Worst President Ever…

…is a term frequently applied to President W. Bush, and it always makes me hot under the collar.  I’m not making a case that he was our best president ever, but to say that he is worst ever assumes that you know something about presidential history.  By declaring that anyone is the worst (or best) anything, you are making a statement that you have some authority in the matter.  In this example, you are saying that you have enough knowledge of all of our presidents to make an objective comparison and that you have enough insight to understand the context of the times in which each of these presidents held office. 

For example, Herbert Hoover, our 31^st president.  Here is a guy who helped kick off the Great Depression.  What about Nixon?  Let’s not forget Chester A. Arthur who signed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882!  In the day I am sure people demonized them, but what about now?

U.S. News and Worldwhatnot did a poll on the worst presidents, according the sound judgement of the American people.  Guess who the top six were?  From oldest to newest, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton and W. Bush.  This only seems to reinforce my notion that we Americans tend to be very fickle people, thrown to and fro by every whim.  If we were really serious about being a solid world power, we would look beyond our own lifespan to learn the lessons of the world.

That being said, I am looking forward to what President Obama will do.  I think that he will need the support of the entire country to continue to move us forward.  Casey and I have discussed what we can do to help in service of our country.  We both strongly believe that it is critical to our children that we teach them that service to country is key to being a good citizen.  Ask not…

He is in my prayers and I hope that the hope I place in him will not be in vain.  I’m willing to take this as a good sign, for whatever it’s worth…

And now for a bit fun here and here.  If you didn’t know your presidents before this, you won’t now either.

And so it goes.

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Politics 101

Just for fun I thought I would blog about politics, more specifically my personal views in relationship to politics.  It seems everywhere I turn there is a story about it so I thought I would add my 2 cents.  

Most of those who know me are generally familiar with my political leanings, but I don’t generally like to discuss the subject.  The conversations quickly turn into to abstract discussions about how the current Farm Bill disenfranchises migrant workers who have their phones tapped by Homeland Security to monitor calls back to Greenland in regards to the war in Iraq.  

In truth, no politic party really represents me very well.  I suppose that can be said for everyone.  That being said I am going to hit my key points.  Please keep in mind that I am hitting highlights here, not making policy recommendations.  There is great potential to read all sorts of wrong information into this, making assumptions and the like.  I would clarify more here, but then it wouldn’t really be a political blog, would it? If you want to know more about my thoughts, just ask.  

If I got to design my own party, the platform would look something like this:

Plank One: Life and Dignity of the Human Person.  Everyone, regardless of state or circumstance or location has a right to live.  

Plank Two: Focus on the Family.  The family is the core building block of all society.  Preserve the family, preserve the society.  

Plank Three: Rights and Responsibilities.  All people have rights within society and they have the responsibility to observe and respect those rights.  

Plank Four: Protect for the Poor and Vulnerable.  Everything that we do must always keep the little guy in mind, the least among us, if you will.  

Plank Five: The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers.  Work is requirement in all societies.  I believe all who can work, should work.  Those who can work should have right to a fair wage, the right to organize to get that fair wage and the right to do so unmolested.  

I’ll pause here to offer some clarification to those of you who know me well and are wondering about plank five.  Most, if not all, of the the time when I ‘talk union’ with folks, it never has to do with the right to organize or to get a fair wage.  That has never been an issue of mine.  Those conversations always end up going too far afield for me to make the point I want.  A lot of that is my own fault.  I like to follow a thought up a rabbit hole and I loose the context of the conversation.  I’m working on it though.

Plank Six: Solidarity.  We are of the human race and we must all respect each other regardless of state, circumstance or location.  

Plank Seven:  Care for God’s Creation.  I know that would never fly in a real party, but here is what I mean.  This earth is a gift and we must all do a much better job of taking care of it.  That means ‘being green’ for lack of a better way to say it, though it goes far beyond that.  While I still hold to the belief that the most inconvenient truth is that most global warming theories lack the scientific rigor for me to stand behind them, I do think that our stewardship of the planet has been poor and must change.  We need to get off of fossil fuels and looks to sustainable, renewable and natural forms of energy and we need to do it now.  As for the ‘far beyond that’ part, we need to look at everything we do from gardening to breathing in terms of its effect on everything else.  

And that is my party platform.  One of my favorite passages from Isaiah sums it all up pretty well:

Cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
Hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow

Isaiah 1:16-17

And so it goes.

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We know who you are…

Look at this sign:

The sign above is showing your internet address, the interweb service you are running, your operating system and the internet browser you are using.  When you are online, there is a great deal of information about you that just hangs out there for someone to pick up.

For example:

Have you ever looked at the left hand side of your screen when you are search Google?  There will be ads for your area.  Mine say things like, ‘Buy a home in Sacramento!’  They know that I am surfing from Sacramento because of that 10 digit number above.  The XX.XXX.XX.XXX number that Mr. McCain (which who should be holding the sign at this moment.  It rotates through the candidates) is holding is registered to an area of the country that can be referenced by the ad software.

So what else do they know about us?  Cookies.  They know about cookies.  Cookies are little text files that are stored on your computer so a website can more quickly identify you.  For example, you check your mail and go to bed.  You wake up and power your system on and go to your e-mail site.  It usually at least remembers your name.  All it did was read a cookie on your system.  These same cookies can be used to track your internet usage and send it back to companies to try and further evaluate your habits. 

Now when it comes to cookies tracking me, I used to believe that it was absolutely wrong and I would do anything to stop it.  I would wipe out my cookies every 15 minutes and routinely purge my browsing history.  But then I got to thinking: Why not make it harder to figure me out?  So now I get online, go to Woot, then to the Starbucks website, surf on over to AARP and pull up a few articles.  From there I head to my favorite bodybuilding website for albino midgets and wrap it up with a trip through the Green, Libertarian, Reconstructive Monarchist site just for good measure.  All in all, it make me feel better.

And so it goes.

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