I tried to find the Republican sponsored commercial that depicts a Washington bureaucrat (who looks suspiciously like an IRS agent caricature) interposing himself between a patient and her doctor. What the ad doesn’t say is that we have that now. Replace “Washington Bureaucrat” with “Insurance Agent”. No difference.
What, you’ve never watched your doctors fighting with the insurance company to attempt to justify care? I have. I watched my Dad’s doctors more or less blackmail the insurance company to get them to approve an “experimental” procedure that has extended his life far beyond the year or so he had in 2001. He’s enjoying time with his grandchildren today. If that doctor had capitulated, my dad would have died when his oldest grandchild was a baby. This is the healthcare system Republicans want to protect. They have a financial interest in doing so, not a humanitarian one. Republicans warn that Obama wants to destroy our healthcare system. Damn straight! We want to destroy the broken system that only works for the insurance companies and replace it with something that works for everybody.
The problem here is that in a Democracy (which is what the United States claims to have, if you weren’t aware), the Government is supposed to be afraid of the people, not the people afraid of the Government. If the government were truly afraid of the people, Universal Healthcare would not be a debate at all. Ask yourself honestly, are you afraid of the Government, or is it afraid of you?
Insurance companies are spending millions of dollars with anti-reform commercials and buying Washington votes. Why? Do they have the best interests of the American People at heart, or are they interested in the billions to be made under the current system which routinely denies needed care to millions? They’re afraid, because they know that every other industrialized country in the world has universal healthcare and it works. They know that our system of paying huge insurance premiums is entirely concocted and unnecessary. They don’t want you to know that.
Did you catch that? The crutches that cost $15 in Canada were $45 in the U.S.? We must have some damn good crutches here in order to charge 3 times as much. Right?
I expect the first conservative to come across my post will respond with something like “If you think it’s so much better in Canada, why don’t you move there?” This probably seems like good logic to them. When you don’t really understand logic, it’s easy to miss a fallacy.
I believe in America and I believe we can fix this. I don’t want to move to Canada, I want the United States’ healthcare system to be the envy of the world, not the laughing stock it is today. You should too.
Wall-E
First, a recant.
I blasted Xbox support in a previous post. While their support still sucks, there was an answer, and the second reply actually got me close enough to find the answer for myself. I appreciate that the support personal are A) providing support for free (well, they get paid, Microsoft provides it) and B) probably constrained to certain responses due to efforts to actually improve support. I also understand that support is a difficult job. I’ve done it. It doesn’t change the fact that their support sucks dog crap, but whatever. It’s fixed now. I won’t sell the Xbox just yet, but I’m not ruling out a Playstation either. At any rate, if the same thing happens to you, the answer is “The License Consolidation Tool”. Despite the websites many assertions that it’s not necessary, it was necessary. Just because the job is difficult doesn’t excuse poor support.
That leads me to DRM and why it sucks and is completely pointless, but that’s another post for later.
Today I had two of my nieces over. I happened to have Wall-E recorded, and thought the kids might enjoy watching it. My wife 
vetoed it because she heard from a friend that it was actually some Hollywood plot to bash fat people and accuse them of destroying the world.
So I watched it to see for myself what Hollywood’s latest evil plot was.
What I saw was a cute movie with a sub-plot containing a cartoonish over-exaggeration of the dangers of rampant consumerism.
So what’s the problem?
It occurs to me that this is exactly what the religious right are deathly afraid of, having a social consciousness and actually being forced to think for themselves. I think the social message “hidden” in the movie is dead on, and not really a bad thing to expose children to.
The Wal-Mart generation could learn something here.
It seems that the religious right are always looking for some plot “to destroy our way of life.” To them I say: “What Would Jesus Buy?” 
