On the NPR Firing of Juan Williams.

There has been a lot of controversy over the past few days about the firing of Juan Williams after saying, "But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb, and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." [source] This is scapegoating. There are one and a half billion Muslims in the world. Muslims follow the Quran today like Christians followed the Bible 600 years ago, and that means that women will wear headscarves. The terrorists are definitely a small minority of Muslims, and saying this shows him to be explosive and not clear-thinking. If an African-American said a similar thing about European-Americans in the 1960s because the person thought that they would be a member of the KKK, they would become inaccurate immediately because it shows an unclear method of thinking and explosiveness. If I was a news station manager I wouldn't want to have someone who is saying inflammatory things on my station because it would be giving the wrong message and I would want people with a clear head on my airwaves so that I would be 1) as accurate as possible and 2) giving non-hateful messages. Because of this, I must support NPR in their decision to have people with time slots be clear and respectful towards everyone. It once was called cultural respect.

Another thing is that NPR is being accused of bias. I disagree with this. NPR does have radio shows that appear to obviously have liberal bias to many people, like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and it is an immensely popular radio show, but people know it is biased, and people listen to it for a good laugh at anybody political. When you listen to them they will bash any politician. Hardly liberal bias, they will poke fun at anyone, from Obama to Limbaugh. That is the only radio show on NPR that is consistently accused of having bias (for a somewhat understandable reason). They have the BBC on the air, and when they air their own news, they will interview people from pro-choice to pro-life and sometimes have a debate between the two side. This is hardly bias at all because they have interviews with not just someone who is hired to give a conservative or liberal spin on it, the people are from groups like Focus on the Family, Westboro Baptist Church, Republican Congresspeople, AND people from PFLAG, Freedom to Marry, and Democratic Congresspeople, ALL IN THE SAME HOUR, SOMETIMES THE SAME TIMESLOT! Now if that is biased, there is no neutrality. This movement applies to all other issues. The people they bring on believe strongly in their cause, are the best speakers for the movements, and are not interrupted. I disagree completely with this accusation.

These two arguments tell me that the far right is just looking for anything to bash other people on, no matter what. They need to cool their jets and start thinking before they say that someone who is saying something incredibly racist is right. That FOX is hiring him now after showing how unstable he is makes me distrust their method for hiring people.

Relations with Cuba

I have thought of the issue with Cuba and wrote the following comparison that makes the answer apparent to me:

The embargo on Cuba is based on the old fear of America against Communism. The laws Cuba has that are the most draconian are drugs, the trade must be stopped in the world, politics, it is a Socialist state afterall, and porn, it is a Roman Catholic society. The first and third are things that are prosecuted in America, and the second will definitely change someday. If Cuba had visitors from America and were able to visit America, they could bring back our ideas to their home country the same way President Saakashvili did in Georgia. That would improve the lives of Cubans. The United States would not be damaged either, because the tourists from Cuba would bring in money as much as money is brought in to Cuba. In fact, the increase in tourism would create a boom that would benefit our economy! It would be beneficial to both countries. It would make Cuba an even safer place to travel.

    Another factor is that after The United States began relations with China, they got more money in their economy and started to build their country up to the point where today their trade has made them one of the most powerful states in the world. The problem with Cuba is they don't have enough trade for the people to make enough income to improve their standards of living. Allowing Cubans to travel between America and Cuba will make the amount of information available in Cuba higher, which will make the people able to stand up to information restrictions through travel. It would continue to allow Cuban dissidents to migrate to America for political asylum, and the draconian laws will decrease and wither, just like China. In fact, it would be faster because Cuba is only 90 miles from Miami, a distance shorter than from New York to Washington, DC!

Why High-Speed Rail is a good idea for America right now!

Everyone has heard the President talk about high-speed rail and many other people. They say that this isn't the time to spend on improving infrastructure because the economy is bad and unemployment is high. They say it will cost too much.

To quote the President, "Their memories are short." Most of America's current infrastructure was built in the 1930s, a decade of unparalleled unemployment and economic slump. President Roosevelt decided to spend on infrastructure, be it the dams of the Columbia river, providing all the power and water needed for Eastern Washington, and the famous Tennesse River Valley Authority, bringing millions of jobs to two of the nation's most impovrished districts. Providing electricity for the booming 50s, and the water for the farmers of America.

