When everyone knew America was going to Iraq by the summer of 2002, I knew it was a farce. Simply by the fact that you're not supposed to know 8 months ahead of time that Iraq would "violate" this or that and justify their invasion.
I was pissed. I said, "Fine, if America is going to invade Iraq, I want cameramen to be there, to film every human die. Show every dead baby. Show everything." - paraphrased. Michael is my witness on this "early" resolve.
If you believe people have the right to bear arms, then you have no justification for war with Iraq. The only reason, the only reason in the world Bush used, was that they were armed. Certainly there were better reasons, but they weren't Bush's reasons. You could rationalize in your mind that the other reasons justified the invasion, but because those reasons were not the invaders reason, they would never be respected.
Let me give you an example that I believe is fair, but won't elicit any patriotic knee jerk. Imagine if the president decides that drug dealers shouldn't have guns. Certainly that seems to fall in line with just reasoning, and American law. But who are the drug dealers? If they are already known, shouldn't they be in prison, or already served time, or at least counseled? You would think to yourself, they could justifiably be arrested because they are drug dealers. BUT, that isn't what the president's goal is, that's your "justification". So federal police begin kicking in the doors, and shooting the dogs of every known or suspected drug dealers in America, but after awhile, the waters are murky, things are rushed, the goal of the president isn't to prosecute drug dealers, it's to take guns. In that respect, he won't need proof the person is a drug dealer, just suspicion, so fairly soon, the police are just kicking in the doors of anyone that's ever done anything. Parking ticket holders will have their doors kicked in, and their dogs shot. Sure, some people will get killed trying to defend themselves, but such anarchy is all the more justification to keep kicking in doors, and shooting dogs, and taking the guns. Soon enough drug dealers will find a way to continue their deeds without being the subject of a door kicking-in and a dog killing, they'll go underground, but the feds will continue kicking in doors, regardless of whose doors. While the Feds are wasting tax payer money killing tax payer dogs, the drug dealing will continue, and the fear generated from the invasion will cause drug dealers to kill more. The point is you have to look at the true goal, not your hope of what will come of the goals of others.
Invading Iraq, because they have weapons was an evil enterprise. Iraq has more weapons than it did before, and the fact that the U.S. military went in and took all the weapons from law abiding individuals has only made things worse. The U.S. military has no trouble disarming the good citizens, so the criminals are the only ones who are armed.
Often people say that Iraq was better off with Saddam. I can't agree with that, at least now they have a chance. Not a great chance, but a chance. The problem is that America's intentions are making it harder for things to get better. Weapons aren't the problem. Conflict is the problem, and Americans are the conflict now.
There's a saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." I'm not arguing that. I'm literally saying the intentions were wrong, they made hell on purpose. People bought into it for peripheral benefits, but those benefits haven't come to fruition, and they never will.
I've talked a long time with an Objectivist, and one of the issues was the morality of intention. Does it matter why a person acts? Is the reason for a good action important? And we both agreed that it absolutely matters. Even if an outsider could only guess to the reasoning, the reasoning will always matter. Iraq is a perfect example. Even if you saw the invasion as a good thing, because the reasoning behind it was different, the outcome won't be the same, because at some point there will be a fork in the road, where you would go one direction, the person with the alterior motives will choose the other. The fork was long ago.
Sometimes kicking in a door is necessary, but if your thinking it's good because there's a criminal on the other side, and the government thinks it's good, because there's an armed man on the other side, eventually there will be a conflict. Not all armed men are criminals, and the government will not care. That is Iraq. That is pretty much all the current conflicts in America, maybe even humanity.
People see this need to categorize people. Whether it's "liberal" vs. "Conservative" or "American" vs. "other" or "white" vs. "other" it really doesn't matter. The borders are artificial. Once the intention of the borders becomes altered, the border can become an evil in itself. For example, if you categorize people by American or other, it makes sense when talking about taxes, or laws, or participation in government, but when it becomes an issue about a person's rights to themselves, that's when it becomes evil. To assert that only Americans should bear arms in Iraq is one example. To assert that all Africans should be slaves is another example. "white" vs. "other" could be applied to learning genealogy, studying language, or custom, or history makes sense, but to use it to imprison Jew or Japanese descendants is wrong. People take things to extremes, and fight it out in these corners, either we have genetic variations, and we should kill those who aren't us, or there are no genetic variations and everyone is exactly the same. Both positions are wrong, yet those become the lines. The conflicts of man seem to be childish in this regard. These absolutes where both parties are wrong. Intention is a factor. If you intend to distinguish nationality, or national purposes, that's logical, but if you distinguish nationality to opress one group, or help another, that's evil. Unfortunately not enough people regard intentions, and seem to only respect action. Never the 'why', only the 'what'. 'Why' distinguish nationality, sex, religion, isn't asked. Only an abosolutist, 'what' sex, either no difference, or one must be superior, no nationalities, unless one is superior to the other. That's not how reality works, and that's why people die. War is not inevitable, but as long as people demand absolutes that are lies, there will be war. There will be death. That is the immediate result to their immorality. It is swift. Immorality isn't just, and neither is the punishment for it. War will never be just in this regard. As long as conflict is for lies.
