Busy
Posted by Joel Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:22:16 GMT
Last weekend Paul's dad Jim came to down. We all met up in Russian Hill along with his cousin David and I got solidly drunk for the first time in a while. The night was really a blast and we had some great discussions.
This week I worked a lot and was pretty stressed out trying to meet a deadline. There was some tension for a while but things seem OK now. LuckyO continues to grow and I'm happy with this new feature I made.
Besides that nothing much has happened. I told Marc I would move in with him in Sunnyvale in three weeks, so it looks like I'm giving up on the city life. I love it but it's just too far away from my job, and the only reason I decided to stay here originally was because I thought I had friends here.
I've largely given up on my self-improvement quest again due to the stress of last week and filled my idle time with WoW to actually relax and have fun. You know, most of the genuinely cool people I've met in my life are people I only know from online. You can't be nearly as discriminating when it comes to people who happen to be in your proximity, and meeting them is so much harder.
I did a lot of research on how I would vote. This will be my first time voting. I'm voting for the Democratic senators, representative, and governor, I'm voting yes on the Prop 89 campaign finance reform bill, and voting no on all of the spending props except the strictly regulated education spending one (not the property values one). This is because I know how much the California schools suck but I also know how badly they spend money generally attributed to education here. I believe in private schooling but I'm also a pragmatist.
how you gonna vote on prop 90? i think that's the eminent domain question.
I get a really bad feeling about Prop 90. I believe in eminent domain for the most part, but it is kind of weird in that it requires the government to compensate businesses when new laws cost them money, which could be considerably expensive. Almost seems like a scam. I don't see why that has to be in there, as supposedly what they were doing was made illegal for a reason, so I'm voting no. Too much potential for abuse.
Oh, I'm definitely voting no on the new cigarette tax. I think the parental notification on abortions is reasonable, that's too important to keep hidden and ultimately the decision comes down to the kid anyway; I have to think of this one from a parent's perspective. No on the sex offenders bit, people who do the time shouldn't have to suffer past their sentence for the rest of their life.
Prop 87 I'm not sure on. I like the idea of it, but I read this: "Prop. 87 makes oil companies pay and makes it illegal to pass the cost to consumers." How can that possibly work? The only way to make up the costs is to raise prices for the consumers and that's what would happen. Higher oil prices hurt the economy and theoretically the free market should make it advantageous to not use tons of oil in the future anyway if it does grow more scarce. After the price drop, I've relaxed my views on oil considerably, and realized how artificial some of that stuff is. Also how they plan to spend it seems goofy. I'm thinking no, but I might change my mind.
"the inherent power of the state to expropriate private property without the owner's consent"
I believe that the power should be exercised for traditional uses, such as highways or parks... and not by local governments for local/private consortiums to make money for private projects (townhomes/car dealerships) at the expense of the displaced property owner. I think that that is what Prop 90 refers to.
http://preemptivekarma.com/archives/2006/10/indefenseof_c.html
our 'city manager' who helped that city take pivate property for the building of expensive townhomes just took a new job... i have been told that our city manager is now employed by the builder who benifited from the taking of these properties.
and don't forget - a vote for pelosi is a vote for higher taxes and more government regulation! woo hoo count me out!
Well, that's just the lesser evil. It's imperative we have more Dems in Congress to help stifle anything else this particular administration tries to pull. I'd rather higher taxes than deficit spending on fruitless wars.
Well this war is more than the money spent. There is a reason we're there and it was made very clear by the president at the outset that it would be a -very- long war. I doubt that pulling out now would make the 911 type of Radical Islamists change their tune, but we can always hope - until they attack us again that is at which point we'll have to start all over again.
I don't buy any of the reasons we're there and neither do the American people anymore. And he made it out like Iraq was an in-out job. We can't even keep Afghanistan under control. All this has done is tarnished the image of America and its values and increased the likelihood we will be attacked. We look like unapologetic warmongers who think we can do whatever we want. And the worst part is, our terrible failure in this has shown how weak we really are.
The terrorists hate us because of shit we've done in their countries and what our pals Israel have done and they've found an effective tactic to combat it. Bin Laden cited his inspiration for 9/11 coming from events witnessed during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel. Some people seem to think we can just push them around and kill their civilians and look the other way when Israel does the same, and because they're not as developed as us they can't do anything about it. But 9/11 showed that's not true. No matter how many Arabs you kill you're only going to strengthen their resolve and hatred of America and encourage more terrorism.
The real solution to this problem is easing tensions between us and the Arabs, by being accountable for ourselves and Israel, not trying to overpower them. That just invites more terrorism. And frankly we don't have the capability.