If Roosevelt had not done this, the power grid in the 50s would probably not have enough to support all the new appliances.

It is better than that even, as a teenager looking for work, I have read "What Color is your Parachute?" and the most important lesson I learned from that book is to KEEP YOUR REFERENCES UP TO DATE. By putting in public works, it gives Americans opportunity to get money, so they can spend which drives an economy, and it keeps their references current so that they aren't bought out by someone else and business runs smoothly.

The Republicans like to say that it will be too expensive, and yes, it is 10 billion dollars. Compare this with the 231 billion spent in the DOD this year. Anyways,that 231 billion will not be paid back. This 10 billion dollars will create revenue for the government, making the deficit slightly smaller in 5 years, aka it will pay for itself!
Assume that the New York-Philadelphia, Miami-Tampa, Seattle-Portland, LA-San Diego, Chicago-Milwaukee, and Philadelphia-Washington trains all have a seating capacity of 500 each, a long train. Each of these people pay $20 to bypass the rush hour and go on the train above the freeway, (which I think would be the best) and these mass-transit corridors are filled daily, twice a day, going to and from work. That would mean every morning each of the 6 trains I mentioned will be filled 2 times per day, earning $20 from 500 passengers, creating a revenue of $12,000 per day for all these trains. Over 365 days (people work weekends, and people would take the train when going on a day trip, it's a lot faster.) that would give you $4,380,000 generated during one year on only these trains. Wait a minute, only one train going in the morning and one train in the evening? That's far too conservative because there are far more people using these trains than 500 per day! We need to multiply this statistic by at least 3 because there will be at least three trains going city to city, and they would be maybe an hour apart each because people work different hours in today's world. That gives us a total of $13,140,000 earned on these trains alone.
But that is completely inaccurate because according to http://www.ushsr.com/hsrnetwork.html there will be 24 trains running independently by 2015 running twice a day every day. Keeping our extremely conservative statistic of a $20 fee and running 2 times per day, filling 500 seats each way, twice a day gives us a revenue of a whopping $175,200,000 of income per year. This is still too low. You have to remember all the money that these 1000 commuters would have spent on gas, in the millions saved, not being sent to OPEC and Exxonmobile, and BP, and instead going to the government which is paying for DOMESTIC POWER. That stat is important showing the money saved by these users, being spent in other parts of the economy, boosting the American economy. You have to remember that there would be at least three trains per day because of the sheer amount of commuters in SUBURBIA who would LOVE to save THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS EACH IN GAS MONEY! Their is no way these trains will not be filled. Multiplying our earlier stat in this train of thought gives us $525,600,000 of income in 2015. This will pay for itself.
Wait a second, I only calculated the amount made in 2015-2019.  Before 2020 there will 35 more trains built, giving a total of 35 trains, times 500 seats, times 2 times per day, times 3 trains, times a fee of $20 per person times 365 days. This is a huge total of $766,500,000 of income per year for the years 2020-2024. This will be a self-sustaining program given my extremely conservative statistics. They are definitely going to run more than twice a day, what about noon? It is absurd that an American would oppose this development because of the benefits we will reap every day for the next 50 years! The money wasted in rush hour will decrease by 500 cars (at least) for each of these trains, making everyone save money. To oppose this is ridiculous. It will help us as much as the Interstate highways did, making America a more prosperous society.

One only has to look at the other countries that are investing in this technology. Europe already has. This has Spain, France, Germany, UK, Italy, and the recently wealthy nations of China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan have invested in this wonderful technology and are reaping the benefits today because of the investment made 5 years ago. This is obviously a wonderful choice for America because it is completely domestic, and it requires no fossil fuels which are going to be scarce in 50-100 years when I am going into retirement.

International Economics, part 1, international money transfers

I have been looking, and thinking, about economics recently, and have written a lot out.

Most people invest their money in some way or another. Most do it by buying bonds from a government, buying stock from a company, or putting their money in a bank in their own country. These are good ways of investing. There is one way though that can be better than all three given the right economic environment. That would be investing in foreign banks. By investing in a foreign bank you get the following benefits.

