paterson should have picked hinchey

i know i haven’t posted anything in awhile, but i just wanted to say that rep. maurice hinchey (d-ny) is much better qualified to be a senator than rep. kirsten gillibrand. usually people like me who blog stuff like to recommend things in advance, but i was operating under the assumption that governor david paterson would pick caroline kennedy or attorney general andrew cuomo, not rep. kirsten gillibrand. let me explain why picking her is so dumb and why maurice hinchey would have been a much better choice:

1) maurice hinchey is one of the most liberal/progressive congresspeople there is, rivaling people like dennis kucinich for the title of most liberal. as a strong liberal/progressive who believes that my state is also strongly liberal/progressive (yes, even the formerly conservative upstate is turning from red to blue), i think he would be perfect. he has many years of experience and is not some inexperienced newcomer like kirsten gillibrand. kirsten gillibrand, on the other hand, is a blue dog centrist democrat who is strongly allied with the national rifle association. so basically, maurice hinchey has the best political views of any congresspeople from new york, he is quite experienced, and he does not have any hint of scandal like charles rangel does.

2) maurice hinchey used to have a swing district and faced very tough elections against republicans, but got redistricted after the 2000 census into a heavily liberal district that includes some of the most liberal parts of upstate new york, like ithaca, and excludes the more conservative areas nearby. if he were nominated to a higher office, his seat would be sure to stay in democratic hands. kirsten gillibrand is currently a congresswoman from a republican district, where it is very hard for a democrat like her to get elected. if she were to stay in congress, her seat could stay in democratic hands, but if she becomes senator, her seat is all but sure to fall back into republican control. by nominating her to the senate, governor paterson is giving the republicans a free house seat that is currently democratic. that is not a good idea.

anyway, i am just comparing the 2 congresspeople from new york, and ignoring our state attorney general andrew cuomo and the daughter of former president john f. kennedy, caroline kennedy. caroline kennedy seems to be pretty liberal/progressive, but she has no experience and for most of her life has been avoiding the public spotlight. apparently governor paterson was going to choose caroline kennedy but she changed her mind for personal reasons, according to some reports. according to other reports, caroline kennedy heard that she was not going to get the job and then publicly announced that she was withdrawing from consideration for the job so as not to be humiliated even further. as for andrew cuomo, i think he is well qualified, and like caroline kennedy he comes from a well-connected political dynasty that can raise lots of money, but the drawback is that he is currently filling the vital role of state attorney general, continuing the good work that eliot spitzer once did as attorney general, before eliot spitzer rose to the level of governor and got a silly notion to go screw some prostitutes for fun. eliot spitzer actually did a very good job as attorney general for years, prior to becoming governor and becoming involved in scandals and having to resign. and governor david paterson is a bit of an enigma when it comes to his political philosophy, because he used to be known as a liberal democrat, but ever since he became governor he has been rather centrist in many issues, especially regarding taxes and government spending, where our governor is downright conservative. our governor does blog on the daily kos, but i am quite certain that this is more of an effort on his part to reach out to liberal/progressive activists than an indication that he actually agrees with liberal/progressive activists on much of anything. he mainly just wants our help re-electing him in 2010. my favorite politician in new york state would have to be rep. maurice hinchey, and my second favorite is binghamton mayor matt ryan. they are both on the correct side on the issues i care about.

anyway, barack obama is president now. i have kind of known that he would be president for quite some time, even before the election in november happened. back in 2007, i thought that whoever the democrats nominated for president would easily beat any of the republican losers who wanted the job, but i was pretty sure hillary clinton would be the democratic nominee and end up as president in a huge landslide. i was not a supporter of hers in the primaries; i supported dennis kucinich throughout 2007, but decided to back barack obama instead after seeing his impressive victory in iowa as well as dennis kucinich getting hardly any votes at all in iowa. i wanted someone more liberal/progressive than hillary clinton who would be able to defeat her in the democratic primaries, since i was sure that whoever the democrats picked would easily win in november 2008. for a while last year, john mccain was actually ahead in the polls, most notably after he picked sarah palin and before sarah palin’s public image went kaput at the same time wall street went bankrupt. once sarah palin became a national laughingstock and john mccain suspended his campaign to go fix the economy in washington, it finally became clear to me that, yes, barack obama really would win this thing. and as for the primaries with hillary clinton, i knew he would beat her back in february or march, once he won a whole bunch of primaries and caucuses in a row and got a big lead in pledged delegates. so anyway, i have kind of seen this obama thing coming for almost a year. two years ago when he first announced his candidacy, i thought barack obama was a joke though, and did not take his candidacy seriously at all. i wondered what the deal was with this guy who seemed more like a celebrity than a politician, and whether he seriously wanted to be president or if it was just something all his adoring fans begged him to do. i have always been a cynic, not the type of person to believe in other people or put my faith or trust in anyone or anything, and i was quite skeptical of him, but by the middle of 2007, i was taking barack obama a lot more seriously, since he seemed to agree with me on a lot more issues than hillary clinton, and he was #2 in the national polls for democratic presidential candidates. i wanted anyone but hillary clinton, since she gave george w. bush a blank check with regard to the patriot act, the war in iraq, and many other things that she and many fellow democrats caved in on, when they should have known better. barack obama was more of a blank slate, and i figured it is better to have a democrat i do not know about than a democrat i already know is too conservative. and in the primaries and caucuses of 2008, barack obama proved that he was more of a liberal/progressive and hillary clinton was more moderate/centrist/conservative. that is why i supported him, for ideological reasons. so i was quite glad to see him finally sworn in as president, although chief justice roberts totally screwed up the oath of office for both of them, so they had to redo the oath of office later in front of reporters. it is great that george w. bush is finally gone, once and for all, and our constitution has term limits in place that say that he can never ever be president again. our country is finally safe from further damage being inflicted by dumbya! barack obama, however, has been saying and doing things that simultaneously make me feel good and make me apprehensive. some of the things he has done, people he has appointed, things he has said, are things i wholeheartedly approve of and think are awesome, such as nominating hilda solis to be labor secretary. other things are a bit, shall i say, troublesome. tax cuts for the rich, having a treasury secretary that is a loyal follower of his predecessor henry paulson and a fan of bailouts for big banks, keeping bob gates as secretary of defense, having rick warren give the prayer at the inauguration, refusing to prosecute former bush administration officials for their crimes, not supporting single-payer health care, etc. i never really expected barack obama to be a liberal/progressive entirely, but just that he would be somewhat closer to my views than someone like hillary clinton, and i suppose he at least has passed that test with flying colors. recently, barack obama has reached out a lot to conservatives and republicans, both politicians and media pundits. i do not know exactly why he is doing this, but he says he wants us all to be united and he thinks they might have some good ideas that he could use. this is part of the overall pattern with barack obama: he is not an ideological person at all, but a pragmatist who does whatever he thinks works best, regardless of the ideology of who came up with the idea. i think that this is both a good thing and a bad thing: good because it may help him be more successful and accomplish more as president, but bad because it means he might not take this country as far in the right direction as someone who stayed ideologically pure as a liberal/progressive. i really think the media has overemphasized him as a personality and pseudo-celebrity, and they have especially overemphasized his race and focused too much on his family members. i think that his race and his family members are not what americans should be focused on right now; he does have a very nice family and it is very nice that he is the first black president, but maybe we should focus on solving the problems facing our country and dealing with the various issues, rather than having gossip about michelle obama’s fashion choices or repeating thousands of times how barack obama is the first black president on the news channels every day. yes he has cute daughters, but maybe we should let them have their privacy and have at least somewhat normal childhoods. the point is, we need to be focused on the problems that affect us as a nation and come up with ways to solve them, and not be sidetracked with gossip and silliness. i have no doubt one of the next few presidents will be female, and while that will be just as noteworthy as our first black president, i hope people do not make too big of a deal out of it, since being president is a very important and serious job and media coverage of presidents should focus on what they actually do that affects us, not whether they are personable people that the average joe would like to have a beer with. it is because of media silliness that george w. bush managed to serve 2 full terms as president, instead of having al gore or john kerry have an outright win in either of their elections against him. the media turned both al gore and john kerry into laughingstocks and both of them were mercilessly made fun of all the time, and vicious untrue rumors were spread about both of them and believed to be true by a large percentage of americans. the media totally screwed up in 2002 and 2003 when dick cheney misled many people into supporting a war against iraq, fooling most of the media and most of congress as well as george w. bush (who is fooled very easily). the media does not do their job properly most of the time, instead acting quite silly and foolish. and yes, i include all major media outlets in this critique. they should go back to reporting just the facts and doing lots of serious investigative journalism to uncover things that are kept secret by the powers that be. leave the gossip to tabloids, websites, and celebrity gossip shows.

