Rob Bell In Columbus

Rob Bell in Columbus, Ohio on December 10 for the Drops Like Stars Tour.

Just found out they are filming the Columbus tour for the DVD.

Already got my tickets.

New Gloss Box Mac Dock Icons

Click for Large Picture

Click For Large Picture

Had some free time at work and my dock icons looked at me the wrong way. So the obvious solution was to change them all!

You can download the Photoshop working file here, if you feel inclined.

Pipe Cleaner Zoo Animals

I don’t know about you, but Sundays in our house are for constructing pipe cleaner zoo animals! Nothing gets the adrenaline pumping faster then twisting and turning small wires with fuzz into elegant  beast of beauty.

What we have here is a rare breed of zebra know in the safari as the “Mullet” Zebra. And next to him is the endangered “Afro” Giraffe.

Good times.

Why Voting In Our Democracy Doesn’t Matter Anymore

We vote because we believe it changes things, we vote because we have FAITH in the system. We vote because it’s the only control we feel we have. We use voting much like charity work in America. We do it so we feel good about ourselves.

But voting in a Democracy doesn’t matter. It only works for the majority, the minority are left unheard. You only need 51% of the public to agree with you, to have total control. That’s why we were not founded as a democracy, our founding fathers laid the frame work for a constitutional republic. a society of self-government, self-reliability, and self-accountability.

All the talk on the news is we need to vote out every member of congress. The media’s job is to make you think your vote matters.  Why you ask? Because it’s the only way to make the system keep going. As long as people feel they can change our country by voting, the duopoly of Democrat and Republic lead decisions continue. We are presented with two options for the mere sake of making it look like we have choices. It’s a formality really, if they thought the public would go for only one choice trust me they would do it.

That’s why Goldman Sach’s and JP Morgan give money to both Democrats and Republicans. THEY DON”T CARE WHO WINS. As long as you don’t realize they don’t care. That’s why the media marginalized candidates who were anti-war and anti-big government. Ever heard of Mike Gravel? I would hope not, other wise the media hasn’t done a good job.

Gravel was a Democratic candidate for President in 2008. Gravel is firmly against war, I don’t mean he’s anti-war like Obama who said he would bring our troops home, and then continued the wars, explained the wars, hired private contractors to replace soldiers, and then sent more troops to Afghanistan. Not that kind of anti-war. gravel is a point your finger  in the face of the corporations anti-war.

Wonder why you never saw him in a debate? He says he was purposely kept out of the early debates because he’s anti-war, and when he asked why he wasn’t allowed to debate. They told him someone at GE didn’t approve of his views.

See the illusion is you have a choice. You can vote for any of the candidates we have pre-approved.

Diebold who is one of the largest electronic voting machine operators in the US, who was used for the Presidential election, has 5 developers that are convicted felons, including Senior Vice President Jeff Dean, topping the list are his twenty-three counts of felony. Don’t forget the two people convicted of voter fraud in Ohio for the 2004 elections. doesn’t that smell like democracy, placing a vote on a Diebold machine, that doesn’t spit out a voter receipt and doesn’t make the voting record public?

Don’t believe me that it’s a stacked house, can you name an Independent politician? Do you know the name of the only truly independent senator in the house? out of 100 senators there is only one Independent! And no I don’t count Lieberman as Independent in my eyes.

Our country faces a great threat, but it is not a Democratic Problem, it is not a Republican problem, it is a corruption problem. You can vote every member of congress out, every senator, replace every aid in the white house, we can protest against every bill that hurts small town Americans and at best we will create stagnation.

We have made honesty a liability in Washington instead of a virtue. We need to remove the revolving door of corporate influence in private government, we need to remove the lobbyist, we need to remove politically correct speech, we need a public that is more informed about government and liberty then they are about fantasy football stats and fall tv schedules.

We are losing an informed pubic to the self indulged, narcissistic entertainment industry of “ME”. I can hardly have a intelligent political discussion at work or in public with out someone bringing in the “he said/ she said” argument of democrat vs republicans. The republicans always think it’s the democrats fault, the democrats always think it’s the republicans fault. It’s never going to change. You know why, because at the end of the day republicans and democrats are forced to support party lines, they have to put food on the table too.

I think people who believe voting changes things are good intentioned patriots. I also think they are naive not to see the tyranny closing in. voting may work in a republic, it doesn’t not work in our current state of affairs. Protesting may work when government is scared of the people, it does not work when government owns the guns. Is it any wonder that the number one industry in the United States has become the Military industrial complex of war, security, and surveillance. Is it any wonder we are busy spreading DEMOCRACY in the middle east and not a Constitutional Republic?

