Just say no!

I did my taxes this last weekend. It's the American way. It's been awhile since I've worried about taxes. Ever since becoming unemployed, I'd have the occasional income from dividends and interest, or the sale of a stock. One year I even converted my traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, but it was small enough that I didn't have to pay any taxes on it since it was below the standard deduction.

Alas, I'm sad to report, I am no longer unemployed. I have joined the ranks of the self-employed, and running Atlas Quest is my job. =) Gotta pay taxes--not a whole lot mind you (the government doesn't require you pay much if you don't make much)--but for the first time in several years, I'm an honest-to-goodness tax-paying citizen. I'm helping to pay those poor soldiers stuck in Iraq, road improvements, teachers, and subsidizing farmers everywhere. And, I'm embarrassed to admit, helping to pay the president's salary.

But it's the American way. I'll get over it. The thing I don't get, however, that makes me mad is that little check box on my 1040 asking if I'd like three dollars to go towards the presidential election. HELLO?! Why would anyone but a politician check this box? Do you want to see your tax dollars used to create attack ads on television? Annoy you with stupid little banners people put up in their yards? And bumper stickers that you'll still see stuck on used cars for years and sometimes even decades after the election is over?

Checking this box supposedly does not cost you anything more. Oh really? Where, do you suppose this money comes from? That three dollars could have been used to help pay down the national deft. It could have been used to hire more teachers, fix broken bridges. And you want to throw it down the toilet so politicians can bad mouth each other?

Sure, it's only three dollars, but there are so many more needy places it can be used. Don't give it to the politicians. Use it for a better America instead. I'd like to change that box so if I check it, the president (or even my representatives in Congress) would be required to pay ME three bucks. See how they like it for a change.

Just say no to rich white guys asking for handouts. Let them earn it like the rest of the tax-paying American public.

Okay, that's not very fair. The top two Democrats for the presidential nomination are a woman and a black guy. I like that. I don't really know much about either of them. I know the woman was married to Bill Clinton and is the senator of New York, but outside of that, I really don't know a whole lot about her. The black guy is a senator for Illinois, is trying to quite smoking, and has a name strangely reminding me of Osama Bin Laden, but I won't hold that against him.

Normally, I don't care much about who's running for president so early in the race. The election is still over a year away and a lot can change before then, and I don't even know much about anyone who's running. Except that I absolutely love the idea of a minority being president of the United States. Black, female, gay, Hispanic, Asian, Native American--I don't really care. I'm tired of rich white guys running this country, and I just love the fact that in almost all probability, it will be a minority that will be the main contender for the presidential race for the Democratic party.

Okay, maybe a woman isn't technically a "minority" in this country--I think they actually outnumber men 50.1% to 49.9% or something like that, but there's never been a woman president before and I just want someone who's not a rich white guy in the oval office.

If you're tired of rich white guys running the country running this country, raise your hand? Yeah, I thought so. Let's give women and blacks a chance to screw things up too. It's only fair.

And check NO to giving them your hard earned money. Frankly, I don't think they've earned it.

Are you scared yet?

Apparently, you should be. I was getting the oil changed in my car the other day, sitting in the lobby of Jiffy Lube waiting for them to finish with the car. Completely off topic, but bear with me for a minute, someone ahead of me went to the counter to pay and asked the luber if he could use a student or AAA discount, and the luber said he could use one or the other, but not both. And I thought, "WHAT?! They accept AAA discounts?"

So when it was my turn to pay, I asked about the AAA discount, showed them my card, and got 10% off the order. Remember that the next time you get your oil changed. I had no idea they accepted it--it's certainly not a discount they tell everyone about.

But back to the subject at hand--they had CNN running on the television and one of the reporters that covers Wall Street was talking about how "scary" last week was (or was it the week before that?) when the market dropped over 400 points in one day. The exact quote I might have wrong, but I think it was something like this: "It was very scary," and she nodded with a somber look.

I own stocks. Most of my money, in fact, is tied up in the stock market, but you know what? I wasn't scared. In fact, I didn't even know about the 'blood bath' until after the music had stopped when I was talking on the phone and Amanda mentioned that the market dropped over 400 points that day. My reaction was to raise an eyebrow. Not necessarily because the stock market dropped over 400 points, but rather I was surprised that Amanda would know it. She doesn't usually keep up with that sort of information. =)

I'll admit, the stock market doesn't drop 400 points in a day every day, but it was what? About a 2 or 3% drop? Not exactly something that would ruffle my feathers. I expect stocks to drop 2 or 3% on a regular basis. Heck, I expect stocks will often drop 10 to 20% over periods of time--maybe even more when times really get rough. And they think a less than 3% drop is "scary"? No, I don't think so.