1. When you go to that country, you have a guaranteed amount of money to draw upon that doesn't have to be exchanged which gives you a precise amount whenever you go there.
2. Assuming that the country you put your money in protects bank accounts, it is guaranteed to be protected.
3. By investing in a developing nation their economy can be expected to grow which means there will be more demand for their currency which will cause their currency to go up in value compared to other currencies. This means that by investing in these countries you are able to while getting interest have your money's value in your home's currency go up at least 100-300% which is far more secure than stocks, which when you take the money home means that the value of your home's currency will then appreciate in value, making everyone better off and better to travel. This would make the entire world eventually become more even if the currencies were allowed to balance.

This is illegal in many countries because the leaders fear that the money won't come back to their country there are several arguments against this however.

1. The person investing will eventually bring the money back home which will make their home country more wealthy.
2. The amount of money transferred comes back which is completely different from outsourcing manufacturing to countries like China and southeast Asia. The money that is sent to these countries has been shown to not come back which is part of the reason why the American/Canadian/European/Australian economies have become potentially unstable recently is because of the loss of money. This is far worse than investing in foreign banks which makes the argument against overseas investment mute.

Basically, regulating international banking is pointless, except that it is often used to move to countries to fund drugs or terrorists. Then their should be an alliance of countries that allow money to be transferred within their borders as long as:

1. The money is kept away from drug and terrorist organizations and if moved outside the union will be inspected.

Countries I would look at joining are: the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, the Eurozone, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, UK, and several others that have shown their intentions to fight drugs and terrorism.

Why we need to crack down on the drug trade

We need to crack down on the drug trade in our schools. They ruin thousands of people's lives year after year and makes it so that we lose valuable workers of our economy. It wastes America's money year after year and sends money to drug dealers so they can send more drugs up here. This hurts us deeply and it is becoming obvious something has to be done. I think that prohibition on the less dangerous drugs should be revoked. This is why:

1. Prohibition made illegal consumption of alcohol skyrocket and we spent millions trying to stop it. Consumption didn't stop.
2. Smoking. We have smoking legal if you are over 21 and you can only do it in certain places. If smoking were illegal than a lot more people would smoke because there would be no regulation and it would add to the cartel's profits. By making it illegal it makes it so teenagers have a harder time getting it. If it was illegal, that would not be true.
3. If we allow authorized sellers to sell the drugs and taxed them the taxes could go immediately to rehab. People would be paying for their rehabilitation when they use it which would benefit all Americans. They are taking the drugs anyways, so if they were made legal and regulated consumption will drop. It will lose popularity with people who use them to be bad, and our prisons would have fewer people. That will benefit everybody. The drug cartels will lose power and the violence in Mexico will subside saving millions of lives.
1. Proof: Canada has legalized marijuana and other less harmful drugs bringing the illegal drug trade there down. Unfortunately, they don't have enough people to make a big enough dent on the world market. We do and we must.

The drug I would look at deregulating is

• Cannabis, which is useful in medicine.

Another thing, besides that the way we need to do it is by fighting the use in high schools, because that is probably their biggest market. That could save thousands of lives and keep billions from the cartels. That needs to be regulated to save lives.

Free Trade Part 1: Overview and NAFTA

Free Trade. Say this to different people and you will get both acclaims of praise and disgust. I personally am in favor for free trade. Here are the reasons:
1. It allows people in different countries to have their wealth level out over time. If there is more trade between countries, the currencies will level out. this will happen because the demand for different currencies will equalize. This is why the American and Canadian dollars are always close to each other.

2. It allows people to get the best deal on goods. If you want apples in the winter in America, you need them from the southern hemisphere and vice verse. German beer, Russian Vodka, Indian carpets (leaving child labor out of the question), these are all produced at certain times of the year at one place or another, and to not get them is silly, because it limits citizen's choices on what they want to buy. It will mean that people will have access to the best materials throughout the world.

