evolution

at the risk of a lawsuit by the aclu, i’d like to wish all of you a merry christmas.

aw, what the hell. merry christmas to the aclu too.

if you are a purdue student just happening by, check this out (scrolling may be needed). president jischke decided to listen to his common sense – something i wish more americans would do.

you know, i had posted a long manifesto explaining my politics on this site. i’ve seen things, mostly the rise of hostile, barking leftism, that have made me angry enough to get political. i don’t like politics, and i don’t like being angry.

i used to be about life, living, and learning. what happened to me?

i’ll tell you what; i’ll cut you a deal. i know where i stand (government exists to protect me from criminals, terrorists, and the poor house, otherwise get lost), you (however enlightened or misguided you may be) know where you stand, and we’ll call it even.

i like living, thinking, and learning too much to get caught up in the rest. i know there’s a large class of people on the coasts that think that because i’m a midwesterner from “flyover country” that i’m “more given to jingoism” (reportedly from newsweek) – i.e., that i’m an idiot who’ll believe anything anyone who waves a flag says. i have a message for you – fuck off. i’m an educated man. they don’t just hand out master’s degrees in mathematics – even at kansas state.

if you’re currently in government, i have a message for you – fuck off. you’ve done nothing but raise my taxes for wasteful breaks for big business and wasteful social programs, and interfere in my life in a myriad of other ways.

fortunately there’s a piece of paper that says i get to say what i just said. unfortunately there are groups who either ignore it or want to ratchet it down on us.

so i guess if i needed a term to describe myself, it’s “independent” – i don’t depend on east coast elites, west coast elites, other midwesterners, or you. if you need to look at a set of values that i identify with (i suppose), think midwestern.

remember that if you are a person who, like me, likes living and learning, you can get yourself really pissed off by reading what’s out there on the internet. average people and nutbags alike can voice their views out there; it’s best never to take it too seriously.

you want me to suggest someone to vote for? forget it. that’s not my style. i’ve already said i’m casting for george w. you can vote for whoever you damned well please.

ah, crap. what has politics done to me?

that’s just about enough political crap for a while. i am home for the holidays. today i did a bit of christmas shopping in kansas city, where shopping was going at full bore today, being the last weekend day before christmas. i’m still not finished with my shopping; i’m going to stay in lawrence this time.

howard dean and the “dean fedayeen” (here’s where i got that name) on the radical left go retro.

and, i might add, not one mention of it by cnn, ap, or reuters.

i don’t have anything to say today, so here’s a bunch of little things i garnered from the yahoo! news section, which is, by the way, my least favorite news outlet.

• a lot of people, both in the blogs listed to your right and elsewhere (find your own dammit), are talking about this, and most negatively. this is a topic that unfortunately i don’t know much about.
• sorry, halliburton, you’re going to have to pay for those lunches at the strip club yourselves. notice two things – of course it’s yahoo!’s top story, and that it was a pentagon audit that found it.
• some democrats get it.
• guess which side i come down on with this.
• i like this.
• some people don’t get it.

old europe and the zeropean union are mad about george w.’s method for distributing iraq rebuilding contracts (ap – fox news).

i say good riddance – i encourage america to part ways with the zeropeans whenever possible. nato, the wto, the international court, begone with all of it. america should yank all of her troops from europe and disassociate itself from ineffective european institutions. note that canada is on the list of objectors too. canada has an infestation of hard leftists that is pushing our northern neighbors toward defenselessness and irrelevance. as soon as the people of canada (which can’t be radically different from the people of america) wake up, that’ll be old news. until then, our government should lump them in with the zeropeans.

yes, george w.’s handling of iraq contracts smack of cronyism. don’t you know – republicans waste our money by giving it to their friends in business (via contracts, corporate tax cuts, etc.) and democrats waste our money by giving it to their friends in government (through various social programs). doing something to rid the world of saddam hussein and stabilize iraq is better than doing nothing – which is what old europe has done; which is what leftists in this country would have us do.