<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blogger.com/styles/atom.css" type="text/css"?><feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:gd='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005' xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0'><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446</id><updated>2011-07-28T09:27:48.181-04:00</updated><category term='Philosophy'/><category term='Reality'/><category term='libertarian podcast'/><category term='Stickers'/><category term='libertarian'/><category term='libertarian podcasts'/><category term='Government/Free Market'/><category term='Elections'/><category term='Podcast'/><category term='Government'/><title type='text'>Cody O'Connor</title><subtitle type='html'>Libertarian Text at its Best!</subtitle><link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default?max-results=100'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/'/><link rel='hub' href='http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><generator version='7.00' uri='http://www.blogger.com'>Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>37</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>100</openSearch:itemsPerPage><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-718264616456422500</id><published>2007-09-15T14:29:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2007-09-15T21:39:14.827-04:00</updated><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Philosophy'/><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Government'/><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Elections'/><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Stickers'/><title type='text'>Stick it to the Man</title><content type='html'>&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/120/291582376_3aee254234.jpg?v=0"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/120/291582376_3aee254234.jpg?v=0" alt="" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;There's nothing more annoying than looking at some pompous jerk who proudly displays his "I voted" sticker in which he sports. He walks around with a confidence that he just did something that immediately resulted in lives being saved.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every thing's fine and dandy until someone approaches this man who isn't wearing this sticker. The second Mr. didn't-vote expresses an opinion of his own, something that he deeply believes in, Mr. sticker gets all uppity and arrogant and snidely remarks "If you didn't vote you have no right to say anything."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then from out of the blue, Cody O'Connor comes along to save the day.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;First I'd like to remark in all the rage I can muster, eff you! I can talk as much and as long and as loud as I damn well please as long as I have larynx to produce words, and no whiny douche like you is going to stop it. Now listen very carefully as I explain to you a few simple concepts you were never taught. You don't have to be part of the system to change it!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe this notion has yet to cross peoples minds, but voting is a very poor way to make change. First of all, most people are too dumb to vote for anyone who doesn't have a commercial without a catchy jingle or slogan, so chances are some simpleton negated your vote. So go ahead, vote all you want, but don't expect democracy to save the planet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second, I know politicians have nice smiles and look very friendly, and say really cool things like 'create a new America' 'vote for change' and 'save the whales' and all of that nice garbage. But guess what? They're just trying to get elected, moron! 99% of the time they will pull all kinds of lofty things out of their ass, but when elected will simply make decisions based on what will make them rich. If you think the government plans on fixing the government, I'd like to see your car breakdown and watch you wait for your car to fix itself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Having an "I voted" sticker definitely won't get you out of that mess.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sure, once in a while you get someone like Ron Paul who actually could decrease the size of the government from the inside, and voting for him is great, but dammit, stop telling me that voting is the only check and balance on the power of government!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But they keep bitching. "You have no right to anything. If you have all of these ideas, then you should run for public office!"&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Screw that! Did you ever ask me if I wanted to be a bureaucrat? Sorry, but personally I couldn't live with myself knowing that my paycheck came from other people's pockets. But since I'd rather spend my life in the private sector, you don't think I'm allowed an opinion? The right for people to petition their government? Out the door. Now apparently you can only have an opinion about the government if you're part of the government. You can only complain about the system if you're part of the system.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well I have morals and principals that you don't have about conforming to the system. So no, I don't think I will be a part of it, because I think it's wrong. But you aren't going to shut me up because of that, because believe it or not, me and many other people can make a difference without playing your little government game.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There's mainly two checks on government power that people seem to miss. The first is civil disobedience. Politicians love power, but their power is derived from consent of the people, and if you refuse consent, then they lose power. Let them legislate all they want but when masses of people ignore their silly little laws, then they'll start to realize how powerless they could really become.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;60% of Americans don't pay income taxes. Why aren't 60% of Americans in prison? Answer, because the government doesn't have the resources to imprison 60% of Americans. Why don't they have the resources? Because 60% of Americans don't pay income taxes! It all comes full circle. If you don't give them money, they won't be able to afford a gun to oppress you with.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sounds a lot more effective than voting, which essentially is just &lt;span style="font-style: italic;"&gt;asking&lt;/span&gt; your government to listen to you, not obligating them to. Hold tax money above their head however, and they're all ears.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second, someone needs to watch the watchers. Every time you hear of some scandal breaking out, you didn't hear it because the other party found out about it. Trust me, they're too busy receiving bribes themselves to say anything about other politicians doing it. You heard it because the media told you. The media collectively keeps watch on the government and immediately informs the public when it's not doing a good job. To avoid social ostracism from everybody, because everybody consumes media, they are forced to act accordingly. Because if they don't, then the civil disobedience really begins to kick in.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Constitution as you know, was a document to make sure the government didn't become too powerful. There's a reason why freedom of speech was the first amendment. It's the most effective way of keeping your government in line. A right to vote isn't even in the Constitution. I kid you not.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That is why I have no time for people telling me I can't speak simply because I didn't vote. Me speaking is making a much bigger difference than your stupid little vote. And when you tell me to shut up, you're only allowing for our country to continue on the wrong path.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get off your high horse so you can look at me in the eyes. Let me tell you that I do a lot for us as a nation. I write, I podcast, I tell people what's wrong with our government, I go to protests, and yes, I do engage in civil disobedience. I do a lot for us. And you? Oh, yeah, you voted. That's just wonderful. You did nothing, you've made no difference. Maybe I should be the one telling you not to speak, because by following the system you're doing a great job at making things worse.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The only thing that an "I voted" sticker is good for is a bad wax job.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-718264616456422500?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/718264616456422500/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=718264616456422500&amp;isPopup=true' title='6 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/718264616456422500'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/718264616456422500'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/09/shock-to-system.html' title='Stick it to the Man'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-7331509110977928288</id><published>2007-04-13T15:15:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2007-08-07T11:36:46.062-04:00</updated><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Podcast'/><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='libertarian'/><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='libertarian podcasts'/><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='libertarian podcast'/><title type='text'>Libertarian Talk at it's Best! A libertarian podcast.</title><content type='html'>Sick of resorting to crapcasts for your libertarian alternative to the left/right media? &lt;a href="http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com/"&gt;The Cody O’Connor Show’s &lt;/a&gt;got you covered. Prepare yourself for the most fast-paced, cutting-edge libertarian podcast on the net! With a perfect blend of righteous anger and comedic wit, you will be both informed and entertained. Be sure to get involved by shooting your e-mails to &lt;a href="mailto:codyoconnorshow@yahoo.com"&gt;codyoconnorshow@yahoo.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How does &lt;a href="http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com/"&gt;The Cody O'Connor Show&lt;/a&gt; beat out other libertarian podcasts and internet radio shows? For one thing, these guys sound like the belong behind a microphone. Other hosts just don't have the personality. They all sound monotonous, and lethargic. We're different. We are peppy, confident, and happy to be here. The show covers the politics, but we're also funny and entertaining, because that's important in a radio show too.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And we're here more often too. Most podcasts will give you a half hour a week, or less. &lt;a href="http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com/"&gt;The Cody O'Connor Show&lt;/a&gt; does an hour and a half LIVE every Wednesday and Sunday night from 7-9 PM EST. To listen live, go to http://myspace.com/codyoconnorshow and find the link to our SHOUTcast server there.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The production quality is professional. No crappy mics, annoying ambiance, horrible leveling, or low quality bit rates. The show sounds as professional as the hosts.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So what are you waiting for? Go &lt;a href="http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; where you can stream, download, and subscribe to the best libertarian podcast on the internet!&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-7331509110977928288?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/7331509110977928288/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=7331509110977928288&amp;isPopup=true' title='15 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/7331509110977928288'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/7331509110977928288'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/04/libertarian-talk-at-its-best.html' title='Libertarian Talk at it&apos;s Best! A libertarian podcast.'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>15</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-2643951621464860826</id><published>2007-03-26T14:40:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2007-08-26T16:38:44.326-04:00</updated><title type='text'>The Cody O'Connor Show Studio</title><content type='html'>&lt;a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://a477.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/115/l_ca71c64ecc7c5b2b42b67d9ab36b482c.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://a477.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/115/l_ca71c64ecc7c5b2b42b67d9ab36b482c.jpg" alt="" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-2643951621464860826?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/2643951621464860826/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=2643951621464860826&amp;isPopup=true' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/2643951621464860826'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/2643951621464860826'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/03/cody-oconnor-show-studio.html' title='The Cody O&apos;Connor Show Studio'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-1974138656258863646</id><published>2007-03-17T19:27:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2007-03-19T06:16:23.687-04:00</updated><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Reality'/><title type='text'>Pretty Words = Pretty Wrong</title><content type='html'>Whether they know it or not, the left has a tendency of using "pretty words" to describe their positions. Their language can be deceptive, and sometimes make outright lies to convince people to support their beliefs. By using language as a mask, they have successfully managed to make their Big Government and Socialist agendas seem reasonable. I'm gonna try to go through all of them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let's start off with taxes. Ask a Liberal what taxes are and what will they say? "It's when the government asks people to give their fair share to society."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The first lie is that the government is asking, and you are giving, and the entire process is voluntary. That's not the case. Try not paying your taxes, what happens? Maybe you'll only get fined, but go on, keep avoiding taxes. It may take time, but eventually you'll see the gun in the room. At the end of the day, you either pay your taxes, or you spend time in the pokey.