I could rant all day.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Monday, December 08, 2008
Fast Food
Little Caesars used to give you two pizzas for the price of one, in one big box. Also I only remember the square pizzas, all throughout the 80s and 90s the big box of square pizzas was the only thing I know of or thought of about Little Caesars. After coming back to Stockton this I realized they got rid of them. But they did have the $5 large one topping for awhile, but now that's gone too, though Pepperonies down the street has $5 large one toppings and they are better quality.
Round Table has the highest quality pizzas for a big chain, but Stockton has better places like Michael's. Recently ads for CiCi's pizza have been showing up in California, which shocked me at first because I thought CiCi's was only in Pensacola Florida. CiCi's has average quality, but for $5 it's all you can eat/drink including a nice salad bar and dessert pizzas. Round Table has started their own affordable lunch buffet but the one near my house sucks and any other time round table is expensive enough to make a man cry.
So. Since my having no money has run long I've been following Joel's path of shooting right for the dollar menu at fast food places. It's like we're cheating them. I can't believe some of that stuff is a dollar, while they charge 3 or 4 dollars for something slightly fancier. A good example is Wendy's, you can get a double bacon cheeseburger for $1, but a freaking mushroom cheeseburger is $4. You can get a small soda for a $1, you can get a 5 piece nuggets for $1 (and those nuggets kick McDonald's ass) I can't even believe how good Wendy's nuggets are, spiced, juicy, crunchy. You could get a small soda, small fries and 2 sandwhiches for $4! Meanwhile one 2 patty cheeseburger meal will run you into the $6 range.
Taco Bell has a few good things on their ".79 .89 .99" menu. Depending on the location, prices vary, but you can get a "Cheesy Double Beef Burrito" for under $1 or a "Half Pound Bean and Cheese Burrito", and they're both filling. The triple layer nachos (the 3 layers are hot sauce, cheese, and beans) are good themselves and are usually the cheapest thing on the menu. Though the sodas will kill you. Jack in the box has a few good $1 items, the chicken sandwhich, two tacos, or a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. Though once again the soda is ridiculous. Sodas at fast food restaurants are straight up scams. They make more profit on the soda than anything else. It's the cheapest to provide, and costs the most. I'm just glad in the 90s restaurants started allowing free refills. Although there are still some places that won't do refills, like the McDonald's on the corner of Haight Street next to the Golden Gate Park, because 3 in every 4 people there is a filthy bum, really really filthy bum and they all want their McDonald's cups refilled.
For a while in the 21 century soda machines in California dropped prices and you could get a .35 can of Coke (unlike the 90s and 80s where they were .60 and above), but I think they've risen again, all the soda prices have risen back to their inconvenient prices, seriously, I haven't seen a good $5 24 pack price in a couple years. Is corn to blame? Maybe they should go back to using real sugar. I'm getting tired of $5 12 packs and $2.79 2 liters. 2 liters SHOULD BE .99!!!!
