1.kc.life

Fears

2005-10-26T18:55:00.000-05:00

If our fine country, the United States of America, could find a reason to do a preemptive strike against Iraq, how come Israel hasn't made a move against Iran even though Iran's new president has openly delcared that Israel must be "wiped off the map"? I can't understand how a nation as belligerent as Israel could stand having such words said about it for very long. And with the United States looking for wmds in Iran, it wouldn't take much to get an Israeli-American coalition together... and then the occupation zones would span from the mediterranean to the Hindu Kush, quite an American Empire indeed.

Insular Areas

2005-10-23T20:49:00.000-05:00

The United States are being ripped off every day. While American citizens living and working in the states are paying taxes to defend their fellow citizens and pay for the upkeep of their fine cities and their fine country, there are other people living in Insular areas receiving all of same benefits as American citizens, including defense and tax dollars, without having to pay taxes themselves. The only difference our cousins in the Insular Areas of the United States of America have in rights is the fact that they may not vote for any national office, such as congressmen (or congresswomen) or the president. Sorry to say, but a very large percentage of Americans, who both have the right to vote and the obligation to pay taxes, don't vote. In the 2005 Iraqi election, a higher percentage of the eligible population turned out to vote than in the 2004 United States presidential election. How is it that people who risk getting blown up or having their heads shot off while, or as a result of, voting still vote more than people here who just have to get in their big old SUV and burn a gallon or two in order to get to their neighborhood voting station, with no more risk of getting shot than on any other daily excursion? And why are we letting thousands upon thousands of people live on our bill on tropical islands without paying for it while enjoying the same rights as many of their cousins back in the states? We should give our insular states a choice, become a full fledged state or lose your American tax dollar life support system. Hopefully they'll be smart about it and choose to become states, but if not they'll still have our tourist dollars to live off of.

Communism In the USA

2005-10-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

For those of you who hadn't realized that the United States possessed a far left wing, heres your proof.
I find it odd that a party based around anti materialism has a materialism section ("giftshop" in fat cat capitalist terms)

Milk = Steroids?

2005-10-14T20:41:00.000-05:00

A recent article from abc news brings to light the opposition to a new milk add comparing milk to steroids. The national baseball league apparently doesn't approve of commercials that may be a bit on the edge. But this is not the right attitude. If every company was so afraid of being sued or attacked for airing commercials that made light of tough issues or didn't make every activist group happy the television stations would be filled with nonstop infomercials. There are times when you've got to just take something as it is and not get quite so uptight about it. Relax people.

"Tear Them Down"

2005-09-29T21:30:00.000-05:00

"Tear them down
One by one
All the walls that divide us..."

Thats the start to a song that has bored me to death in recent days, but today led me to thinking, "should we start by tearing down walls, or stopping ones that are going up as we speak?"
And thats true, why the heck should we try to start destroying barriers to a free world while the people that we endorse and are funding are building equally if not morsoe evil walls?
Par example, Israel. Looking over at our western chunk of the Middle East what do we see... Is it western culture expanding through friendship and trade with its neighbors? Is it aid going to the less fortunate countries around it? No. It is the images missiles and artillery strikes coming down on people deemed "terrorists" after they are killed. Its a 30 mile long barrier facing the Gaza strip and a planned 403 miles of fence, wall and trenches facing the West Bank.
Is this the example the west should be setting in this new globalizing world? Shunning those worse off than us and bullying them into peace by leveling houses with bulldozers in retaliation for a rocket attack thirty miles away? America is fully connected to these grievances against proper moral conduct through its billions of dollars of funding for the Israeli military.
Stop the walls from being built, then tear down the ones that exist. One step at a time.

The Anti Curse

2005-09-28T21:55:00.000-05:00

How about this...

A new law to reduce cussing in America. Since there is absolutely no way for a law enforcement agency to govern people's words or keep track of what they say when, you would have to turn the people against eachother as the government's law enforcement agents.
How would this work? The punishement for cursing would be a dollar fine per curse. There would always have to be a witness. The witness (informant) would have to record the offendant cursing 100 times. This would probably be on video tape. Once 100 examples were collected, the witness could go to the local court and present the evidence. The police would then proceed to bring in the offendant, charge them for 100$, $1 per curse. 75$ would be given to the witness and the remaining 25$ would go to the state. Multiple cases would have to be held at a time for cost efficiency, and failure to appear in court would result in dramatically higher fines. This would lead to more government revenue to pay off the debt and a boost in mini video camera sales.

EMA Tax

2005-09-22T19:08:00.000-05:00

With all of this money being spent to aid those Americans who live on the Gulf Coast, I think there should be some way for them to cover those expenses in the future. Thus, I propose an EMA tax, or hurricane tax. This would be an additional task required of all citizens who blatantly decide to live where there is a pretty high chance their house will get blown to smithereens come fall.