First, let me be clear. I’ve abandoned Christianity for many reasons, not the least of which is I no longer believe the adult fairy tale of a “benevolent” “God” watching over all of us and allowing all of the bad things to happen because he works in “mysterious ways”. It’s a load of crap. It’s Santa for grown-ups. I think that there is some sort of higher consciousness, but it doesn’t look out for us on an individual level, it’s not a God, it isn’t accurately described by any religious text ever, and it’s completely explainable by science, even if it’s science we don’t understand yet. So all criticisms of Christians as to whether or not they have any idea of what their own religion dictates should be taken with a grain pound of salt.
That being said, if Jesus were alive today, he’d puke at the sight of the people who call themselves his followers. Yes, I’m talking to YOU Ray Comfort and Pat Robertson! I don’t know a 
single “Christian” alive today that lives the life prescribed by the Christian Bible. For all their faults, the only group I know that actually came even somewhat close was the cult.
I believe that Jesus would say “Stop the wars in the Middle East”. Christians say “Fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here.” I believe Jesus would say “Help the needy” (see Matthew 25), the Religious Right say “No Socialist Health Care!”
Why? Why do Christians (as a whole) seem to be so off? The only answer I can come up with is “Someone told them that.” Why was 
my wife opposed to Wall-E? Because someone told her it was somehow un-Christian. I don’t think anything that was lampooned by the movie is anything Jesus would not condemn. Why do so many Conservatives/Christians/whatever seem to believe whatever they’re told? Are none of them capable of thinking for themselves?
The other night I watched “Sicko”. Just on a whim. I wanted to see what liberally biased crap Michael Moore was spewing in this movie. I’d never liked him because he was obviously a rampant Liberal with an agenda and a movie camera. While I did spot a few places in the movie that were obviously biased, for the most part it 
was a dismal and unfortunately accurate depiction of the piss poor state of health care in America. I’m shocked at how much better it is almost everywhere else. And he identified why it’s different here, and traced it back to Nixon and Edgar Kaiser in 1971. It’s appalling that in this country we give doctors bonuses on being able to deny as many people health care as possible, while in England doctors are given bonuses on crazy dumb-ass criteria like how many people they got to stop smoking.
I was so surprised by my own reaction to this movie, I wanted to share it with my wife. Her first question was “Is this that Michael Moore movie?” and was uninterested in anything that came from it. She was intentionally rejecting anything she might have 
learned from it based solely on things she had heard about Michael Moore, presumably from her religious right friends. I’m glad I didn’t let my own bias stop me. I’ve finally realized that despite being an ignorant conservative for years, I’m really a flaming liberal and I’m finally coming out of the closet. While most people my age are becoming more conservative and start voting Republican, true to the story of my life I’m doing exactly the opposite, I’ve wised up. I’m actually looking in to becoming an activist.
I’m aware that war only begets more war. Our actions in the Middle East are inspiring hate and fear of the West in the youth of that region and actively swelling the ranks of those who want to destroy us. I’m aware that that it takes strength to say “we will not negotiate with terrorists”, but it takes more strength to stick to that principle when the time comes. I’m aware that that it takes a kind of 
strength that’s hard to find to say “we will not submit to terrorism, but neither will we become terrorists ourselves.” It takes one kind of strength to stand up and criticize people like George Bush and Dick Cheney for sacrificing America’s principles when times were dark, and it’s entirely another to stick to those ideals when you find yourself in their position. The recent disappointments from President Obama serve to illustrate that he, just like the rest of us, is only human. Still, let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.
Attention XBox: F*ck you!!!
Today is the day Microsoft kicked me in the balls. It was inevitable. I’ve built a career around working with Microsoft technologies. I’ve bought thousands of dollars of their software. I’ve paid an outrageous amount of money for their XBox. I’ve bought their arcade games. etc etc. For fuck’s sake I’m writing this goddamned post using Windows Live Writer on my new Vista OS.
Recently My XBox fried, all of one month out of warranty. I let that slide. I sent it in and got it fixed for the measly cost of $99. I let that slide. I recently noticed, however, that the arcade games which previously worked for everybody with a profile on my XBox (e.g. the rest of my family) no longer allow them to play the full version of the games.
That’s right, the games which I paid money for and have legally can now only be played on my profile.
That’s new.
