December 15, 2012

Only 2 more hours until I resettle in Colorado Springs. I guess it's going to be a nice respite from the last 3 months of insanity in New York. But in 12 months and 3 weeks there, I maybe saw any local friends there once. I heard from them much more frequently on Facebook. I reconnected with some people, and survived some pretty horrific stuff (homelessness due to lack of money and to storm damage, and the longest stay I've had at a hospital since I was born).

And with the Newtown school shootings dominating the news, I was shocked to find something else that (assuming 20 children and 6 educators hadn't gotten killed in their school) should have made the news. It seems "Banana Boat Song" singer Harry Belafonte has gone off the deep end. Under the encouragement of self-proclaimed civil rights activist Al Charlatan, Belafonte suggested that President Obama should "work like a 3rd World dictator" and jail Republicans. Not surprisingly, this load of aural crap aired on the cable channel version of NBC News, MSNBC. I have argued for nearly 20 years that NBC and its news division should be put out of business. They have staged news. They have ignored news. They have slanted news much further to the left than Fox News has to the right. They gave a racial huckster a nightly cable show. (But then, Al Charlatan was previously employed by Fox News before he got paychecks from journalism's Evil Empire.) And now they aid and abet in treason by suggesting that the President destroy the Constitution and jail (if not kill) the opposition. Shut NBC and their corporate enablers (Comcast) down now. And while Harry Belafonte may have every right under the Constitution to spout such violent speech, I have every right to state that he should have been at the barrel end of Adam Lanza's stolen guns yesterday instead of those 20 innocent schoolchildren.

November 22, 2012

Today is Thanksgiving Day. This uniquely American holiday is used to celebrate thanks for the gifts God has given us. For some people, those gifts are obvious- a loving family, a good job, a nice home. Some celebrate their many gifts, some are internal, some are spiritual, and many are material. Others are thankful they escaped the recent Hurricane with their lives. I guess I should be thankful that I survived Hurricane Sandy with all the major stuff safe and dry, and with a FEMA grant that will allow me to move to a place that actually has electricity and heat (although I don't currently know whether I will stay in NYC after the hotel voucher expires in 9 days or else move to Colorado Springs, Texas, or Nebraska). I guess I should be thankful that I'm spending Thanksgiving with relatives in Chambersburg that I haven't seen in years. But it still doesn't mean there is a lot to not be thankful for, indeed to be irate at.

There is still poverty. Jesus said "The poor will always be with you" (Matthew 26:11). But then that passage does not denigrate the poor, it is meant to show compassion and the Christian need to care for those who cannot help themselves. Too many people cannot help themselves anymore. They need help, but the type of help they need is subject to debate. As someone who spent 8 of the last 19 months in homeless shelters, I can argue that you don't help the homeless by building cardboard boxes to "show solidarity" with them (as a report this morning on WHP-TV suggested), but by getting them off the cold streets, getting them into indoor shelter, and helping them find meaningful work so they can afford real housing.

There is still injustice disguised as "help"- Obamacare being a prime example. This program that was intended to get more people to get health insurance does nothing to control health care costs. Indeed, it shifts some of those costs to the lower middle class who cannot afford health insurance and make too much for Medicaid through the insurance penalty tax. It is driving up operating costs for small businesses and franchises (who now are forced to pay for costly insurance) (see: Denny's, Papa John's). To avoid those costs, businesses are reducing hours for employees and hiring fewer employees. It doesn't take an economist to know what that will do to the unemployment and underemployment rates. And by re-electing President Obama, the American public has approved of his undeclared wars on the unborn (by increasing aid to the eugenics loving, abortion profiting Planned Parenthood) and the Catholic Church (by the Obamacare/HHS mandates that force the Church to pay for anti-Catholic health care practices).

For many, the solution to poverty seems to be by throwing money at those who have none. Yes, part of the problem of being poor is lack of money. Just giving a block grant to someone who has no idea on how to spend that money for needs is like burning that money in a fire pit. A block grant that qualifies as poverty in New York would be a middle class grant in Middle America. Many doesn't even know how to budget- something that should be taught in schools. Too many teachers are focused not on educating their pupils, but on their pay. There is so much bureaucracy and waste in some school districts that taxpayers are paying near 5 figure property taxes for schools that pay their administrators and janitors more than their teachers and the students who do graduate know more about President Obama's personal life and Spongebob than about Algebra and Science.

