pysch... dinner... scrabble... bowling...

I have just recently started to watch the tv show "psych." If any of you haven't seen it, check it out. I watched the pilot, and I was rather impressed... sort of lie to me meets house meets bones. Tomorrow, the neighbors invited Andrew and me over for dinner. isn't that adorable? I hope we play board games. That would be splendid. I vote for scrabble. I <3 scrabble. After dinner, I may go bowling. I also <3 dollar bowling night. If anyone would like to go to ze bowling lane with lane, hit me up.

kiss kiss.

ambienic perspecitve (which is apparently a cynical socialism filter)..

The bailout is 800 Billion dollarsish. That seems like a fuck load of money until you put it into perspective... The wealth of the top 25 people in the world is about 800 billion.

25 people could pay for the bailout. lol. it just seems absurd that these people are going to be. The top 1% of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 90% of the population. wow. some people live in mansions and eat caviar off golden plates, some live in cardboard boxes and eat refuse off of the tops of heaving mounds of garbage. I see no problems with the fact that people should be paid for their merit in a capitalistic society... But are these people really worth more to our society. a Teacher that makes 42,000. does work that is 1000000x less skilled or important than anil ambani who has a networth of 42,000,000,000 is he that much better than a teacher

I'm sleepy right now. so i'm going to go to sleep, but i'm going to look at this stuff some more tomorrow because this stuff interests me, I want to see if i can't figure out what kinds of assetts they have, and what they do positive toward their society with their money, and how much they pay in taxes. etc. Before I go look for real data, I'll just say that according to my knowledge (which can be limited in scope) is that Bill Gates gives a shitload of money to the community for aids and some other shits. Warren Buffett I believes gives back a Lot as well. I believe the waltons gave back diddly shit.

adolescent naivety spawned my optimism

saudade.
jin tian bu xihuan.
my chinese is fantastic. I was watching the 30 seconds to mars video "from yesterday" and I understood everything the little chinese man said. It is 10:33. I just played a lot of poker. it was a success. yay. Whit is coming to pick me up. Lisa is meeting us there. She's nice, I'm priveleged to have met her. I have few good friends that I ever hang out with, yet many good friends. it's a travesty. nice people are rare, heed my advice, clench them with a tightly closed fist. Live in the moment and realize what you have, who you have, and what they're worth. Life is beautiful, despite all the ugliness. one of my favorite things is looking in people's itunes at their 25 most played. I think it's so revealing and so interesting. Even mine is so revealing. Music is the reflection of the soul and the soundtrack to our lives. cute. Anyone without a passion for music hasn't a passion for life, I've always thought that... and to this day, I haven't found a person that defies that categorization. Everybody who is like eh, I like all music or, I don't really have a favorite is a bland person. I dare you to prove me wrong. I think that I'm going to get a mail order bride when I turn 26. Probably a south or central american one, but perhaps a chinese one. vote now for your favorite nationality! ;)

tiger army = fantastic. <3
ray lamontagne = fantastic.
I haven't been to the gym in so long! gymno means naked in latin. lol
gymnosperm angiosperm.
anyone who knows the capital of Somalia gets 15 bonus points. Mogadishu... if you answered that correctly without looking... wed me.
The more I think about it, the more that I feel there isn't a person in the world that can relate to me. I lose.
There are four type of learning styles according to something I just read.
People that focus on the why,
people that focus on the what,
people that focus on the how,
and people that focus on the what if...
if you want to get your point accross effectively, especially if you're a teacher keep that in mind. the best order is what, why, what, how, what if.
I'm a what... maybe a little bit of how.
also, if you can structure instruction kineasthetic, auditory, visual, it's more memorable.
i'm rambling. i dunt' care.
who the fuck lives in foothill? seriously. le sigh.
I watched a mighty heart... the movie about Daniel Pearl. I was unimpressed. Angelina Jolie did a shitty job.
I also watched hitman. Very entertaining. I liked it, and watched it again.
I also watched Charlie Wilson's war... informative for those uninformed, not a bad movie, but a little jaded on the side of the mujahideen.
whit here.
i leave.
win.

wen wen.

feb 11.