So I, being the dumbfuck Microsoft groupie that I am, innocently assume this is some glitch, probably a result of Microsoft’s hard-on for DRM. I figure if I e-mail support and explain it, they’ll fix it. Right? Today I got this in reply:
Hello X,
Thank you for contacting Microsoft online support for XBOX. I am Y and I will be helping you today with this issue.
We have received your email and as I understand that your other account are unable to play your Xbox Live Arcade Games on Xbox Live. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience you have felt regarding this unfortunate matter.
With regards to this, X, you may only use the downloaded arcade games if you use only the account in which you’ve downloaded. Also, some items that you have stored on your Xbox 360 console cannot be transferred from one profile to another profile.
Thank you for your time and understanding.
If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply ‘with history’ (include any previous e-mail) or reference to Service Request Number N so we can expedite our service to you.
You may also contact Xbox Customer Service for US and Canada by calling 1-800-469-9269 at your earliest convenience, and we’ll be happy to help you. We are open everyday from 9:00 A.M. to 1:00 A.M. Eastern Time and 6:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. Pacific Time
For international customers, please contact Xbox Customer Service in your local region. (To find the correct Customer Service number for your region first use this link http://www.xbox.com/en-US/ChangeLocale.htm to select the appropriate country and then use the contact number found under the support menu). You may also choose to call international assistance (direct dial to the US) by dialing 425-635-7180.
Thank you for visiting Xbox.com. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.
Best Regards,
Y
Microsoft XBOX Support Services
Yep, a fucking form letter. That’s verbatim, with the names changed to protect the (somewhat) innocent. In case you got lost in all of that, it basically says “Fuck you. We’re Microsoft and we can fuck you if we want to and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it, dipshit!” Either that or “I hate my fucking job and didn’t really read your e-mail and hit the ‘Send the Fuck-You-form-letter’ button without thinking”.
Personally, I’m surprised. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I had actually bought into all of Microsoft’s bullshit, just to find out that I’ve been a fucking idiot. With a blog. So now I’m supposed to buy the same game four times? Fuck that!
I replied back and carefully explained the situation. Something that used to work on my console now does not. I don’t expect to get anything different, but after all of the money I’ve invested in my XBox, I figured I should try at least one more time before I chuck the piece of shit out the window and go buy a Playstation.
Companies usually only get to fuck me over once. I will never again have a Verizon account, even if they do have the cooler phones. I don’t care. I will never again buy Quicken or TurboTax. You only get to fuck me once, guys. I’m not that kind of girl.
This is a little different. My entire career is intertwined with Microsoft, so I can’t just simply say “Fuck off” and buy a Mac. I actually even wanted to work for Microsoft prior to today. I’ve even talked to the Channel 9 guys about a job opening before. We’ll see where this goes, but I can say I don’t have to buy anything that isn’t a development tool or an OS in the future. If Microsoft continually treats their end users this way, Steve Jobs has got nothing to worry about (unless Apple fucks their customers too, which I wouldn’t know. I don’t buy much Apple stuff).
Oh, and one more thing guys, every so often one of the customers you piss off will have a blog. Someday you might piss off somebody with a blog that actually has readers. Be careful…
My New Hero
Let’s be honest, these “Tea parties” are sponsored and architected by the Republican party. The people attending them may well have valid gripes, but they’ve been misled, and don’t really want to hear that they have. They’re unwittingly campaigning for the rich against the poor, which most of them are (if you define poor as making less than $250,000/year). I have to give credit to this guy, who had the balls to get up in front of a group of these people and tell them things they didn’t want to hear. The result is predictable.
As Americans, when we get angry we want to direct that somewhere, and we usually don’t care if it’s misplaced. That’s how Iraq happened. Bush used the momentum of American anger to vault us into a war that had nothing to do with 9/11. We’re a pretty gullible lot.