but back to my original point: rep. maurice hinchey is awesome, and should have been picked to be senator. rep. kirsten gillibrand will be much more centrist as a senator, and her house seat will fall into republican hands the next time there is an election there. sure, she will be able to get re-elected as senator, but i am sure almost any democratic politician would be able to get re-elected in a state like new york. it’s easy! the republicans barely put up a fight at all, and they have hardly any supporters left in this state. new york is almost as liberal as massachusetts. i mean, just look at the republicans who until recently controlled the state senate: the republicans in the new york state senate are actually more liberal than governor paterson on a number of issues, and they were endorsed by lots of liberal organizations in the 2008 elections, including many labor unions. the republicans lost control of the state senate anyway, because the republican brand name has been so badly tarnished in new york state. in most states, the republican politicians in our state senate would be considered liberals and would have to be part of the democratic party since the republican party in a typical state would want its politicians to be conservatives, not liberals. new york state is an exception because it is so liberal, people in both parties are liberals. there are still some parts of upstate that are conservative, but the binghamton area is definitely becoming more and more liberal, and i think the same thing is going on in other upstate cities. the mayor of binghamton and county executive are both liberal democrats, and the 2 congressmen for our county, rep. maurice hinchey and rep. michael arcuri, are both democrats, rep. hinchey being one of the most liberal democrats in all of congress. our state senator tom libous might be a republican, but he is about as liberal as a republican can be without switching parties. our county has urban and rural areas, and the democrats are strongest in the urban areas, while the republicans are quite strong in the sparsely populated rural areas. the suburbs are the areas that can go either way in an election. anyway, maurice hinchey is one of the best people in congress, matt ryan is the best mayor binghamton has ever had, and barack obama might possibly turn out to be our best president ever, if we are lucky. as for the republicans, the race for rnc chairman is all about race, according to politico.com. they have to get past the public impression that they are a bunch of racists, especially now that we have a black president, and this is quite a difficult problem for them because they are so tone-deaf on issues of race and many of them think that being part of all-white country clubs or distributing songs called “barack the magic negro” is perfectly normal behavior for someone wanting to lead the republican party at a time when we have a very popular black president who is a democrat. republicans are so used to having spokespeople in the media like rush limbaugh, ann coulter, bill o’reilly, michael savage, etc., who hate political correctness and love being offensive. it is hard for them to reign in that beast of offensiveness, since so many republican shills have a constant uncontrollable urge to go around trying to offend people on purpose all the time. then republican politicians or political operatives who get their news from fox news or right-wing talk radio end up saying offensive things without intending to, because they are under the influence of fox news and talk radio. this ends up landing them in hot water, something they richly deserve, because they are the ones who cultivated all of these shills in the media who say offensive things all the time to get higher ratings and make more money. colin powell spoke out against rush limbaugh last year, but then again, he did that after endorsing barack obama, so colin powell can hardly be considered representative of what a typical republican thinks. now if any republicans in congress denounced fox news and talk radio, that would be much more interesting, but i doubt any of them has the gonads to do it. i have seen plenty of democrats denounce msnbc, like the people in the hillary clinton campaign last year, so obviously democrats have a lot more gonads than sissy republican losers. republicans are sissies because they are always afraid of criticizing whoever their current Dear Leader is, so all throughout the era of george w. bush they all had to avoid ever saying anything negative about him. democrats are not like that at all: we attack each other just as viciously as we attack republicans, on a regular basis. when bill clinton had both houses of congress controlled by democrats for his first 2 years in office, he did not get along with them at all, and there was a lot of public criticism back and forth between the democratic president and the democratic congress, helping lead to republican victories in 1994. republicans like to march in lock-step behind their leader and never criticize anything their leader does, instead heaping all their criticism on liberals, even at times when liberals have been out of power for many years and all the country’s problems are the fault of conservative republicans, like in 2006. and what happened in 2006, at a time when conservative republicans controlled all 3 branches of the federal government with an iron fist? they lost badly, and the democrats took over both houses of congress, and 2 years later, democrats made even more gains in both houses of congress and won the presidency too. that is what republicans get for following their leader george w. bush like lemmings after he jumps off a metaphorical cliff. and in the 2008 election, the bush name was tarnished, so everyone running for president as a republican was going around singing the praises of ronald reagan and claiming that they were just like reagan. the hero-worship of ronald reagan is quite bizarre, since they seem to think ronald reagan is equally as awesome as their other hero, jesus christ, or maybe ronald reagan is even more awesome than jesus christ. but republicans have a visceral hatred of hollywood actors who publicly speak about their political views, even though one such hollywood actor who became involved in politics was ronald reagan. their hypocrisy is just immeasurable. i remember a few years ago they claimed that anyone who publicly said anything bad about george w. bush was a traitor to america and a communist/terrorist sympathizer. at least that is what republicans who post stuff on the internet said online. so it is rather ironic that now us liberal democrats are accused of having a cult of personality around barack obama and thinking him to be the messiah. it is one of the most ridiculous things to be accused of, since we criticize obama’s decisions on a regular basis, and a large percentage of us (including me) don’t believe such a thing as a messiah can possibly exist, since it is just mythology. the hero-worship crap is mostly the creation of the news media, which goes around encouraging that type of silliness all the time, typical behavior for the idiotic news media we have in this country. i am sure there are some people, probably numbering in tens or hundreds of thousands, who really do think barack obama is so fricken awesome that he will magically solve everyone’s problems and turn the entire world into a happy, peaceful, prosperous utopia. but who cares about them? let them live in the safety of their own delusions and pull the wool over their own eyes. as for me, i don’t practice what i preach because i’m not the kind of person i’m preaching to. i have to go now, because there is this thing called “sleep” that i have not done yet tonight, and i have, umm, very very few hours left to even attempt to do any sleep, and in all likelihood, i will get little-to-no sleep unless i miss an appointment with my psychologist today. but missing an appointment would be a big mistake, because i suffer from c.b.i.d., the most common psychological disorder in the world. c.b.i.d. is short for completely batshit insane disorder, and everyone on the entire planet suffers from this form of mental illness. the only cure is... well i had better not mention the cure, because it is worse than the disease. anyway, i hope we all get better from this illness, and praise “bob”! whoops... i guess my case is worse than i thought, if i believe in “bob”... i will need to have trepanation to open my third nostril so i can become an OverMan, but the only place where this controversial surgery is done is hidden deep within the jungles of malaysia in a place called dobbstown, which is sort of like a cross between xanadu, atlantis, and jonestown. it is not on any maps, because its location is kept secret from the cartographers, and i have never been there. on second thought, i would rather not go there. it is a silly place.

there aren’t jobs in computers for americans

did you know that if you are an american in the computer field, there are a lot less jobs available than americans who have the education and training to fill them? this has been true for years prior to this recession. i graduated cornell university in 2004 with a double major in computer science and mathematics and could not find a job in my field, because the amount of computer science graduates is many times higher than the number of job openings for them. the same holds true for people with more experience in the computer field: way more people like that than jobs for them. and another thing: foreign countries like india and china send a lot of their young people to our universities or to their own universities to study computers, creating even more of a surplus of people educated in computer science compared to the much smaller number of job openings. so, what has happened?

the i.t. or hi-tech or computer industry, whatever you want to call it, has been hiring foreigners as temporary guest workers. these workers, primarily from india but also from other countries, are temporary, do not get good benefits or a good salary, but they do get to come here to the united states on a temporary basis and work here, and then they have to go back to their home countries again. meanwhile, the hi-tech industry has for years been propagating myths that americans are not good enough for these hi-tech jobs and that they need foreigners to do them, while at the same time laying off american workers. at the times that they were hiring more people than they laid off, this still did not keep pace with the numbers of new computer science graduates, people like me. the hi-tech industry has also for years encouraged as many people as possible to try to pursue careers in computers and study computer science, in order to create this surplus of qualified applicants to choose from. the whole dot-com bubble in the late 1990s was a part of this, but that strategy continues to this day. educational institutions are still churning out too many graduates in this field, just as they were doing 8 years ago. the primary government program utilized by the hi-tech industry to hire foreigners is the h1-b visa program, although they also use other programs. and guess what? they have plenty of lobbyists in washington, d.c. and a whole lot of influence.

what are the objectives of the hi-tech industry? like almost any other industry, they want cheaper labor. they do not want unionized workers because unionized workers have higher salaries and more benefits. they would rather hire temporary workers than permanent ones for the same reason: they can pay lower salaries with less benefits. and this is also why they seek out foreigners, and why they have successfully gotten the government to intervene on their behalf to help them get cheap foreign labor to come right here to the united states of america and replace our own american workers. people have to train their replacements. as for me, i haven’t even been able to get an entry-level job in the industry, since it is so competitive. like many people in the computer field, i am better with computers than i am with people, and lack social skills, so i am not good at job interviews, since job interviews are primarily social interaction. so for those employers who are hiring people the old-fashioned way instead of hiring a bunch of cheap foreign labor, they have a huge number of applicants to a small number of jobs, and they look for any excuse to disqualify an applicant. lacking social skills is one such excuse, and another is lack of any work experience in the industry. but how do you get an entry-level job in an industry where most entry-level jobs go to foreigners and the ones that are left are very highly competitive?

i would say that the hi-tech industry is succeeding in its efforts to create a large pool of qualified labor that they can hire from, and to find the cheapest labor it can and make the highly qualified people duke it out for the few jobs that are actually good.

back in the 1990s, there were plenty of high-paying jobs in the hi-tech field, mostly in the dot-com boom, and there were actually way more openings than qualified applicants. this is why the industry found it so necessary to find more labor, and started resorting to hiring foreigners and bringing them to the united states. at that time, it actually made sense, since there truly was a shortage of labor and a surplus of job openings. but times changed dramatically around the year 2000 or so, and ever since, the hi-tech industry has had the upper hand, once all the unprofitable dot-coms went out of business and all their employees were suddenly unemployed. the united states department of labor has highly inaccurate statistics in their publications, because they do not have enough staff or funding to get more accurate statistics. and so, the official government publications about hi-tech jobs often misstate things and say that salaries are higher than they actually are, or that there are more jobs than there actually are. this is because the government is relying on statistics provided to it by the industry and does not verify them, and the industry purposefully lies to the government for its own benefit. then, when job seekers are looking at pamphlets by the department of labor about various types of jobs, the information they find is quite inaccurate.

for more information, there is a website and a blog about all of this, both put together by someone who actually does have work experience in this field but cannot find a job, and who has done all the research about this situation.

