I'm a Little Confused

OK, I got this in an email from my oldest brother, but I thought it good enough to reprint. I'm sure it's working it's way around the web, congrats to whoever wrote it :).

I'm a little confused...

• I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight..... If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
  
• Growing up in Alaska eating mooseburgers and going aerial shooting for wolves in the winter; a quintessential American story.
  
• If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
  
• Name your kids Willow, Bristol, Trig and Track, you're a maverick. Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
  
• Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
  
• If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, to 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
  
• If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive. If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
  
• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disf igured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian. If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
  
• If ,while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
  
• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
  
• If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Mortgage Mess - Update

Sorry, because my calculator couldn't hand 700,000,000,000 I had to guesstimate and did it wrong. The number in the previous blog isn't 43,0000 times my mortgage, it's 4.3 million times my mortgage. I'm sure this will be a relief to everyone who was concerned that our government is wasting our money.

I should also add that McCain wants to create a big agency to consolidate all the other financial agencies in the country. I'm hoping he didn't get this idea from DHS, since it's well known that DHS is one of the biggest boondoggles in the history of this country and possibly has created an even greater threat to the security of this country than if it was never created. I've been to one of their buildings in DC. They have nice large TV's with video conferencing equipment in EVERY room, they also have very nice stainless steel appliances in their kitchens (I swore the counter top looked marble, but I didn't touch it, didn't want them getting my fingerprints you know). The chairs are also very very nice and comfortable $700 variety. But this is about our government wasting our money on the mortgage issue, not about them wasting our money on office furniture.

Mortgage Mess

Wow can you believe that Bush wants to give Wall Street $700 Billion to bailout the mortgage mess? I'd be OK with this if it weren't for the fact that the people involved with this made millions or more themselves, and this bailout will just put more money in their pockets, my money, money that I can't afford to give them. What we need to be doing is assigning personal responsibility to issues like this. If people get rewarded for good work, then they should get punished for bad work. What's happening at the top echelons of corporate America is that the leaders get rewarded for driving their companies into the ground. This bailout will do nothing but reward these companies and show others that they can get away with murder while lining their pockets.

This financial mess was caused by people who aren't concerned about the country, they aren't concerned about their companies or people, they are only concerned with making as much money for themselves as possible before things go bust. We've seen this in .com, energy and now mortgages, what's next? Why not reward people for a job well done? I'm also not happy that I did everything right, I didn't get tons of money out of my house to buy big TVs or fancy cars, I didn't buy a house that I couldn't possibly afford, but I'm now stuck with part of the bill to pay this off. This payoff will pay for my mortgage over 43,000 times, think about that. If we would have put this to solving Aids or Cancer, would we have done so by now?

Does something need to be done about this? I don't really know. One of my very good friends thinks that we should be hands off. The President obviously believes we should just write this off (he's done that a lot with the cost of money and lives in Iraq). I'm thinking it should probably be somewhere in between. If I was McCain I'd be quaking in my shoes, because I think most Americans will be repulsed by this bailout, and I'm sure the Democrats will pounce on this for political purposes (I also don't like this, the country is suffering, we need people doing the right things for the country, not their party).

OK I said my piece, I think I'll go figure out how I'm going to pay for my mortgage, since the government isn't bailing me out of my responsibilities.

Sam the cat

J.W. Philip Ramsey

Ramblings

OK, it's been a few weeks since I've posted anything here. I'm not sure why I've been so hesitant, well I do, it's because my thoughts are a bit, radical sometimes. I don't try to be radical, it's just that I tend to think without concept of boundaries, I've been told that while some people think outside or inside the box, I don't feel the box really exists, the belief in this "box" provides an instant limiting factor.

It's been interesting to watch the flow of the political season. While I don't like being called a Democrat, for lack of a better term I am one of those. I don't like associating with parties because they instantly want to build a box around you. It's like what my mother told her students at BYU "When I became Mormon, the Elders told me I had to be open minded", one of the students commented back "They forgot to tell you that once you've joined, you need to close your mind again". Mom was fairly radical also, which is why her students liked her, I'm sure she was a breath of fresh air at that very religious institution. Mom also preached to me that I most likely looked as different to the person I was looking at as they looked to me, this is an important concept that many people aren't taught.

That's what I feel is the issue with these political parties, they expect you to embrace their philosophy, but don't want to listen to other's ideas and concepts. I look at the two parties in power right now and I see two groups of people who've lost sight of what's important for the people. They just want to win and gain power. Right now the Republicans are coming out of their power curve, they've gone in, exploited their power, and are now being voted out. I'm sure given 4-8 years of Democratic leadership the same thing will happen to the Democrats, they will have exploited their power, and will be voted out. This pendulum is swinging in very wide arcs right now, leaving the majority of the American population to fend for themselves. What are being looked after are the special interest groups who pay for the elections, the majority of the American people are left to try to pick between two groups who don't care that much about them.