Its absurd that other Americans should be paying all of these taxes and then the money regularily gets sucked into helping the same set of people. I'm not saying that helping hurricane victims is not a federal responsibility. Thats why we have a federal government, to get states to aid eachother when one state may be up and another down, but when midwest states with much less need for storm relief than the gulf coast are having their tax dollars regularly drained towards something which isnt repaid to them in any kind of aid from the gulf coast.
The state should either increase their own storm reaction abilities or pay the federal government more to do it for them. Thats the EMA tax.

Concerning Ecoterrorism

2005-09-14T17:50:00.000-05:00

This past week french enviromentalists have been making themselves noticed by deflating the tires on all the SUVs they can find and leaving notes simply stating that the owners of the suv's are hurting the enviroment and aiding the terrorists. I appluad this.

This way the ecoterrorists get their point across, but dont overdo it like some have done in america. Most notably is an exact counterpart to this when American ecoterrorists set several suvs on fire and let them explode. This is much more violent (the american way), and even though it is more entertaining it is also criminal.
Its stupid to own a big SUV in a city like paris where smart cars really are smart because you can actually fit into the parking spots which an suv takes up two of. The french have taxed the gas so much (which I also applaud) that only the very rich can afford it, but still people use those behemoths in Europe, against all common sense.
I just hope that they'll find reinflating their tires everytime they park such a pain that they will come to their senses, buy a smart car and start helping the enviroment instead of the terrorists.

Literacy Tests

2005-09-13T20:30:00.000-05:00

In this fine state, we should value intelligence more than we do, possibly to the extent of life or death, for that is the way it works in this world. The more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to have a job, be capable of taking care of others and helping your community and state in general. Therefore I propose random literacy tests. The punishment... read on.

State Highway Patrol members would be instructed to randomly stop cars on roads, the occupants would be requested to select their language of choice for their test. For after all, an intelligent french man is still an intelligent man. The test : read a paragraph and summarize it. Something rather simple, maybe a news bulletin from iraq, which would not only test the subject but also increase their knowledge at the same time. If the person satisfactorily passed the test, they would continue on their jolly way with a note saying that they had satisfactorily passed the literacy test in the last week.
If they fail the test they are either A. fined 50% of their possesions, to be handed over to the state or B. shot and have their full assets seized by the state to pay benifits for those who are passing the literacy tests.
This would both encourage smarter citizens of this fine state and pay bills. How perfect.

Regarding Religious States

2005-09-10T23:56:00.000-05:00

States created by religion have no right in a modern day society, It is totally wrong to use a religious document, such as the bible, to justify the creation of a country. Yes, Israel is the country that was created on these basis'. They kicked out the residents of the country with little regard as to how those people and their descendants would live or where they would live, and took their fertile land and resources holding up the bible to support their reasons. Only recently have they stepped back and thought that if they made the world better for the people they evicted, maybe those people would stop trying to kill them.

I appluad the withdraw from Gaza, and I was actually stunned this past week when I noted that the pictures of American National Guard soldiers forcibly evacuating New Orleans' residents in the New York Times was a mirror image of Israeli Military Police doing likewise in Gaza just a month earlier.

It is morally wrong to destroy others homes and lives in the name of religion.

Feel free to disagree, I'll listen.

On secession...

2005-09-08T13:19:00.000-05:00

I realize now that any state in the USA would have a much easier time seceding from this fine union much more easily than the csa's poor attempt under the wrong motives all those years ago.

With states possessing massive nuclear arsenals, particularily those in the midwest and coasts, they could ransom secession from the USA with nuclear anhilliation of major cities as their trump. For most states this would work temporarily, only to have economic means crush their small nation-state. No American senator or congressman / congresswoman would vote to have their own state the victim of a nuclear attack in exchange for keeping just one of their fellow states in the union.

Alaska is ideal for its own nation state. It has oil for income, it has coastline in abundance for free trade, its seperated from the continental states adding to its protection from American retaliation, and it has a massive nuclear arsenal left over from the cold war and positioned on china and the rest of east asia that could easily be repositioned to target any city.

Unlike the secession those years ago, it would not be doomed to economic failure even if its military might did prevail because of the value of its oil. Oil is the sole basis for many nations' economies in this modern day and age and could be the sole basis for Alaska, although Alaska also has great tourist industry and a booming fishing industry. This same oil would sever the continental states' lifeline which powers not only the civilian population, but the manufacturing and the military. Cities like Los Angeles and Pheonix which are totally depedent on cars for their suburban lifestyle would be forced to their knees and would bring their own congressmembers to let Alaska go, as long as the pipeline is reopened. Think about it.

Feel free to leave a comment as well.

