03 April 2008

New content update

Short blog post today...

1. Megane 6.7 and I have put the finishing touches on another MSTing, "Loki Unties the Wolf." By all means, check out the link and feel free to tell us what you think either by email or even commenting here on the blog. Thanks in advance!

2. In more updating news, Megane 6.7 has also updated the Quick and Dirty Rifftrax Reviews with the more recent Rifftrax coming along.

Thanks again for your support and attention, and happy reading!
--Zoogz

07 March 2008

The ultimate compromise:

More political musings from your friendly webmaster, so feel free to ignore if you don't care much about politics.

The Democratic nomination race enters its umpteenth week. It's nuts and crazy how many people are getting bent out of shape in this process, which is an absolute shame. My own position is a fairly simple one. Barack Obama first, John McCain second, Hillary Clinton last. This is because I admire Obama's policies and his experiences and feel that he is the best representative of the people that we could hope for as President. The second part is not so much an endorsement of McCain, but a repudiation of Hillary Clinton; I feel that she is a liar, that her character is such that she will continue to issue promise after promise and not follow through, and that she will not only continue the current "money for influence" politics that already happen in Washington, that they will only get worse and far harder to stop.

I would not be surprised if there are Clinton backers in the audience right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are unhappy with my opinions. I'm seriously not here to try to convert anyone to my position today, but to extend an olive leaf (much like I would believe Obama would if it was a possibility). After all, Obama's and Clinton's stated policies are rather the same. And unfortuntately, one of the two has to win -- and that is the problem. I hear more and more that Clinton supporters do not want to vote for Obama just like I wouldn't want to vote for Clinton.

So, how about a compromise -- John Edwards for President?

Compromise candidates used to happen all of the time. Just take a gander at conventions which happened before 1950. The primary process is a process that was created to give citizens a more-balanced say in what happens, but ultimately we are dealing with what is a private organization, the Democratic Party, who makes their own rules and everything.

Edwards has already attempted to run earlier anyway. He has many of the same policies that Obama and Hillary has. And if what I'm hearing is correct, that race and gender do not matter, then I can't imagine that his race or gender should matter either.

There's just been too many bridges burnt in this process. Clinton has alienated many Obama supporters by saying that they "don't matter" and Obama has certainly raised questions about his ability to lead and his experience to Clinton's supporters. I would not be surprised to see that both candidates have passed through the point of no return, especially with a Republican candidate that has shown his ability to capture Independent voters.

While Edwards would be my first choice, especially since he was running a modestly successful campaign, there's always Richardson, or Biden, or other Democrats that the compromise could settle on. While I understand it would likely be a disappointment to the hardcore partisans of either candidate, both candidates would probably feel that they have to bow to the party in this way (as the Democratic Party still provides access and other needed services) and it would reestablish the Party's ability to control what is going on and not have it completely ripped apart in the process.

Ultimately, compromise has to happen though; one set of people have to compromise whether they want to or not. It should not be this way. Hillary's supporters should be able to point to specific parts of her platform that they feel is important, Obama's can do the same, and the compromise candidate can be rid of the baggage of the last four months of hard-core campaigning, attacks, and other needless and unnecessary shenanigans that have happened in the Democratic primaries and caucuses.

In summation: Edwards for Democratic President 2008!

06 March 2008

Deepening Winter Doldrums

In March... yeah, I know.

I'm sure that many other people have had these kinds of stretches, but I'm pretty much in the middle of the doldrums right now, mostly because I'm feelin' a lot like Charlie Brown looking at the football.

I won't go into a whole lot of details at present, but suffice it to say that lately, any news I've had has been bad. I've had a close relative pass recently, seen opportunities go without having any power to influence them positively, computer problems, and work has become a quagmire where I'm getting assigned a completely new process that's so unknown that I may or may not be legally liable for mistakes I (or OTHERS) may make, much less dealing with coworkers who seem to want nothing more than to throw me under the bus.

It's been depressing to say the least. The football is right there, but I haven't kicked it in the longest time and at some point, the question starts... is that damn football even kickable?

The worst part is that I have had time off of work recently. Ordinarily, that's a good thing, but it seems like all this time that I've been taking off has helped only minimally. And considering how days off are are a precious resource that is finite, it kind of makes me feel as if I've failed even that.