I am very careful about what I tell people, again many of the thoughts are "different" and I prefer to sit and debate topics than write about them from a blog pulpit. I've had people who think my thoughts are not within the teachings of their religion, and try to force their faith on me, disowning me as a bad person if I don't change my thoughts. Personally I believe in being Christ-Like and I try not to judge a person by their opinions, but rather there actions. I try to be people's friends and I have many of them. Many people define me as being "cool", not sure what that means, but I guess it's OK. I think they like me because they know I'm there to help and listen, I'll go out of my way to help someone, even though it's not my job or I'm not getting paid to do it, I do these things because I feel they are right.

OK, I must be in a philosophical mood today ;). Maybe we should instead discuss what is the color red?

Freedom of Speech

I had my friend the "BarkingCarrot" (Actually I don't know her, she frequents a social app that I've been playing with lately, she seems to be pretty bright though) congratulate me on a posting I put on her site, she said it took "Balls" (her words not mine) to say what I said. I've been thinking about this for a bit and I started thinking, when does someone have to have balls to state their mind on the state of our current political situation. To be honest we're a bit messed up in this country (this is one of these things were I'm not sure if we've ALWAYS been messed up and as I get older I'm realizing it, or if this is something new, I think we've been ALWAYS messed up, but I like status quo).

This is the state of the current political situation as I see it. We have two groups that don't like each other. They have taken on causes, not out of desire to push that cause, but because they enjoy power. I would respect both parties if they could just look at each other from time to time and say "Hey, that's a great idea, and it's not my idea", instead we've become a nation where we're completely polarized. People don't like each other based on their skin color, background, orientation, political stance, favorite football team, sock color, etc... We've become a nation that is afraid to speak our mind for fear that it will offend. One race can't talk about problems with another race without being labeled racist (I've analyzed myself on a very critical level, I know I have issues, but I believe I can say that overall I'm not a racist, I love people).

Back to freedom of speech. As a professional I feel that I don't have the freedom to write in this blog what I truly feel. I know that whatever I write could be used against me on some level and right now I'm not in the position to do this. I think the President of the United States saying "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" has done more to destroy this country and it's freedoms than the war in Iraq that is in theory being fought to preserve our freedoms. After that little sentence, everyone who didn't agree with the war in Iraq is a terrorist. This Administration has done more harm to the country and to the office of the President than any in history. They have lied to the country and world, illegally invaded a country, tortured prisoners of war (sorry they are terrorists, not prisoners of war), they've made it so I laugh when the President told Russia that they can't invade a Georgia (of course he said a democratically elected country). They've done all this and they are still allowed to stay in power (well at least he didn't lie about having an intern perform oral sex on him, we all know lying about that is wrong).

This freedom of speech needs to be protected, our founding fathers thought it so important that they made it #1 on their list of Amendments. We need to understand that we might not agree with each other about political, moral, or other issues, but that doesn't make us bad people. I've been labeled a "Liberal", whatever that is, I fight the term "Democrat", we had a Republican here in Prince William County I would have voted for in a heartbeat, He was concerned about his community, not his party (of course when he went for higher office, he changed his voice). In reality we don't have "true" freedom of speech though, I could easily have someone look at this blog and decide not to do business with me or decide I'm just a bad guy. To that person I feel bad for, I wish they would take the time to sit down with me and talk with me, I'm actually what most would call "good people".

Olympics and Politics

Flipping around this morning between the Olympics (interesting how we ONLY get to see sports where Americans do well, I want to see the sprint cycling matches, last time we got to see those in depth was when Nelson Vails was good in it, he was an animal in the sprint) and Meet the Press (man I'm getting old).

Olympics

8 gold medals? I find it odd that 1 or 2 gold medals isn't good enough. Phelps now has 14 Gold Medals and 2 Bronze. He's a great athlete, but I feel that this is goes in hand in hand with the obsessive nature this country has in winning and in "more is better". They have a Soccer and Basketball channel, these keep replaying old matches, we should be able to see different sports, hmmph.

Needless to say I'm tired of the Olympics, they need to have more action and less special profiles, more countries being shown and less of US athletes willing gold. Best win I've seen so far is with the Brazilian swimmer, he won and broke down in tears, being part Brazilian I understand that feeling and I know I would have done the same.

Politics

I'm watching Meet the Press, they are talking about Obama and McCain of course. Seems that both candidates meet with an evangelical group (I think it's sad that this country is so pulled by special interest groups). Both candidates were asked about evil, if it existed and what they would do to it. Both admitted that evil existed (which is good, we all know that in order to have good we need to have evil, well those of us who think about those things know it, I've run into people who believe there can be only good, hmm let's define good without evil), McCain wants to stamp out evil (ok how do we really do that), Obama wants to confront it (a better answer, admits that you can't stamp it out, but you can try to manage it).

Russia/Georgia

This is an interesting situation, but what's more interesting is to hear our President say that you can't go in and invade a country (hmm isn't that what he did with Iraq? At least Russia isn't fabricating evidence to show they are in the right). From what I've heard so far Georgia had been probing Russia's defenses (most likely at US request, since this is what the US has done for years). This is a touchy game to play, since if you piss someone off you end up with people dead. So Russia was provoked and acted with force (if you listen to the President, that's how he says he would react).

I believe the US needs to stick out their chest some here, but it's awfully tough when we have a person in the White House who's lied to the world, authorized and defended torture and illegally invaded a country, I think we really have no leg to stand on.