The Rusted Musket

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We are all living such cushy lives that the Government’s encroachment on us is creeping up, little by little, and we don’t even notice. There are so many unconstitutional things that they do that it is sick. So much money is wasted, practically burned. Who’s money is that? It is the citizens of this nation’s. I think that there should be a ledger where every penny is accounted for. We need to hold our leaders accountable for their actions.

A lot of people seem to think that “rich” people don’t pay their fair share of taxes. But according to this article the wealthiest 1% paid almost 40% of taxes while only making 22% of the income. I would say that they are paying their fair share. And before you think lets tax them more, you should read over that article and think on this. Small businesses employ about 50% of people (see here) and these increases in taxes affects those businesses because a lot of them are taxed on a individual basis. Small businesses are the lifeblood of the USA and they are also part of the American Dream, to own your own business and to work for yourself.

Another thing to think about is that people who are well off spend a lot of money which creates jobs and helps to drive the economy. A lot of the rich worked very hard to get where they are a many own their own business and built it from the ground up. Why should we tax people for hard work? Isn’t that counter productive? We want people to better themselves and to try harder, but that won’t happen if the more money people make the more is taken away.

If you’ve been following the news you’ll know that Obama has been having a bit of trouble pulling his cabinet members together. According to this new post Tom Daschle just withdrew his nomination for Health and Human Services Secretary (HSS) amid concerns over conflict of interest and tax “evasion.” Daschle isn”t the first (maybe not the last) nominee that has had troubles… Nancy Killefer was going to be Chief Performance Officer and also had some tax problems. Before that we had Bill Richardson and his scandal about awarding a state contract to one of his political donors… Obama is not off to a good start it would seem; I don’t recall ever hearing of a President having so much “trouble” filling the cabinet posts. I’m not sure if Obama is just unlucky or if he is nominating some really questionable people.

Its rather funny that the Democrats responses are shock and dismay. Its like they are saying “this is unheard of, how could a democrat be so stupid and corrupt?!?!?!” though for most normal people it’’s probably not much of a surprise.

Bush labeled North Korea as part of the axis of evil because it is possible that they are working towards getting nukes and because of their human rights violations. Are they really “evil” probably not, but their Government certainly isn”t friendly, not to its citizens and not to the western powers.

Reuters just published a story here about North Korea’s warm welcome to Barrack Obama’’s new presidency. The basis of the story is that North Korea just scrapped almost all of its agreements with South Korea, essentially a bit slap in the face for the USA diplomatically, but it could also be seen as an aggressive move by them. What interesting about this is it happened so soon after Obama became president. What kind of message does that send about him? Probably that North Korea thinks he will be a pushover. It”ll be interesting to see how he does deal with this…

The Obama administration wants to make a few changes as is indicated in this article… If you read closely enough and think about what he wants to do you”ll realize that he is hitting the auto industry when it is down… But not only that, he is also a) hurting adoption of these vehicles and b) making it even more difficult for the regular person to get a car. How is that you say? Well it is because these “regulations” aren”t cheap, $2k to $10k per car to be passed onto the consumer… Yep sounds like a great plan considering people can barely afford their cars as it is.

I don’t have a problem with fuel efficient cars, heck my car is a honda civic that gets 35MPGs and I have CFL in most of my lights. But would I be willing to pay an extra $2000 to $10,000 for a few extra MPGs and a few less pounds of CO2 in the air?¹ No I don’t think so. Regardless of the environmental impact of this, the economic impact would be very damaging. You can’t just tell the car companies to magically make more efficient cars. It doesn”t work that way. Wake up Obama, you can”t just wish things to be true.

PS. I have absolutely no sympathy for the Big 3, they deserve to go away with all their mis-management and union crap. It is sickening that the Government bailed them out, very sickening…

Its a sad day when abortion is monetarily supported, but in my opinion its even sadder when we as voters don’t really get a say on how our tax payer dollars are distributed¹.

Obama strikes down Bush’s ban on funds going to international abortion supporting groups. First off its pretty sad that we are supporting groups that are promoting abortion in other parts of the World… Its our tax payer money, maybe it should stay here and go towards fixing our bridges… Secondly, I guess I’m not surprised that he did this, since he is “pro-abortion,” but what I do find surprising is how many of these executive orders he has been handing out in so short a period of time… Guess he was truthful when he said “change.”

Found this interesting post, which originated as a uncredited chain email… But I thought it was interesting/funny (yet mostly truthful) enough to post…

1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.