“I want to start off by honoring the service of our veterans, our current service members, thank you so much for all you’ve done for this country. I also want to say, a little history lesson here. Back in 2000, there was a bunch of surplus in the country. And then the next ten years, it was just destroyed by the profligate spending by the Bush administration. Here we are today in a situation where we have to…Cheer if you make less than $250,000 in a year. Just cheer. Your taxes are going to be cut under the current budget. Congratulations. I was laid off in September because my employer had to make budget cuts. That was before the election. Let’s remember if you’re going to argue about more taxes and less spending, to place the blame where the blame belongs and that’s squarely in the hands of the Republican congress and…”
Just in case you were under the illusion that this is not a Republican event. That took some serious balls.
I’m very disappointed in the Republicans. Apparently their answer for recovering from the disaster that was the Bush administration is to put all of their efforts into making Obama look just as bad. When Obama starts a war that costs over 4,000 American lives needlessly, get back to me. When Obama starts pissing on the Bill of Rights in the name of “freedom”, get back to me. When Obama makes spying on and torture of American citizens legal (which it is, if you didn’t know), get back to me. This crap is ridiculous. Obama hasn’t even been in office long enough to fuck up. It took Bush longer than that to really fuck the country up. Two years from now I might be joining you, but right now you’re all blaming Obama for the fuck-ups for the Bush administration, and it makes you look really, really stupid.
Don’t get me wrong, you’re right to be angry. The country is pretty messed up, just be honest about how it got that way, and about who is really promoting this event. Hint: it’s the same people who fucked it up. Stop playing politics and do something positive.
P.S. if you want to vent about Obama and the Second Amendment, don’t bother. You haven’t read it. I will ignore you and your uninformed opinion of what it means.
Your to-do list for today
THINK
FOR
YOURSELF!
Boston Tea Party my ass…
Today, the world is a slightly better place
I’m still keeping up on the news, and despite several Republican attempts at revisionist history (e.g. “Bush defeated the Taliban/Al Queda” which still hasn’t happened, the economy problems started before Bush, blah blah) I see the mess beginning to be straightened out. Apparently President Obama was shocked to find out that he had the authority to declare American citizens as enemy combatants, and could indefinitely detain them and deprive them of their civil rights without due process. Yep. Apparently the damage done to the Constitution didn’t just apply to Iraqis.
I got a slight chuckle when I heard there’s a movement in Canada to have George Bush detained on suspicion of torture (which shouldn’t be too hard to prove), where he is headed now to give his first post-presidential speech. I believe that it will be an American first to have a president arrested for war crimes. As embarrassing as it would be for the country, it would still be good to see. One can hope…
I like President Obama. I think he’s shown moral fibre in his first couple of months as President which has been sorely lacking in America’s leadership for a very long time (e.g. more than eight years). It saddens me to see Republicans still playing politics. The Democrats do too, but Obama seems (so far) to be above it. The fact that he’s a Democrat seems almost incidental to him. He’s out to repair the damage of eight years of Sith rule.
I don’t hate all Republicans because of Bush, nor do I like all Democrats because of Obama. I wonder how people justify what happened to themselves solely because they call themselves “Republican”. I wonder how many people no longer call themselves “Republican” because they couldn’t. That’s the danger of being a party-liner. I’m neither Republican nor Democrat. Neither Conservative nor Liberal (well, maybe just a bit Liberal). This gives me the ability to be a bit more objective about politics. I didn’t like what I saw and I didn’t have to rationalize it. I like what I’m seeing now and I can be confident I’m not rationalizing.
I wish he weren’t a Democrat, but if he weren’t he wouldn’t have been elected. It still bothers me to see our government stuck in the grip of these two massive political parties that for the most part seem interested in nothing but bickering. I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, though.
The Slippery Slope
I’m continually astounded at buzz around the current election. I listen to people tell me why McCain is great and why Obama is great. Once you cut through the bullshit it usually boils down to why McCain or Obama sucks. Honestly, do you vote for candidates, or against them? Honestly?