Why is it that with increased farming technology, increased storage and transport technology, and increased wealth, the quality of food has gone to shit? Seriously. Why can't food use real ingredients anymore. I don't care how much growth hormones you use, I just want real natural ingredients. WHEN THE HELL DID EATING REAL FOOD BECOME A SOCIALIST IDEA??????????? All the real ingredients have been replaced with chemicals and manufacturing. Why do only hippies and vegetarians shopping at Trader Joe's get grains in their fucking bread and cereal? Milk and cream in their ice cream? Why is bread bleached? EVER? IT'S DISGUSTING. Bland bland bland. Almost every fast food place uses bleached bread for buns. Thank God Subway EVENTUALLY started offering breads that weren't completely void of nature. Whole grain crunchy flaky bread tastes 100 times better than bleached starched whatevered white bread. I'm not a hippy for thinking this. I'm not even someone who cares about eating healthy, and I agree with the health nuts. This food we call American sucks. Why has "Capitalism" eliminated variety? Why do all sodas have the same ingredients? Why is there only 1 variety of cow and chicken used in all meat products in America? Why is there only one milk cow? Why is milk only from cows? There are litterally thousands of kinds of delicious sea life we could eat, but instead we eat 1 lobster, maybe 2 or 3 kinds of crab, 3 or 4 clam type creatures, and maybe 4 kinds of fish for 300 Million people. Why don't Americans eat anything more than chicken cow and pig??????? Goat, Lamb, Deer, Buffalo, Giraffe, Monkey, Dog, Cat, Turtle, WE COULD HAVE ANYTHING. WE COULD FARM ANYTHING. Instead everything everywhere tastes the same. Every city in America serves the same food, from the animals, and probably the same supplier. Washing away all variety is the hallmark of the 20th and 21st Century for America.
Cheese butter cream are replaced with oil
sugar in all its delicious variants, glucose, fructose, sucrose, etc. all replaced with high fructose corn syrup.
Nothing is flavored anymore, cherry flavoring, is high fructose corn syrup, and chemicals. Strawberry flavoring, high fructose corn syup, and some more chemicals. Apple, banana, watermelon, orange, lime, grapefruit, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP AND CHEMICALS. WHY WHY WHY CAN'T THEY JUST USE THE REAL THING? FOR GOD'S SAKE IF THEY HAD IT IN THE 19TH CENTURY WHY CAN'T WE HAVE IT NOW????
I don't want to go to another country. I don't want to go to a place where they have yet to spread the ideas of refridgeration, or safe handling, or cooking food thoroughly. This place. Here. America is suppose to be the best.
I recently watched this ad battle take place on TV. Progresso took a shot at Campbell's because Campbell's had some number of soups with MSG and Progresso had some number of soups without. Campbell's came back with an ad showing they had more soups without MSG than Progresso did, and that Progresso has MSG too, and they promised to remove MSG in all their soups. Progresso ran an ad where a woman taste tested two soups and said one was MSG (Campbell's) and the other was all natural, so Campbell's ran THE SAME FREAKING AD with a woman taste testing soup and saying Progresso's was full of MSG and when she tasted the Campbell's she identified what fucking farm the vegetables where from. My only question is WHY THE FUCK IS THERE MSG IN ANY GOD DAMN SOUP IN AMERICA???? I THOUGHT THAT SHIT WAS ILLEGAL! MSG chemicaly melts a few layers off your tongue, making your tongue more receptive to flavor, making good food taste better, but it also goes into your stomach and melts away your stomach lining, which can give you an ulcer and kill you. THE BIGGEST SOUP COMPANIES IN AMERICA ARE MELTING YOUR FUCKING STOMACH LINING TO BOOST SALES. FOR SHIT FUCKS SAKE WHY WOULD THEY ONLY BE CALLING EACH OTHER OUT ON IT NOW? FOR THAT MATTER, WHY DID IT TAKE THEMSELVES TO DO IT? HOW MANY DECADES HAVE THEY BEEN POISONING US???? HOW MANY OTHER PRODUCTS USE MSG? Old people eat soup. Old people have weak stomach lining, and are more prone to ulcer. Soup is full of ulcer causing MSG. Campbell's is mm mm KILLS OLD PEOPLE. I just looked into it and found that yep. Pretty much everything uses MSG except Chinese food now-a-days. I'm not old enough to remember a time when Chinese food restaurants didn't advertise "no MSG" so the fact that they still advertise it seems really odd by comparison, oh those evil Chinese, they were doing the same thing Doritos is STILL DOING, but they stopped 30 years ago and are still paying the consequences while all your chips are dripping with ulcer powder.
That's my rant.
If I could have a restaurant, I would serve shit you couldn't get anywhere else in town. Then I'd go out of business.
Just as a little bonus tidbit, I looked up MSG on Wikipedia, the first company to market MSG was Aji No Moto in Japan in 1909. The asians pioneered MSG use in cooking long before that by extracting it from seaweed, but Aji No Moto were the first to purify it and sell it. When I was in Japan I bought a bottle of Aji No Moto brand MSG thinking it was salt. It tasted horrible by itself, but I found that when it was mixed into some rice it made the rice taste great. I didn't realize it was MSG until a couple years later when I learned what MSG looked like. Aji no Moto means "essence of taste" and the company was completely founded on selling MSG.
