More Republican Lies!

The Republicans and their Tea Party toadies are screaming to cut the deficit. Now, I’ve grown away from my initial fondness for Obama, for reasons I’ll address later, but the message the Republicans have been pushing lately, is that the only way the United States won’t fail is to radically cut spending, and now!

Paul Ryan’s budget clearly demonstrates the two faced nature of today’s Republican leaders, or lack-leaders.

Mr. Ryan’s budget “saves” 4.4 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Ok, savings, mostly by killing of social programs and handing the money currently spent on Medicaid to private insurance companies; but we’ll agree it’s a savings. Here’s the liars part – he’s wants to drop the tax bracket on the richest 2% of Americans from 37% to 25%. That’s giving back to the Rich 4 Trillion dollars over that same time period. Cut spending by 4.4 trillion, reduce revenue by 4 trillion… where’s the savings? There isn’t one, it’s a lie.
Mr. Ryan claims that giving the rich back their money will result in growth that will grow us out of the financial debt problems. Where have we heard that before? The deficit clock was actually going backward, we were paying OFF the National Debt when Bill Clinton left office. The first order of business for “W” was to give a huge tax break back to the rich… The 8 years of the “W” administration experienced the greatest loss of American jobs, middle class wealth and prosperity since World War II… Isn’t that clue enough that ReaganOmics simply does not work..

The other argument is “ you’re taking the money from them in the first place in the form of taxes, it should go back to them”. Remember what the goal here is. If the goal is to cut spending to reduce the deficit, cutting both revenue AND taxes, do not work. The highest tax rate during the Carter administration was 75%! Regan, by decreasing the highest rates began the ever increasing deficit problem. Cutting taxes and cutting spending are 2 separate things.

To counter this, Ryan say’s “we’ll get out through growth”. We’ve cut the high tax rates, we’ve given it back to the rich, and we’ve seen negative job growth – that just fact. The Heritage Foundation study that he based this logic less conclusion on has been debunked as bunk. It doesn’t work and we’re living through that reality.
Keep your minds open and your wallets closed.
_BT

The iPad is Overpriced Hype

It may be the latest buzz that’s making Apple stock holders rich, but the reality of the situation if the iPad is no more than an overpriced hardly useful trinket with zero place in Corporate America.


From now on, I'm calling it the iToad:




As far as a “desktop killer”, get your head out of “the cloud” and get real. The biggest problem with the iPad is that everything is crippled to support longer batter life. Apple has gone through huge pains to disable any possible use of external – non apple – storage. USB thumb drives, forget them. That’s painful enough, but here’s the real killer: The OS times out all backgroup apps but streaming video after 10 minutes.



We experimented with an iPad to see if it will connect to the office remotely using a remote desktop and a software tunnel. We’ll it connected and ran just fine…for 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark, the software tunnel application timed out, died and killed the link.



If that’s not enough, there is NO trial period for the apps store apps. When you use an Android device, at least you have a grace period to try the application before you’re actually charged for it. No such luck in the Apple world. Your newly purchased app is a toad falling well short of expectations, too bad so sad - you’re stuck with crap. Here’s the reality… For ½ price of an iPad, you can easily purchase a nice Netbook that does everything the pad does, and much, much more.



Time to stop the i-hype and have a reality check. Keep your minds open and your wallets closed.
-BT

Poor Poor Pitiful them… and other Govies

I want to say a few words about the current events in Wisconsin. There’s a whole lotta whoopla about a few Govies and teachers loosing a few benefits and having to pay a few percent more toward their retirement.

Here’s the facts…
 I am a white color manager with a college degree.
 6 of the last 12 years of working I received ZERO raise.
 Every single year, my health care premiums have increased 10%-20%... While deductibles increase, and covered procedures decrease.
 I have no pension.
 Only 6 of the last 12 years of work have I received any retirement contribution from my employer.
 As a technology worker, millions of my peers have been fired and those jobs have been sent to China, India or the Philippians.

I chose not to be a Govie…. As a private sector worker, I pay for Govies. My taxes pay your salaries, your retirement, your medicine.

Now I see people who will receive life long annuities - paid for by ME – throwing an absolute tantrum because they have to pay a few more percent toward that forever gravy train.

Where is the outrage from my shrinking buying power?
Where is the outrage as pensions were eviscerated from private companies?
Where do I get to protest to get stop my life from eroding?

No where. I can work, or I can quit and my children will go hungry. Nice choices.

There are many more of me than there are of you.

Government works, Teachers, Public workers… Hear Me… I am tired of you. It’s time to equal field, and I’ve already lost everything I have to lose - but my job. It’s your turn to pay, I’m broke and you’re part of the reason.

stop crying go back to work and pay your fair share.
nuff said.

Google Maps for Blackberry Kills your Battery

About 3 weeks ago, I downloaded and installed Google Maps for my blackberry. I thought it was pretty cool when driving. A day or so later I noticed that my battery life dropped from 3 days to 1 day!! I didn’t use the phone any more than normal, but I had a significant decrease in battery life. Having to charge my phone every day was just plain bothersome.


I've have my phone a year now; maybe the battery was just getting old and not holding a charge anymore. I happened to have an unused battery from a warranty replacement that was less than 3 months old, so I decided to try the unused battery. I put the battery in and let it charge up. After a couple days use on the new battery, it still suffered the same issue, just 1 day battery life.

I lived with the problem for several weeks wondering what could have changed. I was texting just a couple days ago and noticed that the arrows in the upper right corner of the screen were indicating almost continual back and forth data access and I wasn’t actually do anything?!?! That’s when I remembered I installed google maps a couple weeks early. I went to my downloads and deleted Google maps. Deleting the application required a hard device reset. After removing the application I found it interesting that battery life was back up to 3 days again!!