anyway, i have one piece of advice for any people young enough to still choose their career path: stay the fuck away from computers! seriously! majoring in anything that has to do with computers is a bad idea. do not study computer science or information technology or anything like that. if you do, you will be totally fucked and never be able to find a job in that field. it is as useless as majoring in philosophy or some other field that has no actual jobs. just trust me on this. majoring in computer science is a dead end, and you will have no career unless you do something crazy like moving to bangalore, india to help educate the people there about computers. and the people in bangalore, india already know too much, and there are too many of them who know too much, and they make hardly any money at all doing jobs that americans used to do. we cannot stop outsourcing jobs physically to other countries, like jobs that go to bangalore, india. but we can stop outsourcing jobs to foreigners through u.s. government programs that enable companies to bring foreigners here as cheap labor. i would call them indentured servants but their status is lower than the status of indentured servants. indentured servants got to stay in america once their temporary period of being the equivalent of slaves had expired. people brought here through the h-1b visa program are temporary guest workers who have to go back to their country of origin afterwards, and they never get to move here permanently and become citizens. that does not mean that they do not ever try to do that, and end up as illegal immigrants. many of them do, in fact, end up as illegal immigrants, although they ironically got to this country legally in the first place. the whole system is messed up. it is pretty much the same thing as employers that hire a bunch of undocumented illegal immigrants to work as cheap labor illegally, except this is a government program and it is all perfectly legal, a program created by the united states government to take away good high-paying american jobs and turn them into low-paying jobs for foreigners. ideally, this h-1b visa program would be completely eliminated, but instead, it might actually be expanded. again.

there is good news, though. hilda solis, nominee for labor secretary, has indicated that she would allow americans to compete for all jobs offered to foreigners through the h-1b visa system, and not let american employers discriminate against their fellow americans in favor of foreigners. this would not solve the problem of there being many times more qualified applicants than available positions, but it would make things a little more fair for people who are trying to get a job. as for the question of job creation, president-elect barack obama has a goal of creating 3.5 million new jobs, and is open to all ideas from everyone about how to do that.

and i do currently have a job, and it is on a computer. typing. it is called data entry. it is not exactly what i studied in college, or what my career plans were or are. i have had this job since mid-2007, since a little after 3 years after graduating from cornell with the computer science and math double major. prior to my current job i spent a year and a half unemployed, applying to all sorts of jobs in my field that i could find, mostly locally. and the job i had right before being unemployed did not last very long so i would not even consider it a real job. the amount of total hours of work i did in that job was incredibly small, about 1 day’s worth of work, but spread out over 2 or 3 weeks, with me not working most days. i was only supposed to work when my boss called me on the phone to come in and do something; i was an extra person that was only supposed to come in when everyone else was too busy to handle something, and they made very little use of me. my previous job to that, which was my first job after college, was one i had for the fall 2004 semester working at the local community college as a math tutor, and i only worked 5 hours a week, since the math tutoring center only has one person working there at any given time, and most of the time actual math professors or the guy in charge of the math tutoring center are there to do the job. jobs i had prior to that? i worked at a laundromat, doing laundry one summer. that job is completely useless on a résumé. the other job was working on a website for cornell university’s dining services, where i mostly just got text versions of stuff in email and then turned it into nice-looking html pages where everything was laid out in big tables... it was almost all menus that would show all of the food served at each major campus eatery throughout a given week. i worked about 1 hour a week on that job, for about 2 and a half years. that was my first job. so anyway, if you are looking at how many jobs i have had where i am not working some ridiculously small number of hours a week, i have only had 2. the first real job was at a laundromat doing laundry, and that was the most horrible job ever, like working in a sweatshop. the second real job is the one i have now, doing data entry, and it is much better, but it is still low-paying. anyway, my advice to everyone is: do not pursue a career in the computer/i.t./high-tech industry! too many people are already doing it, and there are not enough jobs to go around! cornell has consistently been ranked as one of the top 5 computer science schools in the country. if someone like me from cornell, valedictorian of his high school, cannot get a job in this field, i doubt many other people could get one either. do not make the same mistakes i did. as for me, i will do my best to get a better job, one in the hi-tech/i.t./computer field that makes use of my skills that i learned in college and when i learned computer repair to become a+ certified by the computer technology industry association (called comptia for short). ideally, i would like to be a computer programmer and write software. i am not going to abandon this goal of mine, but i would not recommend anyone else having that goal unless they are very very good at programming. and, ever since i got my current job, i have made very little effort to find a better one, because all the time i was searching for a job that was in my field, i could never ever find one. now i have forgotten most of what i learned in college and my skills have faded away significantly. i am no longer fresh out of college, and still have zero work experience in my field of expertise. for the time being, keeping my current job is also a good goal to have, since my current job is far better than no job at all. it seems kind of ridiculous to try to look for a job at a time like this, when the economy is doing terribly and everyone is laying people off if their company is doing well enough to avoid completely going out of business. the company i work for seems to be doing fine and actually keeps hiring new people on a regular basis. that gives me a sense of security, and i get along quite well with my boss and co-workers. it seems a bit foolhardy to abandon the security of my current job to go out and risk finding a new one when i doubt any better ones really exist out there. there were not any better jobs for me in 2004, 2005, or 2006, nor could i find anything good in the summers of 2000, 2001, or 2002. (in the summer of 2003 i went to mexico to study spanish instead of looking for a summer job.) anyway, if nobody hires me to write software or do something else computer-y that is better than data entry, i will have no choice but to write software on my own, for profit, or go into some other sort of business venture on my own. and it will be a complete disaster since i know absolutely nothing about running a business, i am quite disorganized and messy, and i have absolutely no ideas about what i would do (like if it were a software business, what the software would actually do). i have absolutely no ideas and i know very well that most new businesses fail within the first year, so i am pretty staunchly against the idea of starting a business. that is just my last resort, if all else fails, something i would do in an act of complete desperation if i am unable to find a good job anywhere else. but, to be honest, i would rather just stay at my current job doing data entry than fuck around trying to start some stupid company that would go out of business within the first year, especially since i can’t think of any ideas on what the company would do. i mean ok, another idea besides writing software is that i could repair computers, but seriously, i do not have any suppliers or spare parts, and i am not experienced in computer repair, and i do not have anyone i know of whom i could hire. i do not have any money. and since i am completely unconvinced that i could ever start a company, i doubt i would be able to convince anyone else, especially since i am such a brutally honest person and am incapable of lying about stuff like that. so for the time being i am staying at my current job, but that does not necessarily preclude looking for other jobs, applying to them, and even maybe getting some job interviews. but to be honest, i do not even want to do any of that job-seeking bullshit, because i already know how it will turn out. i will not get the job. that is how it always ends, unless the job i am applying for is something that almost anyone can do that is barely above minimum wage. did i also mention i have never had a girlfriend and girls, like prospective employers, have likewise consistently rejected me? i do not go around asking out girls, because i do not want to be rejected again. i just hate rejection soooooooooo much. sure i would love a girlfriend more than anything. just please, somebody give me one already! a girl who is attractive, is willing to engage in premarital sex, does not have any sexually transmitted diseases, is 18 years of age or older, and is a willing partner. that is really all i want, my basic minimum requirements. being intelligent would be a plus, and having lots of money would be an even bigger plus. but i do absolutely nothing as far as asking girls out nowadays, and i have done very little of it over the course of my lifetime so far. the same could be said regarding my record of applying to jobs. in both cases, i just hate and fear rejection so much, i can’t stand it. but i am sick of being a failure in life. that is why i play video games, play with my dog, go on the internet, watch tv, and do other things that distract me from my problems. distractions are truly the great joys of life. if it were not for the things other people consider a “waste of time”, i doubt i would have any joys in life, except for incredibly minor pleasures that are barely even noticeable to me. this is the life i have because, in part, of the job situation that has been around for these many years since the end of the dot-com boom. perhaps, as some claim, there may have been a few times when there actually was a decent chance for someone to get a good job in computers some time earlier in this decade, but that would certainly have to be in some geographical area other than the one i live in, because the local economy here has been in the shitter ever since the end of the cold war. the recession of the early 90s that happened under the first president bush never really ended around here, and we have basically had a recession in this area ever since then, due to cutbacks in military spending at the end of the cold war and the downfall of the company ibm that used to provide a huge number of great computer jobs in this area but has now almost completely left this area. ibm was actually founded here, and this was its original headquarters. other major local employers from the mid-20th century had gone out of business by the end of the 20th century. to be honest, binghamton actually peaked in the 1950s, and has gone downhill ever since. it would be logical for me to relocate to another area with better job opportunities, but the one time i tried that, it did not work and i was forced to return to binghamton, and i do not have enough money to try it again. so for now i will stay at my current job, as i have been doing for 2 and a half years, hoping that at some point i work up the courage and determination to go out there and find a better job, something i do not quite feel ready for right now. i am just too unsure of myself, and have no confidence. i suppose i have always been this way. perhaps this means that waiting is a futile endeavor which accomplishes nothing except wasting more time of my life away. perhaps i ought to go back out and apply for jobs and ask girls out again. given the apocalyptic economic conditions right now, i suppose i might have better luck with the girls, since i think my social skills have improved over the years. then again, what should i do? wait until i am old before i change anything in my life or try to get a better job? that makes no sense. but then again, nothing seems to make any sense anymore. i do know one thing: oh wait, i had it a minute ago but i forgot what i was going to say. i guess that means i don’t know much of anything anymore. what? ok now i am confused. what is going on here anyway? i forget why i am typing whatever this is that i am typing. is there any point to this “blog” thing? am i just writing blog posts now and then out of some misplaced sense of obligation to at least post something on the internet now and then? and why do i repeat the same word or phrase multiple times in a sentence, or 2 sentences in a row so often? i have noticed i do that a lot in my blog posts. but i do not wish to edit them at all, because the quality of the writing is so low, and i never re-read or edit things before publishing them. it is a waste of time. it is not like i am getting paid to do this. i would rather be doing something else right now, like eating or sleeping or playing a game. mostly sleeping, since i am tired. normally playing with my dog would also be on the list, but my dog has an ear infection and is not very enthusiastic about much of anything, and just wants to sleep all the time. also, since i am tired too, just like my dog, i would rather not do that right now, maybe some other time. ok then, i will do it some other time, like later today. i am going to sleep now. probably. who knows? that is just a prediction, but you know how insomnia is and how bad i am at keeping promises about stuff i will do. or if you don’t know, i was just using a figure of speech when i said you know and i did not literally mean it. anyway, me sleep now. did you notice i say anyway a lot, and sometimes start sentences with and or end sentences with prepositions? or that i even start some sentences with or, or do not use quotation marks around words when i should, or how i type ALMOST everything in lowercase? well, the grammar in my blog may be atrocious, but i spell everything correctly, since, after all, i am a former spelling bee champion (the champion in my school district, not at any higher level). it is too bad that does not get me a beautiful girlfriend and high-paying prestigious job. the weather around here is so fricken cold, i hate it so much. florida has such nice weather compared to here. but i got bit by a spider-or-something-else in florida and now have a big inflamed area that is red and sticks out, and my dog got something-or-other in his right ear and now has an infection. i am guessing maybe sand from the beach got in his ear and clogged it up, or dirt from the backyard in florida? who knows? the shadow knows. whatEVER. anyway, go see the movie “metropolis” made in the 1920s in germany by fritz lang. it was a very high-budget movie for its time, much longer than the other black-and-white silent films of that era, and it introduced many science fiction things that have been imitated by many films and tv shows since then. it had a mad scientist, a humanoid robot, and all sorts of crazy stuff. the newest edition you can find of metropolis is a digitally remastered dvd that has very high quality picture and combines footage from various reels of the film found all across the globe, using the best-quality version of each scene and having everything computer-enhanced to look good. did-you notice-my-extra use-of-hyphens? ok enough of me making fun of my own grammar. why do i say ok so much? geez. i gotta go sleep or something now, seriously. did you notice how i say more than once that i am going but do not go? (and did you notice that i am very bad at keeping my blog posts on a single topic, and write very long posts, and my paragraphs are not exactly paragraphs in the traditional sense?) well this time i am going. bye. (incidentally, does anybody actually LIKE my writing style? if you do, you are even crazier than me.) i said BYE! now SCRAM! (ok. geez. anyway... did you notice how i just repeated geez after saying it a few sentences earlier, or how i keep asking if you noticed something? no? me neither.) SCRAM! (you just repeated scram. ok bye.) you just repeated BYE! (i am you, we are the same person.) shut up, me. (isn’t it proper to say myself instead of me?) no. go away. (no.) yes. bye.

