Steve Poizner

I finally was able to hear Steve Poizner speak at our much delayed Reagan-Lincoln Dinner here in Sacramento County. I was most impressed by his presentation and understanding that “it’s the spending stupid” to lift a phrase from another political campaign.

He fielded a number of questions on a variety of issues. The person next to me was anxious to ask Poizner about his position on abortion—a subject that many folks are passionate about. I suggested instead of asking him which label—prolife or prochoice—he wished to apply to himself that this person ask him specifics about issues that Poizner would likely face as governor. I suggested that he ask about taxpayer funding of abortion and conscientious objections by pharmacists and other healthcare providers to being forced to provide “morning after” pills and other such methods of abortion.

The person seated at my table got up after Poizner had completed his Q & A period and went looking for his. This person had stated previously that he would only vote for prolife candidates. He must have been successful with what he was told by Poizner because when he returned to the table, he was filling out an endorsement card.

California Voter Speak

The voters have spoken. California’s legislature and our Governor were sent back to the drawing board to try again to fix the budget. Meanwhile, we have the highest and oppressive taxes this side of New York.

It’s time for voters to take the next step in the tax revolt. It’s time for a series of ballot initiatives to implement a part-time legislature; probably with a unicameral one with about 180 members. If we had one representative for every 200,000 people, we could have more responsive representation with such a variety of interests that no party would be able to firmly run the state. Budgets would be on a two year cycle and lawmakers would meet for three months every other year. Lastly, we need to reign in the power of state employee unions. They need to comply with the rules that every other business in the state must adhere to.

None Dare Call It Fascism

• Governments nationalizing their banking and largest industries.
• Government regulating salaries of the businesses that they control.
• Government hiring and firing executives and members of governing boards.
• Government confiscating or depleting the assets of its wealthiest citizens.
• Government trying to spend its way into economic prosperity.

The Cold War Soviet Union? Cuba? China? Venezuela?
NO! It’s the United States of America under Barack Obama.

Reports are surfacing today that the newly elected President will be give the head of General Motors President, Rick Wagoner, as the price of any more federal funds to keep GM afloat. Wagoner has reportedly agreed to step down. Wagoner’s sin according to Obama was that “He is considered responsible for increasing GM’s focus on trucks and SUVs—at the expense of the hybrids and fuel efficient cars that have become more popular in the last couple of years.” – Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20625.html

Translation, GM made the types of vehicles that Americans wanted to buy instead of forcing American consumers into “green” vehicles that the environmentalists said were good for the planet. He has sinned against the planet and assisted in the violation of “Mother Earth” and for this he must be sacrificed.

Obama furthers his fascist aims of controlling the means of production and also furthers the erosion of individual liberty and freedom of choice.

Kings

Allegedly this new show is a modern day telling of the lives of Kings Saul and David. After watching it last night I was disappointed. The King’s son is a spoiled party animal that pretends to like girls but saves the really intimate stuff for the boys. There is no son named Jonathan even though he and David are best of friends in the biblical account. David reveals that his slaying of the Goliath tank was an accident not the result of his faith in God. I could go on but I think you get the point.

The story premise could actually work if the writers were just more attentive to the original material. It looks like NBC has chosen to give the biblical account the same treatment that they gave to Battlestar Galactica. Keep the names, flush the story line and “reboot the franchise”. Hey guys, God doesn’t need your help to rebrand the Bible.

There are a lot of reasons that Saul might want to kill David, but it was the people chanting “Saul killed his thousands, David his tens of thousands” that really pushed Saul into a homicidal quest. In the first episode David surrendered twice and blew-up a tank. With a kill ratio like that how is he ever going to get the King a few hundred foreskins for his daughter’s hand in marriage? I Samuel 18:24-29

I have my DVR set to record the show but I have little confidence that it will improve. Too bad. If the show lived up to the hype I would make my children watch every episode.

Watchmen

Over the weekend I snuck out of the house and went to see the movie Watchmen. I had read much of the publicity about the movie. I also was familiar with the legal disputes that almost stopped the film from being released.

Unlike some ignorant idiots, I did know that this was an “R” rated movie and not intended for children. The violence in the film was not as disturbing to me as The Dark Knight Batman movie from last summer. Most of the rape scene in the movie ended up on the cutting room floor but has been promised in the director’s cut of the DVD. You did get the idea of what happened and at least a few other guys stopped it once they figured out what was going on. Dr. Manhattan manages to spend half the movie buck naked and the full frontal shots of his “purple pickle” at parade rest is a new addition to the “R” film genre.

