Tuesday, November 28, 2006

hey nancy pelosi

hey nancy pelosi, if you read my blog, please do not let alcee hastings be the chairman of the house intelligence committee. i thought you campaigned on getting rid of corruption. he is corrupt. don’t fucking let him be chairman of the intelligence committee. i don’t care who is chairperson, as long as it isn’t him. jesus fucking christ. i mean i thought you learned something from the scandals over tom delay and jack abramoff and duke cunningham and bob ney and william jefferson and mark foley. isn’t jane harman next in line for the job? and she is a woman too, just like you. i heard you hate each other, but who cares? give her the job anyway. but it would be funny to see you two fight each other, live on pay-per-view, in a catfight, a caged nude wrestling match. maybe even as funny as watching borat fight a fat man naked. i don’t know. whatever. but alcee hastings is fucking corrupt as hell. don’t nominate him, you idiot. i read online that you were probably going to nominate him anyway. that’s why i am calling you an idiot. also because you publicly protested the fbi raiding the office of congressman william jefferson. that was also idiotic. why can’t you take a more principled and consistent anti-corruption stance? and for crying out loud, jack murtha is corrupt. why the hell did you support that bastard for majority leader? like, jack murtha said he might consider taking a bribe, and alcee hastings was impeached and removed from a federal judge position for taking a bribe. jesus christ. look, the republicans had all these people who were plagued with scandal. so when one of us democrats starts having scandals over being corrupt, it is time to throw them under the bridge and abandon them and find someone with a clean record to take a leadership position. sure we can let them stay in congress if they are some corrupt piece of shit, but don’t put them in charge of anything. oh, and guess what, john kerry? nobody likes you. so shut up. there was a recent poll out and you were dead last among 20 well-known national politicians in likeability. oh and guess what, harold ford? you were the most conservative of the new democratic candidates for senate, and you lost. yet liberals won senate seats in montana, virginia, and ohio, senate seats that had belonged to republicans. oh and what the hell happened to you, bill frist? why the fuck are you retiring? you are such a loser, bill frist! oh, and guess what, fox news? nobody watches you anymore! your ratings are down! good luck holding onto your advertisers! at least you aren’t bankrupt like air america radio! goddamn air america radio... i listened to air america radio all the time, but now the local affiliate has quit and changed formats and become espn sports radio. i fucking hate sports! stupid-ass jocks! all you professional athletes can go fuck yourselves! i don’t give a damn about professional sports! it is a waste of time for people to pay attention to stupid shit like professional sports, when they could be paying attention to more important things, like, oh, i dunno, the fact that iraq is a fucking quagmire! we should just let muqtada al-sadr run the fucking country already! at least he could be able to maintain some fucking order, unlike the current iraqi security forces, who kinda, oh i dunno, suck ass! anyway, the new senators from montana, virginia, and ohio all kick ass. my new congressman is a democrat and he replaced a republican. but, i am trying to withhold judgement on him. he seems kind of, ugh, centrist and crap. definitely not a liberal like me. i hope he, like, doesn’t mess things up too bad. i mean for crying out loud, he supports the republican bill to outlaw the writ of habeas corpus and let the president make people enemy combatants and detain people without trial and have warrantless wiretaps and all that crazy shit. what the hell is up with that? and what the hell happened to the republican party? don’t they officially claim that they want to keep government out of people’s private lives, and that they want fiscal discipline, and individual liberty? what a bunch of lying corrupt sacks of shit. why don’t they ever act like they believe in the shit they claim to believe in? also, i am kind of getting sick of jesse jackson and al sharpton and those sorts of folks. i mean, yeah, great, we have liberal religious leaders from minority groups who support the democratic party! whoopee! but are they really much different from those assholes like pat robertson or jerry falwell or james dobson who support the republican party? i mean all these clowns are a bunch of would-be mullahs who claim to speak for millions of people but really they only speak for themselves, and all they want is to attract attention so they can get more money and influence. i think it’s great that jesse jackson and al sharpton find a biblical and christian basis for liberalism, since that means liberal democrats have more hope of reaching the religious voters, but still, i think liberalism needs a secular, dare i say atheist or agnostic, group of advocates who are equally prominent. you know, conservatism has plenty of atheist advocates, most notably the followers of ayn rand, the objectivists. but we cannot let these objectivist scumbags have the last word; they are all brainwashed pod people who worship ayn rand like she is some kind of deity, even though they are allegedly atheists. and libertarians and anarchists have also been unduly influenced by objectivist nonsense. the only other overarching political ideology based on atheism (besides objectivism) is marxism. and we can’t let a bunch of goddamn communists represent the left-wing atheist point of view. luckily, i think there is a very nice political ideology that is sort of based on atheism, called secular humanism. it is much, much better than objectivism or marxism. secular humanism is truly the way forward. but i am not sure if it is so much of an ideology, as much as it is just a way of thinking rationally and objectively about what is best for humanity as a whole. that is basically all it is, thinking about what is best for humanity. check it out. anyway, i gotta go. laters.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

my stupid life history