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What are taxes really? Theft, stealing, mugging, looting, need I go on? How can you compare taxes to anything other than being mugged? Some guy sticks a gun in your face and says "give me money or else," and it's considered stealing, but when the IRS sticks a gun in your face and says "give me your money or else," it's called taxes?! Give me a break!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But the left will always jump to say that you benefit from taxation. My first reaction, so what? If a mugger takes your money and buys you a Slurpee it's no longer stealing? And what if he got you a blueberry Slurpee, and you wanted a strawberry Slurpee? Shouldn't you have been left to decide what you wanted to get with your money? But worst of all, what if he took your money and got someone else a Slurpee?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Are you seeing the benefits here? I'm not. It seems to me that the government is taxing you because they think you can't be responsible with your money. No, if you want to buy a product or service, then you should choose to do so on your own account. Why does government think they have the right to do so for you? Do you even trust them with your money? I don't. They'll either get you an inefficient service, or an inefficient service for someone else entirely. Again, where are the benefits? How do I benefit from having half of the money I make taken from me? Don't you think if everyone was taxed less, we'd be better off?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Think about how much better things would be if people had more money. Companies could sell products for less, up their wages and hire more people. That means people will have more money, be able to afford the products or services they want and overall live a better life.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh, and isn't having more jobs a better solution to poverty than welfare? I should think so.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Back to that quote though from the beginning though.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The second myth is that you somehow owe something to society; some kind of a debt, and you must contribute your end. This insinuates that you didn't actually earn the money you have. You were just fortunate, or lucky (the liberal words for hardworking and successful). Isn't that insulting? You work, and work, and work, and as soon as you reap the benefits of it, the government thinks it's fair to take that from you. No, there is nothing fair about taking money from someone who worked for it, to give to someone who didn't. They didn't deserve that money. There's nothing fair about it. It's unfair.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Its punishing success, and rewarding failure. What do you think this does to people's drive to better their lives? You think they want to work hard now? Nah, they'll take the free ride. Who wouldn't take free money? Which is exactly what welfare is by the way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every time the government steals from you, they put some fancy smanchy word in front of it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When you buy land, it's supposed to be yours right? Well, when the government makes you pay money to live there, or they seize the property, what do you call it? I call it renting property from the government. They call it property tax.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When you work and a portion of your salary goes to the government, what do you call that? I call it slavery. They call it the income tax.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When you die and 80 percent of your wealth goes to the government, what do you call that? I call it grave robbing. They call it the estate tax.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why all of these taxes? Their answers are again pretty words to describe something that is very ugly. They say it is "pooling your resources to provide for the common good. It's cooperation over competition."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you bug them enough about it, they'll admit that it's a Collectivist mindset, and if you didn't already know, Collectivist is the pretty word for Communist.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I apologize for the pun in advance, but "pooling your resources" means the fruits of every one’s labor are going into one big basket. Johnny Appleseed put in more fruits because he spent more time picking them, but everyone gets to take out the same amount. Do you think Johnny still has an incentive to pick so many fruits? No matter how many he picks, he still gets the same. Now, when everyone realizes this, what happens? No apples are picked, and everyone goes hungry because of this Communist mindset.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The fact is that Capitalism is what's best for the so-called common good, because more people are better off. Cooperation is just an excuse to place your burden on society, and when everyone does this, nothing gets done.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But the madness doesn't end here, I've got plenty more pretty words for you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When the left calls for the nationalization of a service, or support an existing nationalized service, do you think they use the word "nationalize" on you? Bah, why do that when we've got pretty words, right? Public, free, universal, you've heard all of these before.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Public education is really government-run education. Universal health care is nationalized medicine. Public property is government owned property. Not so pretty any more, huh?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And stop telling me that these government services are free. They steal from you to pay for it. Once you get that through, then you may have opened your mind up to a free market solution, but the issue of efficiency is the final nail in the Socialist coffin.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Contrary to popular belief, in competition people win. Companies compete for your money. How do you become the company that gets to sell the product? By producing a product that is of good quality and low price. In competition, the consumer always wins, plus, the company that loses isn't necessarily out of the game (unless they really suck). Now they have an incentive to work harder to please the consumer.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When the government owns industries, things don't work this way. The government is the one and only option, it is the monopoly. It doesn't have to compete for your money; in fact they force you to buy their product. Do you think the government has a motivation to grow if people will always buy their product? Of course not. This is why government bureaucrats get lazy. Their job is secure, they don't have their assess on the line like private workers do. They can expect their paycheck no matter what, so why work? What's the point? You're always going to get that paycheck. This is the reason why the nationalization of industries reeks in inefficiency.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ah, but the left will go even further and say you have a right to these so called free services. Umm, no. You have the rights to life, liberty, and property. You don't have the right to free housing, food, and medicine. Why? Because these liberties are at someone else's expense. Someone else is paying for that free sandwich you hold in your hands, and my guess is that they didn't choose to do so voluntarily.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The intentions for helping the poor are great, don't get me wrong, but this is not what helps the poor. Again, if people are taxed less for this free money, companies could afford to open new jobs and hire more people. Now the poor have a way of escaping poverty. Living off the government just keeps them alive; it doesn't throw them into the middle class or something because they're not working.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Last but not least is their use of the word Democracy, which is mob rule. Hey, power to the people sounds great, but what powers are you talking about? They believe the majority can enforce any policy, no matter how wrong it is. They believe the majority has the right to vote for laws that restrict your natural rights to life, liberty, and property.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is why we have a Constitution, and this is why we should have a stronger Constitution. The people should never have the right to vote away your freedom. Remember, what's popular isn't always what's right. Think about it this way, if we were a Democracy during the Civil War we'd still have slaves. Just because slavery was popular, doesn't mean it was right.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So the next time you talk to your Liberal buddy, make sure you listen to the language he uses, and tell him what the reality is of what he's saying. Sure, accuse him of using pretty words, and he'll accuse you of using ugly words. But here's the thing, you're looking at reality, and reality is pretty ugly.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-1974138656258863646?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/1974138656258863646/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=1974138656258863646&amp;isPopup=true' title='4 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/1974138656258863646'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/1974138656258863646'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/03/pretty-words-pretty-wrong.html' title='Pretty Words = Pretty Wrong'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>4</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-3767664182245514050</id><published>2007-03-10T12:46:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-03-10T19:55:13.147-05:00</updated><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Government/Free Market'/><title type='text'>Involuntary Compassion</title><content type='html'>Society. It's you, it's me, it's everyone. And all people have a different perception on how the people in their society behave. Some people say that life is nasty, brutish, and short if we don't surrender ourselves to the leviathan called the government. Others believe that people are generally good, and they will contribute to society if given the chance. I happen to agree with the latter. Generally, people are compassionate.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every day in life we hear people say. "Oh, the pollution! Oh, the poverty! It must be stopped!"&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Have you ever met a single person who likes pollution or poverty? No, people care! They want to see the problems in our society be fixed. But there's one question that must be asked. How? How do we fix these problems?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Well, there's a government solution, and then there's a free market solution. So, which one works? And which one is unnecessary?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It's unequivocally clear that it's the government solution that is unnecessary. Why? Because people don't need to be forced to care. They will choose to care.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now, I already have a moral problem with the government stealing, ahem, taxing you for services that can be handled by the free market. But instead of philosophy, let's look at this in a pragmatist manner.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why would one propose the government tax you to help people in bad situations? It's quite simple, really. They think you're a slime ball! They think you don't care about the sick, or the poor! They think you wouldn't donate a cent to save your mother's life! Not to mention they actually think the government is efficient compared to the free market.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This notion is wrong, though. Remember the hurricane Katrina aftermath? While the Statist Liberals were too busy defending Ray Nagin, they missed out on a few important lessons. One, people care. Voluntary donations for hurricane victims were endless. Two, the free market is more efficient than the government. Which was more helpful? FEMA, Nagin, and Bush? Or the Red Cross and Salvation Army?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And it's not like people only give during a national crisis, however. People decide to give every day. You could argue that people aren't giving enough, but why could that be? A lack of compassion? On the contrary, people aren't more charitable because about half of their income is taken by the government in one way or another. Some people can't afford to donate if they're already being forced to.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But if you're not seeing a difference between donation and taxation, then you're forgetting the issue of efficiency. Private organizations have to persuade you to become a customer. The government forces you to be a customer. Because of this, the government doesn't have to compete and is therefore less efficient.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, why is it unnecessary to enforce this coercive compassion? Because if given the chance, people will choose to be charitable. People care.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why steal if people are willing to give?&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-3767664182245514050?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/3767664182245514050/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=3767664182245514050&amp;isPopup=true' title='3 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/3767664182245514050'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/3767664182245514050'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/03/involuntary-compassion.html' title='Involuntary Compassion'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-7595167383586316175</id><published>2007-03-04T20:47:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-03-04T20:49:31.914-05:00</updated><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Podcast'/><title type='text'>Hey</title><content type='html'>I should probably tell you that I'm back now. I've been back for a while, but the blog has been neglected. Ah, oh well, go check out the podcast. &lt;a href="http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com"&gt;http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-7595167383586316175?