last post EVER (for 2008)

ok, so this jackass named chip saltsman from tennessee is running for the job of republican national committee chairman, which would basically make him in charge of the entire republican party and the spokesman for the entire party. so guess what? he is a complete racist. he distributed cds that he burned to every member of the republican national committee full of songs that he illegally pirated, including a racist one called “barack the magic negro” that is supposed to be funny. but actually it isn’t funny at all, even if you are a racist or a fan of racial humor, because the humor is just retarded. it isn’t the kind of racial humor you get from someone like dave chappelle, carlos mencia, or david alan grier, because that stuff is actually funny. then again, those guys all have (or in dave chappelle’s case had) plenty of talented comedy central comedy writers working on their shows, and the guy who wrote this song didn’t. this song, “barack the magic negro”, was popularized by rush limbaugh on his radio show (just one of many examples of rush limbaugh’s racism), and we all know rush limbaugh is very influential among the conservative base of the republican party and among republicans in the house of representatives. rush limbaugh claims not to be influential nowadays, but that is just because the republicans lost the elections and are very unpopular now, and he wants to avoid any of the blame for their crushing defeats in the 2006 and 2008 elections. we see his real influence when a top contender for leader of the republican party gets his music off rush’s show, and rush limbaugh was also the guy who kept promoting sarah palin as his favorite pick for vice presidential nominee, before john mccain chose her. rush limbaugh basically brought us sarah palin. he is also the guy who got president bush to withdraw the nomination of harriet miers to the supreme court. rush limbaugh got the house republicans to oppose the banking industry bailout the first time around, and he helped build pressure from the conservative base on senate republicans that led to them blocking the auto industry bailout (resulting in president bush giving the auto industry a bailout using money from the other bailout). he got the comprehensive immigration reform bill that was backed by john mccain, george w. bush, ted kennedy, and most other politicians in washington, d.c. to be defeated in the house, through his tirades against it on the radio. you see, the other conservative talk radio show hosts all take their cue from rush limbaugh, and they all read the same talking points, and they have millions of brainwashed followers willing to do whatever they say. he also coordinates with fox news, basically by having people at fox news listen to his show for talking points and by having his staff watch fox news for talking points. plenty of conservative websites like the drudge report, conservative blogs, conservative news sites, and conservative forum sites then spread the message on the internet. anyway, that successful model is what liberals/progressives have been trying to copy with our blogs, with air america radio, and with our gradual success in taking over msnbc, except most of us on the left have realized radio is a lost cause and have focused on taking over “teh internets”.

back to the original topic... this song does not even have an original tune, and is to the tune of “puff the magic dragon”. i would link to it on youtube, but the original music video of it was taken down (presumably for being offensive or something). well ok, here is another music video of it, but it starts out with obama talking so it isn’t just the song. since that is also on youtube, i expect it will also be taken down soon since youtube loves taking stuff down and censoring everything. well ok, so we could confine the problem to just chip saltsman, rush limbaugh, and the guy who made the song, paul shankman, as well as rush’s millions of listeners, and say that it is just an isolated incident and does not involve republicans as a whole. not so fast. politico.com reports that this controversy will probably HELP chip saltsman win the title of republican national committee chairman. that’s right: being a racist actually helps you become the leader of the republican party. instead of distancing themselves from chip saltsman and condemning him for distributing this song (and doing likewise to rush limbaugh and paul shanklin), republicans are all defending him and saying it is wrong to condemn him. oh really? the last time i checked, barack obama, a black man, actually won the election, and we americans were busily patting ourselves on the back over how racism had finally been completely destroyed, never to resurface again, with the help of a news media and politicians repeating that “post-racial” message. and now this comes up, proving that racism still does exist after all!

in related news about racism, gov. rod blagojevich of illinois has appointed roland burris to the u.s. senate, based on the fact that roland burris is black. roland burris is one of those people who runs for office again and again and keeps losing again and again, not the kind of guy who can actually win elections. sure, he managed to win 2 elections like back in the 70s and 80s, but who cares? he has been out of politics (at least the winning side of politics) for decades. former black panther and current congressman bobby rush said that we shouldn’t “hang or lynch” roland burris at a press conference held by gov. rod blagojevich, roland burris, and congressman bobby rush. bobby rush also said “my prayers have been answered ... that the governor would appoint an african-american to complete the term of president obama.” both rod blagojevich and bobby rush repeatedly emphasized that roland burris is black and therefore he should be the senator from illinois, and they made the argument that if you don’t let the only black man in the senate serve as a senator because of who appointed him, you are a racist who hates black people. so what is the problem here? a BIG one. rod blagojevich is the racist here, cynically thinking that if he names a black person to the senate, it is somehow legitimate, given that rod blagojevich has been indicted on federal corruption charges and is probably going to be impeached and removed from office soon. gov. blago thinks that if he names someone black, he can use the race card to make sure his pick gets seated in the senate. every single democratic senator currently in the senate has already come out against letting rod blagojevich appoint someone to the senate, and so has former senator and current president-elect barack obama. if anyone chooses the next senator from illinois, it should be either barack obama or the voters of illinois, not some corrupt crook like blago. this cynical maneuver of choosing a black man so that the appointment isn’t blocked is the most ridiculous use of the race card i have seen in some time, and it has no chance of working, given that barack obama has already condemned blago for appointing his replacement after trying to auction his senate seat off to the highest bidder. anyone dumb enough to appear at a press conference alongside rod blagojevich is committing political suicide, so i do not think roland burris will end up in the senate, although bobby rush can probably do anything and still get re-elected, since he is in such a safe district. anyway, my point is, yes, the republicans are a bunch of racist assholes, but not all racist assholes are in that party, and we have some too, like rod blagojevich. technically though, rod blagojevich might not exactly be racist, he might just be cynically trying to exploit the racism he perceives in others for his own political gain. but that is kind of the same thing anyway. just imagine if this appointment goes through, then in 2010 when roland burris is up for re-election to the united states senate, everyone will know that rod blagojevich (who by then will probably be a convicted felon in jail) was the guy who put him there. then roland burris will lose re-election (just like he has lost almost every election he has been in) and obama’s senate seat will fall into republican hands. that is what happens if we let blago pick the next senator and play the race card like this... we lose that senate seat to the republicans in 2 years. why do you think every single democratic senator came out against letting blago do that? i mean, duh! anyway, rod blagojevich must be stopped from being allowed to name roland burris (or anyone else) to the u.s. senate. he needs to be impeached and removed from office a.s.a.p. now i am not going to impugn roland burris’s honor or integrity at all; i am just saying this is not the kind of guy who knows how to win elections, and with blago’s kiss of death, his political career is over. here in new york state, governor david paterson is focused on appointing a successor to hillary clinton in the senate who can actually win elections. we have yet to find out if caroline kennedy is the one for the job, but her chances seem to have been waning a bit in recent days. caroline kennedy is still the top candidate, though. there aren’t many other potential senators who have statewide name recognition and can win elections, besides andrew cuomo. but andrew cuomo already has a job as state attorney general and he is still somewhat new there, so appointing him would cause problems by creating another vacancy to fill. plus we have more of that identity politics bullshit and people wanting a female senator to replace hillary clinton, the same identity politics bullshit that rod blagojevich is trying to exploit in illinois.