3. If people are able to go other places to get work than the money in the super rich countries will start to level out to the really poor countries. Look at it this way. The American dollar is inflated because there are too many dollars floating around. If you made trade with the rest of the world go up, the dollars will go to other countries and prices that are extremely high right now will shrink because the value of the dollar will rise. The other bonus is that countries that are havens for crime and drugs right now will become more wealthy and be able to crack down on criminal acts, be it trafficking of persons or drugs. Everyone will benefit.

Oh America, hear my plea

For 30 years we have been complaining how the government is so corrupt, never listens, always bribing, and cutting essential programs. Lobbyists from Wall Street bribe politicians, steering clear of the occasional representative.

We get depressed, wondering if it will ever end and we listen to our spin and our party's propaganda. Yet, we never analyze and listen to two sides of the argument.

We listen to hate radio, spewing false information, "America is doomed," never quoting, always lying.

We don't vote responsible, yet we complain. How can we solve our problems without doing such an easy duty. How can you say "I love America" without ever spending time to read the news? We read the tabloids, yet we never read the news.

How do we fix the problem? We make an honest effort to read a reliable realistic news source. If they talk how we are doomed, they are selling. If the airtime is not equally divided during and election, the "news" channel is propaganda. We find the channel  that gives both sides and keep the commentators and comedians in a different time slot from the news, otherwise, they are propaganda.

When we trust the theory of democracy and participate.... Then we are free. Only then can America survive.

Things I want to see.

I want to see the Right-wing talking heads respond to three propositions

1. Mississippi has just outlawed marriage between black and white people.
2. Protesters march on building of Church in Atheist community.
3. Tax officers in Beverly hills are stopping white people for hopes of getting the money they lost.

Wouldn't that just be entertaining or what? Terrible, yes, entertaining, definitely.

How to balance the Federal Budget in 4 easy steps.

No long introduction because none is needed. Everyone knows the situation.

Step 1 (in progress): The budget of every department in the government is published on a single website. Check. www.usaspending.gov has it all. But the second part is that you need to be able to go down the department's budget line by line on the internet. A link to website is at the top of every government webpage. This is the first step to cut wasteful spending. President Obama presented this.

Step 2 (close, but not good enough): Every law is easily read and is at the top of every government website where people would see it. This is at thomas.loc.gov.

Step 3 (not even close): Every bill focuses on a single change or program, like in the New Deal. They are posted on Thomas as soon as they are proposed. They must be precise and to the point, and use normal English.

Step 4 (just a thought, risky though): There is a government news-feed on a website that only tells of all the bills, resolutions, and amendments, money spent, and every other government action on an easy-to use feed.. It runs in parallel to private corporations to give the information out in a concise non-confusing way so people can understand. It would allow people to see what every department is doing in chronological order which will make it harder to be corrupt in government and seek out corruption. You could turn a department on and off to see each department's budget. There would be an option to see what your Senator/Representative is supporting. The only argument against this I can see is government-controlled media. But this will be alongside the commercial press giving everyone one site that has everything relating to the government.

Step 5 (sadly not on the horizon): The people of America believe in how Democracy works (which has been proved for thousands of years, Greece) and they use their power to be one big check and balance to the politicans on Capital Hill. We listen to multiple sources, use tools like Google News to get 5 sources per day at a minimum, and are not pessimistic about the government, because that is what I believe to be selling Capital Hill to the corrupt, which is somwhere between an unpatriotic attitude and Treason. Our country cannot survive without people participating.

Eggs

The Economy and EGGS

By: Matthew Stidham

Part 1: Recession

Overview

The economy is in trouble, there is not enough money flowing through the economy.

The eggs are in trouble, they need more salt.

The economy needs more money.

The eggs need salt to be added.

What Will Happen:

The eggs will get more salt.

The economy will not get the money it needs and will continue to slow down because people don't know how recessions work.

What Should Happen:

The eggs should get more salt.

The economy should get more money flowing which will speed it up getting it back to equilibrium.

Who will do it:

The people who eat the eggs will add salt.

The people who are part of the economy will not know how money flows. They won't understand that if everyone starts spending like they used to money will flow and everybody who works will get money back. That means that the problem of money not flowing will not be fixed. However, this requires a majority of the people in the economy to do this, which if they don't know how it works, won't be done.