Failure, especially on a wide-ranging scale, sucks. It certainly humbles a person quite a bit. It's times like this that a vacation seems warranted, but without any money to do so and a winter that doesn't want to end, I can't imagine where the hell to go for it. Anyone got a closet to hide in for about seven days or so? Or some spare optimism to send?

Latest MSTing is still coming along, and work continues. Still no official timeline, but we certainly seem close enough that saying "by the end of March" wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination.

26 February 2008

New Update - completely politics- and opinion-free!

Hey again folks,

Megane 6.7 and I have another MSTing going at a pretty good clip. We have just completed the first draft riffthrough and will be editing for the next little bit.

There's not exactly a timeframe plotted for release, but it's certainly sooner than it was three months ago.

It seems like it'll be a pretty good MSTing. Dammit... just gave an opinion. Oh well, vote Dan Grice, Green Party, for MP for the Vancouver Quadra riding's by-election!

As always, your completely-biased blogger,
---"Z"

15 February 2008

Political Musings for Mid-February:

This is a blog, thankfully, and therefore is a biased collection of opinions and rants from me as well as opinions from my cohort. As such, you get to listen to yet another one of my rants, in which I take an article and pretty much skewer it.

The full article is here


___

February 15, 2008
Obama's Gloomy Big-Government Vision
By Lawrence Kudlow

Senator Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he's aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation's rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing -- exactly what the nation and the stock market doesn't want to hear.

We don't? By all means, continue.

Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He wants to expand health insurance by roughly $65 billion. He wants to "reopen" trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to raise the barriers to free trade. He intends to regulate the profits for drug companies, health insurers, and energy firms. He wants to establish a mortgage-interest tax credit. He wants to double the number of workers receiving the earned-income tax credit (EITC) and triple the EITC benefit for minimum-wage workers.

The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion. And tax hikes on the rich won't pay for it. It's the middle class that will ultimately shoulder this fiscal burden in terms of higher taxes and lower growth.

The middle class? I'd love to see the proof behind this, especially when other reputable authors (David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal, book, published 2005) tell me that the richest 1% of the country has seen their income rise by 558% since 1970 while the poorest 90% have received a NEGATIVE increase, or otherwise known as a DECREASE, of 0.1% since 1970.

For someone who is trying to decry class warfare here, it sounds an awful lot like you're playing the same game... proof?


This isn't free enterprise. It's old-fashioned-liberal tax, and spend, and regulate. It's plain ol' big government. The only people who will benefit are the central planners in Washington.

Oh, no proof, got it. Just the same generalities you're already decrying Obama for.

Obama would like voters to believe that he's the second coming of JFK. But with his unbelievable spending and new-government-agency proposals he's looking more and more like Jimmy Carter. His is a "Grow the Government Bureaucracy Plan," and it's totally at odds with investment and business.

You'd better believe it! Eight years of Reagan, four of Bush 1, eight of Clinton's pro-business regime, and eight more of Bush 2 have certainly shown the efficacy of free markets in regulating themselves and making sure that people are paid equitably for their work.

Obama says he wants U.S. corporations to stop "shipping jobs overseas" and bring their cash back home. But if he really wanted U.S. companies to keep more of their profits in the states he'd be calling for a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Why isn't he demanding an end to the double-taxation of corporate earnings? It's simple: He wants higher taxes, too.

Compared to the double-taxing of Social Security and income tax on my paltry check? Guess who's more likely to keep the money inside the nation, Einstein.

The Wall Street Journal's Steve Moore has done the math on Obama's tax plan. He says it will add up to a 39.6 percent personal income tax, a 52.2 percent combined income and payroll tax, a 28 percent capital-gains tax, a 39.6 percent dividends tax, and a 55 percent estate tax.

Based on WHAT? This is disingenuous at best. What number are we starting with? $10,000 yearly? $1,000,000 yearly? Big difference between those two numbers.

Besides, I'm fairly sure the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper marketed to high-echelon earners, will attempt to introduce bias into reporting policies that may be designed to cut into the discretionary income of such earners, which may impact their ability to continue to buy... the Wall Street Journal.

(Side note. Dammit, I will come out and tell you, I am biased. It's too bad that media outlets won't.)


Not only is Obama the big-spending candidate, he's also the very-high-tax candidate. And what he wants to tax is capital.

'Cause you can't tax dreams, I'd assume.