right now i am in florida on vacation, and i am glad to say i know very little about the politics of this state. the governor here might not be christ but he is crist, and i am pretty sure the republicans strongly control the entire state legislature here, plus i am in one of the most republican parts of the state, the place katherine harris was a congresswoman from, namely sarasota. florida is somewhat strange, a land of contradictions, a tropical paradise that elected and re-elected jeb bush as governor, the state with the most lightning, home to disney world and miami, a state that is completely flat and barely above sea level where the biggest industry is tourism. sarasota is mostly home to wealthy old people. further south than the rest of the states of the south, florida isn’t even one of them at all, as a former spanish colony conquered by then-general andrew jackson in violation of direct orders from the president at the time not to invade florida. people in florida generally do not have southern accents and the state does not really have the same southern culture as the actual states of the “south”. florida was not a major slave state, and has a whole lot of hispanics (mostly cubans in the miami area). so i would say the biggest contradiction about florida is that despite being the most southeastern state of all, it is not a part of the traditional south, but more like the bahamas or bermuda or hawaii or some other tropical paradise. most of the people in florida aren’t even from here, but, like me, are from places like new york state. however, i am actually going back to new york state soon, back where i have a job and the weather is horrible. i am really enjoying all the time relaxing here in florida and the great weather that is not even remotely wintery, and my trusted companion fluffems the dog is having the time of his life running around the backyard trying to catch all the lizards. anyway, this is the last blog post of mine EVER (for 2008). NEVER AGAIN will i ever publish a blog post in the year 2008. so do not worry about having to read thousands of blog posts in the next less-than-6-hours of 2008. of course, blogger/blogspot probably is in some wacko time zone like pacific instead of eastern, so it will likely show some weird time that makes no sense except to people on the west coast as the time i post this. perhaps the united states should follow the example of communist china and only have 1 time zone for the entire country, so that all clocks nationwide are synchronized. or even better, we could have one universal time coordinated for the entire planet, and call it UTC. and we could have things called “leap seconds” that we would add on at the end of the year so that everyone’s clocks would suddenly be one second off once 2009 starts. oh wait... i am receiving word that this proposal of mine has already been implemented. enjoy your leap second, everyone! it may be your last (if they decide afterwards to stop having leap seconds because they are a silly idea)! anyway, my parents are having me look at some things called “planets” in this thing called the “sky” now. i think the planets they are looking at are called “mars” and “venus”. that makes me wonder... WHERE IS EARTH?!? yes i know, earth is the planet you see if you look down, but how do we know aliens didn’t switch earth with some other planet last night when we were asleep? it would explain a lot of things, like why i am yawning right now, since my yawning most likely indicates my sleep was disturbed last night, and the simplest possible explanation would be earth being switched with another planet, according to occam’s razor, so therefore it must be true. with that in mind, it seems most likely that we are now on mars, and the planets in the sky that my parents want me to look at with them are really earth and venus. i wonder how the earth rovers spirit and opportunity are doing at exploring the barren wasteland that is earth. oh... i just yawned again... more proof of some kind of alien conspiracy... or maybe i am a part of the conspiracy but i forgot because of... i forget why i forgot, but i just yawned another time and feel quite tired now. it is strange how the sky is completely dark now, and it is not even 6:30 pm yet. anyway, it is time to put an end to this monstrous blog post once and for all. i yield myself such time as i may consume. i move that the blogosphere recess until 2009. all those in favor of the motion please rise. a sufficient number having arisen, the motion is adopted. i yield back the balance of my time. by order of the chair, the blogosphere is now in recess until 2009. *sound of gavel hitting against podium very loudly*