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/7595167383586316175/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=7595167383586316175&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/7595167383586316175'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/7595167383586316175'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/03/hey.html' title='Hey'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-8434552428167680642</id><published>2007-02-14T19:01:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-02-14T19:11:59.911-05:00</updated><category scheme='http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#' term='Podcast'/><title type='text'>Heads Up</title><content type='html'>Due to an unfortunate blizzard, I won't be able to update my podcast for about two weeks. What was going to happen is I was going to do a three hour show and intersperse the hours throughout the week while I go on a cruise. Unfortunately, there is a blizzard right now and I'm leaving tomorrow and there's no sign of the snow letting up before then so Robby and Mike wouldn't be able to make it here. I give you my deepest apologies for the inconvenience, but I assure you we'll be back on February 28. Go listen to the Liberators while you wait for us to return.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh, and if you haven't yet, scroll down and read my new column.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-8434552428167680642?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/8434552428167680642/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=8434552428167680642&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/8434552428167680642'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/8434552428167680642'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/02/heads-up.html' title='Heads Up'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-117096132848204028</id><published>2007-02-08T12:12:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-02-10T16:44:28.085-05:00</updated><title type='text'>That Pesky Little Document Called the Constitution</title><content type='html'>Isn't it a sad day when the Constitution of the United States is little more than scrap paper to the Nanny-State Left and the Neocon Right? I should think so, but unfortunately a good deal of the Democrat and Republican water carriers of America think they're upholding a good thing, and the thing I speak of certainly isn't the Constitution.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every time the bureaucrats pass a bill that restricts our rights to life, liberty, or property, the water carriers jump to make this point: "We're not diminishing the Constitution, we're upholding Democracy. If the people vote for the representatives and the representatives vote on a bill, that bill cannot be subject to anything"&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;They say this like it was what the Founding Fathers wanted, when the truth couldn't be farther away. The Founders knew there is a problem with Democracy, and it's that popular opinion isn't always right, or moral. No matter how much support it gets, there is no justification for a bill that infringes on one's natural rights.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is why we have a Constitution, and one that is not living and breathing, but set in stone as the supreme law of the land. It exists to prevent Democracy from killing itself a la Fascism.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now, people voting for representatives and representatives voting for bills is a great system that our country runs on, but it can only be effective if all proposed bills are in accordance to the Constitution. Because the Constitution is the only document holding this country back from a bleak future where freedom and liberty are absent.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The most unfortunate thing is that the Constitution isn't holding bureaucrats back from destroying your freedom anymore, and most of the people of our country are too brainwashed by the RNC and DNC party lines to care.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This country is not and should not be a land of Democracy, but a land of liberty. It must be understood that you are meant to have many freedoms, but one of them is not the freedom to pass laws that restrict the freedoms of others, no matter what the majority consensus is.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Would you party hacks find it justified if the bureaucrats voted for no separation of powers, or no presidential term limits just because the majority think it's okay?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And though these examples are clearly rhetorical hyperboles, it is still safe to say that politicians are passing bills that are clearly unconstitutional.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For downloading a $1 song illegally, you can get a $750 fine. Sounds like excessive punishment to me, which is against the eight amendment.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Senator McCain wants to pass a bill that fines people $300,000 to people who don't snitch out child pornographers. Not only is that an excessive fine, but it is also coercion and involuntary servitude, which is against the thirteenth amendment.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What happened to the right to bear arms in California?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How about those warrant-less wiretaps by the NSA. That undoubtedly breaks the fourth.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Are these laws justified just because the majority supports them? Of course not. And I must add that this is only scratching the surface of a mountain of unconstitutional laws.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We're living in a world where liberty is no longer important to people. And I don't care if "&lt;em&gt;the majority&lt;/em&gt;" is against me on this one, because guess what? That doesn't make them right.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-117096132848204028?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/117096132848204028/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=117096132848204028&amp;isPopup=true' title='35 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/117096132848204028'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/117096132848204028'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/02/that-pesky-little-document-called.html' title='That Pesky Little Document Called the Constitution'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>35</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116955325506365425</id><published>2007-01-23T06:52:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-01-23T06:54:15.096-05:00</updated><title type='text'>1-22-07</title><content type='html'>We have a new podcast up. Make sure you subscribe to it on iTunes, you can find the link for that at &lt;a href="http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com"&gt;codyoconnor.podhoster.com&lt;/a&gt;. By subscribing, more people will be able to find the show and help it grow.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116955325506365425?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116955325506365425/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116955325506365425&amp;isPopup=true' title='2 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116955325506365425'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116955325506365425'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/01/1-22-07.html' title='1-22-07'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116941560695857980</id><published>2007-01-21T16:38:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-01-21T16:40:06.980-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Podcast is up!</title><content type='html'>There are still a few bugs I have to work out but the podcast is now up on the web! You can check it out at &lt;a href="http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com/"&gt;http://codyoconnor.podhoster.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'm doing another episode tonight by the way, it should be fun.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116941560695857980?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116941560695857980/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116941560695857980&amp;isPopup=true' title='8 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116941560695857980'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116941560695857980'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/01/podcast-is-up.html' title='Podcast is up!'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>8</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116930315285617336</id><published>2007-01-20T09:20:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-01-20T09:26:18.126-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Podcast Update</title><content type='html'>Well, I've finally done my first podcast, but it'll be a little longer before you are able to hear it because I am still waiting for &lt;a href="http://libsyn.com"&gt;libsyn&lt;/a&gt; to activate my account so I can upload my mp3 files.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But once it is up you will have a lot to listen to because we do two hours a week. Wednesdays and Sundays from 7-8 PM ET is when we record new episodes. But it's not live so it will be a little while after that before it's on the web.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'll admit I probably won't get a chance to update the blog as much because so much time goes into running a good podcast, but I'll try my best.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyways, I'll tell you when it's up and I'll explain all of the ways you can hear it. I don't think you will be disappointed.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116930315285617336?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116930315285617336/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116930315285617336&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116930315285617336'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116930315285617336'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/01/podcast-update.html' title='Podcast Update'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116870908487191497</id><published>2007-01-13T11:56:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-01-15T17:28:17.096-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Here's Public Education For You</title><content type='html'>&lt;blockquote&gt;It started over a dress code violation, hardly reason enough to throw away an&lt;br /&gt;academic career and certainly no reason to be charged with a felony."I have&lt;br /&gt;goals I want to achieve and this is stopping that," says 17-year old Sabrina&lt;br /&gt;Herndon.Herndon was wearing a jacket and strapless top and was changing in the&lt;br /&gt;girl's locker room at Palm Beach Gardens High School.A teacher noticed the&lt;br /&gt;strapless top which is a dress code violation. Herndon says with the jacket&lt;br /&gt;though, the top is within dress code.A male assistant principal then entered the&lt;br /&gt;girl's locker room, and within minutes Herndon was in a choke hold."He came&lt;br /&gt;behind me and he picked me up with it and he tried to carry me out of the locker&lt;br /&gt;room and then I fell, then he came from under me and choked me a second&lt;br /&gt;time."The question of course is what prompted the assistant principal to resort&lt;br /&gt;to such tactics? Herndon says nothing and says she has witnesses to back her&lt;br /&gt;up."I did nothing wrong to where he had to use physical force. I had no weapons,&lt;br /&gt;I made no threats or anything to him."The school district also has witnesses who&lt;br /&gt;say the assistant principal was justified to use force.They're not telling us&lt;br /&gt;specifically what happened because Herndon is a juvenile. They are saying her&lt;br /&gt;behavior warranted felony battery charges.Herndon says she doesn't understand&lt;br /&gt;why she's the criminal, when she's the one who was choked."It's his word against&lt;br /&gt;mine and mine is being overlooked." Herndon is now facing expulsion and her&lt;br /&gt;college career is in question. A high price to pay for a fashion faux pas."For&lt;br /&gt;the whole thing to go out of proportion over a dress code issue is ridiculous,"&lt;br /&gt;she says. &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href="http://www.wptv.com/News/011207_StudentStrangledbyAssistantPrincipal.cfm"&gt;WPTV&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;America as a whole is on its way toward Fascism, but the public education system is already there. School staff has all the power in the world, and students have no rights at all. And it's not just this school, students will agree that every school has become like this. Staff can search your locker and even your car without a warrant, they are the judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to punishment, and what is to be punished doesn't come from a rulebook but from their gut. And now, apparently violent punishment is a-okay. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Will this assistant principal be punished for actions that were blatantly criminal? Of course not. If the government wants to walk into a place where there's supposed to be privacy and strangle a teenage girl based on a trivial rule, then that's okay because they're the government. Besides, by scapegoating this "violator" as the wrongdoer in the situation, they feel justified in what they did and the people just forget what happened.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the America me and my fellow students are living in right now. You can laugh when we say school is prison, but is it such a stretch? No. We students need to stay vocal about outrages like this, or else when we enter the real world, we'll find that it has become Fascist as well. It's only a matter of time before the government enlarges itself to this size, and every man, woman, and child is being watched by big brother. And not just watched, but oppressed. We the people must not let this happen to our country.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116870908487191497?