Disjointed Kitsch

So let me get this straight…

Romney leaves the race and McCain is the presumptive nominee for the Republicans.  The far right Limbaugh/Coulter fringe says “He’s not a conservative Republican” and that they’d rather have Hillary. Talk about splitting the party. It’s not McCain that’ll do it, it’s the far right whack jobs that would rather have it their way or no way that’ll split it up.

I’m not a “party line” guy so I’m really curious as to why the Billary haters are now moving toward  her as a McCain alternative. Is it if they can’t have it their way they’d rather have it no way?

Grow up! You’re acting like a bunch of cry babies that are not getting their way. I’d really  love to see Rush and Ann out campaigning for Hillary. Perhaps we’d get some real bipartisan exchange of ideas going and actually accomplish something instead of just standing on the sidelines blathering at the opposition. What would even be better would be for them to do all that work for Hillary and McCain still get elected. Sweet!

I generally vote Republican although I consider myself and independent. I’m not on the far right wing and I’m definitely not as far left as Billary. My first vote ever was for Regan’s first presidency. I voted for Ross. I’ve voted for Democrats when I thought they could do the job better than a Republican and I’ve voted straight ticket Republican when I thought the democrats were just too far left.

Ever since Nixon I feel like we’ve lived in a “gotcha” politics world. Some part of the political segment, the press, or some special interest is out there to rip the target “du jour” up and cast him/her in an unfavorable light in order to score on their political agenda.

As an American first, not Republican or Democrat, I find this behavior disgusting. I’ve gotten so fed up that I’ve refused to engage in political dialog with just about anyone until the political discourse in this country moves away from the “gotcha” politics and move into one that represents the true spirit of America.

When I review how our country was founded and how it grew, I see cooperation and consensus building as cornerstones of our political process. Where has that gone? Are we so caught up in proving the other side wrong that we’ve forgotten that the best solutions are often forged out of compromise and blended ideas rather than a black and white choice between punishing alternatives? Frankly, I hate the political climate today.

I am interested in Barack Obama’s message of unity and hope, not a divided America, not red vs blue, but red and blue, all colors, facing the challenges and grabbing opportunities in a spirit of mutual respect, trust, and a willingness to cooperate. I find it extremely interesting that the candidates generating the most excitement in either party are not the ones on the fringes appealing to the party base but those attempting to move the discussion toward the middle. John McCain isn’t a far right Republican and Barack, although more left than I’d like, has a message that’s more in line with my hopes and dreams than Billary’s mesage of division and discontent.

I’m not predicting an outcome but whomever is elected I hope that the political dialog in this country stops being about “gotcha” and start being about finding common ground through compromise and mutual respect.

Just about every day I hear a talking head spout “doom and gloom” or “best thing since sliced bread” on some subject. Could be the latest gadget or some political item or a person or whatever. It’s always one extreme or another.

What I’ve wanted to do for a long time is to keep track of these best/worst attributions and then review them 1-5 years later and see how they panned out. Well, at least one person bothered to record a “doom” statement on Apple Computer made by Michael Dell back in 1997 and I for one, “Fan Boy” that I am, hold up an example of the “doom” sayers being wrong:

Shut down Dell and give the money back to shareholders by ZDNet’s Jason D. O’Grady — In October 1997 at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97, Michael Dell was asked what he’d do if he was in charge of Apple Computer. Dell responded to an audience of several thousand IT executives “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.â€? According to Mac Daily News: A month later Steve Jobs responded […]

You can read the rest of the post to see the conclusion by Mr O’Grady, but suffice to say that with Apple’s stock closing up on perhaps the best quarter in their history and Apple’s market cap more than that of Dell’s and twice the value, perhaps it’s best not to piss off Mr Jobs.

Apple’s sale/demise has always been a subject of much discussion by the “doom-sayers”. One of these day’s the heads will stop talking Apple doom/gloom and start talking about Apple as they really are: an innovative, risk taking company that turn in a fairly consistent performance year after year and product after product and not a “flash in the pan”.

What drives people to draw attention to something that they would rather other people not pay attention to? In my home town of Keene, NH, we’re getting protesters outside our local “6-plex” who are against “The Da Vinci Code“. According to the theater manager, ticket sales were “up” for that movie while the protesters were doing their thing. The protesting Priests, Nuns, Brothers and others may have discouraged someone from showing up, but many more came out just to see what the “hubbub” was all about and in the process were treated to one rip-roaring good yarn.

I’m not saying that the movie is great, since I haven’t seen it and I probably won’t. I have read Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” as well as his other books. He tells a great story and a movie adaptation will never do his rich prose justice. But that’s just the point. It’s a story - FICTION folks. Sure, there a number of historical facts in the book - paintings, organizations, people, places - but it’s all sewn together in a make-believe world. I’ll say it again - a world of FICTION.

If you can’t separate fact from fiction then exactly how strong and true is the faith that you cling to and profess? Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, has been around better than 2000 years. Will Dan Brown, Harry Potter or any other book/character threaten that foundation? Come on folks, think about it. If the “Word became flesh”, then why are you taking issue over a bunch of words that are not now and never will be “real”?

As a free society where religious freedom is a cornerstone, anyone has the right to say “I’m offended”. But when we shake our heads over our Eastern brethren creating public chaos over some political cartoons of their spiritual head, and then turn right around and make public waves about a FICTIONAL accounting of our spiritual heratage, can we really claim any high ground here? Sure the folks outside the “6-plex” didn’t riot, but they accomplished the same thing - publicly displaying their outrage. And just like the rioters in the east, how many people around the world who didn’t give a damn in the first place are now intreagued enough to wonder what all the fuss is about? By making public your objections to what should be a private relationship between you and your Creator, you invite the exact thing you are seeking to prevent - calling attention to something that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t matter.

Well, the saga of crappy tech support from eapps is just about over. After receiving lip service support from my hosting provider I decided to take matters into my own hands. After all, this is my virtual server. The main problem was that the dspam service I use against spam stopped working. It’s never really run correctly since I started hosting with this provider, but it did tag the spam and that’s all I asked. It stopped working when I added a new mailbox to support “blog by email” posting. At that point I had done nothing.

Being the technical type, I investigated. I tried changing permissions and ownership but nothing helped. I did contact tech support and let them know that something was wrong. Here’s the “help” I got.

To cut this story short, I ended up installing my own copy of dspam and in the process figured out why the prior installed version stopped working, which was something they evidently couldn’t/wouldn’t do. Now, while I’ve had reliable service from eapps, I’m not impressed with their tech support. It would appear that all they know how to do is install RPMs and tell you to re-install if you have problems. It’s not good customer support and not a great way to keep customers.

I have learned my lesson, however. The best thing to do when I have a problem is get rid of their installed version and install from a “tar ball”. That way I know what’s actually happening.