why i haven't been blogging much lately

since barack obama was elected, there has been a lot of debate among progressives about whether he is a sellout who isn’t really a progressive at all but a centrist like hillary clinton and many of the other people he has surrounded himself with since the election. some contend that he is a true progressive who is going to use these people to gain more credibility with the centrists and even some conservatives, and then use that to push through a truly progressive agenda. others say that now he is showing his true colors. a few of his choices have been genuine progressives (like his choice for secretary of labor) and his defense and transportation secretaries are actual republicans. the latest move by barack obama that has people more upset than ever is his choice of anti-gay crusader rick warren to give the opening prayer at his inauguration, which seems kind of odd for someone like barack obama to do, given that obama is supposedly a staunch supporter of gay rights. besides this obama-is-a-sellout stuff, there has been the scandal over the governor of illinois, rod blagojevich, and all sorts of people trying to connect that scandal to barack obama and other people on obama’s team like rahm emmanuel. i think all of this effort to tie barack obama into the scandal of that insane idiot rod blagojevich is pretty much bullshit, but i also think that since so many of the people in team obama are from chicago and illinois politics, there is bound to be at least one person among the bunch who is close to gov. blagojevich. i mean it would be ridiculous to expect every single person among the thousands working for obama to be completely ethical and not have any problems, but hopefully nobody important or high-ranking in the obama organization is involved in the blagojevich mess. right-wingers keep claiming rahm emmanuel is guilty of something regarding rod blagojevich, since their initial attempts at directly attacking barack obama on this have failed. since i do not actually know who is involved in this scandal, since i have absolutely nothing to do with it, i really do not know who is guilty and who is not, but it seems to me like people are going around jumping to conclusions. as for the obama-is-a-sellout thing, i really have not made up my mind on what i think about this. as a staunch progressive who cares about the issues, i really hope obama is one of us progressives, and i do have some amount of loyalty to him, having voted for him twice (once in the democratic primary and once in the general election). i am kind of taking a wait-and-see approach to see if barack obama really is a progressive or not, and i do not want to jump to any conclusions or take sides in this debate. the next time barack obama’s name will be on the ballot is in 4 years (assuming he runs for re-election), so there is plenty of time for me to watch him closely and make a determination as to whether i should continue to support him the next time around. for now, i still consider myself an obama supporter, and still have an obama bumper sticker on my car. i never considered him the “messiah” (something the right-wingers made up as a straw-man argument against obama), and i certainly don’t think he could magically solve all of our problems and give everyone a free pet unicorn (outdoing those who would give everyone a free pony). anyway, there is little point to blogging about how i am not sure about things and don’t exactly know what to think anymore. i am certainly glad the obama-biden ticket beat the mccain-palin ticket, since the mccain-palin team would have continued the policies of george w. bush and probably been even more incompetent. and i am still staunchly opposed to the republicans and everything they stand for. but as for barack obama, i still don’t know exactly what part of the democratic party he belongs to. i was hopeful when i heard the right-wingers call him the most liberal member of the senate and accuse him of being a socialist. but unfortunately, it seems he is probably not as left-wing as i had hoped. in a country that has been brought to ruin by right-wing policies, ruining our economy through deregulation and endless tax cuts while wasting innocent lives and hundreds of billions of dollars on an unjustified and poorly executed war, where the government has epically failed responding to disasters like hurricane katrina through the idiocy of unqualified political hacks in charge of important government agencies, we need a radical change in how government is run. we need a government that is actually run by competent people who know what the hell they are doing, and who will actually make things better instead of worse. and i, for one, think that progressives are the ones with the right ideas to fix everything, and if obama governs as a centrist, halfway between progressives and conservatives, i doubt it would be anywhere near as successful as an actual progressive government. the administration of george w. bush and the 12-year-long control of congress by republicans (between the 1994 election and the 2006 election) both proved that conservative ideas do not work in practice and that conservatives are morally bankrupt. they think that hating people who are different from them demonstrates their moral righteousness. just consider all their hatred towards homosexuals, illegal immigrants, liberals, atheists, muslims, french people, mexicans, the chinese, the people of india, and pretty much the rest of humanity other than people exactly like them. note that i left black people, hispanics, asians, native americans, and other racial minorities off the list of people conservatives hate, and i also left off women; i am being charitable by not accusing them of racism and sexism, which i could easily have done, since there is a lot less overt racism and sexism than hatred towards the groups of people i actually did mention. i also left off hatred of jews... hating jews is very politically incorrect in the united states and nobody in politics does it anymore, at least not openly, so there is little evidence of it other than from right-wing fundamentalist preachers. anyway, there is no way in hell i am voting for any republican for any office at all for quite some time, unless the republicans completely shape up. i only once voted for a republican who was not running unopposed, and that was for the new york state comptroller in 2006 because i thought alan hevesi was a crook; that same year i voted for eliot spitzer for governor, hillary clinton for senator, michael arcuri for congress, and everyone else i voted for that year was a democrat too except for the state comptroller. there have been a few times i actually voted for green party candidates, actually. when h. carl mccall was running for governor against george pataki, i voted for the green party candidate for governor... that is the only time i voted for a green party candidate when there was also a democrat running for the same office. that was the 2002 election, and it was at a time i was completely disgusted with the democratic party for being a bunch of inept nitwits who went along with whatever president bush said instead of acting like a real opposition party. howard dean’s presidential campaign is what brought me back to the democratic party, since out of all the 2004 presidential candidates, only howard dean, dennis kucinich, and al sharpton were willing to vocally criticize president george w. bush and the war in iraq, and the rest of the candidates were a bunch of centrist losers. i did vote for john kerry (as the lesser of 2 evils basically), but he lost because he was a centrist loser who had failed to staunchly oppose president bush and the war in iraq consistently. the 2004 election is when i became involved volunteering for the broome county democratic party, since i thought it was so important that george w. bush be defeated that i had to become involved. but i have always been somewhat to the left of the democratic party in general, and i am basically someone with the politics of dennis kucinich, who was my initial choice for the 2008 presidential election. i actually voted for kucinich in the 2004 democratic primary since howard dean was already out of the race, and the “dean scream” had made me embarrassed for howard dean, plus my politics were always closer to kucinich than dean; i just had been a howard dean supporter because i thought howard dean was a hell of a lot more electable than dennis kucinich. anyway, this time around, i switched from kucinich to obama in early january, but i am still someone much to the left of obama, a staunch progressive who wants real change and not just people with d’s after their names instead of r’s who are indeed quite a bit different from the r’s but not anywhere near as much as i would want. and barack obama is definitely to the left of hillary clinton, which he proved time and time again throughout the debates and the primaries and caucuses when they were campaigning against each other. i am definitely glad hillary clinton is not the president-elect, since the clintons are pretty much just bush lite. certainly she would be better than john mccain, and all those wacky republicans like mitt romney and mike huckabee would be even worse than john mccain. the only republican candidate who was better than john mccain was ron paul, although i do disagree with him on many issues. ron paul agrees with me on many issues that no mainstream politician like barack obama would ever agree with me on. we both agree on legalizing victimless crimes, which would help downsize the prison-industrial complex. but ron paul has economic views and views on the size of government that i am diametrically opposed to; he wants to deregulate everything, have completely free-market economics, and eliminate the vast majority of government programs, including social security. personally, i don’t like social security either, because it is paid for by a regressive tax and people who had higher incomes when they worked collect higher benefits than people who had lower incomes. social security is far too regressive and needs to be replaced with a progressive system, one that gives more money to the poor and less to the rich, one that taxes the rich more and the poor less. the gap between the rich and poor has been steadily increasing for decades in our country because of right-wing economic policies, and the middle class is being destroyed and most people are gradually becoming poor (not necessarily beggars on the street or homeless, but rather not making much money, or unemployed). until recently, the lack of money by a large portion of our population and the negative savings rate was not hurting the economy too much because those people easily got credit and could borrow lots of money to buy things they could not afford. but now, the credit markets have collapsed and there is less money to go around (money put in banks gets lent out and this has a multiplier effect on the money supply, so the actual amount of money in the economy greatly exceeds the amount of money that physically exists as paper currency or coins, but the recent banking and lending collapse has led to a sharp decline in this multiplier of the money supply). ultimately, the problem was that americans spent more money than they had, because real incomes adjusted for inflation have been decreasing for the average person since the start of the george w. bush administration, while things like college, gasoline, and houses had their prices skyrocket. now gasoline and houses have gotten cheaper than they were a few months or a year ago, but college is more expensive than ever. without good education, people will not be able to make much money unless they become very skilled in particular trades. with the collapse of the auto industry and domestic manufacturing, jobs that do not require education are being lost at an alarming rate at the same time that education is becoming ridiculously unaffordable. we have a lot of problems and barack obama and the enlarged democratic majorities in the house of representatives and the senate need to work together to fix everything, and we need to prevent the republicans from any obstructionism. the republicans have already done their best in the past month to try to destroy our domestic automobile industry, especially with the vote in the u.s. senate on the auto bailout bill. this is shamefully unpatriotic of them, since the republicans are now promoting the idea of just having foreign companies make cars, since the foreign companies employ non-union workers and the american companies employ unionized workers. the republicans are being downright evil with regard to their attempts to destroy our domestic auto industry in order to score some cheap political points against the labor union movement. so, while i have somewhat mixed feelings towards barack obama but still support him, i completely oppose all of the republicans in the federal government. the republicans want to make a horrible economic situation much worse; that is now their stated agenda, since they have openly said that they want to destroy our nation’s automobile industry because of their hatred for labor unions. i think we need more labor unions and we need to save our domestic industries from destruction. labor unions bring employees higher wages and better benefits; even republicans acknowledge that fact. that is exactly what our economy needs right now: higher wages and better benefits for the people who do have jobs, so people will have enough money to spend it and keep the economy going. i hope barack obama is on the same page with me, and that the change he brings will actually be in the right direction and go far enough to fix things. but i cannot be sure about anything, or trust any politician completely. i am somewhat of a fan of new york state governor david paterson, but i do not completely trust him either. i am not naive enough to put complete trust in anyone. that would be utterly foolish. i don’t even trust myself. in fact, i probably trust myself less than i trust most other people, because i know firsthand how unreliable i am and how often i fail to come through on things that i want to do or promise to do. and while i do have higher standards for other people than i have for myself, this is mainly because i consider myself to be worthless scum and i have very low self-esteem. i have always been quite thin-skinned when it comes to insults from other people, since my own opinion of myself is much more negative than the opinions of my harshest critics other than myself. but lately i have become more thick-skinned regarding insults, mainly because i think very little of the people insulting me and think that they are even worse scum of the earth than me, and that everything they say is complete bullshit. it is kind of strange how someone like barack obama can bring out the latent positivity in me and actually make me feel good about stuff. my dog fluffems has the same ability to cheer me up. i actually like fluffems better than anyone, including barack obama, although i do know that fluffems is just a stupid dog and is pretty much clueless about everything. that is part of the appeal of a dog like fluffems: the dog is friendly and very loving and kind towards you, showing you a hell of a lot more love and affection than any human ever does, while at the same time being dependent on you, much dumber than you, and generally inferior to you. so you can feel all warm and fuzzy and loved while at the same time feeling superior and like you are better than someone else. and it just makes you want to show that little dog as much love as you can, and keep them safe from danger because the little doggie is too stupid to know how to avoid danger on its own (things like going out in roads full of cars). if another living creature like my dog fluffems shows me some love, i am the most loving person in the world, but this does not happen very often, which is what makes it all the more special when it does happen. i know that some humans like my parents love me, but they do it in this annoying human way that i can’t stand, and it just pisses me off. i don’t like being constantly lectured, bossed around, talked down to like i am a retard despite the fact that i am smarter than 99% of people on standardized tests, and then being expected to feel gratitude for this “display of love”. sure, i have heard of “tough love”; it is what my parents give me every day. i find it quite annoying, and while i am sure they love me a great deal, i wish they would find a better way to show it, one that is more like how the dog shows it. when my dog displays love for me, it is pure unadulterated love and affection, without any criticism, lecturing, or crap like that to piss me off. my dog worships me like a god, which makes sense because dog spelled backwards is god. when i am at my job and my boss tells me to do something, i do it, and i am not annoyed at my boss or anything. my boss has to put up with me being lazy, unreliable, and inefficient, and still likes me and i still make money. and my boss does not go around lecturing me all the time. when my boss tells me i am doing something wrong, it is very short and to the point. with my parents, sometimes when they tell me i am doing something wrong, the argument lasts an hour or two and is very bitter, and i end up quite upset and completely unwilling to cooperate with them because i feel so alienated from them. but if my boss at work tells me to do something, i do it, because my boss is not going to lecture me for hours about what a failure i am at life and how i need to completely change how i do everything, and tell me a huge long list of things to do and expect me to memorize them, all while constantly criticizing and insulting me but claiming it is “love”. look, i love my parents, my sister, my extended family, all of them... but not in the same way i love the dog. the love between a human and a dog is the love between a superior person who is dominant and an inferior beast who is submissive. but the submissive beast that adores its master is, in a way, the better of the two, because the dog’s affection is pure, untainted by a brain capable of thinking or speaking in words. words are the weapons which destroy human relationships and corrupt our society, but animals do not understand words and are still innocent and pure from the malevolent influence of human language. a dog may be able to obey simple commands, but that does not mean the dog can combine words together to understand abstract concepts. every evil dictator came to power using words and ideas (unless they inherited the throne like in monarchy, but monarchy is also based on words and ideas). every evil dictator throughout history has given out commands to kill people and/or do other human rights abuses through words and ideas, communicating with human language. these evils are not found among animals, who only kill when they need food to eat to survive, or if they feel they need to defend themselves from another animal that they think is going to kill them. among the animals, there are no adolf hitlers or josef stalins or pol pots. there are no terrorist animals. there are no animals who start pre-emptive wars based on lies and then mismanage them. animals do not mismanage the economy or defraud investors or get golden parachutes after making their companies bankrupt. and animals do not have pointless arguments that go on for hours. animals do not use words as weapons to attack your self-esteem. animals cannot lie because they can’t even speak or write in the first place. so i like my dog better than people. can you imagine an animal like my dog voting or even having an opinion on politics or religion or any issue at all? it is ridiculous. animals do not have opinions on stuff like that because none of it makes sense to their simple brains. because they are uncorrupted by all of the propaganda we humans put out, animals are innocent and pure from all of the ideology and spin and biased news coverage. so no matter what your politics are or what your religious beliefs are, you can still find a dog who will love you unconditionally and show you nothing but adoration and affection. in this way, a dog is all things to all people. this is what politicians like barack obama try to achieve, but they can never do it better than a dog. a dog has zero ideas, so it is impossible to disagree with a dog on anything. barack obama is trying to be inclusive and have people from all sides of the political spectrum in his administration, and a lot of people like me are getting somewhat ticked off about that. but if my dog went around being friendly to republicans and jumping up on them and wagging his tail and licking their faces, i would be happy about his behavior, because i know that he is too stupid to understand any of their ideas and he is just a friendly animal who loves everyone. that is why my dog is a role model for me, because i have found that all of my intelligence is oftentimes more of a curse than a blessing. intelligence certainly does not help that much in getting along with other people, because it just helps you think up lots of reasons why you are right and they are wrong, so you can get in an argument with them and you both end up pissed off at each other. the people i get along best with nowadays are attractive female co-workers and my boss, since i am extremely careful not to say anything to those people that might get them even slightly upset with me, and i am very careful to completely avoid anything even remotely close to a conflict with any of them. unfortunately, this means i avoid asking girls out, because i know asking girls out sometimes leads to negative reactions, and i do everything possible to avoid negative reactions from girls i like. with other people, i am not as careful with what i say, and so i end up not getting along with them as well. this problem is worst with my parents, since if you have an argument that is over an hour and this happens on a regular basis, not everything you say is nice, by any means. i do not know how to relate to my parents, since all we ever do is argue, and it is so tiresome. i think it is a bad idea for adults to live with their parents under any circumstances. i have found it to be very bad, since parents cannot avoid being parents and treating their offspring like little kids, even if their offspring are graduates of ivy league universities. yes, i may have asperger’s syndrome and panic disorder, but i have a very high iq and i do not appreciate being treated like some kind of retard who has no clue how to do anything. i know for a fact that i am smarter than 99% of people, because i have taken many standardized tests over the years and almost gotten that result. being treated like i am an idiot pisses me off immensely, especially since i know that the people who are treating me like an idiot are dumber than i am. i only know one person who is smarter than me, this really fat guy i went to college with who has an iq that is probably around 10 points higher than mine. and, like me, he has a few mental health problems and has not been able to find a good job either. so intelligence is not really that great of an asset to have, unless you are actually able to use it to become successful somehow. but i just hate the way i am treated like an idiot, like i am a little kid and not 26 years old, and it is completely disrespectful towards me, so i feel no need to show respect towards those who disrespect me, and that just leads to more long arguments. when i am not at work, i mostly stay in my bedroom to avoid other people, when i am not playing with my dog or watching tv. i have good reason to avoid other people: i can’t stand being around them if they keep disrespecting me. i just want to get the hell away from them and have them leave me alone. my life and my problems are none of their damned business, especially if all they have to offer is criticism and insults. the worst thing is when my parents bother me when i am in my bedroom, because i like to think my bedroom is a safe place where i can avoid other people and not have them bug me with their stupid bullshit. i would really like to live on my own but i am dirt poor. there have been a few times i tried to get a good job, although i have not done it in quite awhile. for quite some time, i have not felt like searching for a new job, because it is so depressing and i hate doing it so much. i do not like being bossed around and told how to live my life by people who think they are better than me, and if they tell me to do something like apply for a better job, i sure as hell don’t want to give them the satisfaction of winning by doing what they told me to do. i cannot afford to live on my own, and my parents sometimes threaten to kick me out, and my response is always, good, i want to leave, i hate living here, but i can’t afford to live on my own. and as for getting a better job, i am just hopeless. i hate applying for jobs, i hate job interviews, i hate waiting for a response from the company and then always either getting a letter of rejection or not getting any response at all. it has happened so many times. the only jobs i have ever gotten are bad ones that i can’t stand that pay next to nothing and do not look good on a résumé. my current job is not entirely bad, though, because there are some nice people at work. i guess one of my problems is i just don’t have any friends i ever hang out with or regularly keep in contact with anymore. and another problem is my constant insomnia and sleep deprivation despite being alone in my bedroom most of the day. i have heard that exercise is good (my parents only tell me to do it all the friggen time) but i absolutely hate exercise, and the weather outside here is practically as cold as an antarctic winter, or at least it seems that way to me, and i hate cold weather even more than exercise. there are many things i can’t stand that i have to put up with on a daily basis, but some (like exercise or applying for jobs or doing my laundry) i can usually avoid, so i do. this is what my parents always argue with me about. but i think if i did more things that i hate and that make me miserable, i would be even more miserable than i am now, and what would be the point of living if instead of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, i were pursuing pain and avoiding pleasure? i do not think a life of pursuing pain and avoiding pleasure is worth living, so i pursue pleasure and avoid pain, since that is the only way to have any chance at happiness. the last time i tried really hard to get a good job, i ended up in the psychiatric ward of a hospital for being suicidal. i do not want to repeat the same mistakes again. barack obama talks about hope a lot, and it is something i like to hear, because i have not had any hope for years, and despite all my cynicism and pessimism, he has given me some hope. but not hope for my own life, just hope for my country and the world. my own life, for the time being, seems to be a lost cause, so i try to avoid ever thinking about it because it is too depressing, and instead i think about things that make me happy, like fun video games or my wonderful dog or how attractive certain girls are or how the democrats finally won everything this time around. i worked in a laundromat a few years back (summer of 2002 i think)... worst job i ever had, the place was like a sweatshop, i completely hated it, and ever since then i have hated laundry more than ever (although i even hated laundry prior to that job). exercise... it is painful and exhausting and often it has triggered panic attacks because of unpleasant or unusual physical sensations it has made me feel in my body, which make me a hypochondriac thinking i have some weird disease and am going to die. anything that leads to panic attacks is something i try to avoid. asking out girls... i have almost always been rejected and it is very emotionally painful for me, and there was only one time i had sex and it was absolutely horrible since i was not attracted to that specific girl and i completely failed at sex, and then for a week or two i was not even attracted to females anymore because i was so disgusted and ashamed. i had sex 3 years ago i think, in november 2005 if i remember correctly. absolutely horrible. i hope to have sex in the future, but not the worst sex ever. only time i ever had it, it went completely wrong. that is just my luck. honestly, i have good reason to hate all the things i hate. i have reasons for everything. but some of my reasons are just stupid. and i hate people who are big enough assholes to point that out. i hate how, regardless of successes like being high school valedictorian and graduating cornell, pretty much everything else in life has seemed to never ever go my way, and everything always seems to go wrong for me. i know for damn sure barack obama can’t fix any of that shit. well, if he does an awesome job on the economy, maybe that would help me find a job, but it would probably only have a slight impact on me personally, because it would still be almost as hard to find a job, only very very slightly easier. it is a lot easier for me to care about issues affecting this country than to care about how awful everything in my life is going, because at least the united states of america is not a lost cause. maybe if i were not a pessimist i would not be a lost cause. but that is like asking a cat to be a dog, or asking the sun to be the moon. being a pessimist is part of who i am, the absolute core of my horrible identity and why i hate myself. without that, what do i have? i don’t know. being a self-hating pessimist is the only life i have ever known, ever since i was a little kid. how am i supposed to “change” or have “hope”? “yes we can”? no i can’t. sorry. i never bought into those silly slogans, because they just do not resonate with pessimists like me. goddammit i need to sleep. i hate this stupid blog. everything i have ever written for this stupid blog is complete crap. i hate blogs, they are nothing but stupid bullshit nobody cares about. now go away and leave me alone. i am in a mood most foul, as is often the case, only this time, i cannot hide it any longer. sorry, maybe i will write a better blog post next time. i am leaving on a vacation to florida on sunday (and i get to take my dog along)! i am both looking forward to it with hope and dread, because i suck at getting ready for things or packing for trips. i can’t wait for the vacation, but i have to get ready for it, and there is nothing to do in florida, at least not the part i am going to with my parents. and will i be able to get along with them? it is so hard!!! i guess i had fun on the vacation to europe i went on with my parents this summer. you see, my parents are not that bad. i am the bad one. oh well. whatever. my dog will be along to cheer me up. sometimes i wish i were in an insane asylum, but i am told whenever i ask a psychologist or psychiatrist that i am in fact “sane”. quite a disappointment, not what i wanted to hear. like is like that sometimes 100% of the time. if it weren’t for my dog... well, i would probably just spend more time on the internet or playing video games. i have to go to a stupid pointless appointment this afternoon with a guy who is trying to help me find a job when i don’t really want to apply for any or go though any more of those awful job interviews. i don’t like having to see him, or my psychologist, or any other sorts of appointments. i don’t like going to the support group for my asperger’s syndrome. i just want to stay in my room and be by myself and only come out when i need to eat or go to the bathroom. i need to pack for my stupid trip. once i get there i will be bored the whole time. at least i won’t have to go to my job while i am on vacation, and the weather won’t be as cold. but i will have those 2 annoyances to come back to once vacation ends after 3 weeks. dammit, i am so annoyed about everything. i would even say that perhaps i am stressed out, except my anti-anxiety medication seems to be preventing me from stressing out. that is a good thing, because at least i am not a nervous wreck with panic attacks like i was earlier this year. i don’t feel like going to my appointment today, or going to work today, or going to the support group tomorrow. i have to do all my laundry before i can pack my clothes and leave for florida on sunday. writing this blog is boring. i am going to try to sleep now. it will not work, i will just lie in bed awake, and then i will have to go to a stupid pointless appointment, and then my stupid pointless job. and maybe i can have a stupid pointless argument or two in between. yeah, i guess i am stressed out. if only i had more sleep... then i would feel better emotionally. constant insomnia takes its toll on the emotions. i need to pack. go away. i am going to try to sleep now and completely fail and just lie in bed motionless with my eyes closed and not accomplish anything except making myself miserable. this happens all the time. try living a day of my life, see if you like it. fuck.