Our government has become fat, bloated, complacent, and corrupt. We have public officials who don’t pay taxes and get appoint secretary of treasury, we have congressmen charged in money laundry that sit on the board of financial oversight, we have governors of states profiting from political decisions,We have Chris Dodd who is the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee receiving contributions from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan! How is that even possible? Not to mention the fact that we can’t ignore the moral failures of our elected officials. It’s become common place to find out a politician is having an affair, of using tax payers money for personal vacations, or over paying for services to companies that profit their friends and families.

Voting is much like choosing the Prom King & Queen. In the end it comes down to who do you think you can live with hearing about and see on every magazine for the next 4 years. Think about this, what would make more change in our government. If 100% of people voted, or if 0% voted? The system only works if we comply.

But what happens when the feds start suing people for garage sales? and swat teaming families that sell eggs? Or get this what happens when  the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service feels like they have to have their very own SWAT team? Did we vote for this? Did we vote for Obama to head the UN Security Council? Did anyone ask you? Did the New York Times even mention it’s a violation of section 9 of the US Constitution?

You may say local politics are more important. Local issues affect your life before national issues do.

In Ohio for example our big issues was “issues 3″ should we build casinos in Ohio, after all it would create 34,000 jobs and we need jobs were in a recession. It would keep a billions dollars in state and we need revenue, after all were in a recession. But there is no talk about the fact that this was the 5th time Ohioans have voted on this issue. See voting doesn’t work …. because if an issues fails, it just comes back next year, and the year after, until they finally get it passed. the best we can hope for is a stalemate, to drag things out.

But the real issue isn’t even talked about. If your economy is so desperate for jobs and money that the only way you can create that is by people gambling, what kind society are you left with? Instead of cutting the budget, deflating government and state payrolls. We encourage people to gamble what little money they have. Why is it that answer is never making tough decisions and cutting programs, it’s always raising taxes, selling bonds, and finding new ways to con money out of tax payers.

I believe we are far past voting for change. We didn’t vote ourselves away from King George. We didn’t protest with clever slogans on poster board for England to leave us alone. When we get to the point of people having nothing left to lose, that’s when we will see real change in our country. When people stop feeling entitled to the profits of tax payers production. When we start creating and producing instead of consuming and plagiarizing. When blogs are filled with original content instead of re-posting mainstream news.

When kids start looking up to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as role models instead of athletes and rock stars. When people start reading history and living in reality instead of fantasize about hitting the lottery. When kids decide to learn how to play a real guitar instead of playing Rock Band …. that’s when change will come to America.

Atlas Shrugged

I had no idea who Ayn Rand was, never heard of John Galt or Dagny Taggart.

For me “Atlas Shrugged” started as a casual recommendation from a co-worker, and slowly turned into a direct urging. Until I finally just  bought the book and decide to commit to reading all 1100 plus pages. Well worth the seven months it took to read it. It starts as a brilliantly written book, and finishes as an experience.

If you didn’t know any better you would think this book was written this year, not 1957. The plot of the story is right out of the headlines of most U.S. newspaper in the last year. Atlas deals with the decline of the economy and the effects of the railroad industry. You can easily insert any other industry in it’s place. I felt at several times you could easily substitute  in banks. after all while I was reading this book, our government was handing away trillions in taxpayer bailouts to the unproductive, socially irresponsible corporate executives.

It’s impossible for me to summarize a thousand page book in a blog post, so I just want to touch on Galt’s Speech towards the end of the book. The 70 page speech had an incredible impact of me. Full of philosophical ideas, and spiritual references, there were nights where I simply read a paragraph and put the book down, because ideas were unraveling in my brain.

I remember the first time I read the new testament, It was paradigm shifting. Galt’s speech had the same effect. I’ve read the Old Testament, the New Testament, and now Atlas, a  sort of Post Testament for me.

A lot of the ideas in Atlas are things I have felt my whole life but could never put a finger on why I felt that way. Church never addressed these issues for me, religion in general is scared to talk about the ideas of Atlas. For me, it’s not a take one or the other, the bible and Atlas both sit on my book shelf, As the two greatest books ever written.

I like this picture, it humors me.

Perhaps that’s the best summary of all. How do you summarize a thousand pages other then to say, on September 12, 2009 during the Tax protest in Washington D.C., people were moved so much with passion to make signs like these here here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and  here.