Unpublished Draft

Many people state that California is part of the “left coast,” the purely liberal section of the United States. I had believed that as well; until I moved here. What I have noticed, in my three-plus years (and counting), in California is that the majority of the state is, in fact, conservative (when looking at area). And even in the Bay Area, which is strongly blue (even deep blue) [...]

This post has been cleaned up. There was a bunch of spelling mistakes that became progressively worse as the post went on. And I have added the standard edits to make sentences readable, as necessary. The piece — as a whole — otherwise is unedited.

This is a rambling rant. Paragraph three has no context.

Unpublished Draft

There is one question you should ask yourself: are you better than person a or b? If you believe you are, you should let it be known; because of your degree, your knowledge, your ability, etc.; if not, you should let time or an independent result allow the decision to be made. Otherwise, society accepts potentially impotent persons [to] guide the future.

There are naturally inferior people. Those who let comedy override their ugliness. Those who let their smarts override their awkwardness. And there are those seemingly perfect people: strong, silent, wise; they seldom exist. Every now and then, you come across a combination. A beautiful being corrupted by the guile of an infantile, inept person wholly devised of ill-will, or deceit [for] those more inherently honest and trustworthy.

Living in the San Francisco bay area, I have come to appreciate the awareness of gay rights. When I was momentarily aligning myself as a candidate for office within the student government association at Syracuse University, I had made proud of myself as a candidate of equal rights. My belief was that gay rights was not a privilege, but a characteristic that would be celebrated.

Growing older and seemingly more wise, I have realized that it is not what you know, but how you let others now what you may know, and the deception of others is either, insincere (at best) or criminal (at worst, or what some may think).

You are not what you are, but what people think you are. And that is either a wholly unfair situation or an equally apt one at the same time. You either know how [to] do something, or not, or make money off other’s people knowledge. You either give up on the situation, or let others decide what is best based on false pretenses. A soul is difficult to calculate; its worth much more difficult to do so. Do you make money? What is enough? Are you rich? Are you wealthy? Are you truly good at what you do, or do you take advantage of people who are truly good at what they do? Are you smart? Or do you need to read a little bit to formulate a response? Would you like some extra time, or are you prepared to go with what you got?

I love three things: My wife, my blog, and my weed. I know what I have and I know what I want. What I do not know, is whether or not I will stamp upon the souls of hundreds of thousands of hard-working persons to gain an extra ten percent. Oh wait, yes I do. No, I won’t. Will you?

Unpublished Draft

- After watching the not-so-good new Superman movie last night, and reading that Yahoo! News and Reuters want eyewitness users to submit photos, I conclude that it is not a good time to become a professional photographer.

Markos may insist that his aim is to elect liberals to government (e.g., his attacks on Ellen Tauscher), but that is not entirely true. It is also about winning seats in red states. And that goal is noble, I admit, but it is also contingent on being a part of the establishment, and not being a separated entity, as too many blogs are purported to be.

There is only one thing that keeps politicians interested — your donations — and until that changes, there will be no “real change” in Washington, or Sacramento, or Albany, or anywhere else. And the DailyKos community has joined that system, somewhat unknowingly. The U.S. is a democratic republic, but for that to work (or continue to work, as the case may be), it is about people choosing their representatives, not online donations.

Unpublished Draft

Daily Kos has officially become an arm of the democratic warfare, it is no longer about liberalism, progressive policy, or ripping on Bush, it has become us vs. them on a larger scale.

Unpublished Draft

What is with the Washington Times? Not only have they been shilling for the “culture of life” movement (but why wouldn’t they, the paper was started by the controversial Unification Church and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon; yes, it was started by a fringe right-wing church; Tony Blankley enters stage right), but now wants to throw fuel on the fire by mentioning gay marriage poll numbers. And on the front page. (Look lower right.)

Images: PressDisplay.com

I am not sure why I did not publish this, although it certainly wasn’t worth any more than all of the other commentary being written at the time, but it also wasn’t worth any less, in my opinion. I attempted to contrast the Elian Gonzalez case with the Terri Schiavo case, and make the point that it was the electoral significance of Florida that drove the outward concern of the GOP in both cases. Additionally, that it echoed the willingness of the GOP to follow the goldmine of evangelical support, no matter the constitutionality of the issue.

I found two other brief mentions of Elian in the archive — here and here, in similar context — but it seems I didn’t re-use the overall thesis of the post elsewhere. I guess I simply wasn’t crazy about it, besides the fact that it was all over the place, with no connecting theme. It was clearly unfinished. But that is no excuse; this is a blog, and all trash is welcome.

Unpublished Draft

First there was Elian and now there is Terri Schiavo. (I hate to say that since this clearly [is] an emotional issue to some.) The GOP loves the battleground of Florida so dearly they will throw out there deepest core-principles. And in both cases, the law has been perfectly clear.

I have asked my friends, and it pains me to do so, what if this were a black man, or a poor woman? What if this were an open-atheist that banged on the doors at the “town-hall meetings” held by Bush, while pseudo-discussing his non-existent plans to reform social security, clamoring about woman’s rights and pre-Iraq War lies? Would there be an uproar?

The base of the GOP is very weak. If an issue takes root in the media, and if the issue has any slight chance of being related to god or Jesus (or jeevus, as Homer would say), they are up in arms until their congressmen/women are forced to do something. Now, I am not saying DeLay isn’t evil; he surely is. But the radical religious right is so important to the GOP; it makes up 30% of this country (my estimate) and roughly 70% of GOP voters. It would be as if the Dems gave up on the intellectual elitists. The difference being, intellectuals tend to think through the issues before lighting crosses and taping their mouths shut.

Google’s Blogger tool marks these forgotten posts as “draft,” and last night I realized that I had 21 saved drafts in the system. (I thought it would have been closer to seven; twenty-plus caught me off-guard.) Most of them are junk, some of them are templates, but a few I wish I had posted and I’m not completely sure why I didn’t. I either thought the topic was too moment-oriented, e.g., Katrina, London bombings, miscellaneous topic-du-jour, etc., to publish them and add to the endless blogposts about the subject in the so-called blogosphere, or some of them were possibly caught by my filter, my wife. I do post mostly without editorial oversight, but every now and then, I do get the “unexpressed” feeling that it would be better if I un-post a certain post. Other posts I start, save to finish later, and never do. All of these entries potentially become saved drafts.

In an effort to clean out the Blogger shed, I plan on posting some of these saved drafts. My writing style has changed over the course of this blog, and it is certain I would not post the entry as written if I were to publish it today, if at all, however, I will only make necessary edits — spelling, broken links — to the posts. Other than that, they will be published as I wrote them. I will make note of the original draft date, and do somewhat of an annotation of the blogpost, as required, and as I see fit.

(I was thinking how interesting it would be to annotate one’s life, but then I realized, a blog is as annotative as one can get. Introducing MyAnnotatedLife.com.*)

* I know, it’s available.