There is still general insanity- the sausage making nature of American politics, the left wing activism creeping into the American education system, the various wars throughout the world, the Satanism that pervades Al Qaeda and radical Islam, disease, hate crimes, NBC News, materialism, and the worship of money which is in full bloom this time of year. But I'll leave those discussions for other blogs at another time.

March 29, 2011

A lot has happened since my last blog. 2011 has roared in with a lot of turmoil. The turmoil in my personal life so far this year includes the loss, gain, and loss of employment, health problems (involving skin infections I never had to deal with when I lived in NYC), and lost friends. I lost several friends to paranoia, one friend to Kregeritis, and another to a heart attack- at 28. Unfortunately, Jeff Braverman's surviving family is still struggling over his death, and to be honest, they need the prayers more than he does.

There's also been a lot of political turmoil. Some of it could have been predicted with the Republican wave last election day. But the current turmoil in the Middle East is what will affect world history more than any union attempts to convince public opinion to support their attempts to milk more money out of a broken and overtaxed economy. Tunisia and Egypt are free of their autocratic leaders, and there is civil unrest in Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, and Syria. The biggest news in the Middle East right now is the civil war in Libya. Muammar the wacko (I won't print his surname here because there are at least 4 conflicting Arabic-to-English spellings of it in various media sources) is fighting to keep power after losing the eastern part of Libya to insurgents inspired by the revolutions in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt. After the Arab League and EU "discovered" that Muammar was targeting civilians (I guess they forgot what his agents did over Lockerbie in 1988), they lobbied the UN to approve a "no-fly zone" over Libya. President Obama used the resolution as an excuse to supply most of the airpower to enforce the no fly zone. This has caused some weird shifts in the US political dynamic. Conservatives are split on Obama's actions, as are the various tea party contingents. Many Democrats are calling for Obama's impeachment over enforcing the UN resolution. And Obama is making a poor case as to why the US is even involved in Libya. But if anything, Obama should point out that we are finishing an action that Reagan should have completed in 1986. If Reagan had bombed Muammar the Wacko into hell during the 1986 bombings, we could have been spared the Pan Am bombings, various terrorist attacks, and the buildup of a chemical weapons program that was only stopped when Muammar saw the damage that the US Army did in Iraq in 2003.

George Soros and the wacko leftists are at it again. Soros is using his non-profit Media Matters organization to plot a "guerilla warfare and sabotage" against News Corp and Fox News Channel. While I think that one of the big 4 networks should be out of business (mainly because the FCC didn't do its job in 1993), I diasgree with the Soros war against Fox, especially since Fox is no more biased to the right than MSNBC and NPR are to the left and has certainly not done anything illegal other than tear Soros's worldview to shreds.

First of all, Fox News Channel is a cable channel. The FCC has little influence over cable, except to dictate competition and rates bargaining. While I tend to agree with news coverage on Fox News more than I would on ABC News or MSNBC, I do have some issues with Fox News's management ideas. While I know of various web sites that stream CNN, Fox has done everything in its power to shut down sites that try to stream its news. Why? Not everyone has or can afford cable. And why should any commercial network (Fox News, USA, Spike, or any of the over-the-air networks) charge to transmit their programs onto cable on the first place? What the hell are these networks doing with their advertising revenue? And are they so broke that they can't live off that? And if Fox News gave a damn about trying to have as many viewers as possible to watch their "fair and unbiased" news, they should do an end-run around cable by making Fox News and little-watched Fox Business available as subchannels on every over-the-air Fox affiliate in the country.

If Soros wanted to use his powers to destroy a network/media company that actually has violated the public interest (the modus operandi for the FCC), he should go after NBC. Soros probably won't since NBC's news divisions are closest in line to his worldview. But NBC never got punished for the most egregious violation of public interest in my lifetime- the Dateline report where producers tried to prove GM trucks were explosive by rigging explosives on a truck and passing that off as a fuel tank defect. Sure, the NBC News president (Michael Gartner) was forced to resign, but NBC News is still on the air. Dateline NBC is still on the air. And NBC received no fines or sanctions from the FCC for staging the GM story. Meanwhile, CBS got fined $550000 for an accidental nipple flash during the 2004 Super Bowl. How the hell is that a bigger violation of the public interest than anything NBC News has put on the air over the last 20 years? And I still haven't forgotten the "Syracuse Peacock" incidents from March of 1997, when a Syracuse grad employee of WNBC (NBC's low rated flagship station in New York) made threatening calls to the Brooklyn College Excelsior student newspaper concerning my articles that mentioned his pathetic excuse for an employer.

