclear affect on crime. In 2 out of the three ways I have heard, the proper course of action would have been to allow guns.

Actually the Constitution does in fact allow for individuals to have guns the. Constitution only cited the need for militias as the reason, but the exact words were

"the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. "

This has consistently been the interpretation of the Supreme Court.

Organization and Content

When reading this blog it is important to realize that it contains everything that I consider interesting and worth remember and sharing, and I write them down when I have defined my thoughts. So unless you want to play mental hop scotch it would be best to view the blog posts by categories.

The content of this blog will be everything from interesting facts and philosophic thoughts to retarded internet humor. If you read this blog be prepared to think and be forget everything. It is my personal opinion that at times the best thing one can do for themselves is to not think too hard. Humor is not meant to be taken seriously.

At first you may see a lot of humor and philosophy as those are easy relatively simple topics, or rather I should say they are easy and simple topics to write about and define. You may also begin to see my "Yellings" as I call them, where I just basically bitch and moan. These are complaints about society. I encourage people to read them to make sure that they aren't in fact perpetrators of these problems but mostly to cirtique me and to tell me when I am being unreasonable and overly critical.

Telemarketer Prank

Ok so this is fucking hilarious. A man pretends to be a homicide detective when a telemarketer calls. For a second I kinda felt sorry for the guy on the other end he is just doing his job after all.


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Ok second's up. Enjoy

Morality of Carnivorism

The morality behind meat is an interesting one. I people can decide to eat however they want. I am all in favor of doing what you think is best but consider all positions first. I am personally against vegetarianism that is justified by the concept "meat is murder" because the followers are idiots who haven't thought their position through.

"ONLY EAT THINGS THAT ARE STUPID? FANTASTIC! I WONDER WHAT 'ANIMAL ACTIVIST' TASTES LIKE BET IT TASTES LIKE CHICKEN"

Let's say that you don't want to kill anything or anything to die so you can eat it and that's your objection. Completely understandable but how do you do define 'alive'. It's my theory that life is very hard to define and there are degrees of life, the same way there are degrees of machines. So if your objection was about taking life you'd be trying to find a way to get food directly from the dirt. However clearly that is not an option and yet people still object to eating meat. Is it an intelligence thing. Perhaps we shouldn't kill anything that is intelligent. We can only eat stupid animals. Fantastic! hmm... I wonder what 'animal activist' tastes like probably just like chicken. In all seriousness though how does one determine intelligence decide what to eat and what not to eat. Are cows intelligent enough to live. If some one killed his neighbor and ate him because he thought he was stupid enough to be food could you disprove that claim? So yes it's possible to justify what we eat by intelligence in theory however not in practice.

"WE CURRENTLY MAINTAIN A POLICY OF "HUMANS ABOVE ALL ELSE"- (HAAE)"

Let us assume that we can't determine what we can morally eat through intelligence. Self awareness is even harder to determine that intelligence. I'm not even sure what exactly self aware means. I think as a species we need to give it a good thought as to how we want to interact with other species. Eventually we will encounter something of similar intelligence of either terrestrial origin or extraterrestrial origin. We appear to have a policy of Humans above all else (HAAE). Are we going to maintain the HAAE policy that we have going. Despite what Gene Roddenberry seems to think we do not acknowledge other species as equal so easily. I doubt humans would be so nice in their interactions with other species nor that the converse will be true. From an evolutionary stand point HAAE seems very justified we have every reason to care about ourselves and our species and

"I SAY, LET PREDATORS EAT PREY. LET HUMANS EAT MEAT"

What I think should be the determining factor is the predator vs prey mentality of the animal. Deer, cows, sheep, rabbits and ducks are all prey. They run and panic when confronted where as humans, cats, dogs and bears all chase down and attack instinctively and are willing to fight back instead of run in the face of danger far more often than prey animals. We also seem to have greater intelligence than these animals and more control over our actions. Prey seems to be more subject to instinct(and emotion?) than predators. I say let the predators eat the prey and let humans eat meat. Seem pretty natural to me.


Update:
in response to the comment by the lion

Exactly, one theory behind the evolution of man(if you are a creationist who takes offense to that get the hell out) is that we evolved our large gluteus maximus(ass muscles) in order to run long distances so that we may chase our prey until they collapse of hyperthermia (heat stroke).

Eating meat may also have been the only way to develop civilization. A game animal probably weighs between 100-300 lbs. Say you get a 1/3 of that in edible meat. that is 33-100lbs of food per animal. Say it takes 1-3 days to bring back 2 animals. how long do you think it would take to gather 66-200lbs in edible plant material. So if people didn't eat meat then they'd have to live in small well spaced out groups until they developed farming techniques, which would take longer to develop because the there would be less free time to experiment and you don't have as many people so fewer opportunities for the idea to occur.

I would like to make it especially clear that while I think that certain animals should be considered more acceptable to eat than others. I absolutely believe that those animals should be treated with respect and that we should respect what we are taking.