November 2007

I’m not sure how many people that give commentary on the media culture can say this but I can safely say about myself that I listen and watch everything, on either side of the spectrum. When I used to deliver pizza in college I would listen to Rush Limbaugh, at night sometimes I would listen to the Savage Nation - hosted by Michael Savage. On TV I watch fox, msnbc, cnn and in the past few years I’ve been listening to Air America. My point being I think I have a rather broad spectrum of sources that I base my opinion on.

Someone who has always struck me as a total fraud is Tucker Carlson. It seems every network seems to feel the need to have someone on that doesn’t really fit into the general composition of the station. CNN recently gave Glenn Beck his own TV show. I’ve listened to his radio show as well, back when the Shivo case hadn’t gone as public as it did at some point. Tucker Carlson of course used to be the counterpart on CNN’s crossfire which got completely ridiculed when they made the mistake of having John Stewart on who pretty much told them how it is, which is that either of the commentators were political hacks. Watch the entire show get their asses handed to them here:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE[/youtube]

I’m not even going to comment on the bow tie - that alone to me signalizes ueber-geek but whatever. The point I’m trying to make here is that Tucker Carlson is one of the biggest idiots on TV in my opinion. I’ve watched his new shoe closely and the amount of garbage he strews into his commentary is amazing. Recently he had Kucinich on and was talking with him about his Impeachment proceeding and how nobody in the the democratic party was supporting him. While saying a sentence about impeachment Tucker then slipped in a little sentence on how impeachment is radical. Kucinich then corrected him and said that it wasn’t radical at all nor can it be called ‘overthrowing the government’ when it’s something that was put in place by our forefathers to protect ourselves from authoritarian rule which is in violation of its constitutional powers.

To me Tucker Carlson just has absolutely no credibility and for him, of all people to call a NY times columnist a joke, is the big joke in itself. And again like it’s Tucker’s style while starting to talk about Krugman he says “he’s a smart guy.or so they say” - what ARE you talking about Tucker? Is this your style of inserting small tidbits of provocative crap that you think will get people aroused? Or do you just not have the balls to say that on its own?

Here’s Tucker calling Paul Krugman a joke

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=WN6VIEr7dkI[/youtube]

Ok here’s the situation: I don’t just get pissed off about the crooks that call themselves politicians - I also get completely bent out of shape over unnecessary ‘improvements’ on our life style. What the hell am I talking about? I’ll tell you.

I walk into a bathroom to urinate and after completing the task at hand I move onto the personal hygiene step which usually involves washing the hands and then drying them off with either blown hot air, or paper towels. If you knew me personally you would know that I’m like many men, I like my gadgets. I like the portable devices, electronic instruments, and whatever else is hip and new. What I’m not into is paper towel dispensers that are have more technology embedded in them than my car. Granted I drive an old car, but still I feel rather insulted by the amount of development that must have gone into this towel dispenser.

The old school version of towel dispensers didn’t require power, nor did they require the use of infrared lasers to detect whether a hand was asking for a piece of regulated paper towel. Instead they had a rather simple concept. The inside of the dispenser contained a roller of paper towels and if you turned a knob, pulled a lever or did some similar type of motion you ended up with your own piece of cellulose. Someone decided that of all the areas of daily life, the towel dispenser in commercial type bathrooms needed improvement. I can think of at least one other area that I think would be in more need of technological improvements but I’ll leave that for another post.

Not only did someone decided that towel dispensers need improvements, they went as far as ‘recognizing’ the need for people to use less physical energy while on the quest of drying their hands. So instead of turning the knob or pulling down the lever - these formerly strained individuals have now been freed of the agonizing process of self-paper-towel-dispensing and can now happily look forward to a life of dispensers that will electronically feed the paper towel to them.

Why am I wasting my time writing about this? I’m ranting goddammit - look at the site name. So, not to loose any time getting to my point. My point here is that not only do I have an extremely hard time figuring out who in their right mind would think of ‘improving’ the older towel dispensers that we had, I also don’t understand why any company is dumb enough to buy them. First of all I never get enough paper towel, second of all the damn things needs maintenance and thirdly it used batteries to operate which to me means that this newly and ‘improved’ device is now always even more damaging to the environment than it was before.

