Things That Just Piss Me Off

We can spend billions of dollars to pursue the bush war in Iraq, but not on heathcare for children. Our childrens is learning more about bush every day.

Bush Vetoes Child Health Bill Privately
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and CARL HULSE
Published: October 4, 2007

President Bush on Wednesday made good on his promise to veto a bill that would have expanded government health insurance for children. He added, “If they need a little more money to help us meet the objective of getting help for poorer children, I’m more than willing to sit down with the leaders and find a way to do so.”

Awww, he does care, see? He’s willing to give poor children a “little” more money. I guess if those children that need healthcare would sit on the whitehouse doorstep with a little cup, he’d put some spare change in there everytime. Such a compassionate guy.

The veto, only the fourth of Mr. Bush’s presidency, is a politically difficult one for the president, and he issued it in private Wednesday morning, without the fanfare and White House ceremonies he has employed when rejecting embryonic stem cell legislation and an emergency war spending bill that set a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Yes, he hoped the public won’t even notice that he would rather spend more money in Iraq than he does on the needs of children here in the US.

Still, he sounded a bit uneasy. “My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions,” Mr. Bush said, adding that he had come to “explain the philosophy behind some of the decisions I’ve made.”

Your job is a decision making job so you make a lot of decisions. We are so glad you explained that Mr. President. Thank you from all of us hicks out here that didn’t understand that a decision making job would require you to make a lot of decisions. Bush does this a lot. He’ll say that Iraq was a state sponsor of terriorism, then say, in other words, they sponsored terrorism. He is trying to be helpful because he just knows we cannot understand him when he says it only once.

The last part of the quote above is really fascinating. Bush explaining the “philosophy” of anything. I just want him to spell philosophy once.

A lot of people do not understand the conflicts earley legislators had in this country. Those conflicts defined what this country was to be. The main conflict was Federalism vs States Rights.

Regardless of what people “think” the civil war was about, it was also about States Rights vs Federalism.

The early federalists believed that the federal government should make all the laws and decisions and that the states would just follow. The other side of the conflict believed each state had the right to make it’s own laws.

Remember, before the colonies joined together to form the country, each was a colony and they created their own laws. Before some states would join the US, they made sure their rights to make their own laws were protected.

There are certain laws that only the federal government can or should make. The rest of the laws should be decided by the voters of each state. Nevada wants to legalize gambling, but other states do not. That is a good example of how state laws differe and how state laws can supercede federal laws. There is no federal law legalizing gambling, but the state of Nevada legalized it anyway.

In California, they legalized medicinal marijuana. The federal government disagrees and has made marijuana illegal. Despite actions by John ASScroft when he was attorney general, the state still has the legal right to pass a law that legalizes medicinal marijuana. The voters voted for it. Done deal and their right to do so.

That brings us to the death penalty. Each state voted whether or not to reinstate the death penalty. The voters in each state voted. Many voted to have the death penalty, some did not. Texas voters decided to use the death penalty.

Now the supreme court, representing the federal government has stayed an execution to “examine” one method used in the execution of prisoners, lethal injection.

That is their right to do so. They can and should examine different methods used in executions.

That does not supercede the right of the state to continue to use those methods in implementing the death penalty. The fact that other state have halted their executions until they find out what the supreme court says about lethal injection does not supercede the right of Texas to continue.

They made their decision and Texas has made their decision. Perfectly ok if you believe that states have the right to make their own laws.

Texas Planning New Execution Despite Ruling
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: September 29, 2007

HOUSTON, Sept. 28 — A day after the United States Supreme Court halted an execution in Texas at the last minute, Texas officials made clear on Friday that they would nonetheless proceed with more executions in coming months, including one next week.

Though several other states are halting lethal injections until it is clear whether they are constitutional, Texas is taking a different course, risking a confrontation with the court.

Several legal experts said the Supreme Court reprieve would be seen by most states as a signal to halt all executions until the court determined, probably some time next year, whether the current chemical formulation used for lethal injections amounts to cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Eighth Amendment.

Texas, which has a history of confrontations with the Supreme Court over its prerogatives in criminal justice, does not appear interested in waiting. That forces lawyers for condemned prisoners to appeal each case as high as the Supreme Court.

The current challenge to the death penalty is on a much less fundamental level. Even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the two Kentucky inmates who brought the challenge to lethal injection, the result will not be to overturn any death sentences, but rather, at the most, to require a different method to carry them out.

It doesn’t even matter whether you are for or against the death penalty. It does not matter if you are for or against gambling. The voters in each state have the right to vote for what they believe.

It’s called democracy. The voters of Texas voted to have the death penalty. The death penalty is being used at the voter’s request. The fact that Texas is continuing to use a legal method of execution for prisoners means they are upholding what the voters told them to do.

If you live in a state that has the death penalty and you do not believe it’s right, then use the democratic process to get it voted down. Again, it’s called the democratic process.

But instead, we have people who whine about laws that get passed when they are of the minority opinion. They whine and they protest. Freedom of speech is a good thing. Trying to get a law you do not believe in voted down is part of the democratic process.