If the people don't, assume the banks won't offer loans because they won't expect jobless people to be able to pay them back, or if they do will be at high interest rates, and companies won't expand because they won't expect people to buy their product. Those are 3 out of the 4 sectors of the economy. The only one left is government. If the government doesn't keep the economy running, no one else will because the people who do know how it works will be betting on most people not understanding, which will make them not spend, which will exacerbate the problem as happened from 1929 to 1933.

Part 2: Overgrowth

Overview

The economy is booming, people and businesses are overspending.

The eggs are too salty.

The economy has to slow down and have less money be transferred every day.

The eggs need to either have the salt be removed or the eggs remade.

What Will Happen:

People will through away the eggs and make new eggs.

The economy will get even more money flowing through it until so many people, banks, and businesses will have loaned money out that very few will get their money back, which will mean that everyone will all pull back which will slow down the economy dramatically, which will lower stock prices causing people to panic, which will continue to exacerbate the problem, causing a recession.

What Should Happen:

People will through away the eggs and make new eggs.

People should stop overspending which means the economy will slow down so that the problem of spinning out of control doesn't happen and people won't lose their life savings on debt. This would also mean that there wouldn't be a period of three months to four or more years where the economy isn't working how it should.

Who will do it:

Unless if the salt can be scraped off, the person eating the eggs will remake them.

The people will not slow down and stop borrowing and purchasing because they are making so much money per year. The businesses won't stop expanding because they are making record profits, which will mean that they will make too much product or have too many stores which means that they will have to drastically pull back or go bankrupt which in the case of a large company will put thousands of people out of work, exacerbating unemployment. Banks won't stop lending because they will be making billions of dollars of interest. 3 out of the 4 sectors will not be thinking in long term, as has happened at least twice before. Again, there is only one part of the economy to make sure that the economy doesn't spin out of control, and that is government, which can slow the economy down with sales taxes or temporary limits on borrowing, which will be unpopular, but necessary.

Conclusion

The Same Principles That Apply to Eggs Also Apply to the Economy.

Why passing a stimulus package in a recession is a good idea.

There is a lot of talk on Capital Hill about passing another stimulus package. Many Republicans are saying that the first stimulus package was a bad idea, and they are looking in the 4th dimension. In order to be a true leader you need to see in the 5th dimension.

Dimensions. The first dimension is a line with no thickness. The second dimension has vertical and horizontal axes. The third dimension is what we see with our eyes, vertical, horizontal, and depth. The fourth dimension is time. The fifth dimension is parallel universes, or what would happen if something didn't happen.

Many people on the conservative right say that we need to allow leaders of companies to have their companies fail if they do economically risky things. This is an extremely capitalist viewpoint. They forget that who the burden really falls if the company, be it Chase, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, US Bank, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, General Motors, etc., fails. It fails on the millions of workers who work for those companies. The 7 car manufacturers I mentioned employ 390,200 people in America which would be a huge hit to the economy. The 3 banks I mentioned that still exist hold $4.6 trillion that would then have to be spent by the federal government to make sure that their customers keep their life savings. It is scary to think of the Federal Government spending $4.6 trillion in one year making sure that people don't lose their life savings as opposed to spending no more than $1 trillion in order to avoid spending $3.6 trillion dollars more (more than the annual budget) to make sure people have money to live.

Another thing, the GDP of America decreased from 1929 to 1933 when the government under Herbert Hoover's administration did nothing. Hoover could have proposed to Congress to stimulate the economy, but he didn't. In 1933 President Roosevelt proposed a stimulus (New Deal) to bring us out of the depression, which it did.

Food for thought: Where would America have got the money in 1933 to go to war? How did America have enough to go to war in 1941 without running trillion dollar 1940s dollars deficits as opposed to the much smaller amount in 1941-1945?

Why renewables are the answer to the high costs of fuel.

Everyone knows that gasoline is expensive all over the world. Exxon Mobile makes gigantic profits year after year and there is nothing to stop them. This is because they have a near-perfect monopoly on oil sales throughout the entire world. There is no incentive for them to lower their prices because it will decrease their profit and that is not what a rational company does. Being rational and being benevolent are completely different.