If you think a 2 or 3% drop in the stock market is scary, you should not have put money into the stock market in the first place. This doesn't even rank as one of the 10 biggest drops in stock market history. As far as I'm considered, it's a complete and absolute non-event. Not even newsworthy.

But you know, they have to fill all that air time with something, so they call a 400-point drop scary. It sells paper. It keeps people glued to the television. People wring their hands in fear and frustration. But it's much ado about nothing. Don't fall for the hype.

And heaven forbid, do NOT invest in the stock market if a 2 or 3% drop scares you. That's just stupid, because it WILL happen to you if you're in it long enough.

Hypocracy in the House

The House of our esteemed Congress is trying to pass a bill so Wal-Mart cannot own a bank known as an industrial loan company. It is very much "let us pick on Wal-Mart because everyone hates them and we will look good to our voting public" kind of bill.

Target, for instance, already owns such a bank. Why should Wal-Mart not be able to? Wal-Mart says they want to create such a bank to process credit card transactions and such on their own instead of using a middleman which takes a cut and raises their prices and that they are not interested in running commercial banks for the public at large.

The fear, of course, is that they will change their mind and open Wal-Mart branded banks around the world. And maybe they will, but.... so what? Who will this hurt? Other banks are an obvious choice. More competition and all that. If Wal-Mart tries to undercut Bank of America, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, or whatever, they might have to cut fees, increase interest rates on your money in their vaults, or provide better interest rates for loans to stay competitive.

But you know what? I hate banks. I really, really hate banks. They try to nickel and dime you to death. They charge you if you do not keep a minimum amount in the account. They charge you to use certain ATMs. I have a list of possible bank fees from one of my banks that I might face if I do not jump through every single hoop at the appropriate time that that is about 30 items long! And "free checking" is rarely ever truly free.

Frankly, if Wal-Mart wants to compete with these folks, that is something I would very much support. You would not even have to change banks to benefit from the increased competition as the established players will have to cut fees and improve service to stay competitive.

And consider this--if mixing a retail business with a bank is such a bad thing, why are our esteemed members of Congress not trying to pass a bill so Wells Fargo cannot choose to buyout and own Krogers in the future? A bank is allowed to own a retail business, but a retail business is not allowed to own a bank? That is just plain stupid.

This is nothing more than a ploy by politicians to look good by picking on the evil Wal-Mart, but the only person that such a bill will help is the already existing banks--not the consumer. For the average working person out there, this is very bad legislation.

Oh, PLEASE! *rolling eyes*

Time magazine's Person of the Year is YOU? What a cop out. The article I read says:

You were named Time magazine "Person of the Year" on Saturday for the explosive growth and influence of user-generated Internet content such as blogs, video-file sharing site YouTube and social network MySpace.

I was skeptical when they called the American Soldier the Person of the Year in 2003--couldn't they find ONE soldier, a soldier with a name, as representative of our armed forces? What's that say about English soldiers? Are they somehow inferior to American soldiers? Seems cold hearted to me.

But come on! It's a PERSON of the year. Not a PEOPLE of the year. Singular. One person. Okay, I'll give them suck-up points for naming the American solider a person of the year, but I really must protest using YOU as a person of the year. It's not personal, but my blogs aren't getting much action, all things considered, and I've never uploaded anything to YouTube, and I never created an account on MySpace. Frankly, I'm not very good at being "you."

Some of you might be surprised that the person of the year is "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse." For good or for ill. Yep, the runner ups this year include Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China's President Hu Jintao, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

I like the idea of only nominating good people for this particular award--person of the year sounds like a title one should strive for, but we really don't want some people trying to get this illustrious honor. However, so long as "for good or for ill" is the criteria, I agree whole heartedly that Adolph Hitler was an excellent choice for 1938 (perhaps it would have been even better to use him as the Person of the Year in 1939 when WWII actually started--who won in 1939 anyhow?)

But am I the only person who thinks it's a strange contradiction to know that Adolph Hitler and the American soldier have won the same award? And now, every one of us--you who are reading this blog, and me who is writing it--have the honor of sharing an award with Adolph Hitler.