MSG does occur naturally too, which all the more disturbed me in my researching reading people's forum discussions about how they ALWAYS use MSG and if they leave it out, they add extra natural formations of MSG to make up for it. Come on now. If there's to be one product in the entire universe that you would want in all your food all the time, wouldn't you want it to be at least inert? Or maybe beneficial to your body? Seriously, some people are fucked up, MSG all the way in American food. And it isn't inert, and it provides nothing beneficial.
Round Table has the highest quality pizzas for a big chain, but Stockton has better places like Michael's. Recently ads for CiCi's pizza have been showing up in California, which shocked me at first because I thought CiCi's was only in Pensacola Florida. CiCi's has average quality, but for $5 it's all you can eat/drink including a nice salad bar and dessert pizzas. Round Table has started their own affordable lunch buffet but the one near my house sucks and any other time round table is expensive enough to make a man cry.
So. Since my having no money has run long I've been following Joel's path of shooting right for the dollar menu at fast food places. It's like we're cheating them. I can't believe some of that stuff is a dollar, while they charge 3 or 4 dollars for something slightly fancier. A good example is Wendy's, you can get a double bacon cheeseburger for $1, but a freaking mushroom cheeseburger is $4. You can get a small soda for a $1, you can get a 5 piece nuggets for $1 (and those nuggets kick McDonald's ass) I can't even believe how good Wendy's nuggets are, spiced, juicy, crunchy. You could get a small soda, small fries and 2 sandwhiches for $4! Meanwhile one 2 patty cheeseburger meal will run you into the $6 range.
Taco Bell has a few good things on their ".79 .89 .99" menu. Depending on the location, prices vary, but you can get a "Cheesy Double Beef Burrito" for under $1 or a "Half Pound Bean and Cheese Burrito", and they're both filling. The triple layer nachos (the 3 layers are hot sauce, cheese, and beans) are good themselves and are usually the cheapest thing on the menu. Though the sodas will kill you. Jack in the box has a few good $1 items, the chicken sandwhich, two tacos, or a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. Though once again the soda is ridiculous. Sodas at fast food restaurants are straight up scams. They make more profit on the soda than anything else. It's the cheapest to provide, and costs the most. I'm just glad in the 90s restaurants started allowing free refills. Although there are still some places that won't do refills, like the McDonald's on the corner of Haight Street next to the Golden Gate Park, because 3 in every 4 people there is a filthy bum, really really filthy bum and they all want their McDonald's cups refilled.
For a while in the 21 century soda machines in California dropped prices and you could get a .35 can of Coke (unlike the 90s and 80s where they were .60 and above), but I think they've risen again, all the soda prices have risen back to their inconvenient prices, seriously, I haven't seen a good $5 24 pack price in a couple years. Is corn to blame? Maybe they should go back to using real sugar. I'm getting tired of $5 12 packs and $2.79 2 liters. 2 liters SHOULD BE .99!!!!
Why is it that with increased farming technology, increased storage and transport technology, and increased wealth, the quality of food has gone to shit? Seriously. Why can't food use real ingredients anymore. I don't care how much growth hormones you use, I just want real natural ingredients. WHEN THE HELL DID EATING REAL FOOD BECOME A SOCIALIST IDEA??????????? All the real ingredients have been replaced with chemicals and manufacturing. Why do only hippies and vegetarians shopping at Trader Joe's get grains in their fucking bread and cereal? Milk and cream in their ice cream? Why is bread bleached? EVER? IT'S DISGUSTING. Bland bland bland. Almost every fast food place uses bleached bread for buns. Thank God Subway EVENTUALLY started offering breads that weren't completely void of nature. Whole grain crunchy flaky bread tastes 100 times better than bleached starched whatevered white bread. I'm not a hippy for thinking this. I'm not even someone who cares about eating healthy, and I agree with the health nuts. This food we call American sucks. Why has "Capitalism" eliminated variety? Why do all sodas have the same ingredients? Why is there only 1 variety of cow and chicken used in all meat products in America? Why is there only one milk cow? Why is milk only from cows? There are litterally thousands of kinds of delicious sea life we could eat, but instead we eat 1 lobster, maybe 2 or 3 kinds of crab, 3 or 4 clam type creatures, and maybe 4 kinds of fish for 300 Million people. Why don't Americans eat anything more than chicken cow and pig??????? Goat, Lamb, Deer, Buffalo, Giraffe, Monkey, Dog, Cat, Turtle, WE COULD HAVE ANYTHING. WE COULD FARM ANYTHING. Instead everything everywhere tastes the same. Every city in America serves the same food, from the animals, and probably the same supplier. Washing away all variety is the hallmark of the 20th and 21st Century for America.