Mining the Border

2005-09-07T13:14:00.000-05:00

This may sound quite radical to some, but here it goes. We should lay a minefield along the entire border between the United States and Mexico. The United States, along with finland, is the only world democracy to refuse to sign the anti-mine treaty of britain which states the the nation in question may not possess mines in its military.

A minefield would save money on border control, save lives and, for those who still attempt to cross, create more humane deaths than slowly dying of thirst or heat exhaustion in the desert.

First, it would save money. The number of gaurds on payroll would be limited to those necessary to gaurd the checkpoints on roads that have no mines upon them.

Second, it would save lives. The odds against illegal immigrants would be so high many would not attempt the journey which currently kills so many who feel they can make it, but are not actually able.

Third, for those who still attempt to cross, they would die more humanely. Instantly dying from an explosion, or dying within a day from blood loss, would be a faster and less painful death than those who die of thirst, starve, or die of heat exhaustion in the vast deserts.

SAT

2005-08-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

---NOTE---
FROM THIS POINT ON ARTICLES NOT FIT FOR HUMAN COMPREHENSION

Why am I taking SAT classes, you may ask. Because my mother caught me off guard. Everyone has been asking me the same question and I continue to answer it in the same way. So far all of the questionaires have been sophmores, juniors or seniors but I'm sure some freshmen will ask me some day when I remark that I wasted 1o d***** hours of my summer vacation sitting in a small classroom with overdone ac that Sam correctly remarked "well, back to 32 below now that breaks done" bent over a large book which clearly has the label :

For the March 2005 SAT Test

I'm sorry, but to the best of my memory I am not going to be a junior in March of this coming year, and therefore this book and the test it is prepping all of these sophmores and juniors for is going to be totally obsolete by the time March rolls around.
I just wish I had been more awake that morning when my mother asked me if I would be interested in taking a math course this august and I replied with a noise something to the extent of hrmph? For if I had in fact been awaked I would have taken the phone out of her hands, told the nice lady at the phs office "no thankyou and please buzz off" (or something to the same extent) and promptly began planning how to enjoy my extra 10 hours of summer vacation.

Rain

2005-08-12T10:40:00.000-05:00

We're finally getting some rain in here kc mo, which should be good for the farmers. Nasty drought last couple of weeks and this rain will really help with the crops. The farms (contrary to common belief outside of the region) are actually pretty far away from the downtown, or where I live, thanks to good old urban sprawl. That same sprawl is the thing that makes kc one of the biggest (area) cities in the usa. Although you can't beat LA's urban sprawl. (pic is of LA in rain when we were there) I liked LA when i went there, just... it took so long to get anywhere, and alot of traffic. Maybe its just cause I live close to alot of things in kc that I don't see those same problems here. Though getting to some friends houses can be a half hour or even longer ordeal things to the way the city sprawls out. At least America is getting land taxes on all that land, so we're helping pay off the national debt.
I guess you gotta look at the good things, even if they may be small.

Titles.

2005-08-11T09:32:00.000-05:00

Even though they are hard to come up with quite often - I can remember many english papers in which the most time I spent was at the end of the writing when I reread it and could not come up with a simple heading for it, then I would come up with something mediocre and get marked down for it when english class rolled around - I am going to start putting titles at the beginning of every post for the hope that it will make this blog easier to navigate.

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in a hole? phil

2005-08-11T01:19:00.000-05:00

. down past the plaza to the art institute or the nelson or wherever you want to go. Thats city life, having everything nearby where you can reach it by walking, biking or public transport. Thats the way to have a better society too. You cut down on air emmisions by bussing, or even better, taking trains or light rail. You get healthier by walking and biking instead of riding in a car. You dont use as much gas and you help stop oil dependence. How much better can an idea be than that, to stop all of those problems and have a healthier life along with a more fun and easier one?
but I'm ranting again.
Summer is wonderful because of the convenient lack of school and the constantly nice weather, save the unfortunate heat waves that hit kc regularly. Among the other unfortunate side effects of the summer months is the lack of scouting campouts, although high adventure trips and camp are appreciated and quite fun. Just now that they have passed the monthly campout would be greeted with glee, save the fact that it is still summer. Another decidedly horrid part of summer is the rock that sits in your stomach, or at least mine, that reminds you that it will not last forever, and that come september you will return to classes and your summer freedom and laziness you grew accustomed to only in those last few weeks of summer - when your mind finally clicked that it actually is summer - will be revoked with the utmost ease of me driving/being driven for the full two minutes it takes to reach the entrance to school where I will walk in, enjoy the conversation of the halls and take my seat in biology class as my brain rushes wildly to gather up all of my thinking abilities before class actually starts.
Summer is bittersweet when looked upon from that view, but I'm pushing the negative further then it deserves and the positive vice versa.

For a pessimist sees the glass as half empty, the optimist the glass half full and the engineer sees a glass that is twice as large as it needs to be.