i hate my life history! i have lived the most boring life ever, had hardly any notable experiences, and basically lived a life of utter deprivation all along! i know the future can be different, and possibly better than the past. but my past is worse than horrible! it is simply unimaginably wretched! i have lived such a boring, lonely existence, all because i have always been such a creature of habit and afraid of change... and i just don’t like people! can’t stand ’em! i don’t like myself, and i don’t like anybody else either! now as for girls, i might find a particular lady physically attractive... but as for personality... nobody is good enough! at least not good enough for me! people piss me off! just tonight i was talking with some people and they were talking about how a “super ball” (a bouncy rubber toy ball that apparently the super bowl was named after) goes twice as fast after it hits the ground, the first 4 times it hits, and only after that does it start to slow down. what the fuck? have these idiots never heard of science? it is impossible for something to have more velocity after it hits the ground than before. that is not how bouncing works. i tried to explain it to them, and i even brought up flubber from the movies, and said that if things worked the way they said it worked, you could build a perpetual motion machine. ugh! i hate dealing with people’s ignorance! i have never liked other people. i always wonder how they get along so well. why everyone else has friends but not me. why everyone else dates and gets laid except me. am i really that inferior? i am just so jealous of everyone else! why do they get to have lives that are so much better than my horrible little life? what did i ever do to deserve this? on the radio tonight, on the news, they talked to a guy who is a principal at a school in texas where they stopped having school dances because the principal didn’t approve of the dirty dancing that went on there with the junior high kids, which he said was simulated sex. now, i only ever went to one school dance, and i was such a nervous wreck, unable to talk to anyone, and a girl actually did ask me to dance at one point and then i came out and i tried to but my body did not respond to any commands from my brain, i just stood still, unable to move. then she got upset and went away and i could move again but it was too late, and i felt like a freak and a loser and i just never wanted to go to another school dance again so i didn’t. i hate myself so much. i always have. it seems like everyone else has a better life than me. why is it that i was gifted with all these goddamn talents but i never get to use them? i am a genius but nobody will give me a job commensurate with my intellectual prowress. instead, i have great difficulty finding any employment at all, and what little i can find is menial low-paying jobs that a monkey could do. what kind of a life is this?!? nothing is turning out as i intended!!!!! whenever i felt down, whenever i felt like things were so horrible, i couldn’t go on anymore, i always used to tell myself, “don’t worry, things will get better in the future”. i am 24 years old now goddammit, and in june next year i will turn 25! time will not stop passing to wait for me! i can’t go back in time and live my life correctly, the way i should have lived it, to the fullest! no! there are no second chances in life, no do-overs. once something happens, it becomes history, it becomes the past, and it is set in stone, unchangeable. there are not multiple different versions of the past; there is only one, and that is the way things actually happened. and in the one true version of the past, the way things actually happened, my life has been nothing but a long series of disappointments and setbacks and comparing my life to other people’s and realizing it sucks in comparison, every time. oh sure, there are some people whose lives are worse than mine, don’t get me wrong. there are people who are starving to death, and stuff like that. but at least those people have friends, or can make real human connections with other people, or stuff like that. ugh. i can’t stand other people. i am never treated with the respect i deserve. after all the things i have been through in this stupid-ass life, people have the nerve to treat me like i am a little kid who doesn’t know anything, like i am some kind of naive little foolish boy. i cannot stand to have my intelligence questioned! it is the one thing i have going for me! without it i am nothing! dammit, whenever i talk to someone, they always say at least one retarded thing that bugs me so much, i conclude that they are a complete moron. of course i say things like that too! it is infuriating! why do i talk like some kind of juvenile fool so much of the time? why can’t i make my intelligence known in every word i utter, and say things that are profound and meaningful and insightful and true? why do i deliberately use bad grammar on my blog? i am a perfectionist! perhaps my bad grammar be a form of masochism. hehehehe. until recently, i hardly ever talked to other people. whenever i do now, i am usually disappointed. and sometimes (like tonight) they end up thinking i am the stupid one! just because of my lack of understanding of subtle social cues and body language and my lack of empathy! well other people can go fuck themselves for all i care! why should i bother caring about them if they don’t care about me? and if they do care about me, then instead of fucking themselves, they can fuck me! hahahahaha! that was a good one! at least i think that was funny, but i am sure nobody else does! god dammit... i did not earn the title of valedictorian and go through 4 years of hell at cornell in the computer science and math double major, in order to end up at some crappy dead-end job that does not use any of my academic knowledge! from an economic standpoint, how on earth is this a good use of society’s resources? if i am most skilled at academic and intellectual pursuits, as well as at computers and math, i ought to be in a career field where my skills are put to maximal use. my current job is letting my brain rot, because it requires no intelligence; anyone can do it if they type fast enough! oh, we humans are such an inferior race. i am inferior to everyone else in so many ways, and other people i come across are inferior to me in so many ways. but each of us is inferior in a unique and different way, i suppose. each of us has our own failures and weaknesses and things that make us inferior to everyone else. i know i have tons of them. it is such insanity for me! i cannot fathom how i manage to keep such contradictory beliefs at the same time and still pretend to be rational! it is a ridiculous situation. at the same time, i both believe that i am inferior to everyone else, and that i am better than everyone else. i hold 2 contradictory beliefs at the same time. and they aren’t just a little contradictory; they are polar opposites! my mind cannot compute the outcome of that equation! if person a is inferior to persons b thru z, and person a is better than persons b thru z, than what can we conclude about person a? in logic, once your set of assumptions includes two contradictory premises, you can logically prove anything at all, even things that are demonstrably false. in other words, since i hold to beliefs which contradict each other, even if i use nothing but logical reasoning to arrive at new beliefs and conclusions, i can come to any belief or conclusion whatsoever, on the basis of those 2 contradictory beliefs alone! you see, i am not a rational person. i am, how do you say, insane? yes, very much. dammit! so i feel like i have no self-control! i have never felt like i had self-control! i have always felt like i am some sort of automaton, some kind of robot. i have always felt like i am just a passive observer and that everything my body does, it does on its own. if i do something or say something, i feel like that is not