Tag: Politics

Given that I’m waiting for some fresh code to come back for me to test, I figured I’d take a moment to post my view on the subject. If you’re sensitive to these sorts of issues and would just rather skip this post; stop reading now. Otherwise, click more…

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As much as I love my iPod; sometimes I get tired of listening to music and need something else. Recently Air America Radio started broadcasting, though not yet in my area of the country. Fortunately for me, they do have a live audio stream off their website. Initially I was somewhat upset by their choice to use RealPlayer, but like CarTalk and the BBC they’re providing links to directly download the free version. I ‘d sort of looked at downloading the free version of RealPlayer when the BBC started this, but wasn’t impressed with the direct link they were offering. However from what I’d been hearing about Air America, I really wanted to start listening to it. So I gave RealPlayer another chance and this time it really was a direct link and I soon had RealPlayer 10 installed on my station. Then I tuned into Air America and have been listening to it all week long. Mostly I listen to it in the afternoon and catch Randi Rhodes show, but this morning I tuned in earlier and have been listening to Unfiltered, which I like a lot better.

This morning the Unfiltered crew pointed out a rather disturbing quirk in our current tax code. If you’re self-employed and buy a Hummer (or some other 6,000+ lb. vehicle); you can deduct upto $100,000 of the cost of that vehicle from your taxes. On the other hand, if you buy a hybrid vehicle (such as the Toyota Prius) in 2004; you’ll get a $1,500 deduction, next year it’ll only be $1,000, the year after $500. This totally encourages people to buy more monsterously wasteful vehicles rather than environmentally friendly ones. I understand that the massive cut on the big vehicles is intended to help businesses, but shouldn’t it then be restricted to certain types of vehicles or businesses (i.e. farm equipment)?

If we restricted it more, then less people would be likely to buy more vehicle than they need, which might hurt the Hummer company but would be better for our environment. And if at the same time we started restricting what businesses could get that massive cut; we increased the deductible on hybrid and possibly even alternative fuel vehicles; it seems to me that we would enable the people who need to buy those massive vehicles the means to do so while reducing our dependenacy on foreign oil and the reduced emissions from the hybrids would help reduce the amount of damage we’re doing to the environment everyday.

For the record, I don’t own a hybrid yet but I’m seriously considering one for my next car. Edmunds.com has an interesting article talking about some of the hybrids that are coming out in the 2005 year. They’ve also got a bit of preview info on a Honda Accord hybrid that’s supposed to be coming out this fall, but I probably won’t have the money for a new car for another year or two. I suppose it’s just as well; as I tend to avoid buying new cars (due to the expense) and new cars in their first year as that’s the year I feel most bugs are found in the vehicle.

I’ve kind of wander around here a bit, so to sum up:

I finished reading Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. the other night. I’ve been a bit busy, hence the delay in writing up my little review of the book.

First, there’s a couple of things that you should keep in mind about my opinion on this book:

  • My general reading interests keep me firmly planted in the fiction section, so this was quite unlike anything I’ve read
  • Prior to reading this book, I have had little to no direct exposure to Franken’s work.
  • I didn’t vote for Bush.
  • I don’t like the way the Bush administration has been handling things since they came into power.
  • I am not a lawyer or an election official but I still think the 2000 presidential election had some fishy things going on in it (particularly in Flordia).

Now that I’ve got those disclaimers out of the way, I can tell you that I greatly enjoyed this book and will definately be looking at borrowing the rest of Franken’s books (from friends or my local library). Franken’s sense of humor and sharp sarcasm really struck a chord with me. That I agreed with a lot of his points throughout the book, didn’t hurt either. One of the things that I really liked about the book was how well Franken (and his team of Havard students) documented all the quotes that Franken used, via footnotes at the bottom of the pages and in the bibliography at the end of the book. It really gave the book a feeeling of professionalism that frankly, I wasn’t expecting. From what I’d heard about the book via the media; I was expecting it to be more along the lines of drinking burnt coffee made with reused grinds rather than the smooth latte that it went down as. However, that is not to say that the book is without it’s faults.

When you turn the page to a new chapter, you can expect it to have little or no connection to the previous chapter; this makes for a very rough transition between chapters and reduces the readibility of the book. Also, at points Franken lowers himself to the level of the people he’s complaining about in the book (the Right) by resorting to childish namecalling. Generally, he does it after he’s just finished quoting somebody from the the Right do it and walked you through several paragraphs to show how wrong that person from the Right was. Sometimes it’s even funny when he does it; however overall, it’s not a technique that works for me. I’d rather have seen him stay above that sort of thing and instead just continue to use things that the Right have said to show their inconsistencies and stupidities.

Well, that’s all for now (my break’s over and I need to get back to work). I’ll be reading Elizabeth Peter’s The Falcon at the Portal next.