Topic: Rants

New toy and a shocking discovery

By Bill Larson | November 27, 2006 |

On black Friday, like many other Clarksvillians, I was out and about very early. At exactly 5am I was pulling into the filled to capacity parking lot in front of Best Buy. I was there to check out some of the holiday sales.

I found a nice camera in my low price range. A Panasonic Lumix model DMC-LZ3 for $149.00. I saved roughly $30.00 on the camera which by it’s self wouldn’t have encourage me to buy that day. But Best Buy also had the SD memory cards on sale. I was able to find a 2 gig memory card for the camera for only $29, a savings of $50.00 or more. Not wanting to endure the huge line I returned the camera with plans to return in the afternoon to pick it up. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Issues, News | No Comments

Charter sucks redux

By Bill Larson | November 21, 2006 |

I apologize for the lack of updates to the site by me for the last 4 days. You see my cable service was down yet again. This time, it went down sometime very early Friday morning. Figuring it might be a Clarksville-wide issue, I waited until Friday evening before calling Charter on the off chance that the problem which would resolve it’s self.

I called, navigated the myriad options available with Charter’s automated phone system and finally reached a real person. I read the support agent my signals and was told yes, I had a problem, and that they would have to dispatch a technician to my house. But oh so sorry, the first available appointment was Tuesday, November 21st between 8am and 12pm. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Issues, Opinion | 1 Comment »

TN Amendment 1: Protecting the “Sanctity of Marriage?”

By Michael Covington | October 6, 2006 |

Many supporters of TN Amendment 1 will tell you that it upholds the “traditional marriage.” In fact, it allows for a non-traditional marriage in one set of circumstances. Up until 1967, couples of different races were not allowed to marry in sixteen different states (that’s 32% of the country). So at that time, that would have been considered a non-traditional marriage.

Continuing with this logic, if we don’t want homosexuals to upset traditional marriage, shouldn’t we also prevent couples of different races from marrying too? That’s not very traditional, when you consider that from 1776 until then, it wasn’t legal for those couples to marry. Personally, I would consider 191 years more of a tradition than 39 years. So, why is there not an initiative to protect the “sanctity of marriage” from the harms that interracial marriage can do to it? The answer is that to not allow those couples to marry is simply discrimination. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Issues, Politics, Spirituality | No Comments

What’s next? Where will the discrimination end?

By Michael Covington | September 19, 2006 |

My life is not that different than yours. I get up (usually quite some time after the alarm has gone off); grab a quick shower and a bite to eat before dashing off to work or school (usually unbelievably late). I work in customer service for a major cell phone corporation as an extension of the management team and take escalations from customers all day.

Overall, I enjoy my job. I come home, eat dinner, watch my DVR recorded TV shows (The West Wing, The Simpsons, and Eureka), read a chapter or two from a book, and fall asleep until the next day. I truly hope that my “gay lifestyle” is not offending anyone reading this quite yet. I have a townhouse near the hospital, a loving partner (Whom I don’t see enough of as I’d like.), and a kitchen table that has more paperwork than the IRS director’s desk. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Issues, Politics | No Comments

Non-debates get us no where

By Blayne Clements | August 14, 2006 |

VS

According to Kathleen Parker (August 14), having a blog and expressing a strong political opinion is akin to “Stalinist tactics”. Such words would not apply to any right winger editorialist like herself of course, but only to those such as the “operative” Michael Moore.

Parker describes a recent blog by Moore as a “manifesto…straight out of Stalin’s playbook”. The blog merely states his strong opinion that the next democrat presidential candidate be anti-war. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Opinion | No Comments

High oil and gas prices, a sign of market manipulation?

By Bill Larson | July 26, 2006 |

$55,000 per minute or $7.27 billion. That what the profits for oil giant BP in their second quarter breaks down to. Profits for BP are up over 30% from last year, a record high for them in any single quarter.

In Kuwait, government financial assets have reached $166 billion, mostly due to the their record oil profits. So, they have issued plans to give each citizen of the country a gift, of approximately $690 US dollars each. Kuwait has had a surplus for each of the past seven fiscal years of more than 50 billion dollars a year. They are also headed for record revenues for this year as well. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Business, Opinion, Politics | No Comments

Again Deroy doesn’t give all the ‘facts’

By Blayne Clements | July 16, 2006 |

For the second week in a row, Deroy Murdock’s spin, otherwise known as a republican talking points, has been published in the local paper with absolutely no opposing view given. In the old days, I just had Cal Thomas to complain about, but at least Molly Ivins was published to counter balance the neo-con Op-ed. But now each week, we, the readers, are blessed with the great unoriginal insight of Deroy Murdock.

This week, Deroy gives the readers certain facts of WMD’s found in Iraq and the subsequent lack of coverage by the “liberal press”. Deroy is out to convince us that over 500 ‘lethal’ WMD’s have been found. These lethal, dangerous weapons were built in 1989, and have been buried for over a decade. Deroy and the newspaper waste 1/5 of the Op-ed page rehashing Peter Hoekstra’s (R-Mich) and Rick Santorum (R-Mich) parading a misleading report of found WMD’s. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Opinion, Politics | 1 Comment »

Letter to Editor about recent Op-Ed on Estate Tax

By Blayne Clements | July 10, 2006 |

Letter to the Leaf Chronicle sent Sunday July 9, 2006:

In “Estate Tax Hurts Black Americans” (Leaf Chronicle July 9), Mr. Deroy Murdock quotes a study that showed that 90% of black business owners “believed” the estate tax hindered long term growth prospects. What people ‘believe’ is irrelevant in the tax code, however, it is a convenient way to spin the issue. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Politics | 3 Comments