pres.umptuo.us

• The ‘Marching Morons’ show prescience of science fiction. Not only a good message about the way things are today, but also about most people’s ignorance of science fiction as a legit source of literature.

  Monday March 12, 2007

• Boston Terrorists only answer questions about 70s hairdos. These guys are my heroes.

  Thursday February 1, 2007

• Clinton owns Fox News Interviewer. An old link considering this hit the Internets on Monday, but posting anyway for people who haven’t seen it yet. Makes me wanna read Richard Clarke’s book.

  Wednesday September 27, 2006

• Innovator Devises Way Around Electoral College. What? My vote might count now? Give me runoff voting and I’ll be happy.

  Friday September 22, 2006

I came across this long, yet great, article entitled, “The World’s Most Toxic Value System“, essentially harping on honor and it’s effects on creating an effective society. There’s a lot of really good stuff, but this point in particular stuck out:

Nothing better illustrates the thar mentality better than the fury directed by Islamic militants against Danish and Norwegian cartoons of Mohammed. Sacrilegious art in other cultures can offend and get people angry but the lunatic response of radical Islamists is in a class by itself. It’s the shrieking, out of control petulance of a three-year old throwing a tantrum. People infected with this attitude will be utterly incapable of recognizing wrongdoing by their own society, utterly incapable of taking criticism or recognizing the need for correction.

The points on the degradation of women are also of note. It’s funny that you’d think after so many centuries of lasting civilizations, issues like these wouldn’t be a problem. But it looks like tradition, religion, and pride have a way of their own.

• Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?. The stats the article provides make a really good point.

  Thursday June 1, 2006

• Colbert Does the White House Correspondents’ dinner. The man knows no fear.

  Sunday April 30, 2006

• The Morning News - In Praise of Loopholes, by Matthew Baldwin. Yay for taking advantage of the system.

  Tuesday April 25, 2006

• Powazek: Just a Thought: SXSW to MPAA: STFU. There’s only so much control one can have…

  Thursday March 16, 2006

• Daily Show: Dead-Eye Dick. Duckhunt!

  Thursday February 16, 2006

It’s funny how I stop thinking, “Ooh, this would make a good post,” when my blog goes out of comission, and I pretty much stop paying attention to things going on in the world.

I did, however, remember reading about Evo Morales, a socialist, being elected the president of Bolivia. It seems the South Americans get it, and he was elected with an absolute majority (at least 51%) just to show how much support he has.

Shame he’ll probably be assassinated by the US shortly. I give him two months.

I think this entry just set off some alarms over at the NSA.

I revisited my old stomping grounds today to see (hear?) Aaron McGruder speak at UCI as part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. festivities. I saw him speak at UCI a couple of years ago, although this time the crowd was much larger and a lot more organized. Crystal Cove auditorium was nearly filled to capacity, while there couldn’t have been more than 30 people when I last saw him. Good Bush-bashing and complaints made about the news media were done all around. I especially dug his comparison of the Democratic party to Apple.

(Paraphrased) I see the Democratic party a lot like the Macintosh. It’s artsy and creative. It’s better? I don’t see why everyone isn’t using it. And Barack Obama is a lot like their iPod. Popular, but not enough to win everyone over.

Economic `Armageddon’ predicted. We’re spending too much, we’re all in debt, and we’re just digging ourselves into a deeper hole.

Roach marshalled alarming facts to support his argument.

To finance its current account deficit with the rest of the world, he said, America has to import $2.6 billion in cash. Every working day.

That is an amazing 80 percent of the entire world’s net savings.

Sustainable? Hardly.

Well, as of right now, it looks like Bush has got it. Reactions:

calkidd32: do i need a visa to go to canada?
calkidd32: i heard they have lots of donut shops there

Sassyboo22 (10:01:59 PM): shietz
Sassyboo22 (10:02:03 PM): shits histhisthistas;fa;slkdjf as;dfja;sdfj;awdjf
Sassyboo22 (10:02:06 PM): fj;asdfuck u
Sassyboo22 (10:02:09 PM): hi

IllItsau d: can california like, withdraw from the union

aprilmayjun3: if bush wins i’m relinquishing my american citizenship

Now this is good, here’s part of my away message I had up:

Time to build a magic boat out of a school bus and make my way over to Cuba. Who’s coming?

KaMKinD803: i wanna come
KaMKinD803: call shotgun!

