First Things First

This month's update are as follows.  First, Vista Drive gets a new feature, called Motel, this month.  It's a small photoblog kinda thing where I put pictures that fit a certain theme.  If you still don't get it, see it for yourself.  Vista Drive also gets its traditional monthly update, with new pictures added to the Color and B&W sections.  Lastly, if you missed it, American Bliss Magazine was updated on June 20th.  Please read, and enjoy, it.

Afterthoughts : Visiting OJ's House

About a year after the OJ trial was in the history books, a friend and I went on a drive to visit OJ's house.  We didn't know the address, but we both remembered the street name was Rockingham.  I remembered that he got off at Sunset blvd., and drove west towards the ocean.  I told my friend that I sorta remembered his path from there.  So, off we went after dinner.  We drove up the hills overlooking West LA.  Those streets are often a maze of dead ends, and twisting roads.  Make a wrong turn and you might end up in the Valley, or back on Sunset.  We kept driving up, farther up into the hills, until we finally found OJ's house.  The whole neighborhood was quiet, but not all together dark.  There were only a couple of lights on inside OJ's house.  The rest of the neighborhood was all lit up with the million dollar houses showing off.  We drove past OJ's, almost forgetting to slow to take a good look at it.  Not that one could see much over the fence.  My friend, who was driving, made a three point turn and doubled back.  Now the house was on my side of the car, and it was eerie.  There was a sense of gloom that hung in the cold air.  My friend made a turn and followed the curve around OJ's house.  As we passed the gate we paused, and then something that scared the two of us happened.  We heard this bang on the top of the car.  My friend's car was a convertible, and whatever hit us bounced up and made a bang a second time.  We turned to each other, our eyes the size of saucers, then looked back towards the house.  We tried to figure out what could have fallen on us.  Then we thought, what if someone threw something at us.  From OJ's house.  We looked, but by that time there were more cars going up and down the street.  All of them were obviously looking for OJ's house.  Everyone's eyes were focused on the house, and we thought that we best get going.  We never went back to the house.  A little while later the house was torn down.  I guess too many people were driving by, and making it a not so quiet neighborhood.

Editorial : Don't Vote for Bush in 2004

There are many reasons why not to vote for George Bush in the coming election.  The biggest reason is simple.  He is a liar.  He has lied to the the public since the moment he entered office.

The biggest lies George Bush has told us are some of the most important issues of our time, Iraq, and terrorism.  Bush lied to us about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.  He lied that Saddam harbored terrorists.  These two things were the basis of going to war in Iraq.  So the war is based on lies.  Worst of all, there are still soldiers dying in Iraq, on the basis of these lies.  If the reasons are just, then the inhumanity of war is only slightly tolerated.  When the reasons are false, then the war is not only inhuman, it is also criminal.

Another of Bush's lies is his insistence that we are fighting terrorism effectively.  He talks a good game, but budgets don't lie.  Bush has cut the budget to fight terrorism.  He gives with the right hand, and takes away with the left.  Our borders are no safer than before 9/11.  Some places along our borders have little, or no, protection.  The border patrol's budget has been slashed, and barely has enough to keep those currently assigned to protect our borders, let alone hire more people.

Bush lies to us about how great the economy is doing.  He points to the many jobs that were created in the first quarter of 2004.  Yet, no one ever asks what kind of jobs are being created.  Manufacturing jobs are leaving this country, and heading out to China, Mexico, and India, to name a few places.  Good paying jobs are being outsourced to these countries, leaving workers, who may have worked in these jobs for 20+ years, without an income.  The jobs that are being created are in the service field, such as retail, and fast food.  These jobs offer lower wages than do manufacturing jobs.  These service jobs also offer no benefits, and very little opportunity to climb the ladder of success.  So these new jobs are a far cry from the old jobs that are being outsourced.

In short, George Bush is a liar.  His policies amount to little more than cronyism.  The rich are getting not just super rich, but absurdly rich, under this administration.  Meanwhile, the rest of us are left with scraps, and disillusionment.  So it amazes me how anyone, other than his cronies who benefit from his policies, could vote for George Bush in this coming election.  I think that perhaps those who vote for him are not very happy living in a democracy.  They wish to be ruled with an iron fist.  They want someone to tell them what is right, and what is wrong.  They don't believe in the balance of power, or the rights of the individual.  They only see dollar signs.  Dollars are their real God.  The worship money above all else, as Bush does.  The compassion towards their fellow human beings is gone.  Replaced by greed, and immodesty to all means at attaining great sums of money.

Etcetera : Independence Day

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it....

With those words, penned by Thomas Jefferson, a new nation was born.  A country that would be governed not of kings, but of the people.  So many of us forget the idea of these statements.  They were made at a time when government was not respectful of its citizens.  Sadly we live in such times today.

Jefferson was not one to think that a little chance was not a good thing.  Today we have a government that is so large that it often doesn't know what it is doing.  Like the old saying goes, the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.  This is happening today.  Government is no longer responsive to its citizens.  Government finds it easy to dictate what people should do, rather than to listening to what people need.

This independence day resolve to better the way our government sees us.  At the very least vote this November.  Because those who govern like fewer people to vote.  It is a sign that people don't care.  That they are not informed.  When people are not informed, government can impose its will upon the good people of this nation.  All governments, at some point, forget their highest ideals, such as freedom, at some time in their existence.  If the people do nothing to strengthen those ideals, by exercising them to their extreme, then they will wither away slowly.  A slow erosion that eventually leaves no freedoms at all.

Read the rest of the Declaration of Independence at The National Archive Experience.