Observing in August
I have not put together one of these observation style blogs in a while. Had a couple of things that just screamed a short mention to me a little bit ago and so here are a few of them. I am all over the board with this list of observations, so without a theme I am going to hit dates in your blogs to have the tea-party been hi-jacked, and what is a libertarian? Hopefully all the varied topics will make for a good read. Addendum: After writing, most of this went in a political direction – enjoy!
- Removing Dates from your Blog Post – I read that recently, on of all places a pretty good location for finding some good pointers for new and innovative things to do for your WordPress blog. The idea is based on the fact that two similar articles with all else equal in the big search engines will show an older dated entry after a newer dated entry. This article described how to remove dates from all parts of the blog entry for those ‘timeless’ articles so Google and similar would index them higher. My personal opinion on this is not something for kind readers to see, but suffice to say that I am appalled at such a suggestion. First, blog is short for web log, which originated from the idea of keeping a dated log or journal of activities and writing about such. Second, to change the date to improve your SEO is a disservice to the folks actually trying to find relative information. Very little has an infinite shelf life and does not become stale of even clearly out of date with the passage of time. Most commenters agreed, though one suggested possibly movies. But think about the opinion of a movie written twenty years ago compared to the same movie being reviewed today.
- Tea-Party – The tea-party has apparently been completely been taken over by the most extreme right-wing group of the republic party. I thought at one point they were completely against both excessive taxation and extreme government controls. However, as it has become a more defined party it is clearly more the party of no taxation and yet have the government regulate most everything, especially any conduct that some of the tea-party movement might possibly find offensive in any way. It really is a shame, as at one point, being one who is very much about small government and minimum taxation, I thought I might be interested in the tea party.
- Libertarians and the Tea-Party – First, there is clearly no denying the point I made above about the tea-party having drifted much more toward the extreme right of everything else. The thing I am not getting at this point is the commonly misused label of Libertarian by several members of the Tea-Party. Maybe they need to go back and read a few definitions. First of all, is the fact that libertarians believe in minimum government, and subsequently small taxes as much if not more than anyone else. However, they believe that because they strongly believe the individual should be in control of his or her own life. That no one, including a government should be telling them or anyone else how to live. Does anyone else see any problem with this? It is the same kind of thing that I learned conservative was the conservative application of government – but that certainly has changed in a major way hasn’t? Makes me want to go to with computer science definitions of the words, it either is X, or is not X – there is no gray area and certainly no way to redefine things to suit your purposes!
- Daily Show – I am sure I have mentioned tis before, but just to make sure, in regards to national news these days, there is hardly anyone is more interesting to watch that John Stewart on the Daily Show. I will not go so far to say he does not have slight leanings in one direction, politically speaking. I will however point out, that he is a LOT more balanced then a one or two other networks out there in their reporting of things. I do find his constant catching folks in circular logic just gut busting funny on occasion – and they just keep giving him ammo. And hey, he manages to make his points without ever having to say, “Do not believe what they are telling you, they want you to think this and I am telling you to think that instead.” Clearly that comes from somewhere but I can not place my finger on it.