No thanks, I'll take a pass.

And the Election is OVER!

Today marks the fourth day in a row I have yet to see a single political ad on television. It's a wonderful thing, is it not? =)

I'm in Florida at the moment, so elections here mean particularly little to me. Two people, neither of which I know, running for governor. All of those house and senate contests--all full of names I've never heard of. Terrible, terrible ads, though.

The biggest problem for me were the election results. I do not care that one contestant is ahead of the other by a 2 to 1 margin with 9% of the precincts reporting. WHO CARES?! Wake me up with 100% of the precincts reporting.

However, such false news is more annoying because there's some good television I want to watch that the "live election news coverage" tends to interrupt. NCIS, I'm happy, they decided was more important than the news, but that might be because it was on at 8:00pm and polls had not yet closed. Perhaps they consider 9% of precincts reporting news, but 0%, I'm happy to know, they'll admit isn't really news.

Leno, though, oh, that makes me mad. They delayed Leno for about a half hour for the election. You know what I learned during that time? Two things:

1. Democrats took control of the House.
2. Control of the Senate was too close to call.

You know what else? That's exactly what they said on the news the night before. EXACTLY the same.

My advice for future elections: Don't listen to the coverage. Turn off your television. Turn off your radio. Go out with your family and see a movie. Figure out a virtual letterbox, or write clues for a real one you planted earlier in the afternoon.

Just say no to "live election news coverage."

And another thing....

For those following current events, you might have heard that representive Mark Foley resigned his spot in Congress due to some sexually explicit e-mails to underage interns.

There's a lot of finger pointing nowadays about who knew what and when, blah, blah, blah. The usual stuff you'd expect from Congress. Frankly, I think anyone who'd cover up such dispicable things are as criminal as Mr. Foley himself, but the investigations are ongoing and I'm sure we'll be learning a lot more information over the days and weeks to come.

But you know--none of this surprises me. Scandals in Congress? Not like it hasn't happened before. Granted, even Clinton at least wasn't trying to fool around with underage people, but there are a lot of perverts out there, and it's not exactly shocking that some of them snuck into Congress over the years.

No, the thing that surprises me is Foley admitting to being gay. He is a Republican, after all. Is it just me, or doesn't that seem a lot like a Jewish person joining the Nazis? I mean, yeah, I guess he has the right to be a Republican if he wants to, but it seems a bit hypocritical. Why? I just don't get it. *shrug*

Prop 87 blowing smoke up your you-know-what....

There's a commercial on television asking you to support prop 87 here in California. It claims to reduce dependence on foreign imports, reduce energy prices, and help prevent global warming. In a nutshell, Proposition 87 would impose a tax on oil produced in California.

Think about that. Do you think adding a tax to anything actually reduces energy prices? How exactly does imposing a tax on locally produced oil reduce dependence on foreign imports? If anything, it makes foreign imports even more desirable since they don't get the extra tax. Prevent global warming--well, that's probably true. High oil prices do tend to cause people to carpool more, use public transit more, and buy less oil products thereby reducing the pollution going into the air. Long term, the extra money generated from taxes would go towards funding alternative fuel sources which is also a good thing.

I'm not dissing prop 87. I haven't really read enough to make a truly informed opinion on the subject, claiming that adding a tax to locally produced oil will reduce foreign imports and reduce energy prices is absurd. All-in-all, it probably is good for the environment in the long haul, but I wonder if the people of California are willing to pay higher energy prices and increased foreign imports for the healthier environment. There's no right answer here--it's a pretty simple case of environment vs. extra costs. Is the cost worth it? I don't know. But I tell you, I'd be inclined to vote for the side that actually told the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of lies coming out of both camps, so I guess it comes down to those who think the expense is worth it and those who don't. *shrug*

Quit Smoking Made Easy!

I was in a bookstore this afternoon, wandering the aisles, trying to find something that caught my eye. They say you can't tell what a book is like from its cover. Perhaps that is the case many times, but as a whole, I disagree. You can tell a lot about a book from its cover!

One book I noticed out of the corner of my eye had an eye catching title of something about how to quit smoking, and how easy they'll make it. Really? Now, I'm not a smoker and never have been, so I can't speak from direct experience, but is there really an "easy" way to quit smoking? From everything I've ever heard, it's incredibly hard. Most people who quit often take years and several tries before they succeed. Some people who've had a lung removed because of lung cancer haven't even been able to stop.