The movie soundtrack has many old songs that we have heard before. Bob Dylan singing “the times they are a changin’” was the first I remember. The most irreverent moment related to the soundtrack in the film was the song used for the big love scene between Night Owl and Silk Spectre. If you listen to the lyrics, the song is about King David composing a song of praise to God with the refrain of Hallelujah. So what you get in the movie is a song that keeps repeating Hallelujah while the passionate couple is going “oh yeah baby”. This song choice tells us about the director’s view of God and contributes nothing of substance to the scene.

The film features some bit parts of characters that you might remember from the 1980s.One scene includes characters doing an episode of The McLaughlin Group. It features: Eleanor Clift, Pat Buchanan and John McLaughlin. In another scene we meeting several captains of industry including Lee Iacocca right before Mr. Iacocca and several others are murdered by an attack on the group and their host. The infamous Apple computer ad from the 1984 Super Bowl makes an appearance in the film also.

The portrayal of Richard Nixon as a blood thirsty President that decides on a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union is not in character. Neither is the depiction of Nixon using of Dr. Manhattan as the weapon that ends the Vietnam War. Nixon was the one that started nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviets and Henry Kissinger was close to a settlement in Vietnam before Nixon resigned. Had Nixon remained in office, the timeline in Watchmen would never occur.

At this point stop reading unless you want to know some more details of the film including my take on the ending.

You know who the bad guy is in this film the first time you see him. He is not revealed to the characters in the movie until the end of the film. Frankly this spoiled the film for me.

Rorschach is the character that actually moves that plot along in the film as he tries to discover why someone would kill a 67 year old retired crime fighter called the Comedian. In flashbacks we get to meet the Comedian. How he got the name is never explained. The Comedian is never funny or likeable. He is a selfish, murdering S.O.B. that gets his kicks hurting others.

Rorschach reminds me of Charles Bronson in Death Wish or Eastwood in Dirty Harry. He is a vigilante that sees the world in black and white. His search for the truth is compelling. He operates outside the law and delivers the justice that “the system” is too weak to administer.

The villain in the movie reminds me of someone that you would find in a James Bond flick with one major difference. Bond always stops the bad guy at the last minute. Good eventually triumphs over evil. However, in this movie not only does the bad guy get to nuke several major cities and frame Dr. Manhattan for doing it, he gets away with it! Rorschach protests and Dr. Manhattan kills him! Then Dr. Manhattan leaves earth for greener (or redder) pastures. In the final scenes of the movie, we then see that the villain’s corporation gets the contracts to rebuild the cities that he just nuked five minutes before.

Watchmen is yet another film that does not deliver a comic book ending for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”; instead it embraces relativity, moral ambiguity and materialism. I really wanted to like this movie but it left me empty and unsatisfied. If you want to see it, save some money and wait for the rental.

Theft is Building Block of Obama’s Utopia

In the course of getting through my MBA program I have run across some really good teachers and some that are so removed from reality that I can’t seem to find much common ground to even communicate with them.

I rarely listen to Michael Savage but I know that he contends that liberalism is a mental illness. I am now not only willing to concede the point but wholeheartedly agree with his assessment. At its root however, I think that liberalism is the result of spiritual death that comes from rejecting God and his Word. Put another way, Christ is the cure to liberalism.

A case in point is my current instructor. He has multiple degrees—including economics—and a doctorate. He looks at the spending spree of the federal government and his only gripe is that President Obama is not spending enough money to effectively rescue the economy. He claims that Obama is beholden to the right wing of the Republicans because he allowed a few token tax cuts amongst all the pork. Let me get this straight, every Republican in the House of Representatives voted against this bill and the three most liberal Republicans in the Senate voted for it and Obama caved to the Republican right?

The effective debt of the US government exceeds 65 trillion dollars—which is greater than the gross national product of the entire world—and he has the stones to say Obama is not spending enough money? In adjusted dollars, Obama has spent more than FDR in the New Deal in less than two months!

Furthermore, my instructor thinks Obama should nationalize every financial institution in the US and then after a few years the government should divest then (make then private again) and create one thousand small banks. These banks would not be allowed to merge to form larger banks by aggressive use of anti-trust legislation.

