Pardon the language, but it's a quote!

So it's come to the attention of the media that Obama's church preacher has a very, very poor outlook on America and goes so far as to call on God to "damn America" and has been reported to call the country the "US of KKK A". What in all heck? And Obama told us that this church wasn't controversial? You think he could have at least given his preacher the heads up on what they're supposed to be acting like... The memo must have gotten lost in the mail and the church kept on going about their business. Unbelievable.

Of course, all the liberals are sticking their heads up their butts and proclaiming that such a thing doesn't matter, because the preacher is not Obama, and you should focus on issues related to Obama. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you people, but... You DON'T go to a church if you don't agree with what's being said. I mean, there's a clear difference between not liking the properly presented Word of God (which we already know Obama's idea of doctrine of completely and totally whacked when he says the Sermon on the Mount supports gay rights, claiming that the Sermon on the Mount was more important than "some obscure passage in Romans" that speaks against gay unions... Come on! You can't have it both ways!) and not liking random opinions that are interjected into the sermon. I mean, seriously? Why is this even in the guy's sermon? It's not important to spiritual growth... Or do they think it is? My point is, if I went to a church with a preacher who thought like this? I would absolutely leave. Why would I want to hear anything this man has to say if it's tainted thusly? Why does Obama go to this church and put up with it if he doesn't believe this stuff, too? Churches aren't like the government, folks. You don't have to live with what you don't agree with, and being a Christian, I can tell you that, even in my conservative little church, lots of people leave when they don't agree with something. It's a very, very common thing.

Therefore, it is absolutely an important and relevant question to ask. (Which I guarantee you would be asked if it was John McCain who attended this church!) First, his wife blathers on about how we're a mean country and that she hasn't been proud of this country until now... Until what? Your husband was a candidate for the highest authority figure? Yeah, I'll bet you're proud now. And now we have video of the preacher spouting insanities like this, and everyone's willing to turn their heads (again) and claim that Obama is still the one who knows how to fix all our souls? The liberals have gone insane. There is no other word for it. Honestly, how can you vote for this man? Things are constantly coming up that should seriously compromise his campaign, and everyone on the left is ignoring it all! Are they really so arrogant as to vote for a seriously messed up candidate just so another Republican doesn't get in the office? Wake up and see what's going on, people.

Anything to add, Mister Anonymous?

I think that Stargate SG-1 Season One is perhaps one of the best seasons of any TV series, period.

It is March 12 today... The 4th day of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's release. (And the 2nd day of Stargate SG-1: Ark of Truth's release.) I bought it the day of release. Went to church at 9:30 to 11:00am, then went to town, ran into Meijer, picked up the game, and got back home at 12:00. Had lunch, and then settled down for an all-day marathon. Best game ever. I don't think I've had a console on for so long. (With the exception of the Halo games, maybe.) Right now, I'm looking at the record screen and it says it's been on for 33 hours and 6 minutes, and that we've actually been playing for 16 hours and 32 minutes. Most of the power on time has been me spectating online matches and betting on the outcomes. (So incredibly awesome... And coins aren't at all hard to come by, so it's not like you're losing hard work or anything.)

But what post of mine could truly be considered a post of mine if I didn't bring up the idiocies of humanity? I don't read Digg anymore, but I have subscribed to the Games section RSS reed in my Google Reader, so I can keep up with the more important stuff. But, actually, since I've subscribed to Kotaku, as well, I get the majority of my gaming news from them, and Digg is always several lagging days behind. Unless, of course, there happens to be an intolerable "problem" with something... And what better article to promote than a "problem" with Nintendo? You'd think that since Digg obsesses with Apple and Linux and other "unappreciated" companies, they'd be cutting Nintendo some slack... But it seems that most of Digg is too busy trying to make their Playstation 3 look like a good purchase now that they've forgotten that Nintendo is and always will be the top dog. Anyway!

