Disappointment Among Young Obama Supporters

A significant part of President Obama's success in 2008 was the dedication and enthusiasm of young people. They voted, and they did the necessary work to get lots of other people to vote for Obama, including old people.

In the last few weeks of the midterm campaigning the Obama team has tried to renew that youthful enthusiasm and get all these young people to vote again. But it hasn't worked. He has also tried to convince the Progressives and Liberals that the Republicans are even worse than he is, so voting for Democrats is essential. But it seems that lots of the Liberals have such a bad taste in their mouth that they are just sitting this midterm election out.

Young people feel like once Obama got elected he completely ignored them and turned his back on their ideas. During the campaign he supported ending the wars; after becoming president he radically increased the number of troops fighting in the wars. The health care program that was discussed during the campaign was Universal Health Care. I've watched the YouTube clip where Obama says that “Single Payer” is the answer to the American health care disaster. After being elected this rapidly turned into cost containment along with a few badly needed reforms, but certainly not in any way Universal Health Care.

The young voters expected far more from him in the area of civil rights and also in gay rights like DADT. He surrounded himself with Republicans and conservative Democrat advisers. The ideas of the young voters were no longer solicited or welcomed. They were shut out. The progressives and liberals were quite openly told that they were “retards.” Obama opened up environmentally sensitive areas for oil drilling that even George Bush II didn't consider possible, and he became the cheerleader for nuclear energy...in other words becoming an absolutely disastrous President for the environmental community.

The George Bush years almost destroyed the nation's economy, with the government ignoring so many important laws and regulations in the sacred name of “deregulation.” A large fiscal stimulus was needed to get the economy going again, but Obama's stimulus was timid at best. The nation's financial system had been largely deregulated, causing widespread fraud and disaster-after-disaster. All greed driven. The Obama financial re-regulation program was very timid. It certainly will not prevent future similar disasters. This was not FDR style new deal reform, this was timid, cautious, "please don't talk bad about me or kick sand in my face" reform.

During the 2008 campaign it was widely reported that Barack Obama had the absolute very most liberal voting record of any elected official in the U.S. Senate. Ha, what a joke! He has turned out to be surprisingly unemotional and detached. His record as a leader so far has been very poor; no backbone at all; offering to compromise with the racist right wing lunatics at the slightest little criticism. But after he adopts their ideas they have still voted against him and his programs...time and again.

So what has happened is really not in any way a secret or a mystery. Obama pretended to be one thing, but the reality of who the real Barack Obama is has turned out to be completely different. This man is not a liberal. He talks good, but his actions are those more of a Republican than a liberal Democrat.

In a well functioning democracy the voters choose their leader. If they find that the man they chose as their leader has deceived them, and in fact he is just a weak, timid man with extremely poor leadership skills, the voters will do what is necessary.

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Juarez Murder Record

As of October 30 there have been 340 killings in our neighbor city Juarez, Mexico. This is the most ever in one month.

I have been trying really hard to think of some intelligent comment. But I can't. Just what a waste of perfectly good human beings.

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Radical Republicans

Yes, I agree, President Barack Obama and his crew are timid and have no backbone. They keep trying to compromise with the right wingers, but the Republicans just kick sand in their face. Again and again. Obama can't seem to learn from his mistakes.

But lets think a moment about how it is going to be if these lunatic racist Republicans do manage to take over. They openly plan to undo even the very meager progress that Obama made on health care and re-regulation of the financial industry. They state quite openly that they intend to kill off the Environmental Protection Agency. Continued growth in the massive budget deficit is guaranteed after the Republicans lower taxes on the rich even further, while at the same time increasing spending on unneeded missiles and fighter jets. Military hardware that is made by their big campaign contributors of course.

These asshole Republicans don't even pretend to stand for “traditional values” anymore. All, yes really all, of the U.S. Senators are now millionaires. It is entirely about screwing the little guy so that the rich can get even richer. Greed is the only value that matters to these low life GOP bastards.

The low life Republicans will do even more vigorous union busting; get rid of most of that civil rights insanity and that basic human rights nonsense; and finally kill off that New Deal communist Social Security program by privatizing it. Privatized and deregulated Social security will end up looking just like the fraud driven home mortgage market. The GOP will keep spending trillions of dollars foolishly on ineffective intelligence and the military.
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These newly open and honest Republicans Tea Partiers make Cheny and Bush seem almost polite, kind, and gentle.
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The irony is that I see almost none of the American young people standing up and fighting this. Or even interested in talking about it. America has a history of people fighting against oppression like this. It came out in the open in the 1930s and again in the 1960s.

