“The beginning of any society is never charming or gentle.”

-Ruth in The Last Man on Earth

There are some crazy things going on in Montana politics right now.  Something about tea party, republicans, blah blah blah.

here are just a few:

1.  Legalize hunting with hand-thrown spear (Senate Bill 112)

2.  Create fully-armed militia in every town (House Bill 278)

3.  Allow legislators to carry weapons in the Capitol (Senate Bill 279)

4.  Create an 11 person panel with authority to nullify all federal laws (House Bill 382)

5   Allow guns in schools (House Bill 558)

6.  Eliminate educational requirements for persons seeking job of State Superintendent of Schools (HB 154)

7.  Lift nuclear ban for purpose of building a nuclear reactor in the Flathead Valley (House Bill 326)

8.  Withdraw the United States of America from the United Nations (Senate Joint Resolution 2)

9.  Eliminate all state incentives for developing wind power (House Bill 244)

10. Omit Barak Obama’s name from the 2012, ballot because his father was born outside of America (House Bill 205)(this guy was on CNN this week)

11. Compulsory marriage counseling for people seeking a divorce (House Bill 438)

12. Give sheriffs authority over the federal government in terror investigations (Senate Bill 114)

13. Legalize hunting with silencers (House Bill 174)

14. Lift the prohibition on carrying concealed weapons in bars, churches and banks (House Bill 384)

15. Eliminate law that requires landlords to install carbon monoxide detectors (House Bill 354)

16. Require the federal government to prove in court that the National Parks were lawfully aquired. (House Bill 506)

17. Officially designate the “Code of the West” as the “Code of Montana” (Senate Bill 216)

18.  Declare that global warming is good. (House Bill 549)

read more :  http://mtcowgirl.com/2011/02/17/nutjob-bills-in-the-montana-legislature/

I’m going to try to avoid offending anyone here.  Know that I’m expressing my thoughts, not my rules.  This is an idea that I’ve always struggled with, not something that I’m upset with others for doing.

I don’t really value food.  I define food as the most basic substance that we require to survive.  That’s all I am able to see it as, a maintenance requirement for our bodies.  I do see food as an industry, man-made, sensationalized, and hierarchical.  That scares me, and it always has.

I’m not talking about the content of documentaries like Food, inc or Super-size me.  I’m on a much more basic level.  The NEED for food.  Why do we NEED to enjoy food?  Should we really value taste?  If we could get the same nutritional value of a salad in a pill form, shouldn’t we do that instead?  From a time spent perspective?  From a consuming natural resources perspective?

I look to The Bible for answers, partly because that’s where the struggle was born.  I see where meat is sacrificed.  I see where feasts are held on significant days and times.  I see so many metaphors using food to express how important something is.  I see a lot of bread, wine, water, milk, honey, grains and cheese.  These are all basic foods.  Specifically in the book of Job, he makes the reference to not wanting to eat unsalted food.  He is tormented with life’s unending slavery.  I can only hope that I do not meet the same fate as Job for my questions here…

The point I keep coming back to though is that food is temporary.  There are numerous metaphors to stay away from temporary things.  We should build our homes on permanent ground, we should focus on the things unseen and everlasting, not tangible and mortal.  Are we investing large percentages of our days to temporary and earthly things?  We spend so much time preparing something that we’re just going to destroy right away.

This can be applied to a lot of things besides cooking.  Clothing is temporary and earthly, but we put such emphasis on putting on our Sunday best for church.  Movies are entertaining and can be the launching pad for fellowship, but I can’t think of any other activity where we do nothing for 90 minutes.  Discussing politics will just go on and on and on, and it won’t even change a thing.  Is this what we’re called to do with our time?

It basically comes down to where is the line between actively doing God’s work and resting?  Where is the line between investing time versus return?  Where is the line between rendering unto Caesar and following our calling?

Even if cooking long and intricate meals is the best thing we can do in our lives, isn’t there then something righteous about denying ourselves that pleasure?

Again,  these are my own thoughts and struggles.  If you enjoy cooking, do it!  Family dinner time, the gift of hospitality, and inviting others to break bread with you are some of the most tremendous things to do in our life!  I just know that I’m not going to be able to do those things every day and every meal, especially if I’m to value other areas of my life.  Enter struggle.