It seems people are having trouble getting online to play matches with SSBB. May I take a moment to utter a single word here? "Duh?" That's all. This is Nintendo's biggest title... The Smash Bros. line of games have always been hugely anticipated, and the last release (Super Smash Bros. Melee for Gamecube) has been continuously played since its own release so many years ago. This is the Halo of Nintendo... With free online services. Free. Online. Multplayer. It doesn't cost you anything, either... Oh, and it's completely free. Did I mention you don't have to pay anything for the ability to play online? Yeah. Remember when Xbox Live went offline due to the sheer amount of people trying to get online during Christmas break? That was largely attributed to fact that a lot of people were out of school and trying out their brand new Halo 3 game for real this time. The outcry was astonishing and people demanded refunds for a month (which, I might add, is a whopping 4 bucks)... You know! The typical whining that goes on when people are inconvenienced. Xbox Live, a service that you pay for and caters to millions upon millions of players went down... Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, a service that you do NOT pay for, goes down when a blockbuster game is released... People are shocked? People are surprised? There haven't been any sales numbers released for this thing, yet, but I'm going to guess that it's very, very high.

I'm just saying... Can you name a blockbuster (I know that's a term for movies, but I don't care) game title that sports online play that HASN'T experienced some server strain when it comes out? Face it, clueless gamers. Servers are built to sustain massive loads, yes, but there is absolutely no way to know if they CAN sustain massive loads until you release the game. Chances are high that you'll find some coding error that makes the game lag a tiny bit here, and then another error that causes another bit of inefficiency... Things show up after release that you simply can't plan for because your beta player base was nowhere near as high, and you have problems. World of Warcraft had problems with its initial release. After a couple years, they release the expansion pack and a whole new influx of players flooded the servers and they had problems again. Halo 3 effectively leveled the Xbox Live system, and now SSBB is randomly disconnecting people and experiencing some lag here and there... This is unexpected?

I've had SSBB all week and in all this time, I've been disconnected a grand total of 1 time. Once. It has happened so little (just once) that I attribute it to a wireless hiccup, since I'm inexperienced with setting wireless up to work with a router. It hasn't happened to me more than once, though I have experienced lag at times, but... Uhm. What online services doesn't lag out sometimes? Even Google/YouTube lags out every now and then, for crying out loud, and their entire income is based on those sites being UP. My advice to you whiners is to give Nintendo some time to work some issues out and maybe release patches (if they have to). It'll take time... It ALWAYS takes time to sort this stuff out, and it ALWAYS works out in the end. Kind of like when people were whining about there being no games for the Wii when it came out... Consoles ALWAYS have a small selection of games until publishers see that it's a platform to make money off of. Point is: This always happens. Wait it out, like you always have to, because there are always unforeseen oddities in any online service the day it goes live.

So maybe I analyzed this far too much. I guess that's what comes when you're in the business of analyzing heavy duty politics all the time... When you take the same approach to something as insignificant as gaming, you start getting a major over reaction. Oh, and while I'm thinking of it (because I was going to discuss this earlier in the post, but I couldn't figure a place to fit it in), here's a little screenshot of my Google Reader trends page:

12,717 items over the last 30 days... And, as you can see by the chart, I still have 8 days before I have a true 30-day analysis. I'm always looking for more feeds to subscribe to, also. Political feeds, if you please. If you find one that you think I'd enjoy reading (or one you think I should read) then let me know! Ahh... Politics. The ultimate exercise in managing level-headedness and anger, too. Still not quite Peter Heck-caliber yet, though. (I would have said Rush Limbaugh-caliber, but I really don't like how he responds to callers. I mean, they're definitely funny when someone makes a stupid comment and he makes fun of them, but Peter Heck seems to treat every caller seriously, even if they're ignorant views, and he answers them in a way that they could actually walk away with something learned.) He gets some funky callers sometimes and he knows exactly how to answer them to make them think really hard about what they just said. Me? I need time to think and research before I formulate a response.

Anyway... I need to do History and English Composition now... Maybe after I watch a couple Brawls, though.

So in April, the 25th to be exact, there's going to be some sort of "day of silence" for public schools in an attempt to reflect on and promote the idea of homosexuality. Isn't that lovely? For a federal level institute to promote a chosen lifestyle like this, while slamming and bashing and legislating against other? (Okay, so it's really only Christianity that they're against.) It's to help raise the awareness that homosexuals are the subject of much harassment and hate and all those wonderful buzz words of the century.