Cheese butter cream are replaced with oil
sugar in all its delicious variants, glucose, fructose, sucrose, etc. all replaced with high fructose corn syrup.
Nothing is flavored anymore, cherry flavoring, is high fructose corn syrup, and chemicals. Strawberry flavoring, high fructose corn syup, and some more chemicals. Apple, banana, watermelon, orange, lime, grapefruit, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP AND CHEMICALS. WHY WHY WHY CAN'T THEY JUST USE THE REAL THING? FOR GOD'S SAKE IF THEY HAD IT IN THE 19TH CENTURY WHY CAN'T WE HAVE IT NOW????
I don't want to go to another country. I don't want to go to a place where they have yet to spread the ideas of refridgeration, or safe handling, or cooking food thoroughly. This place. Here. America is suppose to be the best.
I recently watched this ad battle take place on TV. Progresso took a shot at Campbell's because Campbell's had some number of soups with MSG and Progresso had some number of soups without. Campbell's came back with an ad showing they had more soups without MSG than Progresso did, and that Progresso has MSG too, and they promised to remove MSG in all their soups. Progresso ran an ad where a woman taste tested two soups and said one was MSG (Campbell's) and the other was all natural, so Campbell's ran THE SAME FREAKING AD with a woman taste testing soup and saying Progresso's was full of MSG and when she tasted the Campbell's she identified what fucking farm the vegetables where from. My only question is WHY THE FUCK IS THERE MSG IN ANY GOD DAMN SOUP IN AMERICA???? I THOUGHT THAT SHIT WAS ILLEGAL! MSG chemicaly melts a few layers off your tongue, making your tongue more receptive to flavor, making good food taste better, but it also goes into your stomach and melts away your stomach lining, which can give you an ulcer and kill you. THE BIGGEST SOUP COMPANIES IN AMERICA ARE MELTING YOUR FUCKING STOMACH LINING TO BOOST SALES. FOR SHIT FUCKS SAKE WHY WOULD THEY ONLY BE CALLING EACH OTHER OUT ON IT NOW? FOR THAT MATTER, WHY DID IT TAKE THEMSELVES TO DO IT? HOW MANY DECADES HAVE THEY BEEN POISONING US???? HOW MANY OTHER PRODUCTS USE MSG? Old people eat soup. Old people have weak stomach lining, and are more prone to ulcer. Soup is full of ulcer causing MSG. Campbell's is mm mm KILLS OLD PEOPLE. I just looked into it and found that yep. Pretty much everything uses MSG except Chinese food now-a-days. I'm not old enough to remember a time when Chinese food restaurants didn't advertise "no MSG" so the fact that they still advertise it seems really odd by comparison, oh those evil Chinese, they were doing the same thing Doritos is STILL DOING, but they stopped 30 years ago and are still paying the consequences while all your chips are dripping with ulcer powder.
That's my rant.
If I could have a restaurant, I would serve shit you couldn't get anywhere else in town. Then I'd go out of business.
Just as a little bonus tidbit, I looked up MSG on Wikipedia, the first company to market MSG was Aji No Moto in Japan in 1909. The asians pioneered MSG use in cooking long before that by extracting it from seaweed, but Aji No Moto were the first to purify it and sell it. When I was in Japan I bought a bottle of Aji No Moto brand MSG thinking it was salt. It tasted horrible by itself, but I found that when it was mixed into some rice it made the rice taste great. I didn't realize it was MSG until a couple years later when I learned what MSG looked like. Aji no Moto means "essence of taste" and the company was completely founded on selling MSG.
MSG does occur naturally too, which all the more disturbed me in my researching reading people's forum discussions about how they ALWAYS use MSG and if they leave it out, they add extra natural formations of MSG to make up for it. Come on now. If there's to be one product in the entire universe that you would want in all your food all the time, wouldn't you want it to be at least inert? Or maybe beneficial to your body? Seriously, some people are fucked up, MSG all the way in American food. And it isn't inert, and it provides nothing beneficial.
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