And this book, on its cover, it promising to make quitting 'easy'? I never even touched this book. I never picked it, I didn't leaf through the pages. I didn't read about the author's credentials. Why should I? (Besides the fact that I don't smoke, of course.) It's obviously a bold-faced lie on the cover. What else do I really need to know about the book? If the title is a blatant lie, dare I ask what the contents inside might include?

It's easy to find such books in a bookstore. Just wandering around the aisles, you'll see plenty of titles like Make millions in real estate in just three years with no money down! or Lose 30 pounds by eating more!

Obviously, publishers wouldn't publish these books if people weren't buying them, but why the heck do people buy into such bold-faced lies? If making millions was so easy or losing weight was so easy, wouldn't everyone already be doing it?

I'm not sure what sickens me more--that people are stupid enough to fall for such a pile of manure or that there are people who are willing sell you such crap. I'd like to think a book titled something like, "The hardest thing you'll ever do: Quit smoking" could become a runaway bestseller. If I were a smoker, I wouldn't necessarily buy the book, but of all the choices on the bookshelf, it would certainly be the first to grab my attention, and I'd perhaps leaf through the pages to see if the inside is as remarkably candid as the cover.

Just say no to hype, people. If a book lies to you on the cover, the inside isn't even worth the effort of checking out.

George W. Bush! George W. Bush!

There's a commercial showing here in California. It's election time, and one of my biggest annoyances living in this country are political ads. Most people would be better off and make better educated voting decisions if they did not have to listen to such crap. They're choked full of emotional pleas rather than logical discussion. They're full of information taken out of context, and twisted into what often becomes outright lies. It's disgraceful and does nothing to help the voting public, but rather confuses them more.

The particular ad I'm annoyed with now is against re-electing Schwarzenegger for another term as governor of this populous state. The reason? He supported re-electing George W. Bush. I had him, chanting with an audience, "George W. Bush!" with a narrator saying something about would you want to support someone who supports George W. Bush.

Really? Is that the worst they can do? As much as most people hate to admit it today, he was actually voted into office after getting more of the popular votes than anyone else--which is more than can be said for the first time he made it into office--but that's besides the point. More people in this country felt that George W. Bush was the best man for the job. Arnold Schwarzenegger felt that George W. Bush was the best man for the job.

Maybe Arnold made a mistake--George pulled the wool over his eyes just like he did with the rest of America. But is that really the best reason not to like Schwarzenegger? I wonder how many people who voted for Bush in the last election are thinking, "Yeah! That bastard voted for Bush too!" If that was a good reason not to elect Arnold, then it seems to me that everyone else who voted for Bush's second term really shouldn't be qualified to be voters anymore. They screwed up! They've lost the right to an opinion, and they've lost the right to vote!

Doesn't really make sense, I know, which is what is so friggin' annoying to me. They're trying to convince the very people who voted Bush into office that Arnold is not fit to govern because he supported Bush. That's f*cked up.

I dunt no no inglish

Since when has it been okay to use a double negative in this country? For instance, take this sentence, "I have not not gone shopping." Technically, it is grammatically correct. I suppose. It's awkward, obviously, but the two 'nots' essentially cancel each other out and you wind up with the meaning, "I have gone shopping." More or less.

Apparently, geeks with GPSes never learned this fact, because I constantly see coordinates written like this: "The latitude of Cumberland is 43.756N and the longitude is -70.189W."

It's that -70.189W that really bugs me. What is it? -70.189 degrees, or 70.189W? You can't have both. Well, technically, it's possible, but -70.189W actually means 70.189 east, which is clearly not what they meant to write since it would put Cumberland, Maine (a real city, btw, which I use as an example since it's the latest one to have bugged me) somewhere in Siberia, I suspect.

Think of it like this. Start at the prime meridian. Face west. Then walk precisely -70.189 degrees. That negative means you'd have to walk backwards and be walking a complete 180 degrees in the wrong direction!

So please, unless you live in Latin America (where two negatives actually IS a negative), use either a negative sign or the letter for W, but never use both at once. You just look like an idiot when you do that.

-- Ryan, who's currently located in Seattle not far from 47.57N and 122.39W, but will probably never be found at 47.57N and -122.39W (which would put me not far from Qiqihar, China)