something under my control, but rather preordained, pre-scripted, pre-programmed, like my body is some sort of robot executing a program etched into its circuit boards. and i feel like the control i have over myself, what little control there is, is just an illusion. in reality, there is no control. nothing is under control. the universe is a grand experiment, except there is no control. everything is random. all the order we see in daily life is just chaos in disguise. i feel like the grim reaper is stalking me. time is my enemy. if i cannot learn to control my mind and body fast enough, i will be old and dead before i learn how to live my life the way i should have been living it since the day i was born. i have cheated death thousands of times, each time in my imagination, but it felt real, because it was a panic attack, and i really thought i was dying at the time, each of those many, many times it happened. how can a person such as me, who is so insane, try to be sane, and not lose his mind? i hate people! nobody understands me. nobody gets it. but what is the point? i am just one of over 6 billion people! why should someone waste their time trying to understand me, anyway? that is why most people don’t even bother! maybe they would bother if there were only 2 people alive, them and me. am i in hell right now? there don’t seem to be many flames. but sometimes i think i am in hell, that life on earth is hell. if this is hell, who is satan? i don’t believe in any religion; they are all ridiculous fabrications of the human imagination, and have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. but it still has this mindless, zombie-like appeal for me. i feel like becoming a mindless drone and having my brain reprogrammed and becoming a pod person, some kind of slave. i feel like giving up on having any individuality or my own will, and becoming part of the machine, of the giant military-industrial complex, turning myself into some kind of half-human, half-robot cyborg, or something. i feel like building a doomsday device and then detonating it immediately after i am finished building it, so as not to give anyone else the chance to stop me from destroying the planet earth. i feel like making time go backwards so that i start getting younger, and everything that ever happened to me un-happens in reverse, and i get smaller and smaller until i am a baby and go back inside my mom, and then shrink down to one cell, which splits into a sperm and an egg cell, and then things continue to go backwards, only much faster now, all the way back to the big bang, at which point, the whole “universe” thing is called off because it is a bad idea. i feel like screaming at the top of my lungs, “this is my life, dammit, how dare you make me mortal! i want to live forever! i want unlimited chances to go back and change things i screwed up the first time! i refuse to accept anything less than eternal life, and complete world domination! i demand that the universe fulfill all of my wishes immediately, or i will be forced to transform into my true shape!” well ok, maybe i really am a human, maybe this really is my true shape. what a horrible shape it is! i need to work out and lose some weight! geez! what is up with that? i am such a lazy slob! goddammit. it is so hard deciding on which girl to ask out. none of them are perfect. so i have to settle for something, well, a little less than perfect, if you know what i mean. upstate new york is so devoid of anything good whatsoever, it is amazing. i basically live in a ghost town inhabited by people who wish they lived somewhere else but for some reason are stuck here. yes, that is why most people are here. trapped here against their will. all of the good people have long since moved far, far away. none of them are left here in town. the people left here are the lowlives, the scum of the earth, the people nobody else likes, the very lowest of the low. upstate new york is so awful, it is probably a thousand times worse than hell could ever possibly be. and that is just because of the taxes, the highest gasoline costs in the nation, the unemployment more than double the national average like usual, the economy that has been contracting slowly like a noose around the neck for over a decade, the aging population, all of the young (and especially the attractive) people moving out, the crime rate that grows exponentially, the rivers that smell of raw sewage, and the ridiculous ultra-duplication of everything throughout local government. this place is a post-modern, post-industrial, post-cold-war wasteland of technology gone obsolete, of companies that lost their competitiveness, got bought out, outsourced their jobs, and left. why am i living in this dump? i have no money, i live with my parents, and i have asperger’s syndrome and panic attacks. i do not adjust well to new surroundings. i do not adjust well to anything new. it is bizarre how much change frightens me, and very illogical. but who can expect emotions to be logical? mine sure aren’t. sometimes i am very frightened, and someone (usually my mom) asks me why, and i say that i have no idea why i am frightened, perhaps it is just a biological thing in my brain with no logical explanation in my thoughts. and then my mom looks at me like i am some sort of alien. no, i am not an alien, i just have panic attacks! most people who have panic attacks are women. am i a woman? yeah right! although i am sure women have it much easier in life. now they claim life is harder as a woman. have any of those women actually lived as a man? no. i’ll tell you one thing: when they had the military draft, who got sent to war? women? no, men! so, now tell me how life is harder for women! women live longer, and are healthier than men! they are also less prone to reckless self-endangerment, and do not have such oppressive sex drives! my sex drive is oppressing the hell out of me! every day i am reminded of how everyone else is better than me, and i am not getting laid or having sex, even though i want it more than anybody else in the world! wanting something alone is not enough. there has to be action. but i am trapped inside this stupid body that doesn’t take orders from my brain. or maybe, more realistically, something is holding me back, since i am afraid of change, so afraid of change that i prefer a terrible status quo to a vastly superior alternative, if it requires going outside of my comfort zone and doing things i am not accustomed to doing or familiar with or comfortable with. if something makes me too nervous, i am outta there! i can’t stand it! it is amazing that i am now able to actually talk to people, something i was too nervous to do most of my life. but i am so disappointed with the results. it only makes me dislike the people i talk to, and who knows what they think of me? i try to act nice to most people most of the time, which is hard, because i have such a low opinion of everyone and everything. and you know what really “grinds my gears”, to quote peter griffin? they took air america radio off the air where i live! the local air america radio affiliate switched to an espn