This is the best though. Bastard Basil is still over in Sweden:

valloq: hey, come back to our great country
ThusSpokeBacchus: i am pretty sure i am going to stay here
valloq: you fucker
valloq: I wanna go
ThusSpokeBacchus: haha
ThusSpokeBacchus: i am not even kidding
valloq: I’m not either
ThusSpokeBacchus: i swear, people will do anything once they have some fear in them

On a side note, if Bush does end up being declared the winner once again, I’d just like to point out that my vote for Nader meant a lot more than a vote for Kerry did. So hah you naysayers, who threw away their vote now?

The elderly people at my Polling Place were great. It was completely empty, btw. I guess considering it’s Pasadena and all…

Pollworker 1: We have a new voter, Eric Lim.
Pollworker 1: Here is your ballot.
Pollworker 2: Was it Eric or Evan? Oh Eric is a Mrs.

I’m surprised by everyone urging others to vote today though, that’s some good democratic spirit. I’m sure it also has a lot to do with what’s at stake this time around, but it’s still a good thing that more people are voting.

I must say though, it felt good voting. I was disillusioned and felt like I had made a difference for a split second, and I’m sure scribbling “President”, and then right below it, “Nader” into the write-in boxes helped quite a bit. Here’s to my first time voting.

November 2nd is coming around, and I thought it’d be good to write up a little rant about my thoughts on this election, and why I’ve chosen to vote (write-in is more like it) for Ralph Nader.

Four years ago I didn’t give a damn about the election. I wasn’t registered, and to me, Gore and Bush were pretty much identical. None of the issues seemed important to me at the time, and if you asked me, it didn’t really matter who won. They were both full of it, wouldn’t hold to their promises, and four years later none would be the wiser.

This time around, it’s almost the same. I still don’t really care for either Bush or Kerry, because as far as I know they’re both lying to the American public. For most people it seems to be a choice of the “lesser of two evils”, which just seems utterly worthless to me. In the end, nothing will have really changed.

I do really, really, hate Bush though. The reasons are rather obvious; Lied about WMDs, got the whole world hating us, giving tax breaks to the rich. I could really get into this, but I’ll restrain myself. I would just love to see this man taken out of office.

So why then, am I voting for Nader and not Kerry? The Electoral College. According to some experts, Kerry already has California by a good measure. And because of the way our democratic process works, my single vote (and all of the Republican votes) in California won’t mean jack shit. I’m safe to vote for Nader and still know that Kerry has received all the Electoral votes from California.

It should be noted that this is perhaps one of the pros of the electoral college. We’ll pretend that we don’t know about electing a president that doesn’t win the popular vote, or the fact that if Democrats started voting Green then the Republicans would always win. On a side note as well, I’m getting the feeling that this election is going to be very close, and that in the final outcome Bush will be president again. Gotta love America.

When it really comes down to it though, and if this were the year 2000, I would still vote for Nader, simply because I really hate this two-party system. We have to make compromises on values we’ve come to believe in, and end up voting for the candidate that most closely matches our own ideals. Anyone else see something wrong with this?

Kurt Vonnegut put it best:

If you want to take my guns away from me, and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you’re for the poor, you’re a liberal.

If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you’re a conservative.

What could be simpler?

It comes down to this: A vote to rid the country of what I’ve come to see as one of the most hated presidents in recent history, or a vote to fight the two-party process.

It’s fairly obvious which choice I’ve taken.

After finally getting around to registering to vote roughly a month ago, the card finally came in the mail saying they had received my registration and that I was all set to go forth and enact my lone voice in the democratic process. And printed on the very front of the card, as well as on the sample ballot that arrived the next day:

Mrs. Eric Lim

Fuck.

I’ve never seen CNN’s Crossfire before, so I really don’t quite understand what Jon Stewart was arguing, but I got the general gist of it. It’s really great to see him go on the show and completely bash it by saying it hurts the democratic purpose.

These sites all say it much better than me though. A link to the actual appearance on the show, as well as a link to what Boing Boing had to say on the subject. Be sure to checkout Salon’s write-up on it as well.

For her, I would vote for Kerry over and over again.

Well, as expected, the debates are going to be completely worthless thanks to all the rules and regulations that have been agreed on. This commentary by Connie Rice pretty much tells all. I love politics.

“This is what I call the Obstruction of Democratic Debate Rule, which sets an impossibly high threshold for third-party candidates… Where are we, Russia? Isn’t Vladimir Putin wiping out democracy in Russia by excluding all opposing candidates from the airwaves during his re-election campaigns? Most new ideas come from third parties — they should be in the debates.”