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116870908487191497/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116870908487191497&amp;isPopup=true' title='30 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116870908487191497'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116870908487191497'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/01/heres-public-education-for-you.html' title='Here&apos;s Public Education For You'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>30</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116869831180469480</id><published>2007-01-13T09:17:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-01-13T09:25:12.063-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Don't Play With Guns...Officer</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;object height="350" width="425"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/35yQg_C-reI"&gt;&lt;param name="wmode" value="transparent"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/35yQg_C-reI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just leave it to the trained professionals to keep you safe. Serve and protect. By the way, does anyone else find it strange that this DEA officer looks like Bob Marley?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116869831180469480?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116869831180469480/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116869831180469480&amp;isPopup=true' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116869831180469480'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116869831180469480'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/01/dont-play-with-gunsofficer.html' title='Don&apos;t Play With Guns...Officer'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116809405134383134</id><published>2007-01-06T09:20:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2007-01-06T09:34:11.363-05:00</updated><title type='text'>I'm back</title><content type='html'>Okay, so I took two weeks off, I didn't plan on it though. I've literally been sick since the day after christmas and am still recovering to date. If you must know what happened, I got my wisdom teeth out the day after Christmas ("gift day") and was soar and in pain for a few days after. But with the surgery taking a hit on my immune system I was prone to about anything. At first I got a fever and then I got a terrible case of the flu. I was unable to keep any liquids down because I was throwing up every hour or two throughout the day and night. By the next morning I had thrown up around 20 times and was completely dehydrated and had to go to the hospital to get an IV. It took two bags of water to the blood stream before I felt better. From there I spent another week just recovering from that, there was a lot of sleep I had to catch up on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But I'm back, and I plan on blogging again, plus I'm still working on a podcast. Right now I'm still working on the studio. I'd post some pictures but for some reason my computer doesn't recognize my digital camera. Oh well. Right now I've got two computers set up. One to play sound clips and the other to record the show. I have a mixer to take in all of the sounds (the computers SFX, and the microphones) and send them to the other computer to be recorded. Right now I have one mic set up, and am planning on going to radioshack this weekend to get a second one. The third I will probably be borrowing. The hosts of the show will be: me, Robby Miller (if you read the comments you know him) and Mike Mehigan. So what we'll have is a Libertarian, a Conservative, and a Liberal all behind microphones debating politics and whatnot. But we haven't decided on how the tone of the show should be. Nasty debates or lighthearted and humorous discussions. Maybe both.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So that's still on it's way, and I will keep you updated on it.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116809405134383134?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116809405134383134/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116809405134383134&amp;isPopup=true' title='5 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116809405134383134'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116809405134383134'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2007/01/im-back.html' title='I&apos;m back'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>5</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116688344910882912</id><published>2006-12-23T09:14:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-12-23T09:17:29.136-05:00</updated><title type='text'>It's Christmas</title><content type='html'>Ho Ho Ho, it's Christmas...... I'm taking the week off. I'll see you all in January, and by the time I come back, my podcast should be up and running. So bye bye for now.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116688344910882912?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116688344910882912/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116688344910882912&amp;isPopup=true' title='29 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116688344910882912'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116688344910882912'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-christmas.html' title='It&apos;s Christmas'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>29</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116540637860053409</id><published>2006-12-08T06:23:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-12-19T06:27:26.543-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Government and its Place in Society</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href="http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061205/D8LQS8E80.html"&gt;--story--&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;"NEW YORK (AP) - The Board of Health voted Tuesday to make New York the nation's first city to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fats at restaurants - from the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is this? This is not the purpose of our government! The purpose of our government is to defend the people's life, liberty, and property, and to ensure that no one person does anything that impairs another person's life, liberty, and property. They are not there to tell us what we can and cannot eat!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is just nonsense. Our government has become overly corrupt, overly bloated, and overly powerful. For decades, the government has been making laws on what the people can't do. But there hasn't been any laws on what the government can't do since the Constitution days. What happened to the concerns our founding fathers had over a government with too much power? Even the Federalists would be frowning at how things are going on nowadays. This is not a government of the people, by the people, and for the people anymore! It's a government of the government, by the government, and for the government. It's obvious that they think they are smarter than us, and therefore justified in controlling our lives, even up to what we eat. It is not right that the government has so much more power than the people. The power to take away whatever rights from the people that they want, and give whatever rights to themselves that they want.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you didn't know, the Bill of Rights is not a document that gives rights to people, but restricts the rights of the government. So if the Constitution is so successful because of that, then perhaps we should see more laws being made that restrict the rights of the government like the Constitution does. We do not need to restrict the rights of the people beyond crimes such as theft and murder. What the government is doing is fabricating crimes. They are prosecuting those who need not be prosecuted, and therefore, not being able to focus on the real criminals! The government needs to uphold their job. They need to prosecute those who are violating the liberties of other people, not pursue victimless crimes. But also, they must look to themselves and ask if what they themselves are doing is right.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Maybe it's the government that is violating the people's life, liberty, and property. And they use their position of power to evade any sort of accountability for their actions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here's a story to help illustrate that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.local6.com/news/10485255/detail.html"&gt;--story--&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;"Deputy Dresses As Elf To Catch Speeders&lt;br /&gt;150 Drivers Ticketed In About 2 Hours"&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is just a sick example of cops just being complete a-holes and trying to hassle you instead of protect you. Think of how many people could be saved by the police if they weren't spending so much time making your life miserable? The fact is, the police are failing in their task of protecting the people because they are too busy with things like the "War on Drugs" and other victimless crimes. But there is no accountability for a failure to do what we the people have hired the government to do.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And what can the people do about it? What? Not too much. It is because the people have been looked at as the problem in society, and the government as the solution, not the other way around. Therefore, thousands of laws are made to make the people accountable for their actions, and little to none have been made to make the government accountable for their actions. If it is true that the government works for us, then why can't we the people tell the government what we need them for? And if they don't meet our expectations, fire them!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am just sick and tired of the government forgetting what it is there for. They are there to protect your rights to life, liberty, and property. Not to take those rights away.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116540637860053409?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116540637860053409/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116540637860053409&amp;isPopup=true' title='48 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116540637860053409'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116540637860053409'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/12/government-and-its-place-in-society.html' title='Government and its Place in Society'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>48</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116511907593943661</id><published>2006-12-02T22:25:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-12-02T23:15:23.086-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Global Warming Devastates The Nation</title><content type='html'>Well, it looks like Al Gore was right. Our globe is warming, and at unbearable rates. Maybe we should have listened. All we had to do was stop smoking and drive Hybrid cars, but &lt;em&gt;noooo, &lt;/em&gt;we couldn't handle that. Well look what's happened now you Ozone hating bigot.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20061201/i/r322696489.jpg?x=380&amp;y=253&amp;amp;sig=D0M8m_4FFoYObGRcWWGD5Q--" border="0" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the city of Chicago has been scorched by a blazing period of raw heat. It was so hot that buildings made of steel had just spontaneously combusted, leaving nothing but white ash.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meteorologists agree that when Chicago hit 1,525 °C, it had broken the record for the highest recorded temperature ever. Coming in a close second was the fires of Hell.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the effects of Global Warming have been seen elsewhere too recently. Although this years hurricane season has been the worst of many, what happened in New York brought it to a new level.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9ibyiDCSXJFfzsBQ5ijzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBsdmIydTZhBHNlYwNwcm9mBHZ0aWQDSTAwMV83MA--/SIG=13714ncdl/EXP=1165204290/**http%3a//www.michaelp.org/photos/rhinecliff_montreal_train/view_of_hudson_river_2.jpg" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just take a look at the devastation for yourself. It is obvious that the hurricane has brought the tides so high, that the entire New York skyline is completely submerged. The last time New York looked like this was the Paleozoic Era.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's quite obvious that these two events are just the first chapter in a long and scary book called Global Warming. The readers probably won't like the ending because the main character dies, as well as everyone else. But then again, they won't be alive to read it anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116511907593943661?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116511907593943661/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116511907593943661&amp;isPopup=true' title='38 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116511907593943661'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116511907593943661'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/12/global-warming-devastates-nation.html' title='Global Warming Devastates The Nation'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>38</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116482505178251299</id><published>2006-11-29T12:57:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-11-29T16:32:01.100-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Imagine That</title><content type='html'>I know some of the radical leftists reading this blog just can't get enough of Communism. And really, I can't see why not. It's just terrific, you know. Everybody gets along, and they are so darn peaceful. Well, the people that agree with their government on everything anyways. The Chinese government prefers to keep the peace by executing people who disagree with them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Communists hate freedom, and more specifically hate freedom of religion. There's nothing they despise more than someone who puts faith in anything other than the state. They see it as a threat that must be put to an end. Just recently, the Chinese executed 15 members of a secret church.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Is it not an outrage that there are people on this planet who are being &lt;em&gt;killed &lt;/em&gt;for doing the things that too many Americans take for granted nowadays? Something as small as being religious, or disagreeing with the government will get you killed! Dead! Hung by your frickin neck!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'm not saying it's our place to do anything, because I don't believe that. I believe that what other countries do is their problem, unless it directly effects us. If the Chinese decide to have a revolution, I am all for it. But if they don't, it's not our place to do anything. We don't have the resources to stick our nose in much more. We've got Iraq and Afghanistan under our responsibility, and we've got Iran and North Korea posing dangerous threats to us.