There is a simple solution to this problem. It has been done before too, and it worked. Early 1900s, Standard Oil owned more than 90% of the world's oil reserves making Rockefeller the richest man in the history of the world. He had no reason to decrease the prices because there was no competition and he created the market price. In the 1940s the US government decided that Standard Oil had to be divided, and the prices went down because every company had to take the market price determined by supply and demand.

There are solutions, and they are being taken after being put aside for at least a decade. The US government is funding more research into renewable energies to make them efficient, which will make them viable competitors to internal-combustion engines.

First, the idea of drilling in the arctic is a short term solution. What do we do when the oil there is depleted? We have to move somewhere else and spend more money moving equipment to other places and more research. An extremely short-term and inefficient solution to the oil crisis.

So, the US government funds scientists and they work hard over the next ten years making fuel cells extremely efficient. We need to make sure that the fuel cells have hydrogen to run. The solution to this is simple. Water is a common resource, hydrogen is a limited resource. What we need to invest in is a way to use nuclear fission to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water atoms and then put them into cars. We put the hydrogen into the cars and you drive off. Simple. The argument that hydrogen is flammmable is true, but not viable because gasoline is also viable. Light a spark next to gasoline and it will start combustion at an uncontrollable rate. Hydrogen may not be stable like water, but neither is gasoline. Nothing in terms of safety will change, and the transportation of hydrogen is silly because we will produce it on-site, which makes it better than gasoline.

Now, who will provide the converters? Companies of course! There will be many companies eventually and people will purchase them, there will be competition, and it will work.

Another thing is, what about the desert? If we can make hydrogen out of water, we can make it out of any thing in the Universe. We just need to improve nuclear fission.

There's the answer to the energy crisis. In essence, it is water.

I don't claim these as my ideas. I am merely putting together ideas from many places.

On Perry v. Schwarzenegger

To find the information on the current case see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_v._Schwarzenegger and http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/tag/perry-v-schwarzenegger

I think this case is extremely important. Gay rights are just right in a free society for the following reasons:
1. Love makes a Family. People need to have the right to marry whoever they want. If we don't give people the right to love they will be miserable for no reason, and anyways, healthy families are built on love.
2. The arguments made are based on religion. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This is the American creed. The arguments against gay marriage are based on religion and gay marriage should be allowed because of this.
3. They are no different than heterosexual families. We need to get past the idea that women and men are completely different. People generally don't follow the extreme right's assumption that they are different. I have met many people and people are diverse beyond what form their body takes.
4. Connecting to my second point, other nations that punish gay marriage include Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia who kill gays among others. Nations that allow gay marriage are Canada, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and Belgium. There are also some parts in America and Mexico City. We need to decide to side with free nations as opposed to genocidal (Sudan), unfree (Saudi Arabia), unstable (Somalia), and bureaucratic nations (Iran).
5. People that go against Gay marriage include Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Osama bin Laden, and many others.
6. They are a minority and are committing a victimless crime.

Because of these 6 reasons, gay marriage must be allowed in the United States of America.

Originally written on 18 January 2010

The Greatest Threats to American Freedom

I have talked to many people about political issues and through these I have grown to become more centrist. I am taking Economics at my local community college and have become a lot more centrist than I used to be, but also have found that some policies make sense, regulating health care, not being afraid of intervening in the economy through a Stimulus or New Deal, or looking over banks, keeping them from doing shady deals that put the economy of the entire world in danger.

There are many threats, Terrorism, drugs, shady deals, there are too many to count! But when you get down to it, the one threat that I think is the biggest threat is two closely related threats, 1. The distrust of all elected Politicians regardless of party, and 2. The fear of knowledge.

I define my first one is the belief that no matter what you say the politicians will always only do what they want and will not listen. The second one means being afraid of Websters, meaning not looking things up, which means when you reach a big word you won't expand your vocabulary.

This threatens us all because it makes so that the corrupt politicians really can do whatever they want because the average American will not look up what their Representative, Senator, Governor, or President are doing beyond the corrupt news media on both sides of the aisle. (the only American sources I have seen that are neutral are NPR, and CNET.) People honestly believe that the politicians are out to get everyone, and they don't care about the people at the bottom and the middle. They need to look at what their representatives, senators, and the President are doing from an open mind, and listen to any addresses that they might have.

