Friday, January 30, 2009

The Super Partisan Administration

For all his talk about reaching across the aisle, inviting republicans and democrats over to watch the big game, he sure knows how to drive a wedge down the middle of the country.

Rush Limbaugh is the single most widely heard representation of conservative thought. Attacking him will buy Obama nothing but hate from a whole lot of people.

I don't listen to Rush, I'm more of a Glenn Beck man myself. There are lots and lots of people who do though, and they feel like Rush is the only person giving them a voice. Attacking Rush is attacking those voting citizens as well.

Obama's first piece of legislature was one of the most divided votes you can get. Not one single Republican voted for this economic stimulus plan, it's not only because it does not make sense, is chock full of pork, and just plain stupid. No, Obama also had to attack the Republicans constituents as well, ensuring he wouldn't get any republican votes.

I thought he was supposed to be smarter than this. Maybe Obama is getting a kick back from Limbaugh for all of the extra advertising.

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Monday, January 26, 2009

Obama's anti-economy pro-environment thoughts

I don't give credence to the idea that we are in a financial crises. I think the term crisis should be reserved for things that are actually, you know, a crises. Let's pretend for this post that our economy does need emergency saving, and that the gov't should intervene.

Obama wants to crack down on auto exhaust. Not a bad idea. However he wants to do it by forcing stricter emissions laws on auto makers. Bad idea.

Let's say you're shopping for a new (used, whatever) car. You narrow your choice to two that are near identical, even in price, except that one has much better gas mileage. which one would you purchase? See, that's how a free market works. You're making a choice for the better product.

On the flip side, what enforced vehicle improvements tend to do is make the car itself so much more expensive that it grossly outweighs the benefits of fuel effeciency. These cars often take more expensive or hazardous (those batteries in the hybrids) materials to make. Costing more in energy and polution to manufacture than they save in emissions.

More expensive vehicles will hurt the middle to lower class in the long run, but what do the elitists on the hill care about us little people anyway. Right now Obama should be looking at ways to cut costs on things that the common Joe needs, not make them more expensive...the economy and all.

So far new administration continues to fail at grasping the big picture.

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Lobbying should be illegal

Expect to see many comments from me about Obama. Due to many stooooopid choices already, I expect these comments to be mostly negative. For instance, the retard Obama has for a VP already stuck his foot in his mouth, with regards to the oath swearing mess up. It's too easy to take shots at Biden, because he may be the worst VP in decades upon decades upon decades.

Today though, I'm going to praise one of the very first things Obama has done. Day one Obama set down strict rules regarding lobbyist. Obama has agreed with me that it doesn't go far enough, but it's a good start.

Quite frankly, lobbying should be illegal. Corporations that contract to the gov't have strict guidelines regarding interaction with gov't officials. For instance we don't even give them a ride in our car anywhere, because it could be viewed as a gift. Lobbyists aren't held to the same standard for some reason, and I can't figure out why.

Good job Obama. Instead of shutting down Gitmo, maybe you should send the lobbyists there.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Welcome to the Obama three ring circus

An historic event! Never in history have we ever seen such a thing! What a landmark occasion!

Never before have we given the red button to a man with such a temper problem.

Never before has a president-elect managed to spend 1 trillion dollars before even being sworn in.

Never before has a president been a Muslim. That might not be a bad thing, if there wasn't a war going on. It would have been just as awkward to elect a German (nazi or not) during World War II. He would never admit that he converted to Christianity as a condition before marrying his wife. He'd also never admit that his choice of wife was provided to him as a condition to get in the good graces of the Chicago underbelly.

When was the last time we had a president with such a highly addictive personality?

Not since the founding fathers has this country been led by someone who may not have been born in the United States. Obama might be a Chinese gymnast for all we know.

Some things are not firsts though. A lot of the Obama cabinet is Clinton's cabinet. Oh goodie gumdrops. Worst of all we have Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. Now that's a good idea, the same people that let Bin Laden go so that he could orchestrate 9/11 are in charge of foreign affairs again.