General Electric was so upset with what NBC was doing to its image (and its profits) that they sold NBC to Comcast last year. Comcast now controls the largest collection of cable systems in the country and 3 over-the-air broadcast networks (NBC, Ion, and Telemundo). Since most liberals hate media monopolies, why aren't they crying out over this illegal (under most FCC rules) media combination?

Getting slightly off the NBC tangent, I have replaced the Windows 2000 system that was installed on my Dell in favor of a Linux-based OS called Ubuntu. Trying to figure out Linux and trying to re-learn UNIX (the MS-DOS for Linux) for the first time since 1997 should be a fun challenge between job searches. This is the first blog I've composed in a completely non-Windows format- using Ubuntu 10.10, Leafpad, and Ubuntu's generic version of Firefox. But then, I have used Firefox's Windows version for most of these blogs between 2005-2010. And if I can master these new programming languages, there's another thing to add to my resume.

September 25, 2010

As of this writing, I have spent a combined total of 6 years in my hometown of Colorado Springs. But this city keeps changing (probably more so than NYC over the last 3 years), and not always for the better.

With maybe 3 exceptions, the people I knew and socialized with during my last stint in the Springs (May 2007-May 2008) aren't here anymore. This city has one of the highest turnover rates in the country. Some of it is due to the military presence. That's how my family ended up here in 1973 and why it left by the end of the 1970s. In 2007, medical marijuana had few dispensaries in this state. Now, there's too many to count in this city (including one just 2 blocks from where I go to Mass) and the unincorporated parts of El Paso County are trying to outlaw them. And it is not that difficult for a physically well pothead to get a prescription for a joint. Wisely, all the major colleges outlaw "legal" marijuana on their campuses. Maybe the Feds should step in and remind them that non-medicinal use of marijuana is still illegal under Federal law, despite what one would believe by reading the back "Cannabiz" section of the Colorado Springs Independent.

The media and politics are also screwed up here. Why is it that the Republicans have a better chance of taking back Albany than Denver? Because the Colorado state Republican party totally screwed up. An unknown candidate by the name of Dan Maes beat the establishment candidate of Scott McInnis (mainly due to Maes's strong support in this county, since excluding the El Paso Republican results, McInnis won everywhere else in the state). And what does that mean now? An underfunded candidate being attacked by the right (Tom Tancredo, who left the Republicans for the American Constitution Party) and the left (Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who is a lot more liberal than outgoing Democrat Governor Bill Ritter). At least the tea party is actively supporting Republican candidates Ken Buck (for Senate) and Scott Tipton (who is running against a member of the infamous anti-Springs Salazar clan for Pueblo's Congressional seat). At least in New York, Carl Paladino has enough money to counter the Democratic machine. Hell, Carl Paladino and Rush Limbaugh recently discovered that Village Voice article from 2008 that ties Andrew Cuomo to HUD policies that caused the housing crisis that caused the Great Recession. What is it with New York Democrats and their love affair with candidates that are proven job and economy killers? Hello- read anything I've written on this blog between 2006-2008 with the keyword of "Spitzer".

And the local media... I understand Colorado Springs is too small to have all the dailies and free papers that New York City has. But 75 cents is way too overpriced for what the only paper in town gets you. And according to the Nielsen ratings, the number one station in this media market isn't even based in Colorado Springs or affiliated with a watchable network. Between KKTV, KRDO, and KXRM, are there are 3 pretty good alternatives. As far as broadcast quality, I would probably rate KRDO and KXRM ahead of their broadcast networks' owned stations in New York (although WABC and WYNW get better ratings in New York than KRDO and KXRM do in Colorado Springs). And now that the damn Pueblo station's main digital signal picks up in the Springs, why are they on both Channel 42 and Channel 30? KHWS TV is fairly good, but it can only be picked up on cable since they don't have a digital signal. And one also needs cable to get the Ion family of networks. And how come Accuweather isn't on any digital subchannels here? And let's not forget our local cable company is Comcast, which also now owns the worst network in broadcasting and gives it channel preference over most of the Springs stations.