radio affiliate! and the station is owned by citadel broadcasting, which was recently bought ought by disney, which owns espn. anyway, fuck those corporate bastards. so what if air america radio recently went bankrupt? so what if they did not meet their financial obligations to you? so what if there wasn’t enough audience? your audience was at least one person (me!) and i am so goddamn important that even if i am the only person listening, you had better keep the fucking station on the air, with the air america radio format i approve of, or else! or else what? or else i will listen to something else on the radio! or not listen to the radio at all! i fucking hate radios! why the hell did i buy one? oh yeah, because i can’t watch tv or surf the internet or do anything fun like that at work, so radio is just about the best i can do, which is pathetic! apparently i need my eyes to see the screen and my hands to type fast and use the mouse fast! oh and guess what? the wonderful program we use at work requires me to use both the keyboard and the mouse, so i have to move my right hand back and forth between the keyboard and the mouse several times, on every document! and i am supposed to get over 3 documents done every minute! talk about repetitive motion injuries! imagine doing that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the rest of your life. oh, and you live forever. at least you get to eat chinese food. luckily for me, i don’t have to do this shit forever. even if i do it the rest of my life (which i doubt), it is still going to end someday, which is a relief, because i am already bored out of my mind with this job! but i am working at one of the very few companies in town that actually hires people! goddammit, i hate myself so much! why do i always have to be my own worst enemy? this is the price i pay for being completely batshit insane. oh well. at least i have my diplomas to brag about, to other losers stuck in dead-end jobs in the middle of nowhere who hate people who brag to them because it smacks of arrogance. but i really have no choice. i have to keep working or else i won’t have any money to pay the bills. what a stupid country we live in. i hope our enemies defeat us. i hope everything bad that has not yet happened, happens. i hope evil triumphs and good people suffer. because if that comes true, it would be exactly what i expected, because i am a pessimist. and, judging by the way things are going now, all those bad things have already come true. the democrats won control of congress and the governorship of new york, and that gives me hope, but i hope my hope is misplaced, and i hope they ruin things even worse than the republicans, because at least then, things will be going horribly wrong like usual, and i won’t have to face the unfamiliar situation of something good actually happening for once in a billion years. and i will still support the democratic party no matter what, even if they adopt the same positions on all the issues as adolf hitler. because there are some things more important than right or wrong, and those things are talking and shutting the fuck up. if someone says something i agree with or like to hear, sure, go ahead, talk, i fully approve. if you have another opinion, shut the fuck up. based on those 2 principles, i will only listen to people i already agree with, and ignore anyone i disagree with, and no matter what the people i agree with say, i will continue to agree with them. quite honestly i just don’t care about anything anymore. truth, lies, good people, bad people, who cares? let the people who are most corrupt run everything. i hope tony blair re-enacts the war of 1812 by burning down the white house. and what is the point of having nuclear weapons if you never get to use them? we need some fresh new ideas in government, some stupid ideas and some evil ones that will really fuck things up for good. i am not even remotely making any sense anymore. i stopped caring hours ago. but honestly, writing crap like this makes me feel better once i get it out of my system, and i am going to feel better tomorrow because of it. thanks for reading. you shouldn’t have. i just wish i had lived a life that was at least a fraction of a percentage point as fun or interesting as your life, because i am sure that anyone other than me who reads this has had a much better life than i have. and if you haven’t, that is a lie, because you have, and i know it. i just hope nobody gets the wrong idea from what i write, and thinks there is some sort of a problem here and they have to intervene. i just need to express myself in words to feel better, and like anne frank, the girl who wrote the diary that was published as a book after she was killed by nazis, i like to make a public record of this stuff. that way people will know what life is really like for a smart person who went to an ivy league college. hint hint: it sucks. another hint: ivy league colleges are not necessarily the best. third hint: i hate cornell, all the other colleges are much better. fourth hint: i never actually learned anything. ever. why do i feel so empty inside? i am pretty sure i don’t even have a soul. with such a miserable life, the decision to go on living that i make every day is masochistic and insane. but i keep on making it every day. and i will continue, until mother nature decides she has had enough of my antics and my body is old and wears out, and the grim reaper comes for me, and gets me confused with a baby being delivered by a stork, and the baby ends up dead, and i end up being born again. i hope i have multiple lives. or at least multiple orgasms. life is such a cruel joke. i should be a comedian by having kids. then the joke is on them.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

kinda apprehensive

ok, so we elected democrats to the house and senate, and we have democratic majorities in both houses now (as long as joe lieberman doesn’t go back on his campaign promise to caucus with the democrats). now what? i am kinda apprehensive. see, george w. bush is still president. and, the public is sort of deeply divided. in iraq the public is also deeply divided. the sunnis and shiites are fighting a civil war, or at least “sectarian violence”. so what is keeping us in the united states from fighting another civil war? i think it is because we have a strong central government, which has a monopoly on the use of lethal force. back in the 90’s we were hearing about anti-government militias that were being formed out west, and that was a supposed threat. but i think nowadays most people are patriotic, or at least most people who own firearms are patriotic. and most people who have guns and hate the government are probably just criminals, a type of person our government is quite effective in apprehending and punishing. for example, rappers often rap about how much they hate the police, which would not be a relevant topic unless the police were quite active in fighting crime very aggressively. usually the rappers also rap about doing drugs and killing people, putting to rest any doubt about whether they are really criminals or not.

