Now, some would argue that I rail against such an act in order to protect my right to be a pervert and take up-skirt images on trains and buses. This is the content of arguements for such laws as it is with anti-virus software makers whose marketing policy is to engender fear in order to sell. (I may be a hardcore Machead, but I do use Windows, and when I do, I don’t use A/V software, but I also don’t use Microsoft software or do things I shouldn’t. Because of that, I’ve not been infected in 10+ years.) The real argument, and the one Republicans and the Religious Right don’t want you to make, is that its about freedom of speech. Yes, taking pictures is a right we have because its a form of personal expression.

What I’m more concerned about is Republicans fighting as hard as they are to not support our President, Barack Obama. We are in a serious recession, we have a dangerously high jebless rate, we have a large, National population of homeless people, we have banks and other financial institutions ripping us off, the credit market is in shambles, and money fund managers are giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses with TARP funds. We’re in trouble. Deep trouble, and Republicans are up to their same, tired, ridiculous old games claiming that Democrats are all about spending and spending and spending. Its shameful.

Think about it, kids (and I’m no mathematician). If you spend X number of Billions of dollars on a bridge refitting project, where does that money go? Republicans would have you believe that simply making the money available is waste and will produce nothing. Democrats, on the other hand (and who never seem to say anything about this), know that what will really happen is the money will go to planning which will create staff positions for design and implementation which will pay architectural firms to design the refits which will guide the project leaders to determining a contractor who will need to hire people to actually perform the work. I don’t know how many bridges there are in the US, but I know there’s a lot so I imagine that’s several hundreds of thousands of jobs right there.

I have a feeling that some of you will ask yourselves what you can do about it. Don’t. Know that you can call, write, fax, or email your representatives in Congress and tell them what you want them to work on. Tell them that pushing a bill (HR414, in case you were curious) to make mobile phone cameras click by law is less important than reinvigorating our economy. Let them know that you’re not happy about this. I’m certainly going to tell my reps what they should be working on.

What set me off is my freezer chest. I have a freezer chest which has sit in my house for the past year not getting used. The wife had been drilling me to get one for years saying that she’d use it and that it would be great. So, I get one and what happens? Nothing. Sure, we have some stuff in there, but it consumes maybe 10% of the overall space, which doesn’t seem a good ratio to me. So, I put it up on CL today. One person queried about it and I never heard back, then some dude sends this (I’ve not edited it aside from removing the regional details):

When is a good time to show it? I live on [REDACTED] near [REDACTED], so I wouldn’t mind going in the morning or at some other time to take a look. I am seriously interested and really do want it, but I will bargain on the price because I could get one new for less than 200.

Wow! Dude! So why not go get one for less? I’m asking $150? Isn’t that $50 less? I don’t know, as I’m not a math genius! This is the kind of thing I’m starting to see everywhere, but I’ll focus on IT. My wife is endlessly combing the gigs in CL hoping to find me something to do “on the side” to make some extra money. All I’m seeing is one person wants to have all of their data recovered from their crashed hard drive and expects all nerds to have “cleanrooms” in their apartments! Oh, and the guy can only pay a few hundred. Um. If you didn’t check, which is clear, these kinds of jobs require extremely expensive equipment and time and can cost in the thousands.

How about the lady who needs to have everything plugged in for her and can only pay $20, or the dude who wants all viruses cleaned off his computer for $5 an hour, or the company that wants to hire an IT guy slash mailroom dork for $10 an hour. How about the people on eBay who are warranty obsessed! If you want a warranty that badly GO BUY IT NEW! I’d put up one of my old Mac laptops and I’d get 15 queries about warranty! Did any one of them pay attention on the note I had in there about how it didn’t have warranty coverage or even bother to notice that it was 7 years old? No!

People’s emails are getting bad, too. Its like the whole idea of foreshortened communications has grabbed hold of America’s unified intelligence quotient and ripped it out wholesale. Some guy on a website asked about how he could improve his position since he’s been on the helpdesk team for over 7 years and still lives at home. It was no wonder that he wrote in anonymously, since it appeared to be penned by an 8 year old, and he claimed to have a BS in biology! Shocking, people! Where is the pride? Where is the belief that we’re the greatest country in the world? What happened to the idea that you have to earn it to get it?!