Since Nixon in the 70s we’ve had an increasingly cynical view of Washington. This is exacerbated by constant sex or financial scandals, continually lying, broken campaign promises, Right/Left slanted media, movies, failing economies, and wars that don’t make sense. I think we can agree that nearly the whole of Washington is corrupt. Why, then, is it that we keep electing the same people? Isn’t the definition of insanity when you keep doing the same thing and expect different results? That’s what we do, election after election. We keep electing the same people and expecting them to behave differently. We keep thinking “This time they’ll keep their campaign promises.” We keep thinking “This candidate really is different because he says so.” That Is Insane. Are we really that stupid?
Why are we as a country so afraid to consider a third party candidate? Why have we not done away with the absurdly inaccurate and outdated electoral college system? Are we really such a commercially jaded and malleable society that we can only consider the big party candidates with billions to spend on their campaigns? Are we really so pathetic that we’ll vote for McCain just because he’s got a young woman for a running mate? Are we really so obtuse that we’ll vote for Obama only because we’re angry at Bush and the Republicans? Are we really all stupid enough to eat the biased crap the media vomits at us daily (both right and left, don’t kid yourself)? Are we really all so effectively programmed that we think there are only two choices?
Remember Ron Paul?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/10/paul.endorsement/
“I’ve come to the conclusion, after having spent many years in politics, is that our presidential elections turn out to be more of a charade than anything else, and I think that is true today. It is a charade,” he said.
Paul said a strong showing by the third-party candidates would express the public’s frustration with the current system.
“If you ever get to the point where you believe the two parties are essentially the same, if the majority is outside of the establishment, it’s not very democratic. The process is not working,” Paul said.
Don’t be a robot this November. Stop obeying the programming they give you. Don’t vote Republican/Democrat because your family does, or you always have. And for the love of sanity DON’T VOTE ALONG PARTY LINES! THINK FOR YOURSELF! Look up the Libertarian party, or the Green Party, or the Constitution Party, or independents like Ralph Nader. Or for the love of whatever you hold dear, if you don’t like any of them, FIND SOMEONE YOU DO AND WRITE THEM IN! Don’t just vote for “the other guy.” It’s not a binary problem.
THAT is what the Henry Rollins for President thing is all about. He won’t win, I know that. I’m not stupid. But I can’t in good conscience vote for the candidates from the two giant Good ‘Ole Boys clubs that have been running our government for over a hundred years. It’s time for change. Real change.
Elections are supposed to be the time when We The People can have a say in how we are governed. That’s been taken away from us by two bloated political parties and the media, and we need to take it back.
digg_url = ‘http://taocowboy.blogspot.com/2008/10/slippery-slope.html’;
digg_title = ‘Why you should vote for third party candidates’;
digg_bodytext = ‘I’m continually astounded at buzz around the current election. I listen to people tell me why McCain is great and why Obama is great. Once you cut through the bullshit it usually boils down to why McCain or Obama sucks. Honestly, do you vote for candidates, or against them? Honestly?’;
digg_topic = ‘2008_us_elections’;
//–>
Hey buddy, can you spare 400 Microsoft Points?
XBox appears to have noticed that they have a user base that consists of more than just teenagers. As much as I hate, and have always hated, the term Gen-X, that’s the easiest way to group together people around my age group who have a common experience base around early video games. Not to say we’re the only ones. I’ve met at least two “Gen-Yers” (I apologize) who grew up with the very same games due to having “Gen-X” (last one, I promise) older siblings. They got the hand-me-down Atari 2600 systems. I still have one. Most of the games still work. Pitfall doesn’t, which sucks because that was always my favorite, but I’ve got re-released versions for Win95 and Playstation. (Damn it’s hard to keep that stuff up to date).
Now XBox has found the newest way to get me to spend my rather hard-to-come-by-lately money in the form of Microsoft points again. They’re releasing all of my old favorites on XBox Live Arcade. Bastards! What a cunning, evil plan!