Political opinions are like butt holes; Everyone has one and they all stink.  To extend the analogy, they should not be revealed in public places.  To extend it even further, possibly into metaphor, If you are so emotional about your political opinion and it’s all you really think about, perhaps your head is a little too close to previously mentioned nether-region.

You know I don’t do the political rant thing often.  I always have my ear against the door, but barely ever do I walk into that chaos on the other side.  The past week has been too much for me, and I’m falling in.  I’m interested from a banking/economy, a current government side, as well as a presidential campaign perspective.  Honestly, and this will probably be the first time I’ve ever said it, you should be too.  There’s a lot going on right now, and it’s hard to keep a check on all the pulses.

Presidential Campaign – This is the easy one.  John McCain is an idiot.  He’s either too old to multi-task, or he’s too stupid to think clearly.  This dude is obviously not fit to be president.  We already have someone that quits to go relax, do we really need another?  He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it shows.  Last week he says the economy is still strong.  Saturday a 3 page proposal is released to congress to review as a solution for the financial crisis.  Monday, McCain says stuff is going to hit the fan.  Tuesday, Mccain says he hasn’t read the 3 page document yet.  Wednesday, he cancels his appearance on Letterman and says that he wants to postpone the debate and his campaign so he can focus on fixing the crisis.  Ego trip much?   He ends up staying in New York until Thursday anyway, and manages to fit in a stop to Katie Couric.  By the time he’s in DC, an approved solution is already announced.  Worthless.  Even Senator Charles Schumer has said Bush needs to, ""respectfully tell Sen. McCain to get out of town. He is not helping, he is harming. Before Sen. McCain made his announcement, we were making progress."  This dude is a train wreck, and he’s not even in office.  Let alone the circus around Palin.  He obviously picked her for her shock value.  She’s been completely absent since.  Worthless.  Smoke & mirrors.  Sham.

Current Government - We’re starting to see the true colors of what goes on in our nation’s capital.  These people have no accountability, and they slack off their whole careers, and when it comes time to get your crap together and do something, they don’t know how to work together.  Henry Paulson apparently begged on 1 knee to the democrats not to tell the presses how bad the meetings went.  Bush is actually doing something it seems, at least trying to get everyone to work together and encouraging discussion.  What we have though are people from 2 different sides of the fence.  You have people with big business and money backgrounds (who, in my opinion should not be allowed to be in politics) like Henry Paulson, and then you have people that have pure legislative backgrounds who know nothing about the market crisis, or how to appropriately manage it.  You know this $700 billion number that’s been tossed around?  Ask someone where they came up with that number.  A Treasury spokeswoman says:

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

OMG.  Are we serious???  We have no idea what we’re dealing with here.  Enter malfeasance probe.  We’re actually going back to the businesses that are in trouble and looking for fraud.  That won’t take long.

Back on track to progressive thinking though, is this really what we want to do?  These companies knew their loans were risky, but they went in anyway.  Preying on poor people to meet their self-serving pockets.  If the government buys all these loans, it doesn’t just end there either.  Now we’re looking at the government serving a role it’s never had.  It actually has potential to MAKE money in this deal…but is this a good thing?!?!  It’s like a whole form of backdoor taxation that I do not approve of.  If you need me to spell it out for you, the government will pay, we’ll say, 1 trillion, for debts that are worth more than 2.2 trillion fully matured.  Do we really want our government acting for a profit?  That money is coming from home owners and normal people.  That brings a whole new level of shadiness and potential for cover ups that I’m not comfortable with.

Economy/business – Cluster ****.  That’s pretty accurate.  Already in the shadows is the fact that we’re letting Morgan Stanley & Goldman Sachs change their status from investment banks to bank holding companies.  While I don’t disagree with this solution, it’s scary.  By changing their status, they become regulated by the Federal Reserve, but they also have more access to borrow more money.  These are the last and largest investment banks and brings them into the 4th and 6th largest bank holding companies.  I’m worried about their practices, or their problems, becoming contagious and bringing down the bank holding or asset management areas of banking.  By association alone, the market is cracking.  BNY Mellon has very limited exposure to any of the bad debt that is in the news, but our stock, with everyone else, is falling.  We’re even throwing $425 million to help out Lehman’s crash because they’re stock is falling below $1/share.  We’ve got Wamu going under and being bought out so that they don’t deplete FIDC funds.  That’s nuts!  We’re going to be left with a dozen or so big banks.  It’s like a survival of the fittest scenario, only with a global scale economy.  If these companies get the bailout they’re after from the government, no one pays but the American people.  Some heads need to roll for sure, and they better have CEO next to their names.