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; of my concern however, is the radical leftists in this very country who believe Communism works. They have been brainwashed into believing a radical and deadly ideology, and with this idea on the rise in this country, imagine what could happen if these people got elected into office? You think the &lt;em&gt;Republicans&lt;/em&gt; are threatening your liberties? You haven't seen anything yet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Republicans think you're in danger of terrorists, and yes I think their policies are a little much, but Liberals think you're in danger of yourselves. They think you are a moron who if left to make a decision, will make a bad one. They are not the party of choice as people say. The only choice they give you is the one to kill your baby, or marry your horse. That's about it. They don't trust the people to run a successful economy. They don't trust you to have personal responsibility. Other than abortion and gay marraige, every personal decision is up to them and you know it. Liberals can't stand the freedom to smoke or gamble, and that's not nearly as bad a decision as gettting an abortion! And I'm Pro-Choice! Again, they think you are a moron.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You know who the real morons are though? The Liberals. I'm sorry, I know I have retained from bashing people for a long time, and there's plenty bad to say about Conservatives too, but this is just necessary. I am not going to say "why can't we be friends" when you are out there sympathizing with an ideology that is so radical, people who disagree are killed! Wake up, this is not a dream for peace. It is a nightmare. In fact, I would rather spend my life in the ninth circle of hell than live in a Communist society.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So how do I convince people that they are exploring such a dangerous idea, so our future leaders of America don't start inching our country toward Communism? I've got to show them the failure that is other Communist countries. I'm sure Karl Marx imagined Communism to be a joyous system with singing trees and rainbow skies, but every time his ideas are implemented, because they are so unrealistic, they are complete failures, and millions of people die because of it. Furthermore, if Communism were to be implemented here, the results would be the same. Complete and utter failure.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think it's time Liberals gave their Communist ideas a rest. I know for a fact that they couldn't last five minutes in a Communist country. Try having a gay parade in Cuba. Try having a protest in China. I'm sure it'll work out great. The truth is, I don't think Communism is really what Liberals want. The ideas and the economics maybe, but not the death and destruction that goes along with it. They just don't know what they're getting themselves into. Communism is not the answer to concerns over poverty, trust me! All Communism does is make people equally poor, and you all must understand that. Don't confuse regulating the free market with such an evil ideology.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But truthfully, regulating the free market doesn't fix poverty either. Free market Capitalism does a better job making the people happy than anything else. For one thing, people are motivated by greed instead of fear, which in my opinion works a lot better. Because of competition, products are of higher quality and of lower price. There of course is always a winning and loosing company, but that doesn't matter because when loosing companies are firing, winning companies are hiring. The only people who can't get jobs are lazy bums. And what's that other thing we get with Capitalism? Oh yeah, freedom.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But maybe you don't care about freedom. Maybe you don't care about liberty. If that's true, then maybe you need to buy a one way ticket out of my country so I don't have to see it collapse any time soon.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116482505178251299?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116482505178251299/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116482505178251299&amp;isPopup=true' title='36 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116482505178251299'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116482505178251299'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/11/imagine-that.html' title='Imagine That'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>36</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116447009809092588</id><published>2006-11-25T09:56:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-11-26T09:12:19.153-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Attention Deficit Disorder And You</title><content type='html'>I just cannot find a single political story to tackle right now. Seriously. The biggest thing going on is Russia giving nukes to Iran, but did anyone actually find that surprising? Did anyone gasp when they saw that story? I didn't. Sure, there are things going on, but nothing &lt;em&gt;new &lt;/em&gt;going on. Iran is still trying to blow people up, politicians are still corrupt, and Hollywood is still full of bigots. I'm sorry, but this whole Michael Richards thing is just a bland topic. Celebrities pulling outrageous things is so frequent, it's not even outrageous anymore. I really don't care about some over-the-hill comedian and what he thinks about black people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What else is there to talk about, OJ Simpson? Please. I can't stand old stories that keep clawing their way back to the front. Gee, maybe we should tell Greta and Nancy to bring back Natalie Holloway and Scott Peterson while we're at it. They're already on a roll after John Mark Karr.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I guess I could talk about the whole draft thing, however simple a topic it may be. You know as a Libertarian I believe people should be able to make their own choices instead of the government doing it for you. Do I really need to tell you that I think people should have the right to choose whether or not they want to put their life on the line?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So when you've got nothing important to talk about, and you've got a blog where you're supposed to regularly talk about something, you talk about unimportant stuff.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let's talk movies for a while. I saw Stranger Than Fiction last night. It wasn't horrible, but I had the same problem with it that I had with Man of the Year. They weren't as funny as the trailers advertised. It was quite deceptive really. With both movies, just about every single joke in them, you heard in the trailer, the rest was all very serious. But it's not that I have a problem with serious, dramatic movies. It's just that I paid five bucks to see a comedy, and that's just not what I got.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But about the movie itself, Stranger than Fiction's story is so, well, strange, it will make your head hurt faster than a large Blueberry flavored Icee. You've got this character called Harold who is a character in a novel. Everything he does is narrated by the author's voice. And supposedly everything the author writes, happens to Harold. But I can't understand for the life of me how &lt;em&gt;everything &lt;/em&gt;he does, ends up in the book. Like him responding to the narration. Like him actually talking to the author, but the author is not at the typewriter telling him what he's doing right then. Yeah, Harold is actually a real person living in the same dimension as the author. This movie is either stranger than fiction, or just a bunch of Hollywood directors on an acid trip. I wish I could tell you which it was. So is the movie worth your time? If you like laughing at Schizophrenics (and honestly, who doesn't?), you'll be able to tolerate the first half of this movie, but after that it's just a headache.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Did you hear they're making a Rocky 6? Now I'm as big a Rocky fan as you are, but how can this guy keep on fighting? He's loosing his eyesight, his brain is damaged, plus he's got to be like 60 years old now. How is he going to beat the next guy? Stabbing him with a cane? Nah. I'm sure a few montages later he could beat the Incredible Hulk up.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I still haven't seen Casino Royale yet. The piece of crap theater near me isn't playing it yet.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The PS3 madness is finally over. Weren't those good times? Waiting in line for weeks on end, spending an ungodly amount of money, and homicide. Good times indeed. Just kidding. I should hope none of my readers would be dumb enough to waste their time with Sony's new piece of garbage. Go get a 360 instead.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have a question. Do people enjoy this ADD style writing I've seemed to adopt? I kind of started it on my post-election post. I'm sorry but I just don't have the attention span to do lengthy essays all about one news story or topic anymore. I still have to once in a while to retain any credibility I have left, but I would much rather just spit out random un-researched opinions and rants.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116447009809092588?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116447009809092588/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116447009809092588&amp;isPopup=true' title='14 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116447009809092588'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116447009809092588'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/11/attention-deficit-disorder-and-you.html' title='Attention Deficit Disorder And You'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>14</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116402170180724150</id><published>2006-11-20T06:08:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-11-20T06:21:41.843-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Happy Feet Beats Bond in Box Office</title><content type='html'>"LOS ANGELES - James Bond has met his match — not a fellow spy but a tap-dancing penguin. The Warner Bros. animated penguin romp "Happy Feet" debuted with $42.3 million, grabbing an edge for the weekend's No. 1 slot over Sony's Bond adventure "Casino Royale," which opened with $40.6 million, according to studio estimates Sunday."&lt;br /&gt;-www.yahoo.com&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Huh?! Forget the fact that our newly elected Democrats already want to bring back the draft. You really start to wonder about this country when a movie about a tap-dancing penguin does better in the box office than a James Bond movie! It even beat Borat!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don't know what to think. Was this country collectively high last week? Or are people really this consciously stupid?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'm surprised no one has asked me about my announcement yet. It should be ready to start in December, but I'll tell you what it is a little beforehand.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116402170180724150?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116402170180724150/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116402170180724150&amp;isPopup=true' title='27 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116402170180724150'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116402170180724150'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/11/happy-feet-beats-bond-in-box-office.html' title='Happy Feet Beats Bond in Box Office'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>27</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116303662657173975</id><published>2006-11-08T20:04:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-11-13T17:45:39.120-05:00</updated><title type='text'>GOP Looses The House And Senate (and other political rantings)</title><content type='html'>Allow me to play the worlds smallest violin.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9gnMiNrfVJF70AALTajzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NDgyNWN0BHNlYwNwcm9m/SIG=12lhohsal/EXP=1163120363/**http%3a//joebrower.com/PHILE_PILE/PIX/FR/worlds_smallest_violin.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9gnMiNrfVJF70AALTajzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NDgyNWN0BHNlYwNwcm9m/SIG=12lhohsal/EXP=1163120363/**http%3a//joebrower.com/PHILE_PILE/PIX/FR/worlds_smallest_violin.jpg" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But seriously, what did you expect? The Republicans were just getting full of themselves. They were saying the Democrats had no plans and it would be a cold day in hell before they got elected. Well, what can I say? Saddam, bring a jacket with you. Because guess what the Republicans forgot to realize? The fact that they themselves were doing nothing productive. Just like the Democrats, it was all talk, no action. Immigration? We're still waiting. A plan for Iraq? We're still waiting. Fiscal responsibility? We're still waiting.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sure, I believe the Democrats are no better when it comes to running this country. They're just as corrupt. But the Republicans got what they had coming to them. The voters were sick of nothing getting done, or done right. And even if the Democrats are no better, at least they aren't Republicans people were thinking.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Personally, I'd like to kick both parties out. But then again, the Eco-Socialists taking charge in a power vacuum wouldn't be a step toward progress either. Let's face it. Very few good third-party candidates are out their for an alternative. And unless you've got super powers (money, charisma) like Captain Lieber-man, you don't even have a shot of getting you're name out there. So you can guess, being a Neolibertarian just plain sucks in the left/right political atmosphere of today. Why is there no room for more than two opinions?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So what are you left to do? You have to play the system until there's some kind of third-party revolution. I (My Aunt technically) voted Republican yesterday, and I'm not a Republican, or a Conservative. But nowadays, if you don't vote for the lesser of two evils, you end up with the worse of two evils.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That's the only reason why I didn't vote for the Independent. Is it not a sad world we live in? I just wish we could soon have more third-parties band together, raise money and really jump in and fight the elephants and donkeys. Even the third parties I disagree with. I just want more than two frickin choices!