burn after reading, crossed off the list. I was unimpressed. Malkovich was good, there was some good pieces of dialogue, but overall I thought the film was lackluster. 8% of the 2009 film goal done bitches. ;) 92% to go. Valentine's day is saturday. I find it appropos that the holiday was named after somebody who was murdered... how romantic. usually I spend assloads of money on Valentine's day... this year, valentineless, I shall spend nothing. I suppose that is something to rejoice about. My mother's birthday is friday. she is old. I love her dearly. Today, I bought her a scentsy. Vince introduced me to the wonders of the scentsy world, and my mother; loving candles, air freshners etc., is in for an olfactory treat. Guess what! the groundhog is a fucking liar. no shadow my left nut. it has been freezing the last couple days... maybe the mayor should have bitten him instead of the other way around. Barack Obama has officially pissed me off. He did the one unforgiveable thing... he held a press conference on monday at 7pm. This caused my favorite show house to be postponed a week. fucker. I say we impeach him. ;) I looked into going to the university of phoenix to get my masters just for giggles and shits... holy vishnu it's expensive... like 28 grand for a year and a half of school. I have been sick, it makes me sad in my throat. ah... c'est la vie. the new seal cd is very good. listen to it. also... viva la hova (jay-z remixing the coldplay album) is quite good too. potato bugs are an evolutionary anomaly. just a random fact, wikipedia them sometime if you get a chance... I think i just made up the verb to wikipedia (though I'm sure it's been used before). I was sad Leona Lewis didn't win a grammy. I <3 her. I haven't been to the gym in forever. fucking gan mao :( I want to go see the monster trucks, and I also want to go see the madame butterfly ballet. anybody that is interested in either or both of those, let me know, and I'm sure you can accompany me and anybody else that comes with me. i go sleepy sleep now. wen beso kiss.

ciao

an ambien induced diatribe, my apology for shitty spelling and lack of coherency

the stimulus plan is starting to piss me off. Republicans are stupid, they are dragging our economy into the ground, and grandstanding and delaying necessary immediate action because they are partisan pieces of excrement, not fit for any toilet except for maybe Joe the plumber's. Republicans are screaming this bill is not bi-partisan blah blah blah. The bill that went from the house to the senate was modified considerably to fit republican demands... demands that don't make sense. Because of their puerile, pompous, piss-poor, judgment skills, the stimulus bill has ballooned to 42% tax cuts. The bill needs to focus on job creation, extension of unemployment benefits, infrastructure improvement, and support for states who are desperately lacking money. This support for the states would make it so that they don't have to fire city employees (i.e. police officers, teachers, firemen etc.) because of a lack of funding... thus preventing a further ascension of the unemployment rates. No... Instead, the republicans wish to emphasize tax cuts and trimming the scope of the bill down. I will address these two issues separately because they are stupid, stupid, stupid. First tax cuts. I'll keep this brief because I could pontificate for hours. The republicans want to make it so those paying income taxes can keep a higher percentage of their wages. Sounds good right? Well, this does minimal amounts of good to those that DON'T HAVE a job. Creating more jobs is the answer, not giving more money to those that have jobs. Would you rather get an extra 20% of zero back or 5% of a dollar. If you don't make anything and have no taxable income, it's pointless to get a percentage of that income back. Okay, so some will say, putting money directly in some people's hands, even if it's in the wrong peoples hands will be good for the economy. To a small extent this is true, yes, they may spend some money, which creates more demand and a slight need for supply which keeps or creates jobs. But just how effective is it in doing that? Below is a chart of the amount of stimulus to GDP you get from various measures.