I’m starting to hear about a new government plan now to insure the debts instead of just buying their out right.  That might be a little better.  This has been something on Barack’s campaign since day one.  I think that about sums everything up. 

I’m not writing a paper here, so i don’t care to cite anything, but I’ll give you a few links and tell you to watch the Colbert Report, the Daily show, and CNN.  I’m curious to see what NPR has to say too.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08270/915335-68.stm?cmpid=generalbusiness.xml

http://video.newsweek.com/#?c=40211&l=1785302026&t=1818133680

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122230704116773989.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Raines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08268/914648-100.stm

http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html

http://orlando.bizjournals.com/orlando/othercities/atlanta/stories/2008/09/22/daily4.html

Yesterday, someone sent me (and a bunch of others) an email saying that cell phone numbers were going public and they had to call some number to make sure they were added to a do not call list.  I got another email from someone else that said that there is a state wide speeding ticket blitz and to be careful.  That same email was flowing around the office twice today and both times I had to tell them it’s false.  Here are the emails:

and the two links on snopes that say they’re false:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp

http://www.snopes.com/politics/traffic/speeding.asp

So basically, if you are going to forward me something, CHECK YOUR SOURCES.  If you don’t have any, CHECK SNOPES.  This is textbook chain letter crap we’ve been dealing with since 1996.  When in doubt, snopes.

I hate politics.  I always have and always will.  The bigger the politics, the worse they are, and in my opinion, the less effect they have but they get the most attention.  To quote the movie waking life, "Do you want the puppet on the left or the puppet on the right?"

I’m getting sick of all the Mitt romney, obama, ron paul, blah blah blah blog posts i’m seeing.  I DON’T CARE and YOUR OPINION MEANS NOTHING IN THE LONG RUN.  Politcal opinion blogs is the filthy blogosphere haze that covers Los Angeles.  Name one thing that Bush did that affects me.

•  Patriot act?  I’ve never given the FBI reason to tap my lines, that I’m aware of.  I don’t use pay phones.
•  RFID chip in passports? – Bush didn’t do it.  I got mine before they went into effect.
• "War" (any of them, real, imaginery, or media hyped)?  I’m a conspiracy theorist at heart, check out loose change, zeitgeist, michael moore movies, and/or alex jones and tell me you don’t think differently afterward.  They all have their extemist curves, but let the facts filter through, and you’ve got some eye opening stuff.
• Gas prices?  HA!  Exxon reported the highest profits in Q4 2006.  It’s all money motivated, and it makes me sick.  I walk to work anyway.

My point is with the check and balance system, the election of a single president pretty much means crap.  The majority of those elected have to be corrupt to have any effect.  I think that’s why we saw so many resignations after Bush was re-elected.  Throw in the electoral college, and YOUR vote is worthless.  You do not have final say.

The only time people have the power to do anything is in local government because it’s much easier to slip under the cracks, and no one takes it seriously enough.  When I moved school districts in highschool and still wanted to go to California, all it took was going to the school board and saying "can i stay?"  and they said "Josh is cool, let’s change the policy so Josh can come."  You can do whatever you want in local government because no one cares and you are the law.

The facts:

• People are not going to move because they don’t like the president.
• I’m pretty sure an "Enslave america" Act won’t pass the popular vote.  America is too large to enforce any life changing laws at the federal level.
• TV and national news outlets bring the political drama to the masses readily because it’s topical and people will argue about it all day.  Don’t let it waste your time any further.

and for the record, I’m only bitter because Bob Dole didn’t win in ’96.  There, I said it.

just saw this link today, and i have to say, i am outraged, almost to the point to register to vote. To sum it up, Rick Santorum (Pa) is pushing for a billthat will stop the -government funded- National Weather Service from releasing free information to the public, because, get this, it is preventing companies like Accuweather from making money. That’s the bottom line, and it’s outrageous. Three things instantly come to mind.
1. You want to know if a tornado is coming? How much money do you have?
2. I’m paying for the information already in taxes, why can’t i know about it?
3. Last time i checked, if a company wasn’t making money, it was their own fault, and maybe they need to reasses their market.