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So that's what's on my mind tonight. I know it's a bit pessimistic, but that's how I feel today. It's like the freaking Alien vs. Predator subtitle. Whoever wins, we lose.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh, and be sure to check back frequently, I have a big announcement coming in the following weeks. I'm sure you'll be as excited as I am...&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116303662657173975?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116303662657173975/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116303662657173975&amp;isPopup=true' title='46 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116303662657173975'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116303662657173975'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/11/gop-looses-house-and-senate-and-other.html' title='GOP Looses The House And Senate (and other political rantings)'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>46</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116273811037814627</id><published>2006-11-05T09:33:00.000-05:00</published><updated>2006-11-05T09:51:36.676-05:00</updated><title type='text'>Finally!</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href="http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13550448,00.html"&gt;--story--&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;"Angry, shaking and defiant, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death this morning by hanging for ordering the massacre of Iraqi civilians."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;About freaking time! Who would of thought it would take three years to figure out what punishment a murderous dictator deserves? But at least it's almost done now.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here's my favorite part of the story.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;"He had wanted to face a firing squad - that request was refused."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Way to put this guy in his place. You want a firing squad? Okay, we hang you. You want the chair? Nope, sorry, you get the rack. And so on. It puts a smile on my face more than McDonald's ever did.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And while we're on the topic of Iraq. I have always, and still support the war, but I hate the way it's being fought right now. And neither party has the right idea. Republicans want to stay the course, and Democrats want to cut and run. Nobody wants to build a tight border around Iraq, and split the country up into three parts, also with a secure border. We'd still have some violence after because we didn't do this earlier, but it's the best option we have I believe.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116273811037814627?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116273811037814627/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116273811037814627&amp;isPopup=true' title='19 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116273811037814627'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116273811037814627'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/11/finally.html' title='Finally!'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>19</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116195724004590634</id><published>2006-10-27T08:39:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-27T09:58:23.726-04:00</updated><title type='text'>This is Sickening</title><content type='html'>&lt;p&gt;&lt;object height="350" width="425"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/14pGY1P97L8"&gt;&lt;param name="wmode" value="transparent"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/14pGY1P97L8" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here you have an actor with a horrible disease, making an ad for stem-cell research; a science that can save his life. Then asshat Rush Limbaugh comes along and accuses him of acting, and making it seem worse to help the Democratic party! It's sickening!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Michael J. Fox is not Barbra Striesand. He's done ads for Republicans. He's got no party agenda, he only wants to be healthy, and will support whoever will help him do that. But as soon as Limbaugh here's the word Democrat he goes into attack mode.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First he says he was off his meds when he did the ad. Well, yes. But what he's trying to do is lead us to believe that as long as he's drugged up he never has any problems. That there's no need to find a cure, he's just grandstanding for the Democrats. We already knew the Bible-thumping Conservatives hate science, but to claim he's acting to make it worse because he's a Democrat is just wrong. Michael J Fox is only concerned about one issue, Stem-Cell research, and he will support any politician who is for it. In 2003 he gave $2000 to Arlen Specter, a pro stem-cell research politician, and Republican &lt;a href="http://www.newsmeat.com/celebrity_political_donations/Michael_J_Fox.php"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then he tries to make it look like the Democrats are the bad guys by saying they're exploiting him. Yet it's okay for him to flame Fox, apparently.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I just don't get it. Why are these ugly little things (which are disposed of by the millions daily anyways)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="left"&gt;&lt;a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Mouse_embryonic_stem_cells.jpg/300px-Mouse_embryonic_stem_cells.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Mouse_embryonic_stem_cells.jpg/300px-Mouse_embryonic_stem_cells.jpg" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;more important than suffering adults?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="left"&gt;Saving potential lives? Please. What good will come from having more babies living in orphanages? Is having more poor and unhappy children really a good idea? And besides, I don't think cells are going to know if we kill them. But adults with diseases will know if we save them. They're the ones with the priority, the real living people. I don't know when embryos received the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They're neither men, nor citizens of this country, so they get nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="left"&gt;Am I being too harsh on these cells? No. They're not itty bitty babies floating around. They don't have feelings. They don't feel pain. Now, it would be great if we could study stem-cells without killing the embryo. That way we could make the embryo into a baby, and save suffering adults. But if we can't, we can't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p align="left"&gt;Real people come first, not embryos. And health comes first, not Democrat and Republican bickering.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116195724004590634?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116195724004590634/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116195724004590634&amp;isPopup=true' title='24 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116195724004590634'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116195724004590634'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/this-is-sickening.html' title='This is Sickening'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>24</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116108186299389077</id><published>2006-10-17T06:33:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-17T18:30:12.933-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Imagine no John Lennon</title><content type='html'>I know I'll probably be impaled with a trident for that title, but man wouldn't things be good if he never existed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Apparently John Lennon is a sacred cow; you can't say a bad thing about him or you can expect and angry mob of &lt;strike&gt;Leninists&lt;/strike&gt; Lennonists to mow you down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The other day in History class we were playing this card game where you'd get asked a question and each student answered it in front of the class. My card read "What are the top three problems with teenagers today?"&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My response was something like, "One, the worsening relationships between teens and their parents. Two, the rise in teenage Commies. Three, Obesity."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Mistake number one. I said something bad about Communism. One girl responded almost defensively asking for proof.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I said, "How about the shirts they wear? John Lennon. Che Guevara. I'm seeing a lot of those now."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Mistake number two. I said something bad about John Lennon.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One student, angered by the comment (because John Lennon is untouchable apparently) told me John Lennon wasn't a Commie. And went on about some end to Communism in Russia that I had heard nothing about so I completely disregarded as bullcrap.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I said, "Come on, haven't you seen the lyrics for imagine? Imagine no possessions? Imagine no religion? That's Communist."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Another student ticked about my comments said, "Communism isn't bad, it's just so awesome that no one's been able to pull it off."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can't tell you how frustrating it is to make sure the class of 2008 isn't brainwashed with Marxism. And God forbid I tell the truth about John Lennon, and what he really believed in.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I don't know what this country is coming to. People in this country really think Communism can work! So I've decided to debunk Communism in just a couple of sentences in a way that can't be refuted.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;People are motivated by money, not the common good. It's part of our human nature and it cannot be changed. Without motivation no one prospers. Don't believe me? Take a look at North Korea, or Cuba. Full of starving peasants. Even North Korea's nuclear program would have been considered low-tech in the 40's. Why? No motivation. People won't strive to make things better when helping the common good as the only reward. People strive to make things better when they can get money out of it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that's the facts. The ideology is fundamentally flawed. So don't give me this BS that it's the dictators fault they couldn't make communism good. The problem starts with the theory. Karl Marx was wrong, and John Lennon was wrong. Plain and simple.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116108186299389077?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116108186299389077/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116108186299389077&amp;isPopup=true' title='73 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116108186299389077'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116108186299389077'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/imagine-no-john-lennon.html' title='Imagine no John Lennon'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>73</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116092513737535084</id><published>2006-10-15T11:00:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-15T11:13:18.910-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Kim Jong *hic* Il</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href="http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20061014/capt.sel10410141224.north_korea_koreas_dear_leaders_diet_sel104.jpg?x=380&amp;y=274&amp;amp;sig=0EmWa_Yd7vRoBwR6hRsGhA--"&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20061014/capt.sel10410141224.north_korea_koreas_dear_leaders_diet_sel104.jpg?x=380&amp;y=274&amp;amp;sig=0EmWa_Yd7vRoBwR6hRsGhA--" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Forget the UN, I think we should send over Ted Kennedy and Mel Gibson as foreign diplomats. I'm sure if they brought over a lifetime supply of alcohol, Kim Jong-Il would be too drunk to ever hit the big red button.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Plus we wouldn't see Ted Kennedy and Mel Gibson for a while. It's a win-win solution.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116092513737535084?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116092513737535084/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116092513737535084&amp;isPopup=true' title='27 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116092513737535084'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116092513737535084'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/kim-jong-hic-il.html' title='Kim Jong *hic* Il'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>27</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116069354706099245</id><published>2006-10-12T18:23:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-12T18:52:28.570-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Dow Breaks Records at Nearly 12,000</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=businessNews&amp;storyid=2006-10-12T203841Z_01_N09257945_RTRUKOC_0_US-MARKETS-STOCKS.xml&amp;amp;src=rss&amp;rpc=23"&gt;--story--&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hey guys, I have a secret for you but you have to promise you won't tell. Promise? You sure? Cross your heart and hope to die? Pinky shake? Okay, I'll tell you, but we have to keep this quiet, I'm not supposed to be saying this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:78%;"&gt;Capitalism works and Socialism doesn't! Yeah, apparantly motivating rich people to spend money helps a lot more than high taxes and welfare.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:78%;"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-size:100%;"&gt;Shhh, though. I don't want Bill Clinton to know. He might have another baby fit for being wrong. Poor guy.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116069354706099245?