Have we ever had a Treasury Secretary who "forgot" to pay his taxes before? That might be a first too.

Should we talk about the posturing about "change" and kicking out the old political nonesense, then having one of the longest running politicians for VP?

Let's also not discuss his demands that there be no more pork barrel politics, even though gratuitus pork for his home is what got him the support he enjoys today.

If I disappear in the next 4 years, you'll know it's because I was excercising freedom of speech and that just isn't done any more.

Don't blame me. I voted Libertarian.

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Thursday, January 15, 2009

One way WoW went wrong

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Body Worlds

Andrea got tickets to Body Worlds for Christmas so we went out on a date last night to dinner and the exhibit. For those unfamiliar, this is the exhibit where there is a bunch of bodies and body parts, all dipped in plastic and put on display. The bodies themselves are in various states of dissection, most with no skin. They are posed in really neat positions sometimes cut in slices and internal organs moved to the outside. Andrea's a Dr. so that is all really neat to her. I even thought it was pretty cool. So, the exhibit itself was worth going to, but the experience as a whole was horrid.

There was no where to park. The underground lot for the exhibit was full. The side street spaces were all occupied. By luck we came across one being vacated, so having gotten to the location 30 minutes early was a good thing, because it took half that to find a parking space.

Once inside we were directed to the basement to wait in line with all of the other pre-paid ticket holders. Yes ALL of them. There must have been a few hundred people down there in a long and winding line. All of them had the time of 7:00 PM marked on their ticket.

For what kinds of things do you have a tickets that have a specific time? Anything in a theater, auditorium, arena, and the like, right? For what is essentially an art exhibit? That seemed odd. You go through at your own pace. You spend more time at the things you want and less at the things that don't interest you. So having a time on an exhibit that is open 24 hours must be to regulate how many people are there at one time, so that everyone gets the experience they are paying for. In this case it was about $30 a person, so you'd expect a fairly personal experience.

It's not like this is their first time at the rodeo. This is Body Worlds 3. That means there was a 1 and 2 before it. Utah is not the first stop on the tour either. There is plenty of experience to have a really good idea of how many tickets to sell for each half-hour block. Instead of rubbing a couple of braincells together and making the whole experience a nice one...for $30 a person...did I mention that already (In our case it was a very nice Christmas present, but I can be irritated for other people)?

After our wait downstairs we got to go back up to the main floor, where there was another line with at least 3 times as many people. After that line we went upstairs, where there was another line. This one probably only had about 100 people in it, so we're nearing the end.

TWO HOURS from the time we got there, we are having our tickets scanned. The lady says "If there is a lot of people at one exhibit just go on to the next and come back later. There will be no more lines after this point." Right after the turn stile, we find ourselves in another line! This one, to pick up our prepaid audio guide (Really cool device that tells us extra stuff about each of the things we see).

The stuff we saw was cool, but at each display there was at least half a dozen other people crowded around it. We spent about an hour in the show itself, with us taking our own sweet time, which seemed reasonable to me. Only 650 people were allowed in the show at once, which seems high for how much space there was. Not everyone had the audio gadgets, so most only paid $25 a person. If everyone else averaged about the same amount of time as us, that's over $16,000 an hour. Due to mismanagement they must have been selling more than 650 tickets for each hour block, so that's even more money their racking in. Even if they were only open and that busy for 5 hours a day (I know that it was packed for at least the 3 hours I was there), that's $80,000 per day...PER DAY! I think for that kind of money they could cut back the number of tickets per hour, and not make us wait for so long.

So for a final grading. The exhibit was easily an 8 out of 10.
The people running it and everyone involved get a -1 out of 10...If I found whoever was in charge in a dark alley, I'd be awfully tempted to make him/her look just like the displays.

Monday, January 05, 2009

2008 National College Football Champions: University of Utah

Just like in 2004 when Utah was the undefeated National Champions. They've repeated it again this year as the undisputable, undefeated National College Football Champions. Congratulations Utah!

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