for example, last night i was served with civil papers by a man dressed in black waiting on my porch for me to get home. it seems as though my hard work is (as i expected) soon to be exploited by someone who wouldn’t/couldn’t possibly fathom a life without pilfering from the coffers of those who actually work for not only their wealth, but also for the respect of being a positive influence and contributor to society.

but rather than waddle in self-pity or shake my fist in anger at the injustice of it all, i’m deciding to take the high road and yes - *BIG GASP HERE* - once again, place my faith in God.

so this morning, just as catherine left the house for work, i decided to stumble on over to the bookshelf to pull out my dusty bible and turn to the book of joshua (that’s right - the one i’m named after). my particular bible gives a brief synopsis of each book and to my surprise, there was a sentence that i found strikingly befitting of my current situation.

it reads:
“Through three major military campaigns involving more than thirty enemy armies, the people of Israel learned a crucial lesson under Joshua’s capable leadership: victory comes through faith in God and obedience to His word, rather than through military might or numerical superiority.”

to me, at least, it doesn’t get any more clearer than that.

QuickBase Support

We’ve been tossing around the idea of revamping the support section of the QuickBase website for some time now. Yesterday, I took an hour and mocked-up what I thought could be one version of the support page. If you look closely, you’ll see that I borrowed from both the TurboTax and the Apple support sites.

now on to what i really think. first, the bad. in general, i’m concerned about any one party having majority over our government – even if one side represents my side. even worse, i strongly disagree with many ideals of the political left (bigger government, more taxes, etc) which means that potentially, i’m going to see more laws that i disagree with get passed. politically, i think my biggest complaint with obama is his liberal views on taxation, which i think is basically a ponzi scheme that progressively taxes those who make more money in order to give those who don’t work free money. as someone who both grew up on welfare and has once had to live on welfare himself, i do appreciate the position of those who need some assistance; however, i think it should be strictly temporary and there should be more “private” programs to help welfare recipients get to the next step of their lives (find a job, relocate if needed, etc ).

i have a great many other concerns about obama, but the majority are character judgments based on things like who he has associated himself with (ayers, acorn, rev. wright, etc) and things he has said ( “typical white person”, “spread the wealth”, etc).

i’m not a partisan by any means. i’ve told everyone that i’m not the type of person to vote for someone simply because they’re republican. in fact, there were people running for positions yesterday of which i knew nothing about. as such, i did not vote on those positions. how can you in good conscience? i also don’t think republicans are innocent. the economy, iraq, and even our privacy (which i think is a very under-discussed issue) have all been completely screwed over. no matter how you look at america, it truly is time for change.

my prediction for the future is that things are going to seem great at first. i predict iraq will come to a close in the next two years, the economy will bounce back, and we’ll see huge strides towards become a “greener” country. but after that, things will get scary. i’m concerned completely ridiculous laws will get proposed and fly through unchecked. as for my fears, i’ll leave it at that since it is purely speculative.
—
now the good: obama is now the new leader of the free world and it was done peacefully in a democratic election that worked. a record number of people showed up to voice their opinion and by a very narrow 1% popular vote, obama pulled off a win.

i have every intention on supporting our president and giving him a chance because that’s the right thing to do. i don’t have a lot of confidence that will be long, but i hope that i’m wrong and i’d like to think that while i don’t expect the new government to do everything right, that they’ll be able to reverse a lot of the wrong-doings that have put us where we all are today.
lastly, i think obama’s win is absolutely huge and historic for african americans. my opinion is that the african american community has perpetuated within their community a huge chip on their shoulders (with good reason) that has manifested itself in ways that both the african american community and everyone would think are unsavory.

i hope that obama’s win removes that burden from their shoulders and that it sends a strong signal to their community that they too are just like everyone else in that they are equal and have just as much opportunity to be happy and successful as the next person.

the “white devil” is no more if you will.

..  and that is all i have to say about that.

i thought the polling place was very well-organized, though catherine and i had one complaint: we were not asked for any identification. in fact, catherine’s name was listed twice (apparently she registered twice). it would have been extremely easy for someone to vote under someone elses name.

all that aside, i’m glad this day is here and the race is almost over.

not the prettiest site, but great videos.

ACORN
Boston Coalition for Justice in Bhopal
Boston DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)
Mass Transgender Political Coalition (WTF?)
Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts

OK. That’s just redonkulous. I get how people are scared that somehow by keeping their own money, it’s going to cost them more money - but truth be told, it shouldn’t! This is the part I don’t get - people go, oh if we eliminate the state sales tax, they’re just going to cut education and police and raise my already insane property taxes. But wake up people! Don’t let them!

Freak out on them. Get mad!!! Don’t just sit back and let them keep taxing you because you’re scared of what they’re going to do. There’s a great line from the movie V for Vendetta, “People should not be scared of their governments - governments should be scared of their people.”

Are mass. tax payers scared? Yes. Is it your money they’re spending for you? YES. Why don’t you want to keep your own money and spend it on programs that YOU care about. Why don’t you start holding the politicians YOU vote for accountable for where your tax money is going.

You’re worried about education cuts when we spend more per student than any other country, yet we’re ranked 18th in the world for literacy?

You’re worried about cops and firefighters getting cut back when we’ve got things like firefighters “on leave” getting full payment while out doing body building competitions.

You’ve got communities like Newton who are building a high school that has gone from $100 mil budget to now almost double that.

We’ve wasted billions on a tunnel that is said to be the least safest tunnel in America and has has already killed someone. Don’t get me started on the tax in the form of tolls we pay for roads that have been paid for 4 times over.

Did you know that for FY2009, Mass has budgeted nearly $1.5 billion for public assistance!

Want to know how much we’re spending total on Labor & Workforce Development? $77 Million.

Astonishing. To me, this is not a partisan issue. It’s common sense: you earn money and so you should be able to spend it how you see fit. You should not feel as if you must keep being taxed for fear of what your government will cut in return.

…and then there’s t-pain without auto-tune