anyway, it was rather creepy how bush fired rumsfeld and george “macaca” alan conceded the election in virgina to jim webb, and then bush and nancy pelosi suddenly announced that they were basically soulmates and loved each other. i mean, what the hell is going on here? why is everyone acting so nice, after all the nasty things they said before the election? it is kind of disingenuous and absurd of george w. bush and nancy pelosi to put on this charade of pretending they like each other. and i have heard from many sources that the democrats plan on avoiding divisive issues like gay marriage or abortion, and instead they will pass laws on issues where the vast, overwhelming majority of the american public agrees with them. things like having the rich pay more taxes, having embryonic stem cell research, reforming legislative earmarks for more openness and accountability, allowing medicare to import cheaper drugs from canada and/or negotiate with drug companies for lower costs, raising the minimum wage, balancing the budget, and having oversight hearings to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse among military contractors in iraq. but there is only so much that they can do in this area, and what if bush vetoes it? it is difficult to come up with a comprehensive legislative agenda. and how on earth can the democrats balance the budget? certainly, the republicans failed miserably, because they kept cutting taxes and increasing spending, making the deficit and debt both get bigger each year. obviously, there are only 2 ways to bring the budget back towards being balanced: raising taxes and cutting spending. now, democrats have a certain reputation for raising taxes, but they actually pledged to cut taxes for middle-class families, instead of raising them. they pledged not to raise taxes for the poor or middle class. so, how much money can we get if we tax the wealthy, and tax corporate profits, and go after tax evasion aggressively, and bring back the estate tax (which is set to expire)? republicans claim that if we taxed those things, that would be bad for the economy, and less people would have jobs. republicans like to tax consumption so as to avoid taxing investment. but the poor consume and the rich invest. for a more equitable economy, the government should tax investment and not tax consumption at all. however, at what cost would this equality come? would this prevent future economic growth? the only way to find out for sure is to do a scientific experiment, but unfortunately, that is impossible in the field of macroeconomics. economics is simply a devious form of applied mathematics, used to advance a political agenda. anyway, the republicans believe in the laffer curve, i.e., they believe in reaganomics, the trickle-down theory, the theory that cutting taxes can increase government revenue. the republicans claim the bush tax cuts resulted in increased government revenue. this is nonsense. the bush tax cuts were enacted during a recession, and then the economy continued its normal cyclic behavior. i believe the tax cuts actually made the recession worse and made it last longer, but eventually, it had to end, because the economy is cyclic and alternates between recessions and booms. the current economic boom that the republicans claim credit for is actually fatally flawed, because the uneven income distribution in the current economy means that there are less consumers with significant amounts of disposable income to spend, which means less consumption, and therefore less production, and therefore less economic activity, period. in order for the economy to thrive, we must encourage consumption by raising the minimum wage to create more disposable income for the working poor, and lower sales taxes so people can buy more stuff. the problem with today’s economy is most people cannot afford all the stuff they buy so they go into debt and have money problems, and try to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying off their debts. the pernicious effects of loans and credit cards are ruining our economy, by changing economic interactions from their normal state into a bizarre cat-and-mouse game, with people buying more than they can afford and accumulating debt, and then trying to avoid creditors as best they can. and most businesses cannot afford to go around chasing debtors who cannot pay their bills. our economy has been reduced to a stack of cards that is about to fall over, with the vast numbers of people who are in debt. the government must regulate the credit card industry and organizations which give out loans, in order to prevent those companies from being the enablers for people with bad credit to buy more than they can afford and go into debt. i am sick of seeing ads that say “bad credit? no credit? no problem!” and promise people free cash or free cars if they are willing to sign a contract that puts them into debt for many years. then the people in debt have to work it off. it is basically like a form of slavery for stupid people. so often i see advertisements for things like a monthly service that will deliver jokes to your mobile phone in the form of text messages in exchange for a ridiculously high monthly fee. there is so much economic activity which is simply exploitation of the public’s stupidity. we need a better educational system so people are not dumb enough to waste their hard-earned money on stupid crap they don’t need. capitalism only works if the consumer acts in their own enlightened self-interest, and it is not in a very good state when people waste money on stupid things like that. or how about gambling? gambling is the exact opposite of insurance, but both of them are scams. with insurance, you pay a relatively small amount of money in order to prevent a situation where you have to pay a ridiculously huge amount of money. with gambling, you pay a relatively small amount of money in order to create a minuscule but nonzero probability that you will suddenly get a ridiculously huge quantity of money because of random chance. in either case, you are wasting money trying to change the outcome of a situation that is almost guaranteed not to occur. but, you ask, what about health insurance, or life insurance, or other types of insurance for things that are probable? health insurance is a scam because the insurance companies make backdoor deals with drug companies and medical providers so that they don’t have to pay as much money as you would pay if you had no insurance. in other words, it is a conspiracy, like o.p.e.c., because all the major companies in the industry have cooperated with each other in order to rip off the consumer, making secret backdoor deals. and this health-care conspiracy has managed to buy the votes of the politicians to help them make even more money through their anti-capitalist collaboration. health insurance companies and drug companies ought to compete with each other, as adam smith envisioned when he wrote about capitalism, rather than collaborating to form a de facto monopoly. have you played the game monopoly? if two players decide they will collaborate with each other and not compete, but instead try to defeat a third player, that is not fair. and if three players are all collaborating and fighting against one, that is totally unfair. i have played the game of monopoly, and i have been the victim of this type of conspiracy, with 3 other players ganging up on me, because i was too smart and they decided i was such a threat that i had to be eliminated from the game and they all had to work together. but i won the game anyway! hell yeah! but that is not what usually happens when 3 gang up against 1, i am just awesome. anyway, that is why we have problems in our health-care system. large corporations are collaborating with their supposed “competitors”, forming de facto monopolies that operate basically the same way as large state-owned companies under communism. so basically we are living under communism, is what i am saying. and that is not a good thing. anyway, the democrats will have to end this system of communism. of course, they will not do it, at least not all at once. they will introduce small, gradual changes to our current system, probably. and the good thing about our current system of corporate communism is, we are not that far away from an actual competitive market economy, and all we have to do is have the government investigate companies for anti-competitive practices, and try to incite the companies to dislike and distrust each other. when large corporations hate each other, this is a good thing, because it promotes competition. for example, ibm and microsoft are bitter enemies, and this is much better than having them conspire together how to rule the world of computers.