russia was right after all

this summer we witnessed a war between russia and the tiny former soviet republic of georgia. the u.s. media portrayed this as russian aggression against a small, defenseless country, and proof that russia was still the evil empire that it was back when it was the soviet union. well it turns out russia did not start the war. the man who was georgia’s ambassador to russia until they ended diplomatic relations this summer, erosi kitsmarishvili, has revealed the truth about this affair, something i have been wondering about for months. i did not trust either the russian or the georgian side of the story, and they both seemed like liars, but at first i thought that the georgian side, as told by georgian president mikhail saakashvili, was much more plausible than the russian side of the story.

south ossetia and abkhazia are both regions of georgia populated by ethnic minorities, ossetians and abkhazians rather than georgians. ever since a war in the early 1990s after the soviet union collapsed, a war in which georgia fought against south ossetians and abkhazians, they have been wanting to become independent from georgia so they can unify with russia, because the people there are afraid of georgians and want protection from russia, a country they view as their protector and ally. after that war, russian peacekeeping troops were sent into those 2 breakaway regions to protect the civilian populations from georgian aggression. however, those 2 regions were still officially part of the nation of georgia, although they had their own separate governments and were not under the authority of the georgian government. south ossetia and abkhazia were all ready de facto independent countries ever since that war in the early 90s, and their status as part of the nation of georgia was only a technicality. this is similar to the kurds in northern iraq: they gained independence from the iraqi government of saddam hussein in the early 90s after the united states invaded iraq in the first gulf war to liberate kuwait. the kurds had their own government in northern iraq and saddam hussein had no authority or power there. after the united states invaded iraq again in 2003 and overthrew saddam hussein, the kurds continued to have their own de facto independent nation of kurdistan in northern iraq, and to this day they are still not under the authority of iraq’s central government. kurdistan being part of iraq is just a formal technicality, and the current iraqi central government has no more authority there than saddam hussein did.

