Should Bush, Bernanke Retire?

After today’s 778 point drop in the Dow Jones, I believe that it is time for someone to start pointing fingers. The two people I think we should look at are President Bush and head of the FED, Ben Bernanke.

Bush needs to go, because he simply does not have any support–either from democrats or republicans. Not only did he put us in this crisis in the first place, but he has also been unable to put together any reasonable plan to help get us out or slow it down. His latest failed attempt comes with the $700 billion dollar “bailout plan,” which was rejected this afternoon. Contrary to Fox News’s “reporting,” it was Bush and McCain–Not Obama– who were not able to receive their party’s backing. Only one-third of house republicans (65) voted for the bill, while 140 democrats voted “yes,” including Obama himself. This is despicable, seeing as it was Bush’s initial idea to write this bill. If our president, along with the republican nominee cannot get even half of all republicans to vote for a bill that they feel so strongly for, then there is something terribly wrong.

I turn my frustration now to Ben Bernanke, who took over as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006. While Bernanke has attempted some fairly radical things over the past year, he has not been cautious enough. Time after time, he has cut the borrowing rate, without any consideration of the inflation rate. If he had started these cuts when he first entered his position, then it may have helped, but instead he ignored the huge problem staring him directly in the face for an entire year.

While there are many others to be blamed for the curent situation that our economy is in, these are two extremely obvious people to hold accountable. I understand that they will not resign, but instead, I propose that we be more careful when we choose the people who run our country. Additionally, I am not trashing anything else that these two people have done–I am not endorsing them either. Rather, I am saying that we must understand that the people who we vote for really do have a great affect on our lives.

Teens Just Don’t Care Anymore

Today, I attended my first Philosophy lecture. The class deals with the ethics and values of human beings. It is taught by the infamously eccentric Lawrence Thomas Hill. The lecture today dealt with whether or not sex can be totally emotionless.

While I did not completely understand the reason for the lecture, I came across a disturbing fact. That being that only 4 students considered themselves theist. This number is out of 400 total students. This is only one percent of teens. While I did not think that most teens believed in god, I did not think that the number was this low.

I do not think that this is purely a religious problem. I believe that many teens are just not interested in things that are really important to their futures and their quality of life. Many people I know do not care about the upcoming election at all. I was forced to turn off CNN’s coverage of the DNC yesterday in order to watch a repeat of Seinfeld. My friend will not vote because he “doesn’t really care about who wins the election.” My girlfriend wants to vote for McCain, because “Bill Clinton is ugly.”

These thoughts are mind boggling. I do not understand how people can have such little concern about their future’s and their country! The work ethic of teens is almost non-existent! I do not know how this has happened.

I hope that this way of thinking changes very soon and parents are able to distill better values in their children, so that the future of this country  can be better for everyone.

Headset Law in NJ

So i spent my first weekend back in New Jersey since the March 1 law that requires all drivers to use hand free headsets while driving. As if I wasn’t hassled enough by the Passover Saydors, I had to go out to Circuit City to by one off these stupid things. I paid $39.99 for the headset–the chea[est one I could find. It is a bluetooth one that is made by the company Jabra, but has the Verizon logo written on it.

Naturally, I believed that this headset would work on my Verizon LG phone, but of course–as with much technology–I was unable to get it to work. Now is the headset incompatible, was I setting it up wrong, or something else. I tried to call both Verizon and Jabra, but they were taking the day off, as it was Sunday. Apparently people must put their phone needs on hold in order to allow minimum wage, Indian, Midwest impersonating, workers enjoy their weekend. God forbid any of these people or US workers lift a finger to help their outrageously overpaying customers.

In addition, I was with my friend who wished to have his numbers transfered and his service transfered to a new phone. This would have cost him twenty dollars to do at the store. However, the smoking hot employee in formed us that we could do it for free if we did it online–where they don’t have to do any work.

In my opinion, Verizon is mistreating loyal customers who refuse to switch to other wireless providers due to the quality of their service. All cingular would have to do is build some new towers, out due Verizon’s service, and start a advertising campaign saying “tired of being fucked over by Verizon, well now you don’t have to!” People will be able to use cutting edge technology cell phones, instead of Verizon’s four year old models.

Well, I just realized that I got a little off topic, but this sometimes happens when I get heated about a subject. Anyways, another topic that really “grinds my gears,” is this new law in NJ. It is ridiculous to make people buy new headsets–like mine– in order to follow the law. These headphones can be too expensive for some and are not really affective. I have heard studies saying that they barely reduce the number of accidents. If you think about it, of course people are gonna have accidents if they are talking on a cell phone. Everyone nowadays uses a cell phone all the time they are driving and there were accidents before cell phones, so its only natural that if everyone is using a cell phone, the people in accidents will be using one. I may have lost you there, if I did go back and read it, because it does make sense.

I think that this is just a way for stores to make money from headset sales and more obviously, the state to make money from tickets and tax from the sales. Hopefully, this law will not last too long and we can all get back to our lives without the hassle of the fucking Republicans. If we can’t manage to get these idiots out of office, than we are looking at four more years of high gas prices, war, social security and health care troubles, pollution, and bullshit laws like this one.

Sorry to get so preachy on this entry.