so, perhaps it is good if democrats and republicans hate each other. like in the capitalist system of the market economy, this drives both sides to compete, and try to produce a better product for the consumer. just imagine how awful things would be if democrats and republicans collaborated in the oppression of the american people and rendered our system of democracy obsolete. just imagine 2 parties with similar viewpoints and similar politicians who get along and cooperate. there would be no more choice left for the voters! it would be no different from 1-party communist rule! so partisanship is a good thing, from that standpoint. of course, there could be fake partisanship. there could be a system where the politicians all agreed on everything and cooperated together, but only pretended to disagree for the elections, and campaigned on platforms to appeal to their parties’ bases, but once elected, governed from the so-called “center” in a spirit of “bipartisanship”, going back on all the promises they made to their bases. just imagine... a democratic politician campaigning, pretending to be liberal, and a republican politician campaiging, pretending to be conservative, but then they both get elected to congress and have the exact same “centrist” voting record, bought and paid for by special interest money. by the way, “centrist” and “moderate” are washington code-words for “part of the conspiracy of elite special interests to take the power away from the people and give it to the biggest campaign contributors”, or, more briefly, they both mean “corrupt”. so, when i see nancy pelosi and george w. bush acting all nice, i get suspicous, and start thinking, is there some kind of secret backroom deal going on here? is this the start of some new era of bipartisan corruption? they said they want to work together to get work done for the american people. but which people? regular, ordinary people like you and me? or the big shots? honestly, i would really like to believe that the government is actually working on behalf of ordinary people, but i am way too cynical and well-informed to believe something as ridiculous as that. but i think divided government is usually a good thing. that way, any law that gets passed must be agreed upon by both the good party and the evil party (it is up to you to decide which you think is which, but only god and satan know for sure). so, any law that is passed is something that god and satan can both agree on, basically. and anything god and satan can agree on must be a good idea. i mean, satan used to be an angel, and has a lot of experience in that position, plus he is uniquely qualified, as the one and only ruler of hell, and the source of all evil in the cosmos. like, if the media wants to do a story about christianity, they need to cover both sides of the story: god’s side and satan’s side. and they have to give both sides equal time. otherwise, they would not be objective. we cannot allow pro-god or pro-satan bias in our media. if that happens, how can we expect to really know what is going on during the war of armageddon? we need both perspectives: the perspective of jesus once he comes back to earth to save the world, and the perspective of the beast with the number 666 on its forehead, the antichrist. if the media tried to cover things from the same perspective as most americans, i.e., pro-god and anti-satan, they would totally miss the story when satan’s armies converge on jerusalem and kill 1/3 of jews, and instead of covering it from satan’s perspective, they would have reporters embedded live with the angels in heaven, asking them what they think. more realistically, what i am trying to talk about (via that long-winded analogy) was how our media in the united states might have a pro-wealthy or pro-republican or even pro-liberal or pro-democrat bias at times, but the real bias, the biggest bias they have, that never goes away, is their pro-american bias. and along with their pro-american bias is their anti-anti-american bias. so, we can never find out about it if our country does something wrong, because our media wants us to think only good thoughts about our nation. only when things get f.u.b.a.r., or fucked up beyond all recognition, is our media willing to talk about something being wrong with the united states of america. but they still approach it with a pro-american attitude, an attitude of “hey, i guess we can’t deny this problem exists, but we americans can solve any problem and i am sure we can easily solve it because we are the greatest people in the world”. like have you heard of narcissism? in ancient greek mythology, narcissus was a young man who fell in love with his own reflection that he saw on the surface of a smooth lake, on a bright and sunny day. and after that, he was so in love with himself, he never fell in love with anyone else, ever again. he was his own soulmate. our entire nation has gotten like that, overcome with nationalist narcissism, and it has become so much of a bias, such a big mental problem for our nation, that we have to be in denial about any problems our nation has, and still think we are #1 and the best, or else our whole national self-image falls apart. now, most nations are not #1, but they still get by. mexico, turkey, france, ... those are all industrialized countries that are not really #1 in anything. they are adequate. they are good enough, but not perfect, not really the best. but people still live in those countries and like them. what countries are #1? well, i think canada, sweden, switzerland, norway, japan, luxembourg, russia, china, india, and of course, the united states. each of those countries comes up #1 in some sort of ranking, by geographic size, population, prosperity, life expectancy, or some sort of quality of life index. it depends on what you are looking for in a country, which one comes out #1. but we can’t be #1 in everything. we should be glad we are #1 in a few categories, even if some of them are bad (like military spending, or number of people in jail). but even if we were not #1 in any categories at all, even if we were a below-average country, it would still be ok. because there are dozens of below-average countries out there that are doing fine, sort of. well not really. but, we can’t just assume we are the best without checking the statistics. life expectancy, infant mortality, per capita income, amount of natural resources, poverty rate, unemployment rate, etc. and, when