Tax cuts... 1.02-1.29 for the important ones. a lot of those falling in the 1.02 category. for every dollar spent on a tax rebate, 1.02 is generated... hey, it least it's positive... go republicans! but wait... what if we instead spent the money on something else, what would be the effect on our gdp and thus our economy? take a look for yourselves. every dollar spent on food stamps generates 1.73 in economic growth, every dollar spent on infrastructure creates 1.59 dollars in growth, extending unemployment benefits, 1.64 for every dollar. and giving aid to the states, 1.36 dollars per dollar spent. Food Stamps should be a no brainer. people with food stamps will immediately spend that money, and it will have a multiplier effect because it is cash now circulating in the system, this is why it has such a high stimulative effect. The same is basically the same with extending unemployment benefits. these people need the money to buy groceries, pay rent, etc, and therefore it gets spent right away and has a multiplier effect. So now you've immediately infused the economy with some short term stimulus, and eased the burden on the seven and a half percent of people who are without jobs, as well as anyone they may give their money to... small businesses, grocery stores whatever. allowing jobs to remain instead of disappearing like a lepers limbs. Now the next order of business is creating new jobs for those 10s of millions of workers that are unemployed. Infrastructure improvement does this. It immediately creates new jobs, and oh my gosh... here's the novel part of it. It's something we desperately need. You are creating jobs for people which will create and repair the very fabric upon which our society is made. So we get jobs, and we get cool shit like better transportation, education, medical treatment as a bonus. and the majority of this money appropriated for these projects would have a relatively quick impact because they are projects that are desperately needed and ready to begin work. Okay, so now we create jobs... yay... One last key, holding on to jobs that are in risk, and raising morale. That's where state funding comes in. Giving money to the states is not the most fiscally productive of the allocation of funds (though it is head and shoulders above the tax cuts which republicans have managed to bloat up to 42% of the bill). So, state funding allows states (which currently have deficits and can't afford to keep state employees) from having to let them go. This makes it so the unemployment rate doesn't continue to spiral downward, and it boosts the morale of the people by keeping them in their jobs. Republicans are stupid. look at facts, pass the bill, and do it quickly every single day people are losing jobs, and frankly the blood is on your greedy old wrinkled up machiavellian hands.
Okay, the scope of the bill... how big it is. Republicans are astonished that the bill is 800 billion dollars ish. To put things in perspective, WWII time spending (what got us out of the depression according to some when compared to GDP proportionally is striking). If we were to do what we did during the wwII era and allocate the same % of GDP to stimulus, it would be between 2 and 3 trillion dollars. that's three to four times the amount that is set to be sent. Well, did that huge amount of spending help in WWII times, damn straight it did. We need to go broad and quickly and decisively 800 billion is a paltry number compared to what history has said has worked. So quit saying the damn bill is entirely too big. look at history... or you could listen to almost every recognizable economist that says that the risks we can't afford to make are to wait to long, or to not make the stimulus big enough. It's not that I think that 800 Billion isn't a big number... I most certainly do... but This is money we need, and we're not just throwing it down an Iraq hole... freudian slip, I mean rabbit hole.

How much has the war in Iraq cost us you ask?
about 800 billion dollars (and another 12 billion) each month... (5,000$ a second if you're looking to put it into context). So, 800 billion is worth the war in iraq but not the stimulus. in the stimulus, we will get better infrastructure, state funding, food stamps, jobs, and an elevated sense of morale.

In Iraq 800 billion got us the following: (according to january 27th statistics)
142,000 american troops still in Iraq
4236 us troops killed
31002 troops wounded, a lot of them being serious brain or spinal injuries... AND that number doesn't include any psychological conditions that may have resulted.
30 to 40 percent of troops that return home develop severe psychological conditions
we've lost 68 helicopters... hmmm... i hear they're expensive

not to mention what the poor iraqis got out of it. I won't go into detail here because this is more about what the us incurred as a result of the 800 billion it spent. but here is a link to a website with all those numbers, and how 100s of thousand iraqi civilians have been killed, how malnutrition is out of control etc. etc. etc. http://usliberals.about.com/od/homelandsecurit1/a/IraqNumbers.htm
not to mention the fact that this war actually strengthened Iran by bringing iranian influence into iraq, and it also brought in al-qaeda operatives. Furthermore, North Korea now has nuclear capabilities (thankfully their leader is a rational, cool-tempered, peaceful, kind of guy... ooh whoops, i meant the exact opposite of that).
further, all the troops we diverted to iraq left no troops for afghanistan, and shit started going awry over there. now we are fighting a war in pakistan to go after the taliban. and if the mujahadeen... end up getting control of pakistan's fledgling and attenuated government, they will have access to nuclear weapons, and a good amount of them actually. So the terrorists could easily get their hands on nuclear weapons (since they comprise the majority of the mujahadeen). and what makes you feel more safe and cozy in your bed than people who hate you and our willing to die to kill you having these weapons of considerable lethality and a lack of inhibition to use them. I get bunny rabbits in my stomach just thinking about it.

so bottom line, quit bitching about the size of the 800 billion... it cannot, absolutely cannon do any worse than what the 800 billion dollars you spent before did for us... in fact, maybe it'll even do us some good... who knows...

commander in trivia... and I'm sleepy

A little presidential trivia.
barack obama is the 44th president of the united states.
he is only the 43rd person to be president though. most people don't realize that.
four presidents have been assassinated in office. Lincoln, Garfield, Mckinley, and Kennedy.
six out of the last 12 presidents have been left handed (only 10% of the population is left handed).
2 presidents have been impeached (Johnson and Clinton). Both acquitted.
8 presidents have taken the position without being elected to president.
Gerald Ford is the only president to become president without being elected... he was appointed to replace Spiro Agnew, and then when Nixon resigned he became president.
James Madison was the shortest president. 5 foot 4 and one hundred pounds
John Tyler had 15 children
james buchanan was the only president to never marry
etc etc.

high intensity interval training kicked my ass today. el fucko.

my bed is big. I loves it.

i go to sleep now. ish.

random, dunno what the point of this blog was.