And as far as KKTV, while they're no WCBS, they tend to have the best local news, although one would not believe that by reading the local Nielsens. But I do have a gripe with KKTV- despite being the last VHF station in town (and by far the strongest digital signal on my converter box), they want to move from Channel 10 to Channel 49. Why, so they can weaken their signal? So they can lose their coverage in the the southern Denver suburbs and in Southeastern Colorado? Ever since WCBS was forced to move to UHF in New York, they've lost a lot of coverage in Orange and Suffolk Counties. The FCC is allowing WCBS to get a repeater signal on 22 since WCBS's main signal on 33 conflicts with WFSB Hartford's signal, also on 33. Before 2009, WCBS was on Channel 2 and WFSB was on Channel 3, and both could be picked up in the far northern suburbs. Now, neither can be picked up without cable. Great going, FCC. I see KKTV moving to Channel 49, falling further behind in the ratings, and possibly losing their longtime CBS affiliation if they don't apply for more repeater signals.

While CBS is the dominant primetime network and (in NYC, Philly, Chicago, and LA) a heavily listened to radio news source, there is no CBS radio news in Colorado Springs. CBS lost their longtime affiliate, KVOR-AM (the original owner and callsign of KKTV) in 2007. Despite the fact that KRDO-AM/FM was (and still is) an ABC news affiliate, KVOR's owner decided to switch to ABC. But then KVOR's owner (Citadel) bought ABC's radio networks and could have easily yanked that from KRDO-AM/FM, but didn't. There are also 2 Fox News radio affiliates that pick up here (KZNT and KCSJ).

And now, I need an internet connection to listen to anything resembling a news radio station or a dance music station

August 17, 2008

Wow.. 5 weeks in Staten Island. It beats the shelter, but some of my housemates can be annoying. Especially the anonymous one who broke that Foreman Grill I bought just before I left Colorado Springs. At least I am getting a new grill out of this mess.

Work is still work. While most of my deliveries either originate or go to Chelsea, I have had a few deliveries that are going to the Upper West Side- especially around W 98th and West End Avenue. One of my old friends from Kentucky, Lane Gold, grew up in that part of town. And now I am getting a lot more e-mails from him. I haven't heard as much lately from the other Kentucky friend who usually e-mails me (Steve Peak). And in a probably coincidental move, local drugstore Duane Reade is marketing a new iced tea called Gold Peak. If Steve and Lane do sue Duane Reade for illegally using their last names to market their new beverage, I'd like some of the proceeds since I did point out the atrocity to both of them. And I still have a car and a student loan to pay off.

Apparantly my Olympic Boycott isn't working. Normally 4th place National Bull Crap (NBC) is having record ratings from the Beijing games. But they will be back in the cellar once the games are over and when Michael Phelps starts hawking his medals for Lord knows what on North and Guilford in Baltimore.

And in other news, the Catholic Church is agreeing in principle with Judaism and banning the proper name of God at Mass. Most Jews won't even fully spell out God, in favor of G-d. But for centuries, Catholics have gone to attempting to pronounce the whole Tetragrammaton, usually as Yahweh. They are now urged to replace the Holy name with Adonai, which means "my Lord", but supposedly doesn't cheapen the name. But "Adonai, I Know You Are Near" doesn't rhyme quite as well as "Yahweh, I Know You Are Near". And now, a lot of Catholic song books are going to have to revise their lyrics. But since the name Lord or God is used instead of the Tetragrammaton in the non-singing part of Mass, the basic Mass format won't change.

March 28, 2008

I guess this is becoming more of a news commentary blog. Now that Spitzer is out of office, another political atrocity rears its ugly head- in the Far East.

For years, I've been boycotting businesses and politicians whose actions I don't support. Some of the most famous on my boycott list include NBC and Planned Parenthood. But it is high time to add the world's most populous nation to that list.

Why?

