Hey, looks like its time to resurrect MLP posts! This MLP post is brought to you by the recent stock market turmoil.

PayPal finally may have some competition from new comer noca.

Do you think you're a Software Engineer? According to one man hacker Ravi Mohan, your probably really a ratcatcher. I have to agree with Steve over here though. If you're a programmer, you probably don't know how compilers work.

If you like Apple's new MacBook Air but dont have the budget for it perhaps you would be interested in the cheeper Asus Eee PC solution and upgrade it yourself.

I finally bought Rock Band, even though I only got the PS2 (PS3 compatible though!) version. It certainly brings back memories of my drummer days. Check out this cool program that will allow the drum pads to work with your PC.

Social Security reform has been the hot topic since the presidentﾒs inauguration, especially private accounts. Some democrats claiming there's no problem, some republicans crying death and destruction if we don't do anything. Those are of course just the extremists. Most people acknowledge that if do nothing at all social security will eventually collapse, whether that happens in 2018 or 2070 is up for argument, I personally think that day is closer to around 2045 (AARP, FEE, Bush). The president in his fifth State of the Union Address, while citing other possible remedies, advocated private accounts as a way to help social security and promote the ownership society he seems to advocate. There are numerous problems around the subject as I see it. Currently 12.4% of a worker's salary (half from the worker, half from the employer), up to $90,000 in 2005 goes towards social security. First, according to most news reports and people I've talked to only 4% of that 12.4% would be diverted into private accounts when in reality Bush is proposing that 4% out of 12.4% would be diverted (Bush). READ: 4 percentage points of 12.4%. This is the difference between $74 a year to $1000 a year. Second, this will actually exacerbate the problem of the upcoming shortfall by diverting funds going into social security somewhere else, around 32%. In doing this potentially trillions of dollars will need to be pulled out of the government's budget in transition, this of course depends entirely on the rate of adoption and how fast we get to the 4%. The reason for this transition cost is because, as the president said, those 55 or older will not have benefit cuts, the rest of us should expect at least somewhere around 32% cuts, which is fine because the private accounts cover it. By extension then private accounts actually do nothing to shore up social security but in fact can create a further burden on the government. Thirdly, as far as interest on the money that goes into I have huge misgivings on allowing people to move funds around at their whim like they would on the stock market, even if it is in conservative funds. You add in allowing brokerage firms to handle this and you run into costs. Assuming the funds in my private account does better than they would in social security, how much of that extra money will be eaten away by the costs of having firms handle my account? Of course thankfully congress has the foresight to at least discuss real solutions to keeping social security solvent. (Parsing the State of the Union)

I've been told that I can eat all my rants about the war in Iraq and that Bush is being proven right with the elections, and collapse of the Lebanese government, and the talk that Egypt will hold some elections. All I gotta say is mad props that at least something is going right for once and that this does nothing to change that the American people were misled about the original reasons to go to war and that the administration should be held liable for the utter lack of preparation and the horrible handling of the war. So good job for not completely screwing it up so that change can happen even despite the things he has screwed up.

I'm not normally one to be a doom sayer but the United States is headed down the road for a disaster. Can we endure another 4 years of Bush and his administration in The White House? If one follows the polls Kerry and Bush are sea-sawing from minor margins to dead heats and I ask the question, how can they still be tied? Who can honestly think that Bush has been doing a good job? I see people claiming that he's making America safer when its clear he isn't, that only he can win the war on terror when its also clear he's making a mess of a minor thing like the war on Iraq, that tax cuts are what we need and needed to help us out of the recession when it really wasn't a recession but more like a market correction after the entire countries pyramid scheme collapsed.

Let me expand on this economy business. I got something like a whopping 400 dollars, which meant jack shit, it was entirely meaningless. Another tax cut for me will also be meaningless. It won't but barely dent my expenses, anymore then it helps the millions of other middle class people in this country. And the idea that tax cuts for businesses and the rich helps make jobs is utterly insane. If the government wants to help with the unemployed it should do something equally insane like, employ them. Civil works and government projects would have helped heaps better than a tax cut. CEOs and Corporations are walking away with even more money yet workers are getting payed less and they are still laying people off. WTF? The worst may be over but the economy is by no means strong, and certainly not as strong as it could have been if someone with any amount of competence was in the Office.

If one knows anything about what the national debt really is its relatively meaningless unless it gets way out of hand. Yet we all know something about symbolism and the symbolism behind the strongest nation in the world having such an enormous burden of debt isn't good. It effects many things, and one of those is the value of the dollar which has been been at a steady decline for years now.

Speaking about symbols, how about the image that our current president presents to people in the international community. Sure the world doesn't dictate our lives, but who are we then to dictate their lives. We are also not alone in the world. Do we really want the entire world to hate our president? They may not all hate us yet, but if you think the hatred that half of Americas divided population has for the president is anything to hold against how the rest of the world feels about him take a look again.

This idea now that he's doing good in the war on terror when he had literally nothing more to do with the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars than pointing to a map and saying blow them up. He still doesn't even have an exit strategy for either of those wars. As president these are the things he's suppose to do, we have generals and officers for strategies in battle and a president for strategies in wars. What are the main goals, what are the timetables, how to enable the generals to get the jobs done?

Putting aside the dubious No Child Left Behind debate, his disregard for stem cell research, the environment, sucking up to big business, doing nothing about health care, screwing up the war on terror, and plunging us into a huge national debt, he has the nerve to try to pass an amendment against gay marriage. That is as direct a violation of church and state if there ever was one. The idea that the government enforces even a few religions ideas of what marriage is, is fascist crap. What he really should do is remove all words of marriage from our constitution and only recognize Civil Unions as a law binding way to join people. By the way, the bill even tries to ban gays from having civil unions. Religions should be able to have marriages or whatever the heck they want to call it but the only time the government should step in is to formalize a Union between two people giving those two people the rights and benefits they deserve equally without discrimination.

I ask again, can we endure another 4 years of this?