Doesn't Obama understand the vital role of capital formation in creating businesses and jobs? Doesn't he understand that without capital, businesses can't expand their operations and hire more workers?

Doesn't Obama understand that without money to pay CEOs more that the American worker can't possibly keep food on the table and buy more from other corporations to keep them in business? Wait up here...

As a serious side-note, why can't reputable economists understand that when the pyramid is too top-heavy, when there is not a base (of taxpayers to keep police and courts, of consumers to keep markets alive) that the earning will come to an end? If Wal*Mart can't sell another Chinese toy, who will get hurt ultimately? Wal*Mart's CEO. Of course, that will be because he and all other CEOs have driven the rest of the American people into subterranean catacombs where their only company is other poor people.


Dan Henninger, writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, notes that Obama's is a profoundly pessimistic message. "Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar," writes Henninger. "It's a downer."

Because this country IS in trouble! Can't you see this? Get out of New York, where the wealth of a nation accumulates, and check out the freaking countryside. There's a good fricking reason that they call the Midwest "The Rust Belt", because people decided to STOP INVESTING IN IT. And when GM buys out another 74,000 workers, these people can't buy the fricking Wall Street Journal anymore either. (Though I'm sure Richard Wagoner still buys his WSJ, and the $8.5 base salary he enjoys is certainly based on the number of cars he personally manufactures...)

Obama wants you to believe that America is in trouble, and that it can only be cured with a big lurch to the left. Take from the rich and give to the non-rich. Redistribute income and wealth. It's an age-old recipe for economic disaster. It completely ignores incentives for entrepreneurs, small family-owned businesses, and investors. You can't have capitalism without capital. But Obama would penalize capital, be it capital from corporations or investors. This will only harm, and not advance, opportunities for middle-class workers.

Until of course they utilize government-backed unemployment insurance... which will show them that they need to get back to work. But because companies are too busy trying to outsource and offshore their labor pools, said worker will probably have to go into business for himself. Maybe by taking out a loan from the Small Business Administration, backed by the federal government. And go into business for himself, and prove that it can happen in the U.S. Just a scenario, I'm sure.

And again, note language. The people victimized are "small family-owned businesses" -- like, oh, the Hilton hotels or, maybe, Wal*Mart -- entrepreneurs, and investors. "Investors", by the way, also includes people like George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Donald Trump... the poor people who will get "hurt" by Obama's policies. Won't you buy The Donald a cheeseburger when he comes to clean your windshield after Obama's elected? It's only the nice thing to do.


Obama believes he can use government, and not free markets, to drive the economy. But on taxes, trade, and regulation, Obama's program is anti-growth. A President Obama would steer us in the social-market direction of Western Europe, which has produced only stagnant economies down through the years. It would be quite an irony.

Hey, moron... should I show you a chart of the growth of the Euro currency compared to the U.S. dollar? These economies are just fine, and they do a far better job of making sure that everyone benefits from the work that is done, rather than just a select few.

By the way, using the government to regulate the free market is a damn good idea. I hope that it happens again in my lifetime.


While newly emerging nations in Eastern Europe and Asia are lowering the tax penalties on capital -- and reaping the economic rewards -- Obama would raise them. Low-rate flat-tax plans are proliferating around the world. Yet Obama completely ignores this. American competitiveness would suffer enormously under Obama, as would job opportunities, productivity, and real wages.

And flat-tax plans are REGRESSIVE. Especially with the way that the loopholes are developed in this nation. Some rich guy can claim depreciation at the same time as claiming income, and the resulting amount he has to pay on is zero because he can afford a lawyer, while the IRS keeps a damn good eye on me because I can't fudge my wage earnings report, especially with my employer reporting this information to them.

There's a reason that tax plans should be progressive. If someone makes $1M a year and gets taxed 50%, that means that they still take home $500,000, which is a livable wage. If I make $30,000 yearly and get taxed 50%, I get $15,000 after tax, barely even enough to make a house payment.

Besides, said millionaire is probably using more services than I am anyway. I'm sure that the millionaire is using the court system to make any challenges others have to his/her weatlh moot, utilizing airport and airplanes far more, (ship-)port facilities and the international waters... the highway system, the police, and generally leaving a far larger imprint on society that requires money to keep going.


Imitate the failures of Germany, Norway, and Sweden? That's no way to run economic policy.