Maybe the American youth is permanently damaged. Spoiled brats who have taken too many drugs and spent too much time in front of video games, TV sets, computer screens, and cell phones. They show pure absolute apathy about injustice. Greed and avariciousness seem just fine to them.

In a Democracy the people get the kind of government that they deserve, and the young people of America who we are turning this over to are certainly going to be living a much more unpleasant life than what we have had. But I guess they will just take more drugs and try to avoid thinking about it.

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Silbury Hill

I have visited Stonehenge many times over the years. The last time I went there I also visited Silbury Hill which is just east of the gigantic Avebury stone circle, about 25 miles north of the smaller but much more famous Stonehenge.

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Silbury Hill is Europe's largest man-made prehistoric mound. Composed mainly of chalk and clay excavated from the surrounding area, the mound stands 40 metres (130 ft) high and covers about 5 acres (2 ha).

There has been some archaeological work done on the hill since I was there so I tried to buy the book from Amazon.com in America. They said it was not yet available, but Amazon.co.uk had it available. Including freight and foreign exchange the price is the same within pennies.


LINK TO BBC ARTICLE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11621802

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Ansel Adams

I'm reading one of Ansel Adams' technical books. This one is called Natural-Light Photography and is from 1952. I just read a chapter on the miniature camera. This is his name for 35mm cameras. He is somewhat disparaging about the sharpness one is capable of getting in landscape photography when your negative is so small (36mm x 24mm), even when you are using the finest lens and the sharpest grained film.

He says that one should at least use a medium format negative of 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 or one sized 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 inches. Of course he likes a 4 x 5 or 8 x 10 inch even more.

It is true that size does matter. Anyone who has had a large V8 engine knows that. But with finesse we now see cars with much smaller engines actually going faster than the ones with big V8 engines. The same is true with digital photography.

A great many fine, expensive digital SLR cameras use an APS-C sized sensor. About 23.6mm x15.7mm. Almost all Nikon and Canon DSLRs use this size of sensor. This is well under half the size of a 35mm film negative, or what we nowadays call a “full-size” sensor in a professional level digital SLR. I have shot some great landscapes and then had great prints made from them in the 20 x 30 inch size with this APS-C size of sensor.

With the “full-size” sensor it only gets better. The noise (grain) gets better; low light levels (high ISO) are less of a problem, and the same lenses give one much better wide angle shots. And if one is willing to forgo any cropping, one can normally get good 8 x 10 inch prints even from the cameras using the really teeny tiny sensors. The advantage here is that as the sensor gets smaller, so does the lens. So many of these cameras will easily fit unobtrusively in your shirt pocket.

This all seems a bit incredible to me, but lets face it: It is now almost 60 years since this book by Ansel Adams was copyrighted. A lot of things have only improved slightly, but in the area of digital electronics the improvements have been incredible.

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Republican Tea Partiers – Like Nazis?

I've had the pleasure of having all different kinds of people as friends during the last 60 years. Mexicans, African Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Cajuns, Jews, People of the Islamic faith, Christians, and people who ride Harleys. But I draw the line before I reach the Nazis and the KKK. I have no desire to associate with this kind of low life person. Sick, racist, and narrow minded.

I used to have friends who considered themselves Republicans. They believed in hard work, honesty, and fairness. They could be generous and would help a man who was down on his luck.

Things have changed now though. The Republican Tea Partiers have evolved into dishonest, greedy, racist, narrow minded, totally self centered people who want to cancel all laws (deregulation), and who will do anything to become and stay wealthy. They bow down to the military and the God of money. Because of their screwed up ideas America has declined on the world stage...substantially.

Just like with Nazis, life is too short for me to waste time associating with low life like this.

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CLL Friends

Ten years ago the internet was almost worthless, now it is tremendously useful. Thanks to the internet I have some wonderful friends who are about my own age, and who also have chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). It really does help to have friends; and it helps even more to have friends who are fighting the same battles as you.

I have actually met IRL (in real life) a few of the CLL people I first met through the internet. But most of my friends I have not met in person. It doesn't really seem to matter though.

