Thursday, January 21, 2010

Stream of Consc-...Nope, Politics.

Another week has come and gone, and I don't really know what to write about now. Another stream-of-consciousness entry? Ok.

I use WolframAlpha for cool things. It's pretty cool. I only wish it had a list of functions on the side, because I don't think I'm using it to it's full capabilities yet. I do like that it includes how far the weather-station is that it pulls data from when I ask for the weather. I don't trust most weather sites because they just don't tell you that info.

Speaking of trust, and lack thereof, let's talk government, briefly. I'm a "damned liberal." As opposed to conservatives, who don't have such readily-available labels (I call discrimination!). So, obviously, I am disappointed with some of the recent happenings. I am also (still) disappointed with humans. And when you put the two of them together...ok, where to begin. Let's start with humans, for no particular reason. Well, maybe we'll start with Americans. X > 50% of the people lack the ability for long-term thinking (fancily known as delayed gratification). If our elected official isn't automatically doing well (or their party isn't) and hasn't fixed all of our problems, automatically kick him out and replaced him with someone who hasn't disappointed us yet. When they fail to fix everything, just kick them out, and elect another guy. Let's take that whole theory of mine, and label it as "A."

Next, we have politics. I just want to scream at the Democrats! Abandoning the Health Bill because they lost their supermajority by 1 seat. To roughly paraphrase from memory Jon Stewart's succinct analysis, "Hey, Democrats, you still have more senate seats...than George W. Bush ever had in the Senate when he did whatever the fuck he wanted to." (Here, you can find the clip at the bottom of this page, because I'm nice enough of a guy to look it up online). Granted, things are a little more complicated than that, Bush didn't have 100% of the opposing party always voting against him. But then, I find it hard to imagine that 100% of the republican senators fully disagree with everything Obama is doing. Hmmm... Wait a sec, I've found the secret to this game! Dear God, just put away all of your actual preferences and vote across party lines! I'm actually not kidding. Hey, Democrats, Republicans are willing to do so every single time an important vote comes up, why can't you do the same? For the love of- just forget about all of your whining on what is fair and what isn't fair, you can change those things AFTER the bill is passed and huge reform is working through. I obviously haven't read the bill, just like most Americans and portions of the government haven't, but I would imagine that a less-flawed, new system, is better than a hugely flawed, 16% of GDP behemoth (taken from wiki, and the first couple of links in google, which hopefully aren't all colluding together against us, oh critical one). You know what, while you're at it, pass through a few more bills with your supermajority. The longer you spend going back and forth over the bill, the fewer and fewer Americans will like it. So, just push it through, stop wasting time, and fix it after you are 100% sure it will take effect. You know what, people aren't going to like it at first, but I bet, if it does even half of what you are saying it will, that people will begin to like it after they are done being angry about it. In case you aren't clear, I am arguing, willingly, for Democrats to stop being the bigger person, and step (very far) down to the level of Republicans, if they want to get anything done. Just this once? Then you can go back to, oh, how did Jon Stewart put it again, something about a nurse's office and glue... Ok, take all of that and label it B.

So, in short, we have this new equation: A + B = extremely frustrating for me. Oh wait, as of this morning, there's a C! Great, now corporations can directly influence even more in our lives, now that they "have similar rights to individuals to participate in elections." So, A + B + C = over the top frustration. For Mr. Glenn Beck, in the 0.01% chance you read this blog, I just- I just miss my America. *tear* There's a whole group of people who are destroying the America I grew up in. *tear, close-up shot of watery eyes* They keep saying they are the "real America," but the real America I grew up in doesn't like guns so much or drive huge gas-guzzling cars.

Ok, that stream-of-consciousness post got really political all of a sudden. And, I'll end it there, as I've said enough on the topic for now.

End

2 comments:

Unknown said...

What? We love guns.

Greg said...

How many guns do you have again?

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About Me

Hi, I'm Greg, but you can call me by my Japanese name, Gureggu, if you'd like. I'm writing this blog to explain effective ways to do business with Japan and Japanese companies. Why? Japanese companies are notoriously difficult to understand, and doing business in Japan has a unique set of hurdles.

Why I'm qualified to write about Japan: I have worked in Japan for a total of 8 years. I worked sales at a Japanese import/export company (subsidiary of a much larger corporation) as the only foreigner in the company. Before that, I taught for 2 years at High Schools and 3 years teaching elementary and middle school in Aomori Prefecture. I have lived the life of a salaryman and experienced firsthand the institutions that shape Japanese people in their most formative years.