I'd LOVE to imitate the "failures" of any one of those nations right now.

I have so far been soft on Obama this election season. In many respects he is a breath of fresh air. He's an attractive candidate with an appealing approach to politics. Obama is likeable, and sometimes he gets it -- such as when he opposed Hillary Clinton's five-year rate-freeze on mortgages.

But his message is pessimism, not hope. And behind the charm and charisma is a big-government bureaucrat who would take us down the wrong economic road.

Because the road we've been driving down, where companies are allowed to merge and screw their workers (too numerous to count), allowed to misreport numbers and screw their workers (Enron, Tyco, etc), allowed to trade freely with other countries to export jobs from this country and utilize sweatshop labor and screw workers (Nike, Wal*Mart), write nasty open-ended contracts which allow only themselves to set rates at the detriment to all other people (credit-card issuers like Bank of America, Chase, and Discover/Novus), and sell bad loans which threaten people's houses (Countrywide et al), should all be celebrated under the grand and bold heading "the freedom of the market". It's got "Freedom" in it! Celebrate it!!

Dammit, if there was ever an economy which needed to be brought into regulation and conformity, it's ours. It's amazing that big business can try to streamline as much as they want to, which may end up making workers irrevelant as they attempt to squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of the money they invest, but if the people of a country try to streamline their markets as well as the controls and methods that companies use, this is immediately "immoral" and "Communist". That's odd, because the money that I send to the U.S. government is often used on such things as "corporate welfare", which lets companies like Exxon post *billion* dollar profits. Can't I have a say about the productivity of Exxon on my economy and government? I'm investing in it, dammit!


Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.

What a bleeding surprise... he has a reason to be completely biased too, because if rich people don't get to keep their absurdly low 15% capital gains tax, which they routinely GET AROUND ANYWAY, they won't have the time or patience to read a blog from an advisor to what's become a failed economic system.

There's a reason that the 90s did so great. The market hummed along terrifically because money was getting reinvested all over the place. It was, technically, wealth redistribution, with all the Internet startups, and the wealth redistribution allowed American workers to earn more money. Not coincidentally, when the American workers have more money to work with, our country is far better off because happy and productive workers produce more. (What a concept.)

Now? We have wealth concentrating into so few hands that the rest of the country is absolutely hurting.

Hey, Corporate America! The citizens of the US are kind of like stocks... if you INVEST in them, they can give you a BETTER RETURN on your investment! Try it out someday!

Yeah, I'm pissy. This may become a regular feature given time and more outlandish statements from known idiots.

As is, vote Obama. Please. Let's *relearn* the lesson we needed in the 1930s, that when the government lets the markets run free that they usually end up hurting everyone involved.

31 January 2008

Corporate Control versus Job Satisfaction.

Today's post examines the overriding need that people have to control and dominate others, just because they can. Of course, this is going to be a pretty minimal issue to most people in the world, but the whole reason I am bringing it up is because it should be a non-issue. Yet, this issue is not, and is one more way that society in America stinks.

I work for nine hours a day (not receiving an "official" lunch period, nor breaktimes) and am salaried. While I do not have a wide swing of hours and usually do not stay late, my schedule and traffic demands that I have to leave at 6:30 and usually do not return until about 18:30, which means I am devoting half of every weekday to either getting to work or working.

To expedite my time at work, I have a small appliance which I use regularly to warm food. This apparatus gets warm, but has safety features which include automatic shutoff and the fact that it does not get above 120 degrees Celsius (not even warm enough to burn paper). I can warm my food while at the same time working, and once the food is warmed I can eat and keep working.

Until today. Today is the day that I find out that I cannot keep appliances at my desk. My manager was so gleeful about this issue, that he sent a message essentially singling me out and included extremely snide statements. I am an adult, and do not need snide statements. I do not need to be singled out. And most of all, it would be nice to think that my company trusts me enough to do what I think is right.

And most of all, it seems almost senseless. Why? Why do you even care what consenting adults are doing in their cubicles? There was no reason in the email, of course. I would not be surprised in the least if management is doing this just because they can. This same manager has shown unacceptance of my preferred arrangement before, which leads me to believe that he is the one who not only reported it to others but has attempted to show that I shouldn't be allowed to do it.