One of my internet friends is wonderfully funny and upbeat. Paul Whittle lives in the UK, and he seems to have found a way to continue to enjoy life, even with CLL. Betty Reynolds lives in New Mexico, USA and she is just plain great. Others live in Arizona and Australia.

It is really important to have friends. Especially friends with a commonality of interest, where you speak the same language and can easily relate to what the other person is going through.

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Time Enough For Love

I just finished the 1973 Robert A. Heinlein book entitled Time Enough For Love. It has got to be one of his best. It is a science fiction novel which was nominated for the Nebula Award and Best Novel in 1973, and both the Hugo and Locus awards in 1974.

The Putnam version is 605 pages long, the paperback reissue edition which I read that was printed by Ace around 2003 is 589 pages long. I mention this because when you are reading a really good, very enjoyable book, it is nice to have it last as long as possible.

In many ways this one book weaves together many of his other books. Any Heinlein fan will certainly enjoy this book.


LINK TO WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love

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Timid Obama Health Care

In the Jon Stewart interview of President Barack Obama yesterday, Stewart appropriately brought up the simple fact that the final version of the Obama health care legislation was very timid. President Obama defended it saying , “It gets discounted because we didn’t get 100 percent of what we wanted, we got 90 percent,” said Obama of the law, who lamented that people tend to focus on the “10 percent” that they didn’t get.

The final Obama health care cost reduction act does indeed implement some good consumer protections. Insurance companies now find it harder to cancel people's health insurance once they become sick. Annual and lifetime maximums in coverage are no longer allowed. These consumer protections could have been required by simple legislation.

The problem with Obama's no-backbone compromising is that his health law did not just give away 10% of the important abuses which needed to be corrected, the percentage is more like 55% or 60%, maybe more.

Many millions of people in America will still remain outside of the health care system. They will be unable to receive proper treatment if they develop a serious disease. This was the great opportunity to implement Universal Health Care. Obama's law still leaves many people with no access to health care. Especially people of modest means or those who are down on their luck. This is absolutely not acceptable.

A great many people were trying to get the government to honestly consider the “single payer” plan or at least the vastly weaker “vigorous government option.” But behind closed doors Obama and his team quickly and completely sold these ideas out to the rich, greedy Republicans. The Obama system siphons away many millions of dollars each year to health insurance companies unnecessarily. Each state and their insurance commissioners have different rules, health insurance policies, costs, etc. This may be the biggest failure of Obama's plan, and it may well be the one which will doom it.

There is also the major question of whether the government can demand by law (with penalties) that people purchase expensive health insurance from private corporations.

President Obama has become insulated from the normal people in America. His plan didn't give away 10% of what we wanted and needed. No, it gave away 55% to 60% of what was absolutely required to make sure that the American Universal Health Care Program would be successful.

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Digital Photography vs. Film

I've been taking pictures for well over fifty years now. A few film movies, some medium format still film, but until digital cameras overtook film I mostly used 35mm film. I was the nerdy kid who ran the movie projector in the 4th grade.

At the moment I own 25+ film cameras, including 35mm viewfinders, 35mm SLRs, and a medium format film camera I just adore. I've owned many digital cameras during the last 15 years, but the ones I regularly use currently are my Nokia smart cellphone camera, a Nikon P100 extreme point and shoot, and three Nikon DSLRs, the DX sensor sized D80 and D300s, and the 35mm full sized FX sensor D700. My little Leica digital point and shoot also takes stunning pictures.

For at least 10 years it has been clear that using digital SLR cameras results in at least as good photographs as 35mm film SLRs. And during the last five years DSLRs have without any doubt grown well beyond 35mm film cameras in virtually every important area that affects picture quality, sharpness, resolution, and color. The one area where 35mm cameras were and are clearly superior was in their size and weight. But by going to a much smaller sensor, and losing some of the image quality, one can easily get to a perfectly good camera which will fit unobtrusively in your shirt pocket.

In the bad old days I had a darkroom full of nasty chemicals. Now I have Photoshop on my computers. It does lots more.