My instructor feels that all our problems can be solved by government central planning of production and aggressive use of wealth redistribution. He wants the outright confiscation of all wealth from the top five percent of all income earners. He asserts that we need to be more like France and Germany. We need more days off, nationalized healthcare and more government control of the economy. This conveniently negates fact that France and Germany are demographically on the verge of extinction due to legalized abortion and other social factors that resulted in low birth rates. For many decades the birth rate has been below replacement levels for all European countries. In addition the large Moslem populations in these countries are pressing for recognition of Sharia Law in these formerly Christian nations.

Of course my instructor is also a believer in “green” energy. He seems to want the personal use of automobiles banned and replaced with mass transit. To facilitate this, he wants housing to be changed to cram as many people as possible into the smallest amount of space. Gaia forbid that we should have yards around our houses and waste water keeping them green.

These are just some of the issues that I can recall my teacher advocating. So why you may ask do I contend that these beliefs are symptoms of a spiritual illness? Let me briefly try to explain.
God has created three institutions to govern man: government, church and family. For a healthy society, each of these must be in balance. Each has an exclusive area of responsibility but there are areas where each intersects.

All law is religious.

“…in any society, any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion. Nothing more clearly reveals, in fact, the religious change in a society than a legal revolution. When the legal foundations shift from Biblical law to humanism, it means that the society now draws its vitality and power from humanism, not Christian theism.” RJ Rushdoony

Any change in law is a change from one god to another. In the same book, Rushdoony states, “…it must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society”.
The basis of Western civilization is rooted in biblical values.

Given the above, what my teacher is advocating is removing the last vestiges of biblical Christianity from our society and replacing them with the power religion of the secular state.

For many, it may be a distant memory but the Ten Commandments are still one of the pillars of Western Civilization. What my teacher is embracing is inverting the edict “Thou shall not steal” and making it the basis of implementing social change. His whole vision of utopia is built by wealth redistribution at the point of the sword wielded by the State. This is the formula for tyranny not liberty.

My teacher thinks by abolishing much private property and nationalizing businesses and thus investing the government with the power to plan our lives he can solve society’s ills.
One can’t help but recall that the Scripture proclaims, “Professing themselves to be wise they became fools “.

At its root, my teacher seems fixated on jealousy and envy that others have more material possessions than he does This whole scheme that my teacher has dreamed-up is the result of years of sin eating away at his insides. Clearly the focus of his worldview is based on a violation of the Commandment “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.” Clearly my teacher covets his neighbor’s house and he covets his neighbor’s employees and he covets his neighbor’s job (ox) and he covets his neighbor’s mode of transportation (ass) and everything else his neighbor has.

My teacher’s utopia can only end in a tyrannical society based either on fascism or socialism. You would think after the hundreds of millions that died in the last century for these two belief systems men would reject such evil. Unfortunately, my teacher thinks he can get it right where Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the rest got it wrong.

DisABELing California

In the wee hours of the morning, Republican state senator Abel Maldonado finally caved to pressure from Democrats and cast the deciding vote in favor of the pathetic budget deal hammered out by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrat leaders. Maldonado traded his vote for one change to the budget and a pyrrhic dream of political reform. Maldonado swapped a twelve cents a gallon gasoline tax for an increase in personal income taxes and some hoped for federal money courtesy of the Obama bailout. He also got Democrats to reluctantly allow a ballot measure for open primaries to appear at a future election.

In reality, all Maldonado did was kick the budget can down the road a year or two. No structural reforms were implemented. All he did was allow taxes to be raised in the midst of a recession that is much deeper in California than in the rest of the country. This will make any hope of recovery in California much more difficult due to an even more hostile business climate than any of our neighboring states. The reality is that not one dime of taxes had to be raised to fix this budget. It is a spending problem. Period!

California is sitting on billions of dollars of oil and natural gas that the government won’t allow anyone to go after. We waste millions on firefighting every summer when proper timber management would prevent these fires from being severe and generate jobs and revenue to state coffers. Water is horribly mismanaged in this state and the list goes on. There is no need for any tax increases.