one company completely dominates an industry, this is called a monopoly, and this is what happens in communism. in an economy like ours there are oligopolies, which i like to call conspiracies, where a few giant companies agree not to compete, and work together, forming a de facto monopoly that is just like communism except it is cleverly disguised and marketed as capitalism. what we need is some good old-fashioned “trust-busting” like what teddy roosevelt did 100 years ago. we need to go after the oligarchs, the plutocrats, the kleptocrats, the illuminati. according to the theories of supply and demand, in a competitive market economy, no company makes a profit; instead, every company has an average profit of zero. any company that can make a profit consistently, and avoid losing money, is either up to something no good, and is somehow cheating, or really is smarter than everybody else. there is a certain minimum amount of corruption needed in order for our economy to function smoothly. if we eliminated all corporate corruption, this would cause chaos and economic collapse and people would lose their jobs and companies would go bankrupt and it would be a disaster. so, we have to draw the line somewhere, and only go after cases where the corruption has clearly crossed the line. if everyone who was corrupt were put on trial and put in jail, this would destroy our economy, if it were all done at once. but if we gradually weed out the bad apples, without going too fast, some of the other bad actors can go legit and then we can leave them alone. i am convinced that corruption is ubiquitous among the large corporations, but since they make most of the stuff i buy, i kind of depend on their continued existence. anyway, i have no idea what this democratic congress is going to do, since all nancy pelosi has spelled out is the first few days or so. after then, who knows what will happen? it is entirely unpredictable. and is bush going to go legit, or is he just playing games with us to get more time and run out the clock until his presidency is over? is he getting something in exchange for giving up rumsfeld? what was the secret deal? i am totally creeped out by this. i don’t know if i can really trust nancy pelosi anymore, since i definitely don’t trust president bush at all. and harry reid definitely cannot be trusted. he is from a red state, is anti-abortion and anti-gun control, and the senate is infamous for making secret backroom deals, especially when it is closely split, like 51-49 or nearby. if you saw fahrenheit 9/11, you saw how nobody in the senate was willing to question the results of the 2000 presidential election. what you may not know is why. there was a secret backroom deal between the democrats and republicans in the u.s. senate. the democrats agreed not to question the presidential election results, and in exchange, the republicans made some concessions on the senate rules or committee assignments or something like that. if one of the democratic senators had questioned the results of the presidential election, it would have broken the deal between the senate democrats and republicans, and there would have been serious retribution from the senate republicans, which would have resulted in the senate democrats having much less power for the next 2 years. in the end, making this deal backfired, at least for tom daschle, the democratic leader in the senate at that time. he ended up losing the next time he was up for re-election. why? he was from a red state, and was labeled an “obstructionist” of president bush, which made the voters of his state not like him. maybe he should have made MORE secret backroom deals, which would have made him LESS of an obstructionist and more of a lapdog, but at least he would have a seat at the table where the important decisions are made... i am sure harry reid has learned that lesson from tom daschle. and that is what worries me.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

VICTORY IS MINE!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! FINALLY WE HAVE ACHIEVED VICTORY AS DEMOCRATS, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS BEEN SOUNDLY DEFEATED!!!!! WE HAVE CRUSHED THE ENEMY!!!!! NOW WE SHALL CONTROL THE COUNTRY, AND, AS THE WORLD’S ONLY SUPERPOWER, WE SHALL ALSO CONTROL THE ENTIRE WORLD!!!!! WORLD DOMINATION IS WITHIN OUR GRASP!!!!! USA!!!!! USA!!!!! USA!!!!! DEATH TO THE INFIDELS!!!!! PRAISE ALLAH!!!!! HAIL CAESAR!!!!! FOR MOTHER RUSSIA!!!!! ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!!!! YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME!!!!! MOVE ZIG... FOR GREAT JUSTICE!!!!! NOW WE CAN FINALLY WIN IN IRAQ, BY KILLING ALL IRAQIS!!!!! PRAISE FUCKING “BOB”!!!!! WE CAN BRING ABOUT THE END TIMES AND JESUS WILL COME BACK!!!!! ARIEL SHARON WILL AWAKEN FROM HIS COMA AND BE A VAMPIRE LIKE DRACULA, AND COME SUCK YOUR BLOOD!!!!! TRANSLYVANIAN TRANSVESTITES UNITE!!!!! ALL PRAISE IS DUE TO TOM DELAY, SCOOTER LIBBY, DUKE CUNNINGHAM, BOB NEY, MICHAEL SCANLON, MARK FOLEY, AND JACK ABRAMOFF!!!!! WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU!!!!! NOW THE FOXES SHALL RULE THE HENHOUSE, AND WOLVES WILL EAT SHEEP, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT!!!!! GOD HATES FAGS!!!!! WINDOWS VISTA SUCKS AND SO DOES INTERNET EXPLORER 7!!!!! JIHAD!!!!! GOD DOES NOT EXIST!!!!! I AM AN EVIL ROBOT FROM THE FUTURE!!!!! THE ALIENS ARE COMING, AND THEY WILL GIVE EACH ONE OF US A FREE COLONOSCOPY!!!!! YOU’VE GOT AIDS!!!!! I AM GOING TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD AND EAT YOUR BRAINS WITH SOME FARVA BEANS AND A NICE BOTTLE OF CHIANTI!!!!! LET’S KILL SOME UNDEAD UNBORN BABIES BEFORE THEY EVEN EXIST!!!!! THE INNOCENT SHALL SUFFER!!!!! IF GOD IS A “HE” AND MAN IS MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE, GOD MUST HAVE A GIGANTIC PENIS!!!!! ONLY THE TRUE BELIEVERS WILL GET TO SUCK IT!!!!! EVERYONE ELSE CAN HAVE COITUS WITH SATAN, WHO IS A WOMAN BECAUSE WOMEN ARE EVIL!!!!! LET’S START A NOOKLEEYAR WAR!!!!! SEND ALL THE MEXICANS BACK TO MEXICO, ALL THE ASIANS BACK TO ASIA, AND ALL THE EUROPEAN-AMERICANS (A.K.A. WHITEY) BACK TO EUROPE!!!!! NOBODY CAN STOP US NOW!!!!! WE ARE INVINCIBLE!!!!! PAPER CURRENCY IS INHERENTLY WORTHLESS!!!!! SHOW YOUR OPPOSITION TO PAPER CURRENCY BY BURNING ALL OF YOURS!!!!! WELCOME TO THE BIZARRO PARALLEL UNIVERSE, PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY!!!!! STOP READING AFTER THIS SENTENCE, BECAUSE IT IS THE LAST ONE!!!!!