There have been many improvements in these digital cameras during the last 10 to 15 years. Auto focus and letting the camera automatically set aperture, exposure, and sensor sensitivity (ISO) are among them. I have several friends who insist upon manually adjusting all of the settings above; but I think this is just silly (or arrogant) in most situations. I guess I go to full blown manual less than1% of the time. Using aperture priority or shutter priority can be very useful, while still letting your fancy, expensive camera do most of the heavy lifting for you.
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Automatic encoding of EXIF data with all important camera information often including GPS location and elevation and copyright information is wonderful. Lens technology has improved too. Most of my 30 year old Nikon lenses will work on my digital SLRs, but in addition to autofocus the new lenses have special glasses like ED low dispersion glass and various coatings which make them function better. Vibration reduction may be one of the finest improvements.

In photography the rule with me, National Geographic, and many others has always been quality through quantity. With digital this is easier than ever. I have a 32 gigabite memory card in my best digital SLR. Indeed one of the important skills one has to master with digital is how to review hundreds of pictures quickly, discarding shamelessly at least 95% of them, and then with the remaining 5% narrowing it down to one or maybe two per area of interest. So one particularly exceptional picture in 100 is still respectable odds. Often it is more like 1 in 250 or less.

Being able to instantly review your picture on the camera's screen, along with graphs and charts showing your exposure can be very useful.

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Famous Leica Shooters

During much of the 20th century Leica cameras were used by some of the world's best photographers.
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Leica cameras, manufactured by the German company Leica Camera AG, are very high quality cameras. Like Nikon, Leica is first an optics company, with cameras and photography equipment only a small part of what they do. Also like Nikon, Leica is famous for its lenses.

Much of its fame came from “street photographs” done by people like Henri Cartier-Bresson. The picture on the right is of his first Leica. He never used a flash, insisted upon using his unobtrusive 35mm viewfinder Leica with a 50mm lens.


Man Ray - 1890-1976 American
Leni Riefenstahl - 1903-2003 German
Margaret Bourke-White - 1904-1971 American
Henri Cartier-Bresson - 1908-2004 French
Diane Arbus - 1923-1971 American

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I have owned probably 15 or 20 digital point and shoot cameras...maybe more. My Leica D-lux 3 is hands down, no question, the best.

LINK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leica_camera

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Wikileaks War Documents

In the first batch of secret documents it turn out that the U.S. Government had kept a great many of them secret unnecessarily. There are some things which need to remain secret, but in general secrecy breeds dishonesty and corruption.

What we have found from these large leaks of war documents by Wikileaks is that our own government and military have been lying to us. Badly understating the numbers of people injured and killed, and certainly at all costs hiding the true cost of all this intelligence, defense, and military.

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Conservative Party Budget Slashing in Britain

I have always sort of liked David Cameron, even if he is a Conservative. But this wild budgetary slashing of his is going to cause a major disaster.

Ministerial budgets have been reduced by an average of 19 percent. Almost half a million public sector jobs will disappear over the next four years. The military is being cut significantly. State expenditures will plunge by 83 billion pounds (€94 billion, $131 billion), and taxes will increase by 29 billion pounds (€32 billion, $45 billion). The retirement age is also set to rise.

It wasn't planned, it just sort of happened that in college and graduate school I happened to take almost enough economics courses that this almost could have been my major. Economists know more about how national economies work than the average undereducated Joe Plumber thinks. Economics, like political science, is greatly affected by people's attitudes, which makes the dismal science a particularly difficult field of study.

I can just about guarantee you that the Cameron cuts are a solid prescription for a massive and painful recession in England, maybe something far worse than that. And their economy is big enough that this might he contagious too.

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Clarence Thomas

This story is so juicy you would expect to read it in some chick romance novel.

A black man who sits on the radical far right wing politically. A guy who is well known for his sexual abuse and ill treatment of women. And this guy is a supreme court justice.

His latest wife, a white, middle aged, arrogant, radical right wing political organizer and general trouble maker, has now reopened his prior mistreatment of women. She did this by leaving a message on the answering machine of one of his prior victims, a black college professor named Anita Hill. She asked the victim to apologize!

Thomas and his loose cannon wife are behaving in a fashion that is wildly inappropriate for a supreme court justice. It is possible to fire him. Under our system of government this is done through the impeachment process. It is about time to get this started. Before he or his wife further disgraces America.

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Obama Slaps The Homos In The Face

I am a liberal democrat. I'm not gay; not even a little teeny bit. Sometimes I take the same position as the gays do, and sometimes I disagree with them completely.

What is happening right now is nothing short of shocking and shameful. A judge has said that don't ask don't tell (DADT) has to stop right now, completely, worldwide. Just like separate but equal for the negroes was ended. End of story. President Obama says very forcefully that DADT will end on his watch, period!!

