Debt Ceiling Crisis Threatens State Budgets, Credit Ratings, Governors Furious

Of course the GOP governors will blame President Obama, however, anyone who is following this closely has to realize by now the President has presented the GOP deals that they would have latched onto immediatel­y if it weren’t for the tea party fanatics. This small group is out to torpedo our economy and our country to satisfy their bizarre sense of what America should be in this day and age. I would love to listen to the conversati­ons that the Koch brothers are having with the GOP leadership right now, how are the Koch brothers justifying their tea party lackeys behavior to the old guard of the GOP? This is madness, is it because the Koch brothers operate independen­tly from Wall Street at large since their empire is still privately held?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Lust, Anger, Greed… and Capitalism

A huge problem we have as democrats is that the GOP is so effective in political messaging. It also doesn’t help that most news media, take the message and repeat it until it becomes a type of political mantra or gospel. The GOP have convinced their base to compare their own household budgets to that of the U.S. They are nothing alike, they don’t operate by the same principles­, they don’t have the same constraint­s. It is really a ludicrous analogy. If the democrats were to try to repudiate their argument, it would have to be in a similar vein, to get the point across. To reference the injustice of cutting social security benefits, if within your family, the wife had put aside 20 dollars every week from her paycheck into a special savings account to do something important with in the future, something that would do a lot to keep her from becoming a financial burden on the rest of the family and some other member of the family decided to raid the account and also to put restrictio­ns on that account, how many families would accept that behavior, well that is exactly what the GOP is doing to every single one of us Americans who have paid into medicare/m­edicaid and social security. Maybe that would help the democrats with their message to the people. They have to come up with a better way of communicat­ing their values and beliefs.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

People too dependent on technology, agree or disagree?

Tags

postaday2011

In my humble opinion, I do find that many people are too dependent on technology. The most obvious example that I encounter each time I go food shopping is at the check out line. I, after the cashier has put in how much I gave them, find some change in my bag and give it to them thinking that it will make it simpler for them to give me back change. Instead they get all flustered and often times don’t know how to figure it out correctly. I blame the introduction of the calculator too early in school, calculators aren’t really needed until trigonometry class. Addition and subtraction don’t require calculators, moreover, a calculator only works as well as the person who inputs the information. How often do we see typo’s when we are reading anything on the computer or in print. The amount of typos, spelling errors and grammatical errors drive me crazy. I blame the over-reliance on spell check and grammar check for these mistakes. I am sure that I make quite a few grammatical errors because there a few rules and I am rusty in their use. If those typos can be made with the printed word, than similar mistakes can be made when inputting numbers in the calculator. I really get the sense that people have adopted the notion that computers are practically omniscient.

I think, that is my greatest fear, that people just assume that a computer must be right. The computer is right only as long as the information put into the computer is correct. I have spent countless hours on the phone with a customer representative trying to rectify a mistake, but all I hear is “I’m sorry ma’am, that doesn’t show up in my computer” I am then required to photocopy all my documentation, send it to them and pray that the correct information will make it into the almighty computer.

Another example of this over-reliance on technology happened 18 years ago. I was working as a waiter in New York City, I had been trained by my father which meant that I knew the old ways of waiting tables. All orders were taken and transmitted manually, without technology. At this restaurant, I had to be trained to learn the brand new computer and luckily, I found it pretty simple. One evening, I don’t know how, but all the computers died during the dinner service. We were 7 waiters on the floor and I was the only one who had the experience of working without a computer. So I rallied the troops around and gave them a crash course in communicating with the bar, the kitchen and figuring out the checks and taxes. My fear is that the young ones will somehow miss out on the experience of what we all knew how to do without the privilege or luxury of a computer and technology.

I’m normally not a pessimistic person or negative either. There is just something about the old ways that I really want to hold on to tightly. The old ways, I like saying it, give me comfort. Perhaps it is my innate sense of unfamiliarity about computers that leads me to stubbornly resist them, I don’t know, but I do know that I resist new technologies for as long as possible. I don’t think that I will change anytime soon.