The Rusted Musket

People are always talking about Iraq it seems, well a little less so lately since the economy isn’t doing so great. AP has a story about the “secret” ¹ tally of Iraqis that have died. What everyone seems to forget is that it was worse before the USA went there… Ever heard of Saddam Hussein? He was responsible for the deaths of hundred of thousand of people. Check out this article if you don’t believe me. His favorite target was the Kurds it would seem; he killed at least 100,000 of them. Heck he even had 40 or more of his own relatives murdered. So my question is, do you really think Iraq would be better off? Would there really have been less deaths? Or is the freedom they can now have better?

It’s getting on my nerves that every time I go to MSN or Yahoo they have these swine flu warnings paired with a picture of as many people as they could fit in the frame wearing those blue surgical mask thingies; lame, annoying, and overplayed.  That is of course till the end of the world epidemic actually happens wiping out 2/3’s of all humanity with the 1/3 that survives being the ones in the MSN/Yahoo pictures who wore the surgical mask thingies…

President Obama is looking to put a lid on nefarious credit card practices according to this article. I personally think that credit card companies have had it coming, they generally don’t care about their customer and often levy fees and/or raise rates for either no reason or little reason. I don’t have any credit card debt right now, I pay off my card every month on time and I’ve been with the company since 2005. But if I was to carry a balance it would cost me 19.9%. Oh and did I mention that I have very good credit as well? That kind of percentage is crazy and way out of line for someone like me, at least in my opinion.

One thing that the article fails to mention though is consumer responsibility. I consider myself a relatively responsible consumer/spender, but many people are not, and those people need to be held to a higher standard instead of laying the blame on the credit card companies. People need to realize when they have a problem and take responsibility and the actions the President is taking don’t require more responsibility from consumers.

Important to remember for next time is that its an ANTI-racism conference at the UN, not a RACISM conference at the UN…

Just read a very interesting article today about AIDS and the Vatican. Apparently the Pope mentioned that abstinence and monogamy are more effective at fighting AIDS then condoms and all of Europe went up in arms about the comment. They called the comment irresponsible and dangerous. Rather defensive of their condoms it would appear. Something that they all failed to mention is that abstinence and monogamy are scientifically more effective. You can’t get AIDS if you are abstinent or married to only one person, but no one except the Vatican mentioned that, or at least that’s what the pope was referring to.

This article is a good example of how people are not logical, they react based on emotion and feelings, not on actual facts or objective reasoning.

Sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Obama is certainly hoping so, at least thats how it seems after reading this article…

You see, Obama isn’t stupid and he has noticed that people are not happy about this nation’s spending and so he is doing his part in making cuts… So lets look at this number. Obama proposed a budget of $3.6 trillion dollars for the next fiscal year… The problem with this budget is that it would increase our debt by more than $9 trillion over the next decade… So the seemingly large $100 million he is “saving” amounts to a fraction of a percent of just next year’s budget. And the thing about government spending is that it never really goes away, sure they may cut, 1%, 5%, even 10% but when the government starts spending money on something they don’t really stop.

So although he’ll be focusing on his great cost savings, and the number does look good on paper, in the end it is nothing more than propaganda to get his agenda through. Why doesn’t he propose a smaller budget and introduce billions in cuts instead of increase the budget deficit by record amounts?

Shame on me for my lack of attendance.  Have you noticed how during this time of private sector implosion the public (government) sector hasn’t even given an inch of cutbacks!  Give me a break…

Internet is under attack, I really can’t understand why this is being done, unless it is because TW is a money hungry, badly managed company…

Interestingly enough this article says that TW changed their ideas after “testing” it out and they now offer a very reasonable $150/month plan that allows you unlimited use of the internet… Yeah, right! This is all a bunch of BS and just TW’s way to screw consumers over and profit more. Bandwidth should be getting cheaper, not more expensive. The equipment is cheaper, the wires are laid, so why this backwards thinking? Some people have mentioned that its probably related to all the videos being streamed online and how this is threatening their cable internet division… Also, they will offer things on their website that are bandwidth free… Monopoly anyone?

The sad thing about all this is that unless people start trying to do something about it, like calling their congressmen and threatening to switch providors, stuff like this will just go on. So, give your congressmen a call, or send them a email and let them know that this is unacceptable.

Okay so I figure I should explain my recent absence… I’ve been a bit busy lately and was actually out of the country for two weeks… When I got back it took a while to get back in the groove, but now that I’ve been back for a couple of weeks I hope to be posting several times a week again.

Just read an interesting article about the recent pirate attacks… Basically the article is saying how many ship owners are reluctant to arm their crews because of the legal implications… I might be missing something here but shouldn’t their safety rate higher on the list? I don’t know about you but I would much rather have a gun.

One of the problems is that there are different gun laws between the countries that the ships are going to and from… But I wonder if they kept the guns on the ships, locked up, after they docked if it would still be a problem… Like most criminals I’m guessing that these pirates would be less likely to attack a someone that is returning fire.

Image Credit: topnews.in