A quick search on google using the following terms “google maps blackberry battery issues” listed a plethora of hits … must be a common problem.


The moral of the story is – Beware Google Maps Users – Google is tracking where you go and what you do! That is the only possible conclusion! My fiancé has an Android and Google Maps is a permanent install, meaning she can’t remove the application. Everyone I know who has a Droid complains of battery life… could this be the problem – mystery solved.


Keep your minds open and your wallets closed.

The Failure of Conservatism

Ya, ya... two in one day. I'm home, there's a nasty ass blizzard outside and I'm bored..... So now you get to put up with two pearls of wisdom in a single day... Lucky you!

.....

I was in High School in the late seventies. Believe me, there was virtually nothing “Conservative” about the 70’s. Society has undoubtedly swung wildly to the right over the past 30 years. For those of you who doubt that fact, let’s consider some of the everyday experiences during my youth:

 Nobody wore a bicycle helmet, hell, we didn’t even owned a helmet.
 My High School had a Smokers Pit. A big area outside where both teachers AND students would go smoke between classes. The “dirt bags” as we called them, toked out there….. that’s smoked pot if you didn’t understand that.
 Nobody got arrested for drinking and driving. The cops would take your booze and send you home… even if you were under age.
 Everyone took guns to schools… we all went hunting after class.
 PG Movies showed frontal nudity. Doubt me? Rent the movie Hooper (1978-Burt Reynolds). There’s a birthday scene where a gal jumps out of a birthday cake - big titties flopping around.. it’s PG movie..
 Kids NEVER talked back to adults, and when they, they got hit… even if they were not your kids.

Musically:
 Charlie Daniels still called the Devil a “son of a bitch”,
 There was still “Bullshit” in Pink Floyd’s money.
 Pete Townshend still asked “who the fuck are you?”.

As horrible and foreign as that may seem:
 We could play outside and never worry
 Houses, cars and bikes, never got locked.
 We said hello and good day to all the neighbors
 Everyone had a retirement
 Virtually nobody paid for healthcare, it was ALL covered by insurance.

Now that we’ve made everything unacceptable, including disciplining our own children, it begs the question… Are we better off? Is society better? I'm not feeling the love.....

As more and more “words” have become unacceptable, as our neighborhood shrinks because we fear strangers. It’s pretty clear that this mass swing towards conservatism has done little but make everyone uncomfortable with everything. When you tell people it’s ok to feel bad because someone says a “bad word”, you’ve just opened up Victim Mentality. Every body now deserves to be happy without having to work for it. Why, because it’s someone else’s fault.

The more you make an issue of anything, the more it becomes a social problem. There is no drinking minimum age in Europe, nor is there a problem with alcoholism. Is there a relationship between the two... you bet your bippy...

It’s the same with words…. Ignorance ‘hides” words, keeps them from the public eye. It’s just another form of censorship. Only by listening, understanding and learning do we remove the power of harm from words.

Lenny Bruce had a good point. Here’s Dustin Hoffman doing a Lenny Bruce routine from the 1974 Movie “Lenny”

Incase the video below does not work, here's a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOnkv76rNL4
It's great... it's also from a man who said this in the '60's. In so many ways we have socially devolved.




It seems to me that “conservatism” has given us little more than provide
 mental justification to move jobs overseas by the millions.
 social acceptable for 2% to own 90%. Never in the history of this country has such a huge pile of wealth shifted from middle class to the rich than in the past 2 decades.

We have unquestionably swung wildly to the right with insidious consequences. It’s good for the rich, the uptight and those without coping skills – but leaves a devastated society in it’s wake.

Keeps your minds open, and your wallets closed.
=BT

I CALLED IT!

This is interesting…. My little rant about Obama being a single termer – Except if Palin is on the Elephant ticket - must have been picked up by someone.

http://www.primariesforpalin.com/?page_id=2

Democrats have started a grass roots campaign to get Palin on the Republican ticket. Evidently even Dem’s recognizes their fearless leader has failed both American and his chances for re-election.

Here’s my problem with this action.. Say they actually get Palin on the ticket, she of course would agree due to her ever expanding ego and narcissism. But the bottom line is this action isn’t being done because it’s best for the Country, its being done to protect a loser. Obama no more deserves to be President any more than Palin.

Obama hasn’t delivered and needs to go. That’s the natural evolution. He doesn’t have a brother in a swing state who’s banging the chair of the republican party to stop a re-count, so he’s just screwed in the none fun way.

This whole “Bush” debacle should demonstrate to America what happens when political greed and corruption run amuck, go against the will of the people and put the wrong person in office. We can’t afford a repeat.

Obama... another Single Term President

Barack Obama just gave his second term to the Republicans. He was swept into the White House touting 3 conditions:
1. “I’m going to close ‘Gitmo’
2. I’m going to reverse the Bush tax cuts for millionaires
3. I’m going to get us out of Afghanistan.

Those were his main promises.. that was it and he won.
Here we are, ½ way through his first term….my how 2 years can change someone…
1. We’ve not heard BOO about Guantanamo Bay – it’s still operational.
2. He just cut a deal with the Republicans on taxes which includes all the breaks for Millionaires
3. He TRIPPLED the forces in Afghanistan.

Well Barack, you just crapped on your base. There’s nobody left to support you next time. If the Economy turns North, the Republicans will get all the credit since they talked you into the tax cut.
No mister Obama, you’re done. If backpedaling on all your campaign promises isn’t enough for your base to run for cover, tossing Health Care to Nancy Pelosi did. Moderates elected you, now there ZERO chance of them voting for you again.

UNLESS…

There’s one chance you have to get elected for a second term. The only way that will happen is if the Republicans are stupid enough to put Sarah Palin on the ticket. That’s it. Either isn't a win for America.