2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.

3. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than U.S. Nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese and North Korean communists.

4. You have to believe that there was no art before Federal funding.

5. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical documented changes in the earth’s climate and more affected by soccer moms driving SUV’s.

6. You have to believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.

7. You have to believe that the same teacher who can’t teach fourth graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.

8. You have to believe that hunters don’t care about nature, but loony activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.

9. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.

10. You have to believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make The Passion of the Christ for financial gain only.

11. You have to believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.

12. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.

13. You have to believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and A.G. Bell.

14. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides are not.

15. You have to believe that Hillary Clinton is normal and is a very nice person.

16. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried is because the right people haven’t been in charge.

17. You have to believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and a sex offender belonged in the White House.

18. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites, and bestiality should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.

19. You have to believe that illegal Democratic Party funding by the Chinese Government is somehow in the best interest to the United States.

20. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right wing conspiracy.

21. You have to believe that it’s okay to give Federal workers off on Christmas Day but it’s not okay to say “Merry Christmas.”

Some of these things are a little over the top, and I’m sure there are a lot of Democrats that aren’t this crazy. But so much of it applies in some way, shape or form.

As I’m sure everyone knows driving is the most dangerous form of transportation. Why is it so dangerous? Are people just really bad drivers, or does everyone driver too fast? Who really knows, but lemme pose a thinker. If I am driving down the highway at 60MPH and the speed limit is 55MPH but everyone else is going 70MPH am I really being a safer driver? By going that much slower than everyone else I am holding up traffic and forcing people to change lanes and or slow down to get around me. Sure I am following the letter of the law, but in this case is it really the safest thing to do on the road. Just a interesting thought that I had but I’ll still be driving 60MPH because that is the right thing to do…  

So being that I am a computer enthusiast and I work in IT, I thought it only right that I do a mini-review of the Windows 7 beta. Especially since I’ve used every Windows operating system since Windows 3.1 and I am a IT Professional… Lastly I don’t mind Vista but it could use some serious improvements and Windows 7 might just do that.

Windows 7 had a somewhat rough start (unanticipated demand for the beta drove the servers offline for almost a whole weekend) but Microsoft seemed to respond well to the demand and added more infrastructure for the beta and expanded the amount of available downloads. Anyway I ended up downloaded the beta at work on Monday. It was a bit tough to get the download as the links were not really working at the time, I ended up having to find a direct link to the 64bit version in the forums. After I found it, I started downloading. It took a while since the file is 3.15GBs but it downloaded correctly with no problems.

VMWare Workstation is a really great tool for testing so I figured I would try out my test in there. I created a VM and used the Vista 64bit as the template, setting it for two processors and 1GB of ram. I must say that I am surprised by how little needs to be done to install Windows 7 (well Vista too), you just need to put in the CD key and a couple other things and away it goes. I had no problems in installation and about a half hour later I had Windows 7 in my VM.

My first impression of it was pretty good. The desktop looked clean and the taskbar got a nice new look. It reminded me a lot of the KDE look. The icons for the quicklaunch portion got a bit larger and show desktop is a little bar on the far right instead of a quicklaunch icon. One thing that they added that I really like is the quicklaunch icon for Windows Explorer. Its nice since I spend a lot of my time in the explorer window and that is one less click for me (yes I know it could have added it by myself). I like how the clock shows the date by default now too, that means less work for me to find the day and less work is always good.

Clicking on the “start” menu shows a very Vista like start menu, but come on what did everyone expect. I’ve always liked the Vista start menu so thats no problem for me.  They did change the shutdown button though which was a gripe I had with Vista. It now has shutdown as its own button and a little arrow to access the other options.

Other notable changes are that the Security Center has been changed to the Action Center which has more options and uses. Basically it is used to help maintain your computer.

The last thing I’ll cover is the changed to the UAC, which I’m sure you’ll all agree needed to be changed. They changed it to work more like the security sliders in Internet Explorer, there are 4 options from full off to full on with a non-intrusive but still secure option as the default. Overall a very good way to change it.

My initial impressions are that it appears to take the good parts of Vista and improve them while fixing the bad parts. It feels a lot like what SP2 for XP did. It changes a lot of stuff but keeps the core intact. Maybe called it SP3 for Vista? 

Anyway, at this point it seems to be a very usable beta with no problems that I noticed. I’ll be very curious to see what they change in the release version.