Tom's Unedited Rants

I don't like politics. I've dipped my toe in politics at the local & state levels. I was naive. I was idealistic. In the end I got burned. Why? I was all about doing the right thing.

They want people who are all about winning the next election. To heck with the average citizen. "Do the best, right thing" doesn't sit well with party insiders or the old boys club. They get power hungry. All they want to do is appease the electorate as little as possible to win as much as possible. Most of them don't want the average citizen involved in the party. I sure found that out. Just try to say or follow anything other than the party line & you will be squashed like a bug. The best of them wonder why voter turnout is so low.

The insiders seem to want low turnout. Turn out the faithful & just enough regular folks to win. Play to the popular ideas, even if misguided, in election years. They will try to get laws passed, knowing that they are a bad idea, trampling on the Constitution, just because it's a popular idea that could win votes. Current examples of this are the efforts in Congress to amend the Constitution to ban flag burning & other forms of desecration, & the efforts to try to set a deadline to bring the troops home from Iraq.

This is what reminds me of how much dyed in the wool Democrats & Republicans irritate me. Don't get me wrong. I think flag burning is very disrespectful, but I find restricting freedom of speech repulsive. I may disagree with your point of view, but I respect your right to it. Even if you're a Jew hating, racist Nazi skinhead or an American hating jihadi. Just don't hurt anyone & you'll be left alone.

The fact that politics has become so annoying to most Americans has allowed the political fanatics, a minority in this country, to take it over. Hopefully the rest of us will wake up one of these days. Then maybe we'll kick the power hungry liars out & make this country a true democracy instead of an aristocratic, plutocratic oligarchy.

It kills me whenever I hear people say or news reports that state that songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store can only be played on an iPod. This is just not true! You have to jump through a couple hoops, but here's how to do it:

1. Burn purchased songs to an audio CD using iTunes.

2. Reimport them into iTunes as mp3.

3. Put on any digital music player.

By default, iTunes imports as AAC. You can change this to mp3 in the Advanced section of the iTunes preferences. It's that simple.