Part of the reason that I bring food to prepare at my cubicle is because I'm not well-off; typically, I can make a lunch for myself for roughly $0.15 per day, especially if I get to keep my appliance. My pay scale, and the payments that others demand from me daily (credit cards and their cheating ways?) pretty much mandate that I either go hungry or find a way to eat super-cheap.

Now, I have to waste time at home, when I spend about three hours awake (not even counting out time preparing for work) compared to the fact that I could be doing the same thing at work.

Not to mention, this is a company that does not even care about the big stuff. We have two tools that we use on a rather consistent basis, both computer network tools. One is an online tracking program in Internet Explorer, and another is a terminal service which connects to many diverse databases. Both work intermittently at best. If there was an issue here at this company, it would be that these programs are costing far more time than worrying about small appliances ever would.

The difference? It costs money. No mention of the fact of how much time is wasted (times the amount that these people get paid), but fixing real problems around here, which is what these guys are paid for, costs more money. Besides, that way you can argue that the workers don't actually do a lot of work and therefore aren't entitled to a raise which even comes close to the cost of inflation -- BigConGlomCoInc. made $3,000,000,000 of profit in 2007, but my raise, a whopping 1.3 percent, didn't even break into the first freaking comma of that rather huge number.

This is petulant whining. You're exactly right. This situation is also symptomatic of what is happening in corporate America, where new ideas are bad, adults are treated as children, and rights are taken away from workers just because management wants to flex their muscles, and workers are pretty much told, "You'd better get on your hands and knees and thank us you have a job."

I sincerely wish that people would just grow up sometimes. This is silly, asinine, and stupid. I freely admit it, and apologize for even taking your time too. My biggest issue here is that there is absolutely no give-and-take, there's just take. I'm really tired of it, especially at BigConGlomCoInc. As written on this blog before, I'm still searching for a job. While things have at least started turning a bit better for me recently, even if I am looking for jobs in the most-repressed place in the United States, I still haven't found the magic combination to get me the hell out.

I know for a fact that this current job will not even be long-term anymore. I am still having the internal debate with myself... do I air the dirty laundry when I leave, or do I try to stay on good terms? Issues like this test my patience to the extreme -- not because they are major issues, but because this is yet another box on the back of the mule. I've never left a job on bad terms before and don't want to start now. On top of that, in other circumstances I would probably be good friends with my manager. But since I'm being treated like this, repeatedly, I really feel that he should know the exact effect all these things has.

Day 158 has passed in the current search-for-a-new-job. I pray on a daily basis that things get better. I don't feel like being around when we have to pay for our own water too.


tl;dr: Corporate America sucks, controls people for the fun of it, and it's because they are run by people who feel the need and the absolute right to control your very lives instead of actually being useful. Coincidentally, put-upon people get tired of it and rant about it on lightly-read blogs.

Eff you, Corporate America.

24 January 2008

A new feature for this blog....

which will probably open me up to non-interest, bickering, non-agreeance, and the possible alienation of many (any) fans...

It's time for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election!

Today's installment is actually three miniature rants designed to get a few things off my chest. Nothing more, nothing less... please feel free to contribute to the (lack of) noise if you agree or disagree.

1) Media involvement in elections.

This is really troubling, for many reasons. There have been many debates already presented in this election cycle for the candidates, but I have a couple comments about debates which have already happened.

Firstly, the Nevada debates... why was Dennis Kucinich disinvited? According to NBC, he hadn't received enough support. Well, it seems more and more clear to me that a candidate's visibility *in the press* is what dictates whether or not people will support them. Kucinich was actually invited to this debate to begin with, but NBC pulled the invite at the eleventh hour.

The one fascinating thing I find about our political process is that the support that a candidate could get can certainly influence the remaining candidates into accepting planks of their platform. Unfortunately, the way that the media is now increasingly shutting out other voices and only broadcasting one or two. I cannot quite tell if this is a cost-cutting decision, a matter of laziness, or if these mass-media outlets are deliberately trying to control the message, but it is reprehensible in all three cases considering the public is supposed to be served by these companies.

John Edwards is now running into the same issue. The Democrats do seem to have similar messages, and if Edwards had a different message that was head-and-shoulders above the other candidates, he may have a better chance to get more media time. On the other hand, it seems rather apparent that the media is following Obama and the Clintons and shutting Edwards out, despite the simliarity of all of their messages. It's a mighty shame... clearly, this man is still garnering some support, and he should still be able to broadcast his message. But because the media has decided he is not the story anymore, they've refused to cover him as extensively.