So I don’t blame critics for being outspoken. I don’t blame those who believe the death penalty is wrong for speaking out. As for the whining part. I can do without that.

Privacy Advocates are going to love this one. Skype is justy named as a possible partner for voice recognition software that listens in to your VOIP calls and displays ads relative to the words you say.

New service eavesdrops on Internet calls
Software monitors calls, displays computer ads based on subjects spoken

NEW YORK - A startup has come up with a new way to make money from phone calls connected via the Internet: having software listen to the calls, then displaying ads on the callers’ computer screens based on what’s being talked about.

For instance, a caller talking about going for dinner might see ads to local restaurants and restaurant review sites, while someone pondering whether to buy a new computer might see ads for computer stores. Relevant unsponsored links also appear.

Will the next step be trying to eliminate the search engines like Google by letting you say a word into your computer and have relevant websites popup based on what you said?

It’s coming. Likely Google will beat others to the punch on it though. They are in a great postion to deliver results from speech recognition. In 1998 I had a coder make me an application to do just exactly that.

We created a database of words and associated those words with urls. Whenever I would say a specific word, my computer would tap the online database and go to the correct url.

So if we were able to do this crude system in 1998, then surely Google has this coming out for us soon with all the improvements to speech recognition software.

Because we depend on fossil fuels so much, many put the need for more fossil fuels way ahead of alternatives. Ford, other car companies, and the oil companies killed the electric car and have suppressed other efforts to get us off of fossil fuels.

It’s all about bottom lines. When oil companies can monopolize alternative fuels, we will get alternative fuels. What the US government and the oil companies conspire to do is to make sure no one comes out with an alternative that might effectively put the oil companies out of business. They do not want any shift of power to happen.

In a free market society, if you build a better mousetrap that makes the other guy’s product obsolete, then you win the market share. That’s a true free market. The US has no free market. The Fed determines interest rates, which determines stock prices and both affect the value of the US Dollar. That is not a free market by very definition.

Proppping up failing companies is also anti-free market. If you go bankrupt, no matter who you are, you should be allowed to go bankrupt, regardless of how that affects investors or owners of those businesses.

Ahhh, but here’s the rub. Those failing companies contribute a lot of money to the campaigns of politicians that can vote to bail them out when they get into trouble. A free market means you are also free to fail, opening the door for another entrepreneur to grab their market share. That is free enterprise.

The only people that get hurt by the current situation is the small business person who has a better idea and a better product for consumers. They start beating the big guy, the government runs in and bails the big guy out so he can stay ahead of you. Maybe there should be a law that says that if the government spends money to bail a company out, they must also give the same amount of money to all their competitors. That might limit the number of times we do this.

Back to the coal thing. Because of our dependence on coal, mine owners are willing to do whatever it takes to get more coal and make more profit, including drilling so close to fault lines that there is bound to be a collapse. Every day without a collapse is pure luck. Then when there is a collapse, the owners tell us all how well they are following regulations and how much they are doing to rescue the miners.

Here’s a good example of such a mine and mine owner from the NYTimes

Panel to Consider Stronger Regulation of Utah Mines
By DAN FROSCH
Published: September 25, 2007

The commission, created by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. after last month’s collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine, is expected to hear testimony from mine operators and those who live in the tight-knit surrounding towns, many of them coal miners whose relatives have toiled underground for generations.

So in other words, the panel will hear from mine owners and those that work for them and depend on the mines to make a living. It’s like convening a panel to look into how the Iraq War is doing and appointing the guy in charge of the Iraq war to be in charge of the investigation into the Iraq War. Wait . . . they did do that.

At first glance it looks like they are giving miners a say in how things will be regulated. But their bosses will be there. Their living depends on keeping their job. They are not going up against the mine owners and will say basically what they have been told to say and the government will once again have an excuse for not doing anything.

Do you think children should be allowed to vote on what laws we pass to protect children? The regulating organizations need to do the regulating and stop asking the mine owners for their opinions. If the mine operators cannot produce enough coal, then we will be forced to find alternatives. WIN WIN.

Mr. Huntsman expressed frustration at the federal mine agency’s handling of the disaster and the process by which the Murray Energy Corporation, the mine’s co-owner, received approval to conduct retreat mining at Crandall Canyon. The procedure involves shearing thick pillars of coal and is often considered risky.

A report issued in February by the House Committee on Education and Labor concluded that the agency was too slow to address risks laid out by the Miner Act and to approve two-way, wireless communication systems that would allow miners and rescue workers to stay in touch when something went wrong underground.

According to the Miner Act, the federal agency must create regulations for the installation of the systems by 2009, but agency officials say they have not found a communications device durable enough to function in the extreme environment of a coal mine.

We can get private companies to build a spaceship capable of leaving the earth’s atmosphere without blowing up, but we can’t get anyone to build a better walkie talkie?

It’s excuses like this that let’s you know that politicians are not going to do anything that might hurt the mine operators that contribute to their campaigns.

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