One prime example is someone I love. He/She said that Obama isn't for bipartisianship. He/She said listening to the State of the Union was a waste of time, and doesn't listen to the Weekly Addresses. He/She frightened me by his fear of Democrats. He/She decided to look at summaries of the State of Union and assumed he/she heard everything. By not doing this he/she is worse than a slave because he/she is being manipulated every day by Fox news spreading only the things that make Obama look bad. He missed one important detail from the speech and I quote: "That's why I've called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad." ~Barack Obama State of the Union. The summaries wouldn't report this because it makes him look good. It isn't the President who is locking out Republicans, it is the Senate and the House. They should be ashamed. He didn't hear that or any of the Weekly addresses, which means that he doesn't hear this message. When Rush Limbaugh, or Fox quotes the President they will quote "We want the taxpayers’ money back, and we’re going to collect every dime." which makes it sound like he will hike taxes up. What he really said was, "Many originally feared that most of the $700 billion in TARP money would be lost. But when my administration came into office, we put in place rigorous rules for accountability and transparency, which cut the cost of the bailout dramatically. We have now recovered most of the money we provided to the banks. That’s good news, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not good enough. We want the taxpayers’ money back, and we’re going to collect every dime." The first one makes it sound like he will hike up taxes on families, when in truth, he will actually be having Banks pay back the stimulus, just like a loan.

Second, I hear people say that someone proposed an amendment, but they won't look and see if it passed the vote. You can propose as many pork amendments as you like, but if they don't pass the vote it won't happen.

Finally, there is the problem, but how does it hurt our freedom? It makes it so that when Congresspeople vote on a bill without anyone reading it they will all be fired if they do enough serious offenses. When the media says that Congressman Joe Bob from Mecca made an amendment that would give all Meccans a tax break on said tax, they will assume it is part of the bill. They do not go to the bill, download the text, and then press ctrl-f and type in Mecca, and then see that the amendment isn't part of the bill because it was voted down! This makes it so that good legislation is shot down when it could save the economy. Yes, I am talking about the Health Care bill. We need to not be afraid of long texts and know that we can pull a single uncommon word out of Ulysses on a computer in less than 10 seconds if it runs. We must do this. If we don't than lobbyists that are not there for charity will continue to rule Capital Hill. If we do, than we will not shop at those places, they will close, which means that the purpose of lobbying has gone away.

America, please do not be afraid of your politicians. They are literally your servant and if enough people look and report the truth of what they are doing they will have their careers ruined, which solves the problem of corruption because it will not benefit anyone. If every able American spent at least 5 minutes a day, watched the speeches, looked into the bills, than they would be unable to do the amendments because their in-boxes would be full and then be voted out at the next election. Democracy is strong and beautiful, and good votes rely on information, but as the display at my local fire station says "The Majority Rules, but only if the Majority Votes."

How to win the War on Terror

The most pressing issue today is how to defeat terrorism. Personally, I am not a Christian and don't want to be, I'm UU so I feel that while the Terrorists are treating people in my country as Christians that what I say here is not trying to expand any religion, but to save lives. People have the right to worship
The radical so-called Muslims at the top have perverted their religion and have distorted it to where they worship one out of 5 pillars, Jihad. Jihad means "struggle for the faith." One American Religion, Mormonism has a practice that I believe is supposed to be what Jihad is meant to be, to spread the faith and word of God. The Quran says in the Cow: "62. Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." The Terrorists conveniently forget this all the time. By fighting the Western World, which is mostly Christian, they are going against the very religion they say they are part of. They are no Muslims. The Quran has all the major figures of Christianity and Judaism. Becausethey believe in what Jesus taught, than they technically believe in "love your neighbor," which means that by fighting they are further Blasphemizing against their professed religion. There is also the fact that if they scroll the Quran they will find that some parts bash Christians while others don't, just like any old religious book that was written by multiple people.

