I wish I could adequately describe to you what it was like waking up yesterday, to find that not only had the country overwhelmingly gone for Obama, but my little right-wing, redneck, nearly hopeless state had too! I then looked out the window, to find a bright, sunny, cloudless sky. The temperature went to 74 degrees by midday, certainly a change from what we should be having at this time of year. I see it as a sign. Even God wanted change.
I have been doing a lot of reading about happiness lately, including Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project. One of the latest posts really caught me as one of my big problems, and it relates to her first happiness commandment, Be Gretchen.
It seems like any person who seeks to be happy would have to be happy being themselves.
I am generally not.
It isn’t that I can’t accept my weaknesses, if anything I accept them TOO much. The problem is I don’t want to be me. I spend a rather large amount of my time wishing I was someone else. I don’t mean “I wish I was anyone but myself”, but more “I wish I was like <insert author here>”.
I just finished reading another great book by Douglas Coupland, an author I have always liked. I find myself ending the book and immediately thinking, “I wish I was as good as Douglas Coupland”. Sometimes, which might be worse, I wish I WAS Douglas Coupland. The odd part is, I know next to nothing about Douglas Coupland’s life.
I think my desire to be someone else stems mostly from the fact that I don’t like myself. I never learned confidence, self-satisfaction, or self-acceptance. I never learned to be ME. In fact, I am not entirely sure I even know who *I* am. In the book I just read, The Gum Thief, the characters discuss how when you are young, you don’t know who you are. At some point though, you gain a basic understanding of yourself. I don’t think I ever did.
The issue is, how do I fix this? Can someone 40 years old learn confidence in themselves? I recently graduated with a degree in Information Systems. On the same day the diploma arrived, I received a promotion at work. These two events coincided on a friday, getting ready for the weekend. This should have made me completely joyous.
Instead, I wonder if a promotion and consequent raise will not just make me a target for future layoffs, and if my internet degree will mean anything to the people who “matter”.
I obviously need to work on being myself. My new resolution: Be Mark.
I took my franchise out for some fresh air and exercise on sunday. I stood in line with what seemed like a billion other people waiting to vote. I was a bit heartened to see so many willing to wait more than 3 hours to vote. When was the last time anyone cared that much?
I guess it depends on what your definition of “convicted” is:
“I’ve not been convicted yet,” Stevens said Thursday in a meeting with
the editorial board of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “There’s not a
black mark by my name yet, until the appeal is over and I am finally
convicted, if that happens. If that happens, of course I’ll do what’s
right for Alaska and for the Senate. … I don’t anticipate it
happening, and until it happens I do not have a black mark.”Stevens
reiterated that position during a televised debate late Thursday night,
declaring early in the give-and-take with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich,
“I have not been convicted of anything.”
I just saw this headline via Reuters:
That seems to adequately sum up our current place in the world, does it not, America?
Senator Convicted on Corruption Charges
Verdict Casts Doubt on Reelection Prospects for Alaska Republican Ted Stevens
Hmm, What. A. Surprise.
Hard to believe a guy who describes the internet using a flatbed truck and some pvc pipe could possibly have been on the take while sitting on the telecommunications committee?
A quote from Senator Tubes:
Allen is the man on the other end of Stevens wiretaps, collected by the
FBI. Prosecutors believed the recordings, which they played for the
jury, proved that Stevens was aware he might be in legal trouble.“They are not going to shoot us, it’s not Iraq,” Stevens can be
heard saying on one tape. “We might have to pay a fine and serve a
little time in jail.”
It looks like the Indiana GOP will have to fight a little harder to keep people from voting.
Rush appeal on voting centers is rejected
Better luck next time, my vote-repressing friends.
It seems like John McCain has finally found someone to support him!
One message, posted on the extremist website al-Hesbah — which is closely linked to al-Qaeda — said that if the terror group wants to exhaust the US economically and military, then victory for the “impetuous” Republican candidate would benefit them because Mr McCain would continue “the failing march of his predecessor” President Bush.
If that plan sounds familiar to you, it should. Let’s see where that might have come from…
“We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went
bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat,” bin Laden said.He also said al Qaeda has found it “easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.”
Hmm, I wonder if bin Laden came up with that plan on his own, or if he might have learned it somewhere else….
Robert Gates, who will become CIA Director in the early 1990s, will
later recall that in a meeting on March 30, 1979, Under Secretary of
Defense Walter Slocumbe wonders aloud whether there is “value in
keeping the Afghan insurgency going, ‘sucking the Soviets into a
Vietnamese quagmire.’”
So, the Pentagon and Bushco lied to us, and used others to do it.
Anyone surprised? Anyone at all….
*crickets chirp*
Didn’t think so
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand - New York Times
So, you are caught red-handed in an illegal activity, how do you get out of it? You get Congress to vote you retroactive immunity! Suddenly what you did that was illegal is no longer…well… illegal. Its a good gig if you can get it.
Now, I know what you are asking: How does one convince congress to do such a thing? i will tell you, since you asked. Give them money.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, at opensecrets.org, you give more than 3.2 million dollars to finance campaigns, and more than 8.8 million and 7.1 million lobbying.
You too could get out of your crimes, if only you had money.