For starters, view the videos below. Many (especially in the Republican Party) thought by increasing trade with this brutal regime after the Tiananmen Square massacre that it would help the millions who were victimized by the evil Communist Party and encourage them to protest, uprise, and eventually overthrow that evil government. After all, a similar policy help bring down that other evil empire called the Soviet Union, right?

Not quite. If anything, the Soviet Union collapsed due to being outspent by of all things the US Military. Ronald Reagan's defense policies may have made nuclear alarmists and the peacenik left go bonkers, but they did indicate to the Soviet Union that we would spend whatever we could to defend our nation against their nuclear threat. It may have ballooned our national debt, but it spent the Soviets into oblivion. By the time the people could uprise against the Communists, the Communists could not pay their own army to defend them against the people, and the army side with the people (and Boris Yeltsin), and Communism is no longer a force in Russia.

Unfortunately, our trade dollars with China did not help bring down the CCP (Chinese Communist Party, to use the Epoch Times's abbreviation). Indeed, it has had the opposite effect. The CCP is using its newfound wealth to attract the Olympics (whose US broadcast partner I have been boycotting for over 11 years, but for other reasons). And more disturbing, the CCP has been building up their military. If the US spent as much of its budget on military purposes as the Chinese have been doing lately, the leftists would be howling. And right now, the Chinese army has the capability to wipe out most of the West Coast with their nuclear weapons. This is not quite the threat that the old Soviet army posed (enough nuclear weapons to wipe out most of civilization), but it is potentially even greater a threat than Al Qaeda. But the CCP won't launch their nukes yet- they still need our money.

Most people know know about the Chinese atrocities in Tibet. But the main test of the CCP army is that little island off their SE coast- Taiwan. The CCP has pledged to do everything within their power (even to the point of nuclear war) to prevent Taiwan from declaring complete independence from China. Such a war would almost certainly involve the US- and if that happens, I wouldn't want to be anywhere west of the Rockies.

To quote Chinese general Zhu Chenghu in 2005, "if the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory (Taiwan), I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," and that "we [...] will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xi'an. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

It is insanity to keep trading with (and de-facto arming) one of the biggest threats to the existence of the United States. At the very least, the US Olympic Committee (based about 8 miles south of my current residence) should boycott the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The United States should halt all trade with China until the CCP is out of power. To continue trade with China and to give any type of aid to the CCP is not just against the ideals of American morality, it is greatly increasing the chances the United States will be in a nuclear war. Right now, the US could win such a war, but as long as we keep funding this beast, our chances of winning such a war decrease. And a US victory could still result in over 30 million American civilians killed (and over 300-400 million Chinese and 20 million Taiwanese). That is over 6 times the worldwide casualties of the costliest war in human history- World War 2.

April 6, 2006

Greetings, all, from the Netscaper 113 sickbed in Queens. I still don't know what caused me to get sick, but I missed work yesterday and spent most of this morning at Elmhurst Hospital. I have to return there tomorrow to get back the last of my test results. I did get one test result back this morning: I am not HIV positive. Not that I fall in any of the risk categories for HIV, but I did get a free HIV test to go along with my other exam. The HIV test was administered orally, as opposed to using needles. And I was able to get the results back in an hour. I still have a stomach ailment and a bad skin condition, but at least I don't have a killer virus. I am stuck on a soup and bread diet for a few days until the stomach ailment goes away.

I don't intend on discussing the rising gas prices or Spitzer campaign in this post (I'm sick enough as it is), but there has been major news that will affect my TV viewing. When Bob Schieffer took the anchor job at CBS Evening News in March 2005, he said his job was temporary. Well, CBS finally found Bob's replacement: Katie Couric from NBC (also known as National Bull Crap for the way they treat news). I don't blame Katie for wanting to leave the cesspool of broadcast journalism, but I don't think her signing was a great move by CBS. CBS's evening news ratings have risen considerably since Bob Schieffer took over last year. Do they really think the co-anchor of a morning show that omitted the most newsworthy event at last year's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a good choice? And NBC has already announced Katie's replacement: Meredith Viera, who currently hosts "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and the odious ABC talk show called "The View". Wasn't Meredith Viera the same 60 Minutes former correspondent who announced how glad she was that she was out of journalism following the September 11th attacks? Well, Today isn't a news show, it's a crap fest. And Meredith, no amount of Lysol is going to get that smell off the new entry on your resume.