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116069354706099245/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116069354706099245&amp;isPopup=true' title='18 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116069354706099245'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116069354706099245'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/dow-breaks-records-at-nearly-12000.html' title='Dow Breaks Records at Nearly 12,000'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>18</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116035544804698484</id><published>2006-10-08T20:53:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-08T20:58:15.980-04:00</updated><title type='text'>I Found This Amusing</title><content type='html'>&lt;object height="350" width="425"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/a2WMmWMB8fo"&gt;&lt;param name="wmode" value="transparent"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/a2WMmWMB8fo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116035544804698484?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116035544804698484/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116035544804698484&amp;isPopup=true' title='2 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116035544804698484'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116035544804698484'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/i-found-this-amusing.html' title='I Found This Amusing'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>2</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116025871098957961</id><published>2006-10-07T17:58:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-07T18:05:10.996-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Final Word on Foley (promise)</title><content type='html'>The facts aren't clear on the Foley case. There are things we know, or think we know, and there are things we don't know. That is why I am staying neutral on this Foley scandal until the FBI investigation is over. I'm tired of commenting on rumors and speculation. Right now this is a non-story. Let's step back and let our system fix itself.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Besides, I'd much rather be talking about Halo 3 right now. Haha. New stuff tomorrow.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116025871098957961?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116025871098957961/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116025871098957961&amp;isPopup=true' title='20 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116025871098957961'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116025871098957961'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/final-word-on-foley-promise.html' title='Final Word on Foley (promise)'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>20</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116025574284908409</id><published>2006-10-07T17:06:00.001-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-07T17:15:42.850-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Links are Finally up</title><content type='html'>Yep, I have the links section finished on the sidebar. I could use a few more Libertarian and Liberal links, so if you want me to blindly advertise your webite, here's your chance. I'm also looking to join a few webrings, so if there's any ringmasters out there who are looking, just drop a comment. I'm really ready to get this site going on the advertising front. Links, webrings, and comments on other peoples blogs.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But speaking of traffic, I must say I'm quite surprised how well I've done in the first week or so. I'm already up to around 25 hits a day, and rising. My new blog has been doing quite well.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So that's just an update on that. More posts coming soon...&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116025574284908409?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116025574284908409/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116025574284908409&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116025574284908409'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116025574284908409'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/links-are-finally-up_07.html' title='Links are Finally up'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116007784325099249</id><published>2006-10-05T15:44:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-05T15:50:43.303-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Holy Crap</title><content type='html'>From the Drudge Report:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;"According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The primary source, an ally of Edmund, adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund. Both are fearful that their political careers will be affected if they are publicly brought into the matter.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The news come on the heels that Edmund has hired former Timothy McVeigh attorney, Stephen Jones.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Developing..."&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'm getting a headache. Every day something huge comes out and it turns the whole Foley story around. I'll tell you what, maybe we should all wait a few days before we discuss this Foley thing because it's clear that not all of the facts are straight yet. Any of us could go either way in a matter of days.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So who is the real lawbreaker now? The person who set this trap? It's getting quite confusing, lets sit and let things unfold.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116007784325099249?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116007784325099249/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116007784325099249&amp;isPopup=true' title='17 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116007784325099249'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116007784325099249'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/holy-crap.html' title='Holy Crap'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>17</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-116001225223828761</id><published>2006-10-04T21:17:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-04T21:40:11.643-04:00</updated><title type='text'>ABCnews Had You Fooled (Foley Update)</title><content type='html'>From the Drudge Report:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;"ABC ONLINE GLITCH LEADS TO IDENTITY OF FOLEY ACCUSER&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FEATURED IM EXCHANGE WAS WITH 18 YEAR OLD&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wed Oct 04 2006 20:32:06 ET&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A posting on ABCNEWS.COM of an unredacted instant message sessions between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page has exposed the identity of the now 21 year-old accuser.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The website PASSIONATE AMERICA detailed the startling exposure late Wednesday.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABCNEWS said in a statement: "We go to great lengths to prevent the names of alleged sex crime victims from being revealed. On Friday there was a very brief technical glitch on our site which was overridden immediately. It is possible that during that very brief interval a screen name could have been captured. Reviews of the site since then show no unredacted screen names."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;SEX CHAT WAS WITH 18 YEAR OLD&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On Tuesday ABC news released a high-impact instant message exchange between Foley and, as ABC explained, a young man "under the age of 18."&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABC headlined the story: "New Foley Instant Messages; Had Internet Sex While Awaiting House Vote"&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But upon reviewing the records, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, the young man was in fact over the age of 18 at the time of the exchange.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A network source explains, messages with the young man and disgraced former Congressman Foley took place before and after the 18th birthday.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Developing..."&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABCnews is really ticking me off. First they Leak this Foley case and have most of us under the impression that it was internet sex with an underage boy. And now, Oops, they find out the kid was in fact 18 during the chats. So that destroys all legal arguments in this story. But even worse, by accident ABCnews released the name of the kid! Now they've ruined two lives and gave us false presumptions on a story without all of the facts!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I know my last post was quite controversial, but after this, it all must make sense to you. What this website has done is just despicable.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Go back and read through my last article with this news in mind.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This &lt;em&gt;is &lt;/em&gt;an intrusion on privacy. It would be one thing if the kid was 16 and unwilling, but that's not the case. The &lt;a href="http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/BrianRoss/story?id=2509586&amp;amp;page=1"&gt;transcript&lt;/a&gt; proves that the discussion was consensual, and now we know he was 18 when he had it. So the whole thing is completely legal, and therefore none of our business.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-116001225223828761?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/116001225223828761/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=116001225223828761&amp;isPopup=true' title='6 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116001225223828761'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/116001225223828761'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/abcnews-had-you-fooled-foley-update.html' title='ABCnews Had You Fooled (Foley Update)'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>6</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-115991229874204116</id><published>2006-10-03T17:23:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-03T19:11:27.190-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Foley's Privacy Infringed</title><content type='html'>Let me start out by saying, I think mostly everyone is missing the point when it comes to this Foley scandal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Everybody is angry at Foley for what he did. They've called him this and called him that. He's a pervert, he's a weirdo, he's gay. Yada, yada yada. Probably, but that's not the point.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Others are making this a Republican and Democrat issue. Foley was bad, but Clinton was worse! Probably, but again, not the point.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The point is simply, why do we know this? Why do we know about a congressman's IM conversation?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Let's look at the facts. First, the kid is 18 and of age. Second, there was no sign of the kid objecting to anything the congressman says. Read the transcript on ABCnews.com, There's more LOLing in the conversation than there are Black Rhinoceros' in Africa. Third, I don't care what you say, discussing how you masturbate isn't "cyber sex". Therefore, I believe he did not break any internet law. Not one.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So if that's true, then why the &lt;em&gt;hell&lt;/em&gt; do we know about this private conversation? Yes, I agree he's a weirdo, yes, I agree what he did was wrong, but he broke no law. And because he broke no law, I find it disgusting that this man's personal business can just be leaked like this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Is privacy no longer important to you people?! This isn't some NSA terrorist wiretap. This is a guy having a legal and private conversation that is being intruded on. He broke no law, he posed no threat, and there was no victim. What is happening with this country?!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Of course this is a new story and not all of the details are set straight, but as I see it now someone working with him found out about this and told ABCnews. Though I could be wrong. But if that's how it happened, I don't believe it was necessary for ABCnews to cover this story, it looks like smearing and intruding to me. Instead I would like to see the congressmen who knew, sit down for a private conversation about what's going one and try and get Foley to clean up his act, step down, or just do it somewhere else. But the whole country didn't need to know, it's not our business. You must understand that Foley's personal life and his political life are two different things.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now if your response to my opinion here is that "He's just standing up for him because he's a Republican." Just shut up. Please. If you know the first thing about me you know that I believe both parties are bad. They take illegal money, smear, and successfully waste taxpayer money in attempt to keep their job. They don't care about America. They don't care if privacy and freedom is at stake. They want to be powerful, that's all.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That is why this is not political to me. I could give a rats about what happens to either party in result of this. If these were average citizens, I'd be just as outraged because unlike politicians I actually care about this country.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-115991229874204116?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/115991229874204116/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=115991229874204116&amp;isPopup=true' title='23 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115991229874204116'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115991229874204116'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/foleys-privacy-infringed.html' title='Foley&apos;s Privacy Infringed'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>23</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-115971131132441734</id><published>2006-10-01T09:26:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-10-01T10:45:20.216-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Eco-Fascism</title><content type='html'>Al Gore is just getting worse by the day. At first he was just a concerned environmentalist. You know, he wanted more hybrids and alternative energy. Surely some of the crap he spewed out of his mouth was a contributor to global warming in it self then too (steamy crap is death to the ozone layer), but it was just a dream. If he was president nowadays, it would be the law. As I put it, Eco-Fascism.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And he really is acting like a fascist, people, I'm not just mudslinging here. Lets do some comparing and contrasting.