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The Face of Intolerance in America

I have lived with gay family members all of my life, and I love them for being who they are, not what they do. I simply disagree with some of their choices in life and I hope and pray that they find the kind of peace their hearts truly need. People can have have compassionate disagreements on difficult subjects like this, but that isn’t enough for some people who must punish everyone around them for daring to have a different point of view. This is the exact kind of intolerant hatred that was waged against them so many years ago, and now they too have emerged to become the very same kind of people they feared and despised so long ago.

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The aftermath of Windows 8

They (Microsoft) had no clue how attached people had become to their beloved start button and the comfortingly familiar desktop.

“Hey, look! Here’s a cool new touch feature to play with!” Would have gone over so very much better than the “Hey look! We took away everything you like and replaced it with a cool new (mandatory) feature most of you can’t use!” we all received.

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Microsoft Windows: You took away my what?!?

Most of us have a very personal (-ish) relationship with our computers, we connect to people through them, we pay bills and explore through them too. So, when Microsoft turned our familiar Windows on its head, the public let loose.

The tile interface idea for Windows 8 by itself wasn’t all that bad; for users with touch laptops and tablets it works just fine, but then Microsoft went a step beyond. They took a nice innovation for touch devices and inexplicably shoved it into the desktop realm.

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Free Appliance Pickup: Convenience, or Raw Deal?

If you’ve ever heard those commercials from your local power company urging you to use less electricity, then you’ve heard the plea to use wisely, conserve energy, and they even offer to pick up your old appliances for free if you buy new energy efficiency ones. Sometimes they even offer to pay you a small amount of money to pick them up for you.

It seems like a decent gesture on the surface of it, why else would they want to haul away your broken appliances?

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Memorial Day: Promises Broken

The list of broken promises to our nations heroes is growing longer every day, the resignations within the VA will not raise those veterans who died at the hands of the own caregivers.

…And but for a proud few; as a nation we have yet to do anything but stand aside and watch it unfold… Unmoved, unstirred and apparently uncaring: United we stand, our integrity stolen, our honor besmirched, our heroes forgotten…

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Speaker Boehner: Deja vu all over again

I mean, how many times have we, the people been suckered by this very same bait-and-switch routine? Are we so willing to believe in the integrity of our public servants that we so blithely ignore the fact that this bill is nothing more than a con-man’s shell game? …Cave-man Boehner has once again lead the charge to certain defeat and our collective ruin by taking this budget compromise and attempting to shove it down our collective throats through intimidation and issuing threats against any republican politicians who stand up to him. Interestingly enough; in the process he has presented us with a very familiar and distasteful choice to make.

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Cave-Man: The demise of principled leadership in the House

Initially, conservative thought that we would finally see some real action on our behalf, some truly principled leadership such as we hadn’t seen since Speaker Newt Gingrich. Alas, that was not to be; we traded the daily vitriol of Speaker Pelosi for the boot-licking antics of John Boehner, and we still have Nancy Pelosi singing background to John Boehner’s never-ending surrender ballad.

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Foreign outsourcing: Why companies go “off shore,” and the sacrifices involved.

Someone asked me recently why Accountants do not outsource their bookkeeping to companies outside the USA.  As someone with an interest in the bookkeeping industry, (I help my wife run Duker Books, a bookkeeping company in Eagle Idaho) I have a few thoughts on the matter, but this topic is equally true of other industries, […]

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A comedy of errors: This week’s Obama gun control & child safety speech by the numbers

In his speech, Obama mentioned a number of goals and his office released the following list outlining those goals in more detail.  So here’s the list and my take on what it means:   Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.  Great. So […]

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The ins and outs of Climate Science: Scientists being less than scientific.

Have you tried to search for the word climate change lately?  Or global warming?  You will notice two things, the UN has completely canvassed the entire internet with its climate change dogma.  Also notice the Global warming is no longer used, because the global temperatures have tended to stop rising in the late 90’s, so […]

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Why this scoffer of Organic food myths drinks only Organic coffee

I am one of “those People” who has never bought into the mythology surrounding organic goods as being the end-all, be-all of human health and wellbeing.  The exhaustive studies published by Stanford University have more recently borne out my initial disdain for the fad craze of supposedly natural foods which it turns out are no […]

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President Obama’s double-eagle salute.

President Obama just flipped you the bird, now what? Today the Supreme Court ruled on the Arizona immigration bill.  (found here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-182b5e1.pdf)  No surprises there:  Some portions of the bill were struck down and one key provision was allowed to remain.  What is surprising though, (Shame on me, I should know better by now right?) […]

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The digital divide: The cause of poverty in America, or just the latest tscam on the poor?

Most of us have heard this claim:  There exists a “digital divide” between the poor and the rich.  Those who don’t have internet are getting farther behind those (the rich supposedly) who do because they don’t have access to the same internet tools that are (supposedly) so vital to their success.  Let’s take a closer look […]

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Hedging your bets in 2012? (The cowardice of timed political endorsements)

Normally, when you hear from someone today about the Republican Presidential candidates, you  you hear hedging and equivocation until very close to the end of the primary season.  Why?  Because nobody wants to be seen on the losing end and lose the public image of being an authority on all things political.  Why else would […]

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Occupy [your city name here] Powerful movement for change, or pointless whistling in the wind?

Perhaps at some point when they (the Occupy Movement) begin to make actual sense and can articulate something other than “Rich people, bad. Give me their money!” Someone might take notice for some reason other than to fill a slow news day.  So far, all I’ve seen during countless interviews is malcontents that have no […]

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Who really supports a repeal of the 17th amendment?

I recently got into a discussion on this topic in the LinkedIn forums with Jeff Stucker.Here’s the text of our discussion:   My initial question: Are we truly all that fired-anxious to abdicate voter control over senatorial appointments? Really? Contrary to the latest Tea Party talking points, repealing the 17th amendment actually does nothing to […]

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