How about I organize a day of silence for all our brothers and sisters in Christ who, in other countries, actually know the true definition of harassment and hate? Would I be allowed to do that in a public school? A self-maintained day of silence that will "disrupt class while promoting the Christian lifestyle"? How about even just us Christians in the United States who can't say prayers during our own graduation without getting blasted by the American Communist Lawyers Civil Liberties Union? For the past several years? (Link, link, link... Please note the years.) Civil liberties? Someone's civil liberties were trashed in an effort to please someone else who has a whine-fest over the fact that someone DARE want to say a prayer at their OWN graduation ceremony. I mean, seriously! What audacity! What nerve! This should be reported at once before others see this display of Constitutional liberty!

The public school system is a federal level system. Let's quote the Bill of Rights, shall we? That little meaningless piece of paper (oops, sorry, I had my Liberal Goggles on... Let me take those off lest I cloud the definition of these documents... Okay, there!)... That piece of paper so important that a few states didn't initially ratify the Constitution because it lacked the description of these basic rights. Here is the first and arguably most important Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Bold text is mine. See it? Right up there? Congress can't establish a religion (meaning it can't say "okay, this is the national religion, so everyone worship or die". A very important clause, seeing as how most people came to the colonies to escape religious oppression) AND it cannot stop people from FREELY exercising their own religions ANYWHERE. We're supposed to be able to go to school and be guaranteed that we can pray at our graduation! The government is supposed to be the one who says "hey, come here, come on in to the court house. You can pray here. Our Constitution guarantees it!" The government (outside of your church) is supposed to be the single most solid supporter of your religious rights, period, without exception, but nope... the Bible and prayers are banned in schools while everything else seems to be allowed, and, somehow, hundreds of thousands of people can't see the blatant hypocrisy here. Instead, a tiny minority of people have been outspoken for long enough for the government to cave in and take the side of someone's lifestyle, while, at the same time, BANNING everyone else's. (Well, not everyone else's... Just Christianity's lifestyle.)

Being a Christian aside, how is this not the very definition of unconstitutional and unamerican? In response, family-related associations are urging parents to pull their kids out of school on this day and to send a letter that explains why they did. If homosexuals are allowed to show their support of such a lifestyle, surely everyone else is allowed to show their opposition to such a lifestyle? (You'd think that, at least.) It's not like there's going to be much academic learning going on anyway, with all the attention on homosexuals for the day.

(I look forward to a special appearance in the comments thread by Mister Anonymous!)

Try saying that three times really fast...

So, it seems my insane conservative ramblings have turned a few heads... Well, that's assume that each Anonymous post is by someone different each time. I really doubt that's the case, but it raises an observation I've made! Here I am... People know me. Granted, if someone randomly comes off the internet and starts reading, they won't know who I am. This is not by choice, I might add. I would gladly post information about myself, but I still live at home with my parents and family, and I don't want some freaky leftist to get angry and drive by to egg our house. If it was my own house? Sure! I think it'd be one of the most awesome things to have happen to me! (Which I will then promptly blog about and show you how leftists can't control themselves... But I abstain!)

But here I am... I have a reputation. I know people and those people know me, and they come here and they know it's me saying all these things. They can say "oh, that crazy GS is at is again", and they'll know it's me jawing about stuff they think I'm clueless about and go on to assume all my insights into life, the universe, and everything is all clouded by my Christian conservatism. But then here comes this fleet of "Anonymous" people with the intention of giving no conversation but the basic liberal rigamarole, trying to trap me with the typical extreme interpretations of what I've said. I respond with an attempt to clarify in the interest of pursuing a conversation and POOF! They vanish completely. Apparently, they either felt their job was done with the simple questioning of my opinions, or they were so completely blown out of the water that they couldn't respond without denouncing their whole perspective on life! Honestly, I'm not sure what to think. Personally, I don't care... BUT! I think it's telling when people come on to my blog and aren't willing to put some of their reputation on the line for what they say. Are they afraid someone else is going to see what they think? Are they afraid that I won't be friends with them anymore? Are they afraid that I'm going to hunt them down and spam their blog with anonymous comments?