I can hear the conservatives now... "No, their job is to make money!" You're entitled to that opinion, but the FCC has also charged the media with informing the public as well... this is why they are allowed to use the public airwaves. Maybe additional, and better, coverage would be in the media's best interests too, as only through multiple voices can this country be governed best?

And don't worry, Republicans, I didn't forget you too. I remember reading in the Detroit Free Press that the editorial staff has endorsed a candidate... John McCain. That's fine, I suppose, but I wonder... does anyone else see this as a rather egregious conflict of interest? I understand that the editorial page is supposed to be separate from the news page and that the editorial page is the only place where opinions can be printed. On the other hand, if the editors are specifically backing one candidate, does that mean that the rest of the paper skews in that direction too? Would it not be better to say, "Editor Smith, from Times Tribune, endorses John McCain" so as to not encompass the whole paper with an opinion?

An unbiased and diligent media is desperately needed in this country, especially after eight years of Bush (and I could even make the argument to add eight years of Clinton plus another four of Bush I.) Unfortunately, we don't seem to have one. Check out this link to read in Kucinich's own words about his exclusion from the Nevada debates. You may scoff at some of his ideas and think that he's talking of conspiracies, but I at least feel that there is some conflict of interest going on.

Which brings us to the next point.

2) Money in Politics.

There's way too much of it. It seems that the only way that candidates get on the air is to buy time, costing a lot of money, or by accepting money from media companies and thereby becoming compromised with regards to their future actions (such as to the FCC). I know that this has been said before, but I sincerely believe that the presidential campaign (and for that matter, many other federal campaigns down to representative) should be run on a public money trust basis.

The FCC has chartered networks and broadcast television as well as radio, and is a ready governor to provide equal time to candidates. The candidates themselves should have an equal opportunity to speak their message, instead of having thousands of dollars drown out others' voices. There are extremely smart people in this world who don't have the money or access to have their words broadcast. While the Internet certainly has changed communications (for the better), this is still an old-fashioned process with regards to media and it will be for a long time to come.

Abuses with money lead me to point 3.

3) Falsehoods and Intentional Misleading.

Dammit, it's "LYING". I hate politicians for bringing the above two words into our lexicon. I rant on one specific cause, but every last candidate seems to be guilty of this.

A radio ad was released in South Carolina prior to the Democratic primary. In this ad, Barack Obama had a quote taken completely out of context and spun to say the absolute opposite of his meaning. I do not subscribe to the thought that all people are morons who readily believe the first thing that they hear, but spreading disinformation is also difficult to overcome.

A personal story; recently, while at a company function, I was taking the last donut from the box and searching for a plate to put it on. Immediately, I was jumped on by a coworker who accused me of being the person who kept leaving empty boxes around the lunchroom. It was as far from the truth as possible; I do try to keep public areas clean, especially in that situation. But because the conclusion was jumped to and the initial falsehood spread, and since it was the first message that other coworkers heard, I was labeled unfairly and had no opportunity to defend myself.

Of course, there is an opposite effect of having blatantly untrue allegations be a detriment... if people saw me as I cleaned the lunchroom, they wouldn't believe what my coworker said and would have thought (rightly so) that she was jumping to conclusions. In this day and age though, when no politician seems to be held accountable for all the campaign statements produced from their headquarters, there is very little risk to having untrue allegations boomerang back to you, and the attack ad still runs strong due to this idiocy. And unfortunately, in the court of public opinion, it is often either the loudest or the first voice which is believed rather than the true voice.

The greater point is this: the American people have been living on a steady diet of lies and falsehoods from the Bush administration. Can we please have a press which challenges our public figures to explain themselves and holds them accountable when this stuff happens instead of just blowing it off? I don't really care if a President decides that they have been looking at the wrong side of an issue one day; people grow and change, and the world at large changes too. But if they cannot have the integrity to make sure that the things they say are true, then I feel very badly for our political process.

I really don't know why I expect anything to change, but on the other hand I don't believe any ever has changed unless someone takes action or at least says something. Cynicism has its place... the front page of this blog's hosting, for instance.... but it took one voice to point out that the emperor had no clothes too.

In other news, Megane and I are in process of working on another MSTing. Hope you guys liked the last one and that you'll like the next!