If we conformed to President Clinton’s welfare reform bill and quit treating illegals as citizens we could realize billions more in savings but as the Good Book says, “The compassion of the wicked is cruelty”. Education is a black hole of money that eats up over 75 percent of all its funding in top heavy bureaucracies that favor San Francisco and Los Angeles at the expense of the rest of the state. We are in the bottom of the nation in our quality of education but we have the strongest teacher’s union in the country.

There is one other factor which the media was too lazy to investigate as to why this deal had to be made this week and that is that we are one day away from the state convention of the California Republican Party. The main focus of many grassroots Republicans was a series of competing measures that would deny any funding from the State Party for any Republican that supported increasing taxes. Some ideas that went along with these resolutions included the State Party being required to fund primary challengers to any Republican politician that voted for tax increases and an automatic censure of any office holder supporting tax increases. Whether Maldonado and company will get this treatment remains to be seen.

I can assure you that rank and file Republicans are mad as hell and some heads in the Party are in serious danger of getting chopped. California is on the verge of becoming a one party state and gutless men like Schwarzenegger and Maldonado are to blame. If current trends hold, Decline to State—California’s version of “None of the Above”—will soon be the second largest political block in the State with Republicans a distant third.

Uninstall Windows Live Toolbar

In the course of reloading my Windows Vista drive, I needed to install some components of Windows Live programs. The Photo Gallery and the Toolbar for Internet Explorer are the main ones I was after. The Photo Gallery program is better than the one that came with Vista. The toolbar has been the keeper of all my passwords for many years. When I went to the website and hit Download I ended-up with the entire suite of Windows Live programs in one shot. The toolbar had been completely redone. Gone were all the icons that I was used to seeing. Most were now just large rectangles of text that I could click on. OK, different doesn’t necessarily mean good or bad.

I looked for my friend that kept all passwords and it was not there. After much searching I finally found the Form Fill Add-On button by our friends at Windows Live. I downloaded the button and it went through the installation process but was never added to the toolbar. After much searching I discovered that the Form Fill button does not work on the new toolbar! There is not one made. If I want it, I have to download something from some third party programmer with no affiliation with either Windows Live or Microsoft. Sorry, I will not trust all my passwords to some unknown programmer in Eastern Europe.

Disappointed, I decided to remove the toolbar and install the old one. However, using Add and Remove Programs in the Control Panel will not let you uninstall any Windows Live component. Not even if I booted into Safe Mode! Both Windows Live and Microsoft searches were no help. Finally, I turned to Google and found the answer.

http://messengergeek.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E3785B1281BBDA1!1271.entry

Find Windows Live application on this page. Follow these instructions.
To uninstall Windows Live Toolbar, click Start, then type/paste the following in the Start Search box and press Enter:
msiexec /x

This will uninstall only the new version of Windows Live Toolbar so you can keep the other Windows Live applications. Then you can install the good ole Toolbar that supports saving passwords.

Old Windows Live Toolbar
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6AD4D337-C3B9-42E4-B8A3-35A0BD9DB2BB&displaylang=en

Form Fill Tool Button

http://gallery.live.com/liveitemdetail.aspx?bt=2&li=4dab8a8c-3f1e-41c6-ba8c-44b500149134

Windows 7

Being the first kid on my block to have new technology, I just had to download and install the beta of Windows 7. I chose to install the update instead of a clean install. My 64-bit Vista Home Premium was running just fine and was fully patched prior to running the upgrade. I wanted to keep all my installed programs and data. However, being an admirer of the boy scouts and their motto to be prepared, I did a backup of my data prior to this installation.

The upgrade did a scan of my computer and gave me a warning that my printer might be incompatible with Windows 7 but I chose to go ahead with the install. The upgrade took well over two hours but required no user intervention until it was almost done. Then I was prompted for the Product Key. It’s good that I printed the number before running the program.  My digital copy was saved to my desktop and therefore not accessible when I was finally prompted for it.

During the install, my primary monitor was on the right with my second monitor on the left. Partway through the install everything switched from the right monitor to the left. I’m running dual screens and the mouse seemed to be in the opposite monitor from the install screen. After Windows completed the initial startup, I found that my primary monitor was on the left and the extra was on the right. To get the mouse from the right monitor to the left, I had to move it completely right and then it would appear on the left monitor. I had to go in display settings to put everything back like I had it in the Vista installation.

