Can We Talk Politics?

Mitt Romney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don’t read this if you are one of those who get all upset if someone’s political opinion doesn’t align with yours. Move along . . . there’s nothing to see here…

I decided to write this after reading a post by a friend about Mitt Romney‘s speech regarding Israel & Iran. Essentially they said they were disturbed by what they read.

First a disclaimer; I’m not a huge Mitt Romney fan. I don’t think it necessary to go into the reasons why but just want to qualify my thoughts. Second, I don’t care if your opinion differs from mine. I only care about discussions that are rational, so if you want to comment afterward and don’t try to dismiss mine with silly clap trap such as terms you use out of context like, straw man or Rumpelstiltskin, I will respond as a rational person. If you respond with irrational argument, chances are I will ignore you. If you lace it with curse words and childish anger…. I will dematerialize and route myself through the Internet and re-materialize in your closet. When you go to sleep I will come out of the closet and beat you senseless with a dead marsupial.

I encourage you to use a search engine of your choice to read what Mitt Romney said and not mine or someone else’s comments first.  A brief summary of what he said was he supports the state of Israel and he calls the current state of Iran a brutal and nasty piece of work. This isn’t unusual language as all viable candidates to my knowledge have supported Israel to one degree or another. You may think this has to do with some ancient religious ideal such as Judaism or Christianity or other such stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is time to set all dunce caps aside and put on the wizard cap. Recall your history lessons; oh you slept through history. Well in summary, when a man with a short temper, bad hair stylist and all round loser of the humanitarian of the year award came into power in Germany during the 1930′s, he decided with a large group of thugs in pre-Empire Strikes Back uniforms to eradicate groups of people. Chief among those groups were those identified as Jews. When some of the body count was added up, he essentially wiped out enough people to repopulate the city of New York, Los Angeles and Schenectady thrown in. A lot of them were Jews.

Several years after World War II ended, the Jews were given some of their original land back in the middle east but their neighbors weren’t all that happy with this decision. Most of these neighboring groups didn’t get the memo on roasting marshmallows and singing songs together; even though most of them are willing to roast those who call themselves Jews.

For the past few years or at least a news cycle or two, the Iranian leadership has called the Jews everything that identifies them as people lower than pond sludge. They have also not been very quiet about their intentions should they have the opportunity. They simply want to wipe the state of Israel off the face of the earth and have been working in their dungeons, closets and not so secret underground lairs to produce weaponry capable of carrying out their spoken promises to their fellow miscreants.

Most of us complain when those who either wish to become elected or are already elected speak with language that is either laced with words that have very little meaning or give different meaning to different groups. We use words like, double-speak or pandering to describe their talk. For example when a politician speaks their mind in giving support to Israel and dares suggest a group of people officially hates and wants to wipe out another group, then we may disagree with them but a rational person must ask, why should we tolerate genocide without at least speaking out against it. We already tried appeasement with Adolf and when that didn’t work out so well many still wondered why?

If you are currently active in politics or interested in voting for a President, then you might look at what has been done in these past few years. Forget the speeches and look at what has been accomplished. If you believe the present administration has taken initiatives in areas you think are important than you know how you should vote. If you question the direction and it doesn’t align with your views then you might consider another candidate.

Related articles

• Romney: US has duty to protect Israel (nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com)
• Tisha B’Av and the Right of Self-Defense (commentarymagazine.com)

Change – The One Constant . .

The End of an Era?

There’s a familiar ring to that phrase and I’m sure it has been used in a number of ways to describe the changing of a generational control, passage of a phase in music or the changes in technology.

I’ve seen many of these come and go but as this article points out with some truth is that much of the curiosity of how devices work appears to no longer be of interest. The End of the x86 Era by John Dvorak points out “that nobody in today’s market really cares how anything works.”

“This public divorce from mechanism actually began before the poke-and-shove interface. It was realized during the wishful thinking ethos of the 1990s when people wanted computers to become appliances.”

He continues to briefly describe the mutation of the early personal computers into the push, shove, point and click interfaces we have on the small Pad and net-book platforms we have today.

This metamorphosis hasn’t simply been confined to computing, although I can recall driving around in Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota from surplus store to store looking for suitable discarded electronics parts from the many major manufacturers found in the area. I and my fellow technology oriented friends wanted to build our own computers. Those with the earlier boat anchors were given tremendous street cred by fellow computer geeks for their ability to scrounge, program the I/O and display something resembling a program on the typically RF connected portable television. Graphical development in those early machines consisted of using characters such as the asterisk, period, comma, etc.

There were many other pursuits into photography, home movies, amateur radio, radio controlled aircraft and rocketry. Many of us repaired or modified cars and motorcycles. Although I never experimented much in the area of customizing other than a carburetor / exhaust enhancement, I did my own British motorcycle repair as well as some of the first few automobiles I owned. I still do some of the maintenance items such as brake pads or computer tech through OBD II scanner.

By and large the era of the do it yourself person has changed from electronics projects through distributors such as Radio Shack, Heathkit, Lafayette Radio and Allied Electronics to home projects assisted by large retailers such as Home Depot or Lowes.

I think my generation has an interesting place in history. It bridges the gap from grandparent pioneers and World War I veterans to parents who were grounded in the Depression era and World War II. We were a curious generation often schooled in trades and tinkered with many different electronic and mechanical projects. Some of these interests were idyllically captured on film such as American Graffiti or Goonies from cars to gadgets.

Will we see a resurgence in interest of how things work? Perhaps not as prevalent but the Internet has many sites dedicated to furthering our understanding. I’m still waiting for the plans to build my own Transmogrifier. Calvin and Hobbes fans will understand that reference.