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;How does Fascism always start? By scaring the people enough so they are willing to give up their liberties for safety. If anybody is manipulating our fears, it's Al Gore. This guy thinks global warming is an eminent threat, more dangerous than any terrorist organization. He thinks the end is near and if we don't give up our liberties we'll all die soon. And it's not just about cars anymore. This guy thinks that every time you light up a stogey you're melting an iceberg. So how does he get the people to allow him to take freedoms like these away by force? By scaring the hell out of them. Propaganda anyone?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then what happens when he gets elected? He takes more power. He'll start regulating the economy, increasing the size of government, and making new laws every day. We'll all be forced to drive Clooneymobiles (see below post), and it will look like a frickin Dr. Seuss book. And every day he'll justify it all by saying it's for the environment. And do you really think he'll stop at the environment? No. What do people with power want? More power. He will always find new things to regulate or ban.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Now I realize this form of Fascism isn't based on hate, though it is based strongly on fear, which is also a great aspect of Fascism. It's simple Hobbesian theory. People give you power out of fear. And the more afraid you make the people, the more power they will grant you. Even the power of being a Fascist dictator.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Me, I don't fear global warming. The only thing I fear is Al Gore becoming president. And in the name of freedom I &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; monger it.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-115971131132441734?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/115971131132441734/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=115971131132441734&amp;isPopup=true' title='22 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115971131132441734'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115971131132441734'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/10/eco-fascism.html' title='Eco-Fascism'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>22</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-115962068326476337</id><published>2006-09-30T08:30:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-09-30T08:54:42.913-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Gas Independence Becomes Cool</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href="http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?&amp;vid=c860df3ccf66c83fb61bb2ffd934330b.889183&amp;amp;cache=1"&gt;--story--&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Lets play a quick game of which car would you rather drive.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9htfR5gYh5FjEAAJ26jzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NDgyNWN0BHNlYwNwcm9m/SIG=1290h84hi/EXP=1159705568/**http%3a//www.autoblog.com/media/2005/12/X07HM_H3001.jpg" border="0" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9iby4FTYx5FtucAq.CjzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NDgyNWN0BHNlYwNwcm9m/SIG=12p88t80p/EXP=1159705811/**http%3a//www.megawattmotorworks.com/articles/05/aug/clooney_tango_2.jpg" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That was the easy round. It is quite worth it to buy a gas guzzling Hummer over an electric car so you can look cool and keep your distance from George Clooney. But round two might be a little bit tougher.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Would you rather drive this car?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9iby4drZB5FyNEAxYSjzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NDgyNWN0BHNlYwNwcm9m/SIG=12savobfk/EXP=1159706091/**http%3a//www.bergoiata.org/fe/voiture-sport-90/Porsche%2520911%2520GT2.jpg" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or this car?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9htfR4hZR5FykMAOBqjzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NDgyNWN0BHNlYwNwcm9m/SIG=12go1n6hd/EXP=1159706273/**http%3a//gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/08/teslasoldout.png" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can't make up your mind? What if I told you the second car was electric? Yeah, electric. That means you can stop buying oil from terrorists so they have no money to attack us, and you look cool doing it. You're looking at the new Tesla Roadster. The future of cars. A way we can beat terrorists without firing a shot, bring people out of poverty, &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; protect the environment. This car's going to make Conservatives, Liberals and Hippies happy. God bless America! And I tip my hat to you Tesla. Good work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-115962068326476337?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/115962068326476337/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=115962068326476337&amp;isPopup=true' title='8 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115962068326476337'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115962068326476337'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/09/gas-independence-becomes-cool.html' title='Gas Independence Becomes Cool'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>8</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-115952615170861953</id><published>2006-09-29T06:28:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-09-29T06:35:51.706-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Sore Loser</title><content type='html'>&lt;a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&amp;storyid=2006-09-28T210712Z_01_N28230044_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-YOUTUBE.xml&amp;amp;src=rss&amp;rpc=22"&gt;--story--&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor and dot-com veteran Mark Cuban had harsh words on Thursday for YouTube, the online site that lets people share video clips, saying only a "moron" would purchase the wildly popular start-up.&lt;br /&gt;Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, also said YouTube would eventually be "sued into oblivion" because of copyright violations."&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So how many of you watch HDNet? I doubt any of you even know it's a real channel.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Youtube on the other hand, a teensy bit more popular. You tell me who the real moron is.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-115952615170861953?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/115952615170861953/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=115952615170861953&amp;isPopup=true' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115952615170861953'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115952615170861953'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/09/sore-loser.html' title='Sore Loser'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-115921696994400018</id><published>2006-09-25T16:12:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-09-27T06:34:52.216-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Focusing in on the Truth</title><content type='html'>As most of you have heard by now, Bill Clinton had a bit of an outburst on Fox news Sunday with Chris Wallace last week on the topic of the War on Terror. If you haven't seen it then take a look at this clip.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;object height="350" width="425"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TvQmrtuQUnI"&gt;&lt;param name="wmode" value="transparent"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TvQmrtuQUnI" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, he's saying that we're putting too much effort into Iraq rather than Afghanistan. Funny, wasn't it Clinton that invaded Somalia to take out a bunch of guerrillas that posed absolutely no threat to us? The same &lt;em&gt;year&lt;/em&gt; as the Trade Center bombings?&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;Talk about focusing on the wrong problem. Yes Clinton "tried" to take out Osama, but maybe he wouldn't have failed if he wasn't busy doing humanitarian work with a country that posed absolutely no threat to us. We're talking about a bunch of idiots with AK's killing each other. Something that has no effect on us. But when terrorists attack our country by attempting to blow up a building that's no big deal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Who is Clinton to say we're focusing on the wrong countries? And no I don't think we are. I think the War on Terror is military genius. We go into Afghanistan and neutralize the terrorist threat quicker than you could imagine, free the people and back off a bit because we're needed less. Then we go into Iraq, take out Hussein and countless Al-Qaeda terrorists and free the people. Though in Iraq there is a bit more of a backlash. And by the way, Al-Qaeda has said they are putting all of their focus on Iraq, so no matter which country we're in, we are still fighting Al-Qaeda. Why not make our stronghold in the war on terror in the middle of the Middle East, where we have quick access to almost any problem country in the area.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So right now we've taken over two terrorist sanctuaries and have used diplomacy on other middle eastern countries to close in on the big one. Iran. The country that funds more terrorists than anyone else, trains more terrorists than anyone else, and overall aid more terrorists than any other country.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Personally, I think Osama bin Laden's just another raghead with a Koran in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. A thug. A thug that couldn't operate without the funding of countries like Iran. I believe that America has it's focus on Iran because Iran is the head of the snake. Cut it off and a few babies will come out but they'll die of starvation because they're too young to get their own food. So really I don't think the focus is on just Iraq, it's just another step toward surrounding the country that funds Al-Qaeda and the rest of those terrorist organizations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Clinton and the rest of the anti-war crowd are just short sighted. There's more to this War on Terror than just Iraq. It's not some useless humanitarian mission that did nothing but get Americans killed. The Battle of Mogadishu on the other hand...&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-115921696994400018?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/115921696994400018/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=115921696994400018&amp;isPopup=true' title='52 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115921696994400018'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115921696994400018'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/09/focusing-in-on-truth.html' title='Focusing in on the Truth'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>52</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34911446.post-115903508691619566</id><published>2006-09-24T15:10:00.000-04:00</published><updated>2006-09-24T15:44:29.946-04:00</updated><title type='text'>Grand Opening</title><content type='html'>Here it is, the grand opening of my new blog, codyoconnor.blogspot.com! I'll call it my blog, you'll call it Cody's blog.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I am really excited to start my new blog and I have no doubt most of you are skeptical after lets see, Blog America, Warzone, and Xenophobia. If you don't remember those blogs then I've proven my point well. But this blog will be different, because for one thing this will now be my primary blog and I plan on passing down the Better Wing throne to another ambitious blogger.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So that means all of my attention is focused on this blog so I promise you now that I will update it more frequently than even the Better Wing. I'll also be posting more because I plan on opening this blog up to more topics, that was the biggest problem with my other blogs. The Better Wing was just politics, Warzone was just the war on terror, and Xenophobia was just making fun of other countries. But here you will have more than that.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Politics will be broadened for one thing. I will have no problem expressing any opinion on any topic and changing my opinion if I feel it is necessary. I'll be spending more time in the entertainment world. Movies, video games, or maybe just something funny I thought of.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But specifically, there are a few topics you can expect to see a lot of. Corruption, government waste, poll-mongering, and extremism when it comes to politics. And about the politics thing I should tell you now that you really shouldn't block out what I have to say just because your not a Neolibertarian. I am a very reasonable guy who believes in common sense and independence before party line politics, trust me. And if we do disagree I would love to chat with you in the comment section about it. Who knows, maybe you can change my opinion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Don't get too concerned if you're not on my links list yet. Once I get going I will be making a link list for Conservative, Libertarian, and Liberal blogs. All neatly segregated.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That's about all I have to say about my new blog. If you have any questions or comments, just leave them in the comment section. Anonymous comments are allowed but I'd appreciate it if you at least signed some kind of screen name at the bottom or something.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;See you soon!&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/34911446-115903508691619566?l=codyoconnor.blogspot.com' alt='' /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/feeds/115903508691619566/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34911446&amp;postID=115903508691619566&amp;isPopup=true' title='3 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115903508691619566'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/34911446/posts/default/115903508691619566'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://codyoconnor.blogspot.com/2006/09/grand-opening.html' title='Grand Opening'/><author><name>Cody O'Connor</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/15532788132088229724</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='31' height='26' src='http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9574/cody4qw3.jpg'/></author><thr:total>3</thr:total></entry></feed>