Oh and here’s another thing. I would probably only complain half as much if the device was really and impressive piece of machinery. The contrary is unfortunately the case. As soon as the light sensor gets a few splashes of water which I would think is the most important feature it has to have considering it’s in a facility that deals mainly with water, the device doesn’t respond anymore. I’m pretty sure something like this couldn’t happen to the old school towel dispensers but of course the old ones also didn’t include any red light that blink every now and then so I understand why the newer ones would be better (cough).

I could go on way longer than anyone’s ever going to pay attention to but instead I’m going to save my energy and get back to work. Cheers.

P.S: I just went to the company bathroom and the towel dispenser won’t give me a towel. Red light is on, I can see a full roll of paper. What a great technological advance that is. Now they probably have to call in a certified IT technician because the device is probably equipped with TCP/IP protocols which have to be tested for errors - GIVE ME A DAMN TOWEL -

First off let me say that I work for a corporation. Without this job, I wouldn’t be able to afford health benefits, I probably wouldn’t get any paid time off, paid legal holidays and so on. Corporations do have their benefits, and they lay largely in the area of the actual benefit packages they offer. Besides that, corporations are an evil of our society that shows it’s negative effects all the time.

According to wikipedia a corporation is a legal entity (technically, a juristic person) which has a separate legal personality from its members. One of the most important documentaries available today is called ‘The Corporation’ - and is something every person should take a look at. Here’s the trailer from youtube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa3wyaEe9vE[/youtube]

It is from this documentary that I’ve learned why corporations can be such evil elements in our society. Let’s take the case of the Exxon Valdez Disaster. This case has gone to court, the judges have ruled and now for over 10 years this case is stuck in the appeals courts. In the meanwhile, the environmental damages done to the local area are detrimental. The reason the case is being dragged out like this is of course because Exxon has a substantial budget as you can tell here by the earnings from 2006. If this was any regular person or at least not a multi national corporation this case would have been closed years ago.

The underlying concept of any corporation is to make money and to do whatever it can notto pay fines like the one for Alaska. Problem being here that a corporation has no regard for the environment as this is not part of the corporation. As a matter of fact a corporation can almost be looked at like a robot that doesn’t need any of the resources human beings need, like water, earth, fire, sun, wind, etc. I think it’s time corporations took into account that they exist in environments inhabited by human beings and that corporations also have bigger chancer of long lasting profitability if they take this into account.

For all of you that haven’t done your homework I thought I’d help you out a little bit today by filling you in on the history of war profiteering that the Bush family has been engaged in since WWII. For many people that live in this country presidents are just presidents and all they see is what’s being presented to them by the media.

If you were to do research on our various presidents throughout time not many of them can compare to what the bush crime family are bringing to the table. Let’s take a step back in time and see what George W. Bush’s grandfather was up to.

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography — by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

In October 1942, ten months after entering World War II, America was preparing its first assault against Nazi military forces. Prescott Bush was managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son George, the future U.S. President, had just begun training to become a naval pilot. On Oct. 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush.

Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.’s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland “ Bunny ” Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Bush.

What you see here is George’s grandpa’s involvement with the Nazis and the United State Government’s action to stop these operations. The biograhy goes onto to stating that the stopping of these action came too late as Prescott Bush had already substantially helped fund the Nazi’s war effort in Europe.

Now I don’t know about you folks, but my Grandfather did far less spectacular things and I must say I’m happy about that. How would I be able to live with myself knowing that he traded with the enemy, in this case brutal murders, managers of concentration camps and countless other atrocities.

So I guess what we have now is just a logical continuation of Prescott Bush managed to establish during WWII. As Eisenhower said, “be careful of the military industrial complex” - he was probably referring to Bush. I’m definitely not the first person to be reporting about thsi, but I figure we all have to do what it takes to make people realize that who and what we have in office right now is just a bunch of crooks.