I don't know... But I'm open to hearing what your explanations are! Capella and I are the proverbial polar opposites when it comes to politics. We aren't both glued to our respective parties, of course... And we agree on some things and disagree on some things, but we're still friends! So, it's obviously not me who going to chew the other out for sharing their views on the government. Plus, responding to Anonymous in all these comments is so confusing... I don't know if it's the same person or not, so each time they comment, I have to assume they're someone entirely different. Kind of gives them an unfair advantage, wouldn't you agree?

So here's a little warning for you folks. When you comment on my blog anonymously? That's fine, really, but I will have a hard time treating what you say as being serious, and I will ALWAYS assume that you're not coming back to resume the conversation, and that you're merely some random Google visitor who thinks it's in everyone's best interest to bash me and then flee and not actually continue the conversation. You're only hurting your own argument.

What a lovely example of government bloat.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008803080438

In a nut shell, the IRS is going to send letters to 130 million households in an attempt to pretty much say "yo! you've got a rebate coming!" Yep. A letter saying you're getting a rebate. No, the rebate isn't actually in the letter... It's just telling you that you're getting a rebate, which is going to be sent to you somewhere around May, which is nearly 2 months away. Do you know how much this is going to cost in just postage? The typical stamp is about 32 cents right now. Multiply that by 130,000,000 and you have a brilliant total of 42 million dollars. In stamps. Just to tell you that you have a rebate, which is going to cost an additional 42 million dollars to send to you. Of course, the Democrats are quick to jump on President Bush for this colossal waste of money (as if Bush has direct control over the IRS?), but I'm going to take this in a far different direction.

This is just how the government works! I mean, there really is no denying it. It just can't manage money very well, and I've never seen a government that does. But, for some reason, thousands of people think that the government will magically recover from its inefficiency and make a national health care system that actually works? Are you all insane? The facts and examples are right in front of you, and all throughout history. The government is FAT, and I don't mean omnipresent, I mean in the sense of bloat and eating up far too much money. All you have to do is look around you to see that. With all the examples and proof that the government is bloated, how can you WANT to get the government involved in your health? How do you think the government is going to NOT be as slow, inefficient, expensive and careless with your health care as it is with everything else?

Someone's lacking common sense...

In another astounding discovery, it seems that someone's had the audacity to link autism to... vaccinations? You better believe it. I linked to the Google News aggregation, so all you multi-source fanatics don't have to do any work. This is a shocker, I tell you... A shocker! Wait, no, I lied... This is exactly what I've thought for quite some time. How many of these freaky odd "uncurable" disorders are caused by mankind's futile attempts to prevent other diseases? I have a hard time believing that shooting dead virus juice into your body is in any way, shape, or form, good for you. Sure, it seems to work for the immediate purpose (except the flu shots... You know, my grandparents would religiously get their flu vaccinations whenever the news told them to, and they would get sick just as much as we would), but what about the problems down the line that nobody's going to attribute to a vaccination when you were 5 years old? (Whether because they don't have the clues to attribute it to that, or they're being paid to administer them, so they're not going to speak out against their income.)

And before you go off on some "oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about" charade, let me inform you that I was the lucky recipient of a disease called HSP, or... Uh. Let me paste it: Henoch-Schönlein Purpura. Do you know how it's caused? Well, a few sites claim that nobody knows how it occurs, but a few sites, such as oxfordjournals.org, familydoctor.org, nih.org, and health-doctor.org say it's caused by... Can you guess? That's right, vaccinations! Surprisingly (not), Wikipedia has no section on the causes of HSP, so don't even both looking there for confirmation or rejection. I had the standard sets of vaccinations before kindergarten, as well as a lucky shot in the leg that had me limping for weeks (when you remember something like that, you know it was bad), and then... oh... 5 to 6 years later, I mysteriously contracted HSP and I was sick for a whole year, man, and eventually landed myself in the hospital because some trashy doctor in Tipton, Indiana decided I had "strep throat in the blood" and overdosed me on Penicillin for weeks before we finally went to another doctor who immediately said "uhm, you need to go see this specialist right now and stop taking that useless Penicillin."

Needless to say, nobody in my family since this escapade have had vaccinations, and we're doing just peachy! No funky sickness, no HSP or autism... We all had a case of chicken pox, but it wasn't so bad, and we got to sit around and watch TV all week. Vaccinations? Totally not worth it, and I can vouch for it with personal experience.