anyway, the president of georgia had been wanting for years to reconquer south ossetia and abkhazia, and put them back under the authority of the georgian central government. russia, on the other hand, still had peacekeeping troops there to protect the civilian population. the georgian president, mikhail saakashvili, made one of the worst miscalculations in military history when he decided to invade and conquer the 2 breakaway provinces. russia does not take too kindly to its troops being attacked, and the civilians in both provinces were already strongly pro-russia and anti-georgia. being attacked by the georgian military reinforced the views of the civilians there even more, and the russian military decided that it would not let some puny, insignificant country like georgia get away with killing its peacekeeping troops and conquering people who were under russian protection.

naturally, russia did a bit of overkill with their military response, completely destroying the georgian military and advancing their troops well into georgia proper. advancing their troops into georgia proper, to positions near the georgian capital of tbilisi, was a show of strength meant to demonstrate russia’s complete military superiority, and how russia could easily conquer all of georgia if they really wanted to, but russia decided against such a move. this show of strength was meant to completely demoralize the georgians and make them realize they had absolutely no chance of defeating the russian military or retaking the breakaway provinces of south ossetia and abkhazia.

in the end, the result was a lot of innocent people on both sides being killed, and plenty of atrocities on both sides. but the war was instigated by the georgian president mikhail saakashvili, who is hardly a democratic hero. he is more of an oppressive despot, although he did win office through a democratic election. then again, russian president dimitry medvedev and russian prime minister vladimir putin both were democratically elected as well. naturally, none of these elections was entirely democratic, and both russia and georgia have some problems with freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and clean elections. both countries are full of corruption. neither country is led by people who are heroic or morally good in any sense.

but the georgian president proved himself to be a lousy ally to the united states with his complete failure in the war he started. what’s more, the georgian president is close friends with john mccain and american neoconservatives, and he was counting on them for support. john mccain presumptuously said “we are all georgians now,” claiming to speak for all americans. well it turns out john mccain was dead wrong. morally speaking, georgia is even worse than russia, and from a strategic standpoint, it would be much more valuable for the united states to ally itself with a big, strong, important country like russia than to ally with a tiny, insignificant, powerless country like georgia. russia has nuclear weapons and they are vital in dealing with iran and north korea as well as in combating terrorism and the potential for nuclear weapons to fall into the wrong hands. russia has huge amounts of natural resources, especially the fossil fuels that we are so dependent upon nowadays. russia has lately been showing off its support for cuba and venezuela, and threatening us if we deploy a missile defense shield in eastern europe. i say it is time to end this silly hostility towards russia and help russia modernize and become a prosperous democratic ally to us and to europe. i think we should let russia join the european union and nato. if russia were to join the european union and nato, it would permanently change things and transform russia into a pro-western democracy and a dependable ally for the united states. just look at the relationship between france and germany. for centuries, the french and the germans (who were called prussians before prussia expanded to become germany) were bitter enemies, constantly at war with each other. france and great britain were also staunch enemies for centuries. but starting with world war 1, france and the united kingdom (which was previously great britain) became staunch allies. germany and france were bitter enemies up until the end of world war 2, and then germany was divided and conquered by the victors of world war 2. it has not been until recently that france and germany have come to terms and become allies, but nowadays, those 2 nations are the closest pair of allies in the world, showing that nations really can overcome long-standing differences. in the 1990s, the united states and russia were on very good terms and were allies, and president bill clinton of the united states was best friends with president boris yeltsin of russia. bill clinton and boris yeltsin were like BFFs (best friends forever). it is rather tragic that this budding friendship between the united states and russia came to a close after george w. bush took office. sure, george w. bush got along with vladimir putin at first, but this did not last very long, because the russians realized that the neoconservatives in america wanted complete world domination with the united states as the undisputed sole superpower in the world, and the united states was turning russia’s neighbors (such as georgia and ukraine) against russia. just as the united states has for many years tried to control all the countries in north, south, and central america, russia has always tried to control its neighbors, especially the former soviet republics. if we condemn russian imperialism without acknowledging our own imperialism here in the western hemisphere, that is pure hypocrisy. when russia lends support to our current enemies in the western hemisphere such as cuba and venezuela, they are really just doing the same thing we have been doing to them, except nowhere near as badly. our foreign policy has been to threaten the national security of what is today the 3rd most powerful country in the world, russia, (after the united states and china). the russians react to threats to their national security the exact same way we amerians do. they are no different from us. we should put aside our petty differences and work together. the united states cannot rule the world as a single superpower, but if we combine forces with the other most powerful nations on earth, we will be much more powerful and much better able to deal with whatever problems occur anywhere in the world. we have been doing this with china, and our relations with the chinese are better than ever, despite all the evils of the chinese government and how awfully the chinese government treats its own people. if we can be allies with china, then why on earth can’t we be allies with russia, a country that is much less evil than china? russia, unlike china, is actually a democracy, and their human rights record, while bad, is nowhere near as horrible as china’s. and why can’t we be friends with all the nations of the americas, including current enemies like cuba and venezuela? if we can have diplomatic relations with communist nations like china and vietnam, and if we were able to have diplomatic relations with the soviet union and soviet satellite states back during the cold war, why must we stubbornly remain enemies with cuba and venezuela? it does not make any logical sense. if we really want to rule the western hemisphere, we should put aside our differences with the few nations that refuse our hegemony, and have friendly relations with their leaders, treating them with respect and like equals, not like inferiors who must obey our commands or else. the whole point of things like the war on terror is for all the nations of the world to work together and cooperate towards a common goal, which, in the case of the war on terror, is defeating all the terrorists and eliminating them from the face of this globe. how can we achieve victory in things like the war on terror if we constantly fight with other nations and refuse to cooperate with them, when stuff like the war on terror requires close international cooperation? in the case of russia, we need the russians and the russians need us. the 2 world wars and the cold war showed the foolishness of nations fighting against one another... wars by definition involve the mass slaughter of innocent people, all because of the silly, petty differences of the leaders of the nations of the world. we won both world wars and the cold war, but that is no guarantee that we will win wars we fight in the future. we are not doing terribly well in the war on terror that is going on right now, for instance. the only way to defeat the terrorists is to work together with all the other nations of the world, including nations that we have historically been enemies with. anyone who opposes working together with other nations is basically advocating letting the terrorists win.

just yesterday, india suffered a major terrorist attack. the indian government seems to be rather inept at combating terrorism and at intelligence operations. obviously we need much closer cooperation with india, in order to help them deal with situations like this. this is just one example of a nation we need better cooperation with. india’s neighbor and long-time enemy, pakistan, is also a nation we need much more cooperation with. pakistan is perhaps the world’s biggest breeding ground for terrorism, despite being an ally of the united states, and osama bin laden and the top al qaeda leadership is believed to be hiding out inside pakistan. it is likely that pakistanis were responsible for the terrorist attacks in india. we need to work together with pakistan to eliminate the terrorists in their country. the pakistani government is most likely going to be cooperative; the current president of pakistan had his wife benazir bhutto assassinated by terrorists less than a year ago. i am sure he is out for revenge, and luckily the people who killed his wife are the same people we are after: al qaeda and the taliban. another way to help solve this problem of terrorism in that part of the world would be to help india and pakistan achieve peace with each other and sign a treaty that would finally resolve all of their long-standing disputes. international cooperation is really the key to defeating terrorism.

and as for georgia, we should certainly continue to cooperate with them. georgia might not be a perfect country, and they might have started a stupid war this summer that backfired on them horribly, but they are our friends, and we should not completely abandon them. yes, it turns out russia was telling the truth about the war and georgia was lying, but we need to cooperate with all the nations, even ones led by murderous liars like mikhail saakashvili. once we have all the nations of the world cooperating with us, we can help to overthrow bad leaders in other countries and replace them with better ones, and we will have plenty of cooperation and not get stuck doing it unilaterally. with the cooperation of russia, china, japan, and south korea, we could probably overthrow the government of north korea, and reunify korea into a single country, led by the pro-western democratic government of south korea. when george bush, sr. invaded kuwait to push saddam hussein’s iraqi occupation forces out, he had the rest of the world supporting him. that is why the first gulf war went so much better than the second one that we are fighting now. this time around, the rest of the world opposes our war in iraq, and the few nations who do support us are still almost all unwilling to help us out in any meaningful way. only the united kingdom has really helped us out significantly in that war. that is part of why the war in iraq has been such a fiasco. of course, there was also tremendous mismanagement under donald rumsfeld, and the war was never justified in the first place, since they kept changing the justifications for the war once each one they were using turned out to be false. there were no weapons of mass destruction, saddam hussein was not a threat to us in any way, and we completely failed to understand all of the tensions between sunnis, shiites, and minority religions or between arabs, kurds, and other ethnic groups. it is a war that was based on lies, that was horribly mismanaged, and that barack obama is going to have to end, with the help of dubya’s 2nd defense secretary, bob gates, who will be staying on to work for obama. and in the case of georgia, our government gave georgia mixed signals that they misinterpreted as a green light to invade south ossetia and abkhazia. we need to be much more careful about the signals we give to other countries and not accidentally green-light any foolish military misadventures. of course, the war between georgia and russia was not really our fault, because mikhail saakashvili is completely insane. but in a way it is sort of our fault, because we are the ones who put him in power in the first place (and by we i mean the united states government that we elected).