Daily Archives: June 8, 2011

Our Government’s Purpose is to Protect Government and Rich People

Memoirs, News, Politics, Writing, , ,

In case you haven’t figured it out, the reason our government exists isn’t to protect the rest of us. It’s to protect very wealthy people and other people in government. An example is the current event involving e coli poisoning. For the last week or so, we were told there’s absolutely no fear of any spread in the United States, even as the same articles were reporting that were sporadic cases of infection in the United States. It’s almost like no one even pays attention to what’s really going on and then just continues business as usual. Well, guess what? There are actual cases of e coli spread in the United States now. Imagine that.

I’ve been stating this for a long time, but no one seems to care (and they still won’t): Our government isn’t really representative of the rest of us. It’s representative of very wealthy people who continue to believe themselves worthy of raiding the government coffers for themselves. They’ll justify it under all sorts of different rationalizations, like “giving back to the poor” or “the wealthy pay the most taxes” or whatever makes them feel best. But in the end, when it comes down to a simple yes or no decision, rational actors decide what is best for them, not for the greater good. This is why we can have a story where the claim is made that oil companies are profiting off of people by doing horrific things to other people and the environment, and then when challenged by “government”, they’ll still continue to do horrific things to other people and the environment, and then turn around and claim “PROFIT!” before giving out absurd sums of money to their executives in bonuses, right before turning to the government and claiming a loss in the same breath that they tell stockholders they are raking in more money than ever before. And the rest of us? We’re so insignificant that they don’t care what we think.

Right now, we have a party in power that got into power by claiming the other party was doing evil things. Rather than stop those evil things, they continued doing the same evil things, claiming the issue is “complicated”, and have asked for four more years to continue doing the same things to make things better by doing the same evil things that have been done for decades. And we’ll vote them that extra time. Why? Because we’re morons. And they know it, so they’ll lie to our faces and tell us everything’s great. And we’ll buy it. Not only that, but we’ll donate to their campaigns to make sure they keep doing it.

And a few of us will complain. And no one will listen because we’re not listened to by anyone. Hell, we can’t even get a major distributor to give us a voice for other people to hear. Instead, the people who get heard are the mainstream people who keep doing the same shit over and over again. And then someone will try to sell us Lady Gaga as if that’s “extreme”. Or they’ll talk about how outrageous Charlie Sheen is. And we’ll buy into it. Why? Because we’re morons. And they know it.

That’s really all I have to say. Which is okay because I’m not important to have anyone pay attention to me anyway.

Have a nice day.

Exploring the Ipad 2 & the desire to own every new piece of technology

Business, Economics, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I finally broke down and bought an Ipad 2. I had bought a Motorola Xoom some months ago, and I had been very disappointed in that product, mainly because it has turned into a glorified doorstop. I’m often the victim of techno hype, in that too many reviewers acted like it was the great alternative to the ipad, but then when I finally got it, I discovered it wasn’t ready, nor was it really as compatible as it should have been with the things that I wanted to use. I could never get any of my music to be recognized by its music reader (people told me to download a different music player than the one installed), the books really sucked, as google books was never the solution to the e-reader issue (people told me to download another book reader), the movie player didn’t play ANYTHING (people told me to find another video player, which I did, and I never did succeed at getting a decent enough one that really worked on the Xoom). Basically, everything I did on the Xoom was subpar and not up to speed. Great doorstop. Or great e-mail reader, if you have wi fi only.

So, I went to the Apple store and they finally had iPads in. I bought the AT&T 3G version, which so far is great, although I suspect the 3G aspect of it is massively overpriced no matter what model you buy. That’s one thing NONE of the cellular companies have figured out in the United States. It’s like we’re in the Middle Ages here, and no one will do anything to make it better.

But my problem is really that I tend to buy whatever new technology thing comes out as soon as it does, and I sometimes pay the consequence for doing so. I bought a Nook Color when they came out, and I was severely underwhelmed by it. They’ve made great innovations with their current ones, but because I bought the first rendition of the Nook Color, I’m left with yet another very expensive doorstop that people tell me is so much better in a later edition. One of my other failings is that when I’ve been screwed once, I don’t give the company a second chance. So I won’t be buying a new Nook. Sorry. Once bitten and all that.

But so far, I love the ipad. I haven’t gone all crazy with it yet, but I’m slowly moving towards getting rid of my Washington Post subscription on the Kindle and choosing alternatives on the iPad. It’s so mucy nicer carrying that thing around (it’s a lot lighter and easier to carry than the Kindle). So far, I haven’t turned on my Kindle once since buying the Ipad. The only thing is: I have no intentions of buying books on the Ipad because their selection is horrid, and their prices, like most Apple offerings, are atrociously way too high. The only advantage I’ve seen so far with the Kindle offering of the Washington Post is that you download the whole thing at once and then don’t have to have a connection to read it. With the iPad, every time I read something, it seems to want to have a connection to the server in order to turn the page. Tried reading the Washington Post on it, and again was seriously underwhelmed. I’ve also noticed that with the Kindle I would read an entire article because you scrolled through them one by one. With the iPad, I scan articles and read very little, kind of like the old way I used to read a newspaper, and that’s definitely not something I like, and it’s a hard habit to break when met with the opportunity.

I’ll let you know further how I do with the Ipad. I’m trying to use the wifi more often than the cellular connection because after the third day, I checked my usage, and man, I was not impressed with how quickly I am using up my monthly amount. Again, while this is more a complaint against AT&T and Verizon, that’s something they need to fix, or they’re going to price themselves out of the cellular market. I think they believe they’ll continue to win because they’re the only game on the block, but what’s going to happen is that someone is going to invent something that circumvents the need for them, and people will jump ship really freaking fast, eliminating them overnight. It’s what normally happens with business and economics; they just don’t seem to believe it’s right around the corner, a lot like Comcast doesn’t realize it’s on its death bed because of how shitty it treated its customers over the years.

Anyway, haven’t posted much lately, mainly because I’ve had very little to say. My writing career has somewhat sucked, and as that was pretty much all I had in my corner, I find myself not very happy these days.