But he keeps allowing the people who report to him to use every legal trick and tactic possible to try and continue DADT. Saying one thing and then doing something just the opposite. This is exactly how he has behaved on the other liberal-progressive issues of universal health care, re-regulation of the financial industry, ending the wars, and the environment.

Barack, people are committing suicide over this. Carrers and lives are being ruined. Yet you want to do the politically expedient thing, taking cover and waiting.

A friend warned me early on that Obama was just another slippery, ethically questionable Chicago politician. Thanks Clay. I didn't want to believe it, but after so much overwhelming evidence it sure is becoming hard to stay solidly behind President Obama.

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Chuck

The latest episode of Chuck on NBC called “Chuck Versus the Couch Lock” which aired on Oct 18, 2010 was very enjoyable.

In it the team must fake Casey's death in an elaborate ruse to capture his former special ops team members who've gone rogue.

LINK: http://www.hulu.com/watch/184805/chuck-chuck-versus-the-couch-lock

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The Purpose of Mass Public Education

Looking back at history and our country's founders we find that free public education was considered a vital part of establishing a properly functioning democracy.

People cannot vote intelligently if they have no idea about the constitution or how the government works. A knowledge of history is useful too. Maybe some philosophy. Certainly being skillful in reading is essential.

We have lost our way. Public Education has become all about science, math, and getting wealthy/greed. As individuals or as our country against other countries.

Many schools no longer even teach civics; at any level. So a kid can graduate from high school and college as well and still be outrageously incompetent as a voter.

A couple of Robert A. Heinlein quotes:

“Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.”

“Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.”

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Desperate Pro-Gay Groups

In today's news I see that apparently various pro-gay groups are desperate for Obama to do something to help their cause. I can relate. Just a couple of years ago when he was campaigning we also thought that he was going to end the wars, try to implement universal health care, improve civil rights, that he was a progressive or liberal, and that he was pro-environment. Wrong on almost counts.

I am not pro-gay. In fact I am far from it. But I do not want to see thousands of troops being forced to leave the military just because of their sexual preference. It is unjustified and harmful to society as a whole. I don't want the morality police busting into people's bedrooms at night either trying to catch two adults enjoying their favorite perversion.

This does not mean I think that we should be bullied or intimidated into saying that homosexuality is “as good” as being straight; or that it can be viewed as being normal. It is not necessarily evil or terrible, although unprotected anal intercourse certainly is a health hazard. This certainly doesn't mean that I want the government to proactively subsidize gays and lesbians with my tax dollars. Social security survivor's benefits and health care for domestic partners are good examples.

Society subsidizes real marriage between a man and a woman just because raising a child is so very difficult. We need to encourage it and try to help out a little financially. Having children and raising them with both the mother and father present is good for society. But the same cannot be said about various sexual perversions. There is no reason that we should financially subsidize them.

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Short Night

I got to sleep a bit late last night, mostly due to some great TV shows.

Then I was up at 2:00 a.m. I had to make a few phone calls to Europe, and with the eight hour time difference it means that for me to talk to them during the middle of the workday morning (before lunch) I need to call pretty early from the Mountain time zone.

I'm glad I made the calls though. It was a real pleasure talking with friends who I haven't seen in four years.

Today will be pretty mellow, I hope. Early voting, I need to go by the post office, and both UPS and FedX are making deliveries later today if the tracking is correct.

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Immigration - Blast Furnace vs. Mosaic

For years there have been discussions about foreign immigrants integrating versus retaining the culture and language of their native country. Are they temporary guest workers or immigrants? Melting pot?

At the moment there are debates regarding immigration all around the world. In Germany the debate is becoming especially heated. There is a growing backlash about the Turks and Muslims who have moved to Germany, but after two or three generations still have not even learned to speak and read the German language, much less fully integrated themselves into German society. The discussion is about the ideas of parallel cultures living side by side (multiculturalism) vs. integration.
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The German newspaper Die Welt writes:

"No one has anything against the immigrants who live and work among us. But many people have something against the immigrants who want to bring their own system of justice along with them. Immigration means accepting the traditions of the chosen country -- and also respecting those traditions. Whoever lives here has to accept that honor killings are murder. Whoever doesn't want to do so, should stay out of the country."

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