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

vote democrat today

please, everyone, vote democrat today. at least in the elections for u.s. congress and u.s. senate. every citizen must do his or her part to preserve this democracy, with 3 branches of government, and checks and balances, a limited government, governed by the constitution, as amended. if you do not vote for democrats, you are enabling the continuation of one-party rule. no democracy can survive for too long under one-party rule. even the soviet union had fake elections. many nations around the world are so-called democracies, but are actually under one-party rule and are little more than dictatorships disguised as democracies. this is actually much more common than actual functional democracies. we cannot allow our nation, the united states of america, the greatest nation in the history of this world, to fall into that same fate, the fate of lesser nations. we must vote to preserve the liberty that we have earned, or rather, that past generations have earned for us, through their noble sacrifice. the founding fathers laid the foundations for freedom, with the constitution and bill of rights, but the system only allowed rich white men to vote, and was quite unfair. we fought a civil war to end slavery, which was a divisive issue, because some people were conservative, and wanted to hold onto the discredited system of morality of the past that said that slavery was okay. then, we gave women the right to vote, but women were still not equally powerful as men. we fought two world wars and one cold war, to save the world from tyranny. meanwhile, we continued to expand liberty at home, eventually granting equal rights to women and minorities, and now we have started to do the same for homosexuals. the republicans are elitists, who believe rich white men should control everything, that women should obey their husbands, that homosexuals are evil and need to repress their urges, and that the poor should work hard and the rich should be allowed to make enormous profits. their beliefs are quaint and outdated, to say the least. every other wealthy industrialized nation has universal health care, except one: turkey. our nation has one of the highest violent crime rates of the wealthy industrialized nations, one of the highest infant mortality rates, and some of the lowest scores on standardized tests. this is despite the fact that we have more people in jail than any other country, we spend way more on education than any other country, and we spend way more on health care than any other country. no country can compare with us, because we are the only country that combines the following 3 things: large population, large land area, and great wealth. we are 3rd in land area, after russia and canada. russia and canada are both rather lacking in terms of population density, and russia is a poor country. we are 3rd in population, after china and india. both of those countries are poor, and have less land area than us. and as for russia, canada, india, and china... none of them has land which is as good as our land; the united states has remarkable natural resources, and a great deal of arable land. we are a large geographic area, with one common language and one common culture, led by one government. and our nation is much more unified than other nations of this size. in china, i doubt the people of tibet and the people of manchuria have much in common. but people from california and maine have a lot in common! that is the greatness of the united states of america! as divided as we may be politically, we are still quite unified. harry reid, the democratic leader in the u.s. senate, is anti-abortion and anti-gun control, both of which are much more likely to be the positions of a republican than a democrat. lincoln chaffee, a republican senator from rhode island, votes with democrats more often than republicans, and is a staunch opponent of bush’s war in iraq. arnold schwarzenegger, california’s republican governor, supports gay marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, and abortion; he basically agrees with liberal democrats on all the divisive social issues. and still, arnold looks up to ronald reagan as his biggest hero. joe lieberman, democratic senator from connecticut, was such a big supporter of bush’s policies in iraq and critic of those who questioned those policies, he ended up losing a primary to ned lamont, because he seemed to have more loyalty to a republican president than to his own democratic party. all across the nation, it is the middle-of-the-road moderates who are going to be making the biggest gains in congress. oh, the rhetoric and condemnation of the other side may be harsh, but never for one moment doubt that politicians of both parties are quite similar. they are all fallible humans who make mistakes, and most of them are so constantly bombarded by ideas from other people, they never have any original ideas of their own. politicians simply parrot the ideas of other people, whoever seemed to make the most sense to them. the more campaigning a politician has to do, the more brain-dead it makes them get. so what is the difference between democrats and republicans? the difference is what set of ideas they tend to believe in more, and where there loyalty is. the difference is in what their priorities are for this country, and what kind of policies they think would exist in a perfect utopia (or in the closest thing possible to a perfect utopia that could be achieved on earth). and democrats, by and large, tend to believe in equality. they believe people are inherently equal, and should be treated the same, and that every citizen of the greatest nation on earth ought to have the greatest opportunities on earth to achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. well maybe not beyond their wildest dreams. but at least, the american dream: being middle class, being able to afford to pay the bills, get married, send kids to college, and have a house and a car and cable or satellite tv and a new computer with high-speed internet, and being able to have consensual sex with any other adult who agrees to it. democrats believe in freedom. like the freedom for anyone to vote, as long as they are a citizen. the freedom of sex, to have sex with anyone you want, as long as they are at least the age of consent, and they give you their consent. freedom of religion, and freedom from religion. freedom of speech, the ability to criticize and/or praise anyone at all, the ability to speak truth to power, or tell lies to idiots. we believe if medicare covers viagra, it ought to cover breast implants too. we believe the best way to fight crime is to legalize prostitution, drugs, gambling, and anything else where all the people involved in the activity consent to it and there is no violence. we believe the best way to fight terrorism is by having lots of allies, and the way you get allies is by being the clear and obvious force for good, the force of righteousness, who does what is right and not what is wrong. and this means no torture, no secret prisons, no military tribunals for enemy combatants, no wiretapping of domestic civilians. we cannot defend liberty at the barrel of a gun, by using overwhelming force to defeat our enemies. you cannot defeat an ideology of hate, by promoting your own ideology of hate instead. the people of the world want to be free, and they do not want us to tell them what to do. so instead, we ought to mind our own business in foreign affairs a bit more, and fix some of our problems at home, so that perhaps we may set a better example for the rest of the world to follow. then, once we have our house in order, we can start telling everyone else around the world the correct way to do things, but not until then. think about iraq for a minute. the people of iraq need to fix their own damn country. it is not our problem. it is our problem if terrorists attack our country. but, if we withdraw, it will force the iraqis to fill the power vacuum, and someone will emerge to bring order to the chaos. if whoever emerges on top at the end is someone amiable enough for us to deal with, then we can be allies. otherwise, we can destroy them with our military (since we will have only withdrawn from the cities and countryside into our permanent military bases throughout iraq, of course) and then withdraw back into our bases again, and let another new iraqi leader emerge. with this algorithm, we are guaranteed a successful outcome. that is just the computer science major in me talking. anyway, the democrats can bring some change to washington, which for too long has been a one-man show, dominated by an arrogant elitist moron from connecticut who pretends to be from texas (yes, that is dubya i am talking about). his man-of-the-people texas-cowboy act has gotten so tiresome. and who is he to dis on john kerry for making verbal gaffes, when it was dubya who said we coudn’t win the war on terror, and dubya who said he wasn’t interested in catching osama bin laden? it is just not possible for congressional republicans to do any oversight of this bull-in-a-china-shop president who has gotten completely out of control. only the democrats can tighten the leash and tell dubya he is a bad dog! someone needs to make him sit in the corner and wear a dunce cap. and if you vote democrat, that someone can be you!