The Cynical Optimist

I kid you not.  At least I can tell you that that I received a hit to my blog from the “Executive Office Of The President USA” (EXOP).

I’m pretty sure it’s a legitimate hit because the President (or his peons) were searching on Bing for foreign holders of US national debt through this URL: www.bing.com/images/search?q=Holders of US national debt&FORM=BIFD –> And of course, as of today, the third image that loads on that page is from my most popular blog entry (which actually has been getting hits from search engines quite frequently).

Oh, and for those of you wondering how I tracked the hit–I use a hidden counter that displays the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and approximate locations of computers that access my blog.  In this case, the  ISP was listed as the “Executive Office Of The President USA” (EXOP) and the location was tracked as Washington, District of Columbia.  Click the image to the left to see what it looks like.

The be sure, I also traced the IP address of the hit and I can definitely confirm that it was a government hit from the Obama administration.  Of course, the address on that page displays the location of the network, hence the address is a random place in DC.  This is typical for any ISP–if I track my own IP address, it won’t spit my exact address.  However, given the fact that the Organization Name is EXOP, and that the search term is relevant to something the president’s administration has been concerned about moreso than ever, I would conclude that someone from his cabinet, if not himself or his close peons, has indeed accessed my Blog.

I’m presidential now, motherfuckers!

P.S. White House, please update your browsers to IE8 at the very least, or just use Firefox.  I can’t believe they’re using IE7–security breach imminent! Although I must say that the fact the IP I tracked is using older software/hardware reinforces my belief about the identity of the user, namely due to the fact that the White House has been known for using outdated technology

Mark my words.

Good job Massachusetts–the irony of the most liberal state electing a Republican to the U.S. senate. Sigh. Expect another +50 points on the Dow as health care gains tomorrow on insurance sentiments. Jerks.

Oh yeah, and the democrats have a lot of republican dick-sucking to do to get the 60th vote now.

I would prefer long-term reduction of health care spending over maintaining the status quo to a point where more than a sixth of the GDP will be sucked into the private sector’s “death panels.”

I was talking to a friend and I came to some interesting conclusions…

I just looked up agnostic atheism and I finally understand how how one can be an atheist but not reject the unknown. I am not an agnostic theist myself, but I’m not sure if that makes me an agnostic atheist because I do not reject (NOR do I endorse) theism/atheism as a component of my agnosticism.

I simply believe that it is impossible to know if there is or is not one or more deities, whereas agnostic ahteists do not believe in the existence of any deity but they do not claim to know that no deity exists. I just share the latter half of that ideology but at the same time I don’t endorse theism. So does that just make me a regular ole’ Agnostic?

Well, I think I finally figured it out, but I can’t decide between Strong Agnosticism (we’ll never know) and Weak Agnosticism (we can know if our science is advanced enough).

I think we need a new category “Agnostic Agnosticism” for people that don’t know if humans can ever know whether or not they’ll never know–that’s basically where I stand right now.  It’s a little confusing but I hope you understand.

With an ever expanding Earthly population in an ever expanding universe, I often question the importance of individuality and whether or not it seems to be getting lost as we increase in numbers, and as the universe increases in size.  A congested freeway or a long line is both a subject of beauty and blight, for while the order in the nature of our behavior is to be appreciated, the impersonality of a vast world of strangers is, at the very minimum, a subconscious pressure upon the tribal human mind as it emerged from the environment of evolved adaptiveness.

It is with this mindset that I approach the expression that “life goes on”–that deaths reported in wars, accidents, acts of violence, or  in disease are often ignorable to the wide majority of us.  And while our families–our genes and our blood–may grieve our absence, and while our close friends may think of us now and then, the true lonesome nature of human life and the passing of the mortal being is a subject of concern.  For even when we hold high regard for the priceless value of life, we have learned to “move on” to the extent that we are aware of the possibility that our grief can be the premature death of us, and that we must protect our own health in refraining from excessive sorrow as a result of witnessing or learning (ignorance is bliss?) about the deaths of individuals who may not just share our genes and our friendship and love, but who also share a common sense of belonging to our race–the human race.

It is this beautiful tragedy, this paradox of life and death, which often pushes my agnosticism towards the supernatural paradigm, for I wish to find non material merit in our existence, and to know that our limited time, and its limited celebration and grief by our fellows during and after its existence, does indeed prevail in some form into an immortal future.

I bow to the moral atheist  but I question the origin of the Big Bang, the”God” particle, the “Higgs boson” from which the Big Bang (or the existence of the universe in any method) resulted, and I “pray” for conclusive results from the Large Hadron Collider.  And perhaps our individuality will become relevant once more–unless of course, “God(s)” is/are nonexistent, or a transcendent power(s) once existed, but has/have (ironically) died.

The ultimate question of life is not so much “how?” as it is “why?”, for it is in purpose that we find merit, not so much in the method.  Moreover, the method is dependent on the purpose, and thus the purpose of living life should be to discover the merit in the purpose of our origins, and not necessarily in the evolutionary (or divine, for the faithful) processes that led to the fulfillment of the purpose.

Unfortunately, and perhaps fortunately, the limit to unraveling the ultimate purpose of the creation of life can only be measured objectively if we wish for our philosophical observations to make sense; of course, those who take the supernatural path accept that they cannot make sense out of what is divine, and when they do, it is their holy thumos, and their sociological rationalization which leads them to believe that unexplainable phenomenons do in fact make sense even in the absence of objective observation.

Thus to ask “why?” when we face life, and to discover the purpose–if there is one–to the creation of life, we must yield either to science or to faith, as the inherent incompatibilities in these two entities create dangerous grounds for their symbiosis.  The self-righteous indignation and the devout loyalty inherent in the adopters of the latter paradigm is applaudable, but the doubt created by the ambiguity of this model offsets its superiority to the former system used for exploring the purpose of life.

So, my advice to you in my writing is to pick your poison wisely, and then to pursue the ultimate question of why?.

…at least in comparison to other great powers, economically speaking.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Foreign_Holders_of_United_States_Treasury_Securities-percent_share.gif  — The Chinese own 24% of our national debt.   That’s a little under 1 trillion of our 6 trillion dollar deficit.

But check this out: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html  — we’re not doing that bad.  Our debt is close to 100% of our GDP, yes, but we’re still ranked 22nd (at the time of this writing) in terms of deficit vs. GDP in comparison to other heavily industrialized countries.

For example.  Japan has relatively more debt than we do!  So do Italy and Germany AND Canada, who are all potential great, if not super powers.

They can’t spell my name right, they can’t deliver the mail properly, they don’t process legal documents correctly, and generally come off as lackadaisical and apathetic in everything they do.  They are unprofessional, ill-mannered, mentally incapable, and unworthy of their jobs, and should therefore be replaced by robots so they’re all forced into mowing lawns and picking grapes.  Bureaucrats are unfit to handle sensitive legal and governmental services.

I think I hate bureaucrats more than I hate republicans.  Yes, it is true.

Fuck every incompetent office worker that doesn’t deserve even minimum wage.  It’d be great if all the job losses in the recession were suffered solely by bureaucrats.  That way, nothing would still get done, but at least the government wouldn’t have to fund their lack of progress through deficit spending.

BAC stocks are looking very attractive just about now. I’m awaiting the April earnings from other banks, but judging by Wells Fargo’s results, things may be looking up.

I want Dow Jones to hit 9000 by the end of the year. Call it wishful thinking, but we’ll find out next week if this is a possibility.

If Bill O’ Reilly fucks Rush Limbaugh hard enough in his ear, maybe he’ll get his hearing back?