Apparently it got flushed down the toilet with the guy who was able to trade a red paperclip all the way up to a house. Expectations, people!! Apparently its all about free these days. If you can get it free and its mostly as good why should you ever pay for it again, yes? Its sad because, as a country, we’re losing out way. We’ve lost most of our manufacturing jobs because people don’t see building cars or computers as a skill. No! That’s akin to digging ditches! We can’t build things or perform labor intensive tasks, no! We’re all in Hollywood or advertising or we work in some office in front of a computer and sit at a nice desk.

We get cappuccino’s in the office and lunch handed over cost free. We get paid well enough not to care how much gas costs and other, stinkier people from other places do the hard things. Its amazing, because the people whom we crap on, those who do the hard work and get their hands dirty? Yeah. They’re happy to have the work and to earn the money, and a lot of them… I know, this will shock you… A lot of them actually take pride in their work! They are pleased they could build a house which doesn’t fall over in an earthquake or create a beautiful garden full of flowers or make your Mercedes work again after you rammed it into an SUV while tailgating and chatting on the phone.

That nice salad you paid $20 for at Spago? Picked by someone who makes a lot less than you, and yet they have a family to feed and a car to put gas into and bills to pay and family back in their home country to send money to. They likely even have more responsibilities than we do, and yet they scrape and scrimp every last thin dime and probably don’t spend much time watching TV, much less even having to worry about their digital cable, HD TV, DVR, and big ass leather couch.

So, what about the decline of man in the modern age? We’re too advanced, aren’t we. We’ve worked hard and our ancestors died for us to have what we have today, right? We earned those SUVs and McMansions and flights to Aruba, right? We earned the right to not have to actually build or maintain what we earned, right? What we are earning is the right not to choose where our goods come from. We’ve earned the right to have our financial power taken away from us by someone who is hungrier than we are. We’ve earned the right to lose our political status in the world. We’ve earned the right to select the president we don’t want because we’re not willing to get up and vote.

We’ve earned the right to wallow in our losses and pain. We’ve earned the right to watch an entire city be destroyed by the sea and not be able to rebuild it. We’ve earned the right to watch thousands of our young men die at the hands of others because of a lie. That’s all that we’ve earned. So, next time you go looking to buy something on Craig’s List, take a moment to see where the other person might be at. Think about why they’re asking for the amount they are asking for and maybe NOT chisel them down because it all about you.

Think about someone else and someone else might just take the moment to think about you back.

The Cuban government has just released restrictions on its citizens having home computers. I don’t suspect it will take long for various vendors to start getting their little laptops down there. ASUS, you seeing a market for your Eee PC yet? Maybe not, since Raul Castro didn’t un-ban the Internet. The Communist government claims that the US embargo stops them from connecting to the cable. We’re friends with China and they’re communists! What gives, Bush?

It looks like the Psystar Mac clone isn’t fake, after all. At least there seem to be a few out there that people are talking about. Gizmodo and Engadget each have at least one. Guess they aren’t fakes after all.

Kensington has a new battery charger for the iPhone, though I’m sure it will work with other dockable iPods. Boy Genius has the poop on a clamshell handset from RIM, supposedly dubbed the BlackBerry KickStart. Finally, Microsoft is no longer pursuing the deal for Yahoo so you can stop trying to come up with new names for the merged force of nature (i.e., MicroHoo!, YahooSoft!, MicroYAHOO!soft, The Yang-Ballmer Love Child or YBLC, or just plain Microosoft!).

Sure, we stole this country from the natives, we stole Hawaii from their sovereign king, and we’ve perpetrated a wide range of other human rights abuses and outright crimes, but hey! We’re here, right? So, let’s give thanks to George W. Bush for all of the wonderful things he has given us and the strong and positive legacy he will have left us when he leaves office next year. Joy to the world, everyone!