This brings me to my major point. Because the people of Afghanistan and other nations where they get there recruits from mostly can't read, the way to defeat terrorism is for peace-loving nations around the world to send people to those places to teach people how to read so that they can read the Qur'an and the Bible so that they can know that by going with the terrorists they are blaspheming against their religion. If this is done thousands if not millions of lives will be saved and Peace can be on Earth and the Human Race may prosper and this type of Evil may go off the face of the planet. It won't stop all of them, because there are people who are mean and unintelligent who don't ask questions and want to mean things in many places. But if more people in the Middle East and North Africa who are Muslim are able to refer back to the source of their religion, more people will decide to follow their religion and do what is right to every good person's perspective, no matter what his/her religion is.

Originally posted on January 3, 2010.

On the Health Care Bill.

Here are the facts. If the bill works as it is supposed to it could reduce the cost of medicine the federal government has to spend greatly. If everyone had health insurance, like people in Washington need car insurance, than tax payers won't ever need to cover these people again and they will be less of a drain on tax payer's dollars. 1/4 dollars spent by the Federal government in FY 2000- FY 2007 was spent on health care. source: http://www.usaspending.gov/source if we bring down the cost of health care by requiring people to be fiscally prepared for health visits, the Federal deficit could be eliminated while decreasing taxes for ALL AMERICANS. If we did this than the national debt will decrease to nothing and another major drain on America's fiscal resources could be eliminated reducing taxes EVEN FURTHER.

That is what we must do if we are to continue to function as a stable society. However, there is one issue that disturbs me during the passage of this bill.

The Republican Party is living in the past. They are afraid of big government, but more than that, they are afraid of Socializing things. It doesn't matter how big the government is as long as it is organized to increase efficiency and takes care of the people that put them in office. Other free nations in Europe, Canada, and others socialize medicine which raises taxes, but eliminates the cost beyond that. There is a reason you don't have health insurance in Canada, it is because you don't need it. If there are problems with how quickly services are provided on a 20 year old system, it should be perfected, but that is their issue, not ours. Other nations nationalize things that help their people live not for power, but to improve their people's lives.
The fear of Socialization goes back to the most evil American who held office. A man who was so evil, that even though he was 1 out of 46 Senators, an entire era is named after him. Joseph McCarthy. We need to get past his dogmatic scare tactics and go forth onto a new era. To live in the past does not help anyone. We have no choice but to leave his ideas.

I am sure it will work and look forward to a day where the costs of government in that area are reduced so that we never have to borrow money ever again.

Originally written on December 24, 2009.

Every American's Power

I am an American, and I love my country just like 300 million other people. I have seen a lot of lies being passed around in the media recently having to do with the past year's deficit. I was bothered by this because they didn't quite sound right, were consistently different, and sounded too high. I was right, they were lying.

If every American went online, at home or at a library, we should all go to one website filled with facts and statistics that give us bundles of information. It is www.usaspending.gov which has every federal report from 1999 to 2007 and the information for the past year's spending by category.

I also must say to people who have been throwing out inaccurate numbers on this past year's spending, you aren't helping your country by starting rumors. It is time to stop playing party politics, and to be one nation indivisible.

Okay, down to facts, the number that usaspending.gov gives for Fiscal Year 2009, adding up every category is $1,000,232,810,837. One trillion dollars!!! This sounds like a lot of money, and it is. However, you have to keep in mind that this country has 307,711,711 people (at 12:01 on October 16, 2009 source: census.gov) so that means, to put it in perspective, the government is spending $3,250.55 per every American, (source wikipedia.org) or about the amount a person would have to pay in tuition to go to a community college for one year. (collegeboard.com)

I could stop here and those facts would be good enough, but a trillion bucks is a lot of money! $3,250.55 is still a fair chunk of change! We need to put in perspective how much that is for our country's budget. Let's put it in perspective.... In 2007, which is the last year I can get an official fiscal report for, the averaged amount for the two approximations for spending on the fiscal report, is $2,556,213,000,000. (page #1 or the 27th page on the pdf) To average that with the population of the United States on July 1, 2007, (source census.gov) which was 301,621,157. The $ per capita is $8,474.91. That is more than twice the amount spent in Fiscal Year 2009.

Take these as you will.

United We Stand, Divided we fall. Out of many, one. Let Freedom Ring.

Originally written on October 16, 2009.