And my vote goes to...

I've been thinking about what I'm going to do this coming election. The presidential election is lost for conservatives. Now the question is: What is our best course of action when dealing with two poor choices for President? The way I see it, McCain is just as bad if not worse for this nation in the long run as Obama is. Why is that? One word: Carter.

Jimmy Carter is probably one of the worst Presidents this country has ever seen. His policies dragged this country closer to economic collapse, and his doom-and-gloom speculation regarding the environment and oil have been roundly disproved. According to Carter, we'd be living in the age of Mad Max right about now, and if we'd actually done what he had prescribed, we'd be experiencing mass poverty in our nation, and probably be either speaking Russian or pushing up daisies. Carter was a horrible president, as history has shown, and he persists in trying to destroy our nation even to this day.

But, there was a bright silver lining on that cloud. His name was Ronnie. Ronald Reagan was the result of that terrible presidency. He renewed the conservative movement in such as way that the positive effects of his policies have lasted to this day. He brought down our nation's greatest enemy without firing a shot. He showed us the real meaning of "Peace though superior firepower". The victory of the cold war should be a lesson to all gun control supporters: Freedom has been for some time, and probably will be for the foreseeable future, won and lost at the end of a gun. The question is: Which end would you rather be on?

But back to the point of this rant: The 2008 Presidency.

There's a parallel here, and admittedly it's an unoriginal one at that. However it's still worth repeating. Obama is the Carter of our time. The candidates we have are the result of the steady decline of conservatism since Reagan left office. There have been some revivals, however the momentum has waned to the point of total dissapointment with our chosen nominee. And Obama, much like Carter, is seeing a rock-star like rise in popularity, without any real qualification or experience. Top that off with a repeat of history (attempts at price controls, calls to conserve our way out of an oil shortage, artificial pushes for alternative enery sources, and straight from the words of Carter himself "windfall profits taxes"), and we're headed for the early 80's all over again. It's as if someone dug up Carter's old speeches and handed them to Barack without even changing a single word.

McCain, on the other hand, may actually do a few things right during his presidency: stay the course in Iraq, continue to pursue Al Queda, open up (some) oil drilling, and push for a resurgence of nuclear power. However, beyond these few things, he's either iffy or downright wrong on the issues. Is he pro-life or isn't he. Will he appoint conservative judges, or will he fold just like he has in the past? Will he stop furthering environmentalist rhetoric or well he continue to capitulate? His record isn't very good. The question then becomes: Can we really risk four more years of slipping standards in the conservative movement in the name of the party?

Back to the silver lining. As you can tell by now I'm hoping McCain loses. I'm not saying I'm voting for Obama, that would also be immoral as a Catholic voter. I'd considered it, but after some careful thought about it, and discussion with my wife, I'd decided that it's best I withhold my vote from both Obama, and McCain. However, I'm still going to vote. You see, I think that the goal of this election needs to be re-focused for conservatives like myself. The message needs to be sent out, loud and clear, that the people of the Republican party should not be seen as servants to the party, as the Democrats see their people. We expect and demand that the liberals in the Republican party move on to their rightful home: the Democrat party. They need to take back thier party from the Socialists that control it. We are not your subjects. We will not follow the party blindly. We, unlike you, have principles. Our motive is not to keep our party in office, in power. Our motive is to bring about the return of Freedom. Freedom from the Federal government. Economic freedom. Religious freedom. True freedom. We will not follow you, because our leader is not the Republican party, it is God himself, the one who gives us true freedom.

Thanks to the hubris of the establishment Republicans, we have no candidate to vote for. To make it clear to the Republican party just who is in control here, we need to send a message that their chosen candidate is not acceptable to us, and that we know who embodies the qualities of a great President, not them. We must vote for the man who was the only true conservative in this race. With enough votes, the message will be clear. I don't expect him to win. I only hope that he will do for this party what Goldwater did for us back in the 60's

If you can't tell by now, "I'm With Fred".  Or rather, I'm back with Fred. Fred Thompson has always been the only true conservative in this election. I'll be writing his name in on my ballot. I know he doesn't have a chance, but as I stated, that's not really the point. The point is: I want my party back. I want my country back.

Windows Desktop Essentials

In my travels between KDE/Linux and Windows, I've found that Windows is lacking in many features that make my move(s) back to Windows relatively painful. That and often times I'll be thinking "Gee. It would be nice if there were a utility to do this or that that would make my life easier.", which often times do exist in Linux, or are easy enough to reproduce with some scripting.

So here's a small list of some of the tools that I've found that help make life on Windows a little bit more bearable.