At first glance, all my Microsoft programs functioned just fine. All the office programs still had recently used documents populated. Internet Explorer still had my saved passwords, probably via Windows Live toolbar. My computer seems to be running faster while running Windows 7. The XPS viewer is much faster than in Vista. So far I’m impressed with the potential of Windows 7.

Control Panel
The show Network Map option in the Control Panel renders an accurate representation of all hubs and computers on my home network. This function even displays my DirecTV DVR. The Devices and Printers show my all in one printer and can even scan via a right click on the printer icon. The Windows Mobile Device Center can’t recognize my HP 910 Pocket PC but I’m sure that a driver will be written for it sometime.

However…I’ve had some issues with the program.
• My first issue is with the desktop wallpaper. Many pictures that I tried resulted in a completely black screen being rendered instead of a full color photograph. When I would switch to another photo on the wallpaper, the old one would briefly flash on the screen correctly before switching to the new one. (I found that the show desktop button would show the correct desktop photo but when any program was running it would revert to black.)
• Another issue is that upon startup, the toolbar on the bottom loses it’s the icons. I could get the icons back if I stretch the toolbar upward until they reappeared and then put the toolbar back to its original position.
• Whenever the computer entered the dreaded sleep mode it failed to wake-up. I had to shut off this pesky setting. Occasionally I even got the BSOD (blue screen of death).
• As it turned out, Word 2007 would not work correctly when saving documents. The save animation would freeze the program at zero percent complete. In order to get back into Word it was necessary to reboot the computer. As someone trying to get my MBA, this was the deal breaker for me. I was forced to go back to Vista to get the Word issue fixed.

I think that Microsoft has gotten a bum rap with much of the Vista criticism. Apple has more security issues and problems than Vista during the same time period. Why Apple’s sh*t doesn’t stick is a mystery to me. Apple is overpriced and much more limited than Windows. I like Vista and Windows 7 looks to be even better.

Fable II

Fable II has been a long time in coming. It has several improvements over the original since this one was written to run on the XBOX 360. The world of Fable looks great in HD. The interface is easy to use and combat is a cinch. Your character can be male or female. If you have a second controller, you can press the start button and get a “henchman” to fight with you. Don’t share gold or points with this character, it seems like a waste to me since he starts with all spells and skills that you already have.

Buying houses to rent out is a great idea in the game. The dog is a fun and original companion. It is the best part of the game. The dog often needs healing but it does some fighting with you and is great at finding quest items and buried treasure. Ranged weapons include bows and firearms both pistols and rifles.

The Mature rating for the game is not from violence but the potential sexual content of the game. In theory, you can have sexual relations with most other characters in the game. Some stores sell condoms so you also get your choice of “protected” or “unprotected” sex. Both children and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can result from these relationships. For those unfamiliar with the game, they don’t actually show anything, the screen goes completely black, plays a few sound effects and then you’re done. Those interested in you will develop hearts over their heads. Some characters, especially later in the game, will outright proposition you. Ladies of ill repute are dressed accordingly and easy to find in one town especially. Having multiple families is possible but not encouraged.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The story is very similar to the original but set 500 years after the original Fable game. First you start in childhood. Then you jump to being an adult. After several hours of adventures you end up in captivity for ten years! Then you are released and adventure some more. The confrontation with the bad guy is anticlimactic. You end-up being shot by him again and wake-up in the Perfect World with your sister. As you go to bed, you hear music, if you don’t go looking for the music box you stay in “groundhog day” to do it again. Once you find the music box you come face-to-face with the bad guy one last time. Simply play the music box and he is defeated. It’s a far cry from fighting Jack of Blades in the first game.

There are two odd quests in the game. The first quest is required to complete the main story. At one point you must sacrifice either a girl or yourself to these evil shadow guys. If you sacrifice yourself, you end-up with evil looking red eyes and age significantly. Self sacrifice however is an act of good, so why red eyes? The second quest is optional and very weird (twisted). You are asked to dig up the body parts of Lady Grey 500 years after she was purposely dismembered. The grave keeper wants to reanimate her because he is in love with her. Just like Frankenstein, lightning brings Lady Grey back to life along with an added love spell. You now get to decide to let her fall in love with you (the first person she sees after her resurrection) or you need to run like hell to escape her amorous intentions. You have 45 seconds to decide. I found the whole thing creepy and unsettling.

Fable II is an entertaining and fun game to play but it is definitely inappropriate for younger gamers.