It all started with DOOM. Oh the countless hours spent in the early nineties banging arrow keys and spacebars killing simulated 3D bitmap based hellspawn. I honestly don’t remember if the original DOOM supported multiplayer (I’ve still got it around here somewhere, I’ll check later) but I remember that DOOM 2 did. I had countless hours of fun sneaking up behind my best friend with a double-barreled shotgun and blowing him away (that’s just fun to say), untill somebody picked up the phone and messed up the damn carrier signal on the modem. Ah, modems: good times!
XBox released DOOM on XBox Live arcade a few months ago. Something that primitive probably doesn’t appeal to today’s youth unless they’ve got a video game history fetish, but it’s nostalgic to those of us that pissed away our youth on it when it was new.
Next was PacMan. Oooh, I was GOOD at PacMan when it was a popular new arcade game. Again, today’s youth would probably not look twice at it, wondering “where’s the damn plot line? How do you win?” You didn’t back then. You proved your mastery over others and your right to rule as master of the tribe by showing how long you could survive the onslaught of digital ghosts on a single quarter. PacMan was the very first “SuperGame”. The first game that caused a craze. Today’s market is so flooded with titles that there really aren’t any crazes any more, other than for consoles themselves. Back then we had PacMan lunch boxes, PacMan bedsheets, PacMan pajamas, PacMan records (yes, records. Not CDs. Those big round black things you put on turntables as part of rap music today used to be a music distribution medium.) PacMan cereal (fortified with Sugar Frosting and High Fructose Corn Syrup), and on and on.
Now we have PacMan on XBox Live Arcade. I love it. My kids hate it.
Then Galaga. ‘Nuff said.
Then Frogger. ‘Nuff said.
Missile Command, Warlords, and on and on. Some are the original arcade versions. Some have the original versions plus an updated version (to help the kids out with it. Their brains can’t process 8-bit graphics).
And Finally, the Coup de grâce, Duke Nukem 3D. Oh, they’re killing me! While money is still tight, I figure “Well, $5 for this game isn’t a big deal”, then another $5, then another, they sneak it in on you. Then, an epiphany: I’m paying for games I already own! How do they do that to me? They’re preying on some kind of nostalgia weakness. I’d be fascinated to know what the psychology behind it is.
Twitter: Crack for the Attention Challenged
I finally broke down and got myself a Twitter account. I thought “Well, everybody else has got one. And I might miss some Rory Blyth wisdom that gets sent only to twitter, and not to Neopoleon.com.” In other words, I appeared to have been worried that something might happen on the Internet and I might not know about it.
That kind of obsession reminds me of the time, back in the early days of the Internet, when I was on a Star Wars Newsgroup. Remember those? So being the Star Wars geek that I am, I posted a message that had some part of Empire Strikes Back quoted from memory. That’s dorky enough, but one member noticed that I had gotten one word wrong, and replied with a full two paragraphs of flame about it.
I always think of that when I want to convince myself that I’m relatively normal. I choose to not remember the return flame, which I’m pretty sure made use of the word “Waambulance”.
Twitter is this bizarre stream of consciousness kind of thing. After only one day on it, I’ve added a Twitter widget over to the right there, and set up my laptop near my chair so that I could periodically check if anybody had Twitted lately while watching TV. It would be a shame if I were to miss one.
The addiction, though, comes from the fact that posting on Twitter more closely resembles how my brain works than a blog does. Maybe we’re all like that, but since I’m still lacking the Psychology degree, I can only speak for myself. I tend to think in small text snippets rather than large articles. I’m sitting around watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles instead of packing for my road trip tomorrow. That seems like something the world needs to know! Tweet!
I ran across a brilliant article that covers this phenomenon. http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0809021 Since there’s APIs for both Twitter and Messenger, I’ll be planning the architecture for my messenger plugin which will allow me to keep up with twitter all of the time, on my drive back. Why? Because A) Twitter says it supports IM but I can’t find anything that backs that up, B) I’m geeky like that, and C) since my car can’t drive itself, I can’t actually do any coding on the drive back. It’s tempting to try, though.
2008 Election Results
I don’t care. I’m still voting for Henry Rollins. (I didn’t expect him to win anyway).
Supersize ME!
Another Idiot with a Blog 