AutoHotKey
By far my #1 pick. Think of it as an easy-to-use scripting language and GUI macro system in one. Have a program that you need to start on login, and THEN go though a complicated process to actually start it up? AutoHotKey can enable you to script mouse clicks and keyboard operations with great flexibility. Not only that, but you can script for certain conditions (such as a failure condition) and code alternate procedures to handle them. I liken it to having the power of Bash on windows, though that's probably an understatement. I find new uses for this program almost weekly. Best of all, it's small and free.

Clipboard Recorder
In KDE, you've got klipper. I missed this greatly years ago when I had to start doing desktop support as a one-man IT department. Then, I found Clipboard Recorder. Just think of it as a clipboard history for Windows. It supports any textual format (HTML, etc), so when you copy from Word into another app, the formatting will stick even when you call it up out of the history. When you rely on copy/paste as much as I do (I find it to be a huge timesaver and helps improve accuracy of data-reentry), you find that this is a must-have.


PdaReach

This is more windows-centric, but nonetheless very useful. Just think of it as VNC for your PalmOS PDA. It's so much easier to operate your PDA when sitting at a PC when you can use the full-size screen and keyboard in front of you. My only gripe with it is that it seems to interfere with my PocketTunes streaming on the PDA, so I have to close it when I'm done using it if I want the stream to continue seamlessly.

AllSnap
Windows snapping for Windows. This works like the windows snapping in KDE or for you windows users, WinAMP. For a neat-freak, this is a godsend. It helps you keep your windows nicely organized on your screen and quickly make full use of your screen real-estate.

John's Background Switcher
This is a recent discovery. This allows me to take all of my photos on my PC and randomly use them as backgrounds. Added bonus: it handles dual-screen PCs with versatility. And although I haven't yet checked out this feature, it apparently will tie into popular photo sites such as flickr and facebook so you can use your online photo store as a source of images. Sweet.

So there you have it. I'm sure I'm missing a few items here and there. They'll have to wait for part 2.

UPDATE 8/15/08: One more addition that I think should be placed on the list.

InstallWatch
How many times have you thought when changing a setting in a program "I wonder where that setting gets saved." Most of the time programs store setting in the registry, however occasionally they are stored in a file somewhere. With InstallWatch, you can take a snapshot of your system before a change is made, make the change, and then analyze the changes, revealing exactly where your setting resides. I use it all the time to make .reg files that make changing a setting as simple as 2-3 clicks (instead of searching for the setting in the applicable program). This of it as "diff for regedit", only better.

The Cost of Green

From xkcd:

Granted, funny, however...

From WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119335110403372123.html):

I'll probably be sticking with my SUV for some time, and in fact, we'll probably buy another after we outgrow this one. Honestly, I can't physically fit in one of those compact economy/hybrid cars. Even if I could fit, the comfort of a SUV makes it's increased sticker price worth it.

The funny thing about it is, these hybrids are only fractionally more efficient than regular cars or SUVs, so it's like being all high-and-mighty and saying "I only pollute the earth 9/10ths as much as you do, so there!". Give me a break. Besides the fact, we'll see how much you're not polluting the earth when those LiIon batteries need replacing.

My Official John McCain Outreach Blog

http://www.johnmccain.com/ActionCenter/BlogInteract/BlogInteract.aspx

John McCain's campaign wants us to blog for him to help spread his message. Here's my attempt:

Vote for John McCain, the spineless global warming movement pacifist.
Vote for John McCain, the pseudo-Republican who's all talk and no substance when it comes to conservative ideals.
Vote for John McCain, the candidate of the new Liberal Republican movement.
Vote for John McCain, he supports the war. Kinda. Except when it's not politically expedient.
Vote for John McCain, he's Pro-Life. Wait, what's that? He's not really? Oh.  Forget that then.
Vote for John McCain, he'll stand for nothing of importance, and destroy the Republican party in the process.
Vote for John McCain, if you are one of those mythical post-Hillary swing voters that will supposedly save his campaign. But as for all of you conservative Republicans, screw you. He doesn't want or need your vote.
Vote for John McCain, because hey, what other choice do you have.

There you have it John. There's my blog to counter all of your marketing fluff. Good luck to you, because you'll need it without the votes of your base. Personally, I think I may be voting Obama to save the Republican party from the anti-Reagan interests that have control of it. Perhaps they'll finally abandon my party if they realize that no true Republican will vote for Democrat lite.

Welcome to the rest of your week...

Where the hell is this global warming I've been hearing so much about.