Here is a list of some really great plugins that will definitely help your site rank higher under search engines. These plugins are not ranked on performance but more overall features.

Add Link Attribute

This plugin will allow you to add a link attribute such as nofollow to any template generated list, such as pages or blogroll, without having to edit the wordpress core. Next time you won’t have to reset all of them when you upgrade to a new wordpress version.

Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button

Add to any will allow you to put a share\bookmark\subscribe button on the bottom of every post, helping your visitors share and save your site. This is great for building up link backs to boost your SERP.

All in One SEO Pack

With All in One SEO you can easily add titles, descriptions, and tags for search engines to read. It also helps deal with duplicate content issues. If you get any of the plugins on this page, get this one.

Google XML Sitemaps

Automatically notify Google, MSN, Yahoo, and ASK.com about changes to your site. This plugin will build a sitemap according your preferences and automatically submit it to the major players like Google and Yahoo.

Nofollow Links

With the Nofollow Links plugin you can choose on a link by link basis which links in your blogroll with carry the nofollow attribute. Some similar plugins only allow you to nofollow all or none of the links. This one allows you to select the individual links you want to nofollow.

Nofollow Tag Cloud

Simply adds nofollow to all of your tagcloud links. Some would argue against this one and some would argue for.

Noindex Archives

A Wordpress plugin to add “noindex” attribute to archive links. This plugin helps with duplicate content issues.

Permalink Redirect

With the Permalink Redirect plugin you can be assured that there will be only one link associated with each blog post. Great for fighting duplicate content. All of this is done with a 301 permalink redirection so it will still pass page rank.

Robots Meta

Robots Meta has too many great features to list. One of its main benefits though is to choose the robots meta information for individual pages and post. Check out the site for more info.

SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images automatically updates all of your sites images with ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set.

SEO Slugs

The SEO Slugs Wordpress plugin removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs which looks nicer, ranks higher in search results, and has a much higher click-through rate when compared to the longer versions.

SEO Title Tag

This plugin is similar to the ALL in One SEO plugin except it focus more directly on Post titles and Post slugs. A great feature of SEO Title Tags is it’s mass edit mode where you can list and edit many different post titles at once. Great for Spring Cleaning.

Technorati Tags: best seo plugins, top seo plugins, seo plugin, seo plugins, wordpress plugin, top wordpress plugins, best wordpress plugins, title tags, titles, alt, attributes, meta, robots meta, seo slugs, seo title tags, permalink redirects, nofollow links, link attributes

Alan Greenspan, in an interview on Democracy Now, discusses the current issues of the Iraq war, Social Security, tax cuts, and his work as economic adviser under the Clinton, Bush, and GW Bush administrations. To view the complete interview, go to democracynow.org

Somewhere towards the middle of the interview, Noami Klein brought up that Bush administration tax cuts coincided conveniently with Greenspan’s advocacy for privatization of Social Security, Klein suggested that these policies must conjunct into some sort of ideology. In response, Alan Greenspan said:

Well, first of all, ideology is not what I hold. I try to learn what are the facts, and I let my opinions, judged on the facts, not by some preconception, which I regret is what ideology as a notion means.

So assuming that he doesn’t work from the “big picture” and that tax cuts along with privatizing Social Security were two different objectives, they certainly do generate an ideology whether or not Greenspan doesn’t want to be labeled… He is essentially calling for the scaling back of government within the economy and leaning towards the privatized sector rather than taxes. But let’s look at more that has built this case…

He has also worked as the head of the Federal Reserve during the Reagan administration, and during his time there, we saw the income inequality rise. The ratio between CEO pay and their workers rose 43 percent. Amy Goodman asked if Greenspan shared some of the responsibility through his policies of deregulation, privatization, and free trade.

Greenspan responds by saying the large factor of income inequality sprouts from a poor educational system in a economic time where demand for skilled labor increases the pay between skilled an unskilled laborers. He said in addition, that he wants to open American borders to bring in workers from foreign countries and hence, drive down the wages in order to lessen the gap.

Ok, the average left-winger would notice right away that CEO pay is not the same category as “skilled workers’ pay”. Skilled worker would be upper-middle class to upper-class range, meaning somewhere between 60K - 250K a year. CEO is the range of over 1 million dollars a year. So to say that us laborers will have to compete with foreign countries to lessen the gap of wages will only mean wage suppression without change in CEO pay. In fact, it would increase the gap between CEO pay and worker’s pay, no?

The second thing is that Greenspan doesn’t even talk about improving the educational system. Although personally, I think if everyone did receive a college education, it doesn’t mean everyone will start making more… the nature of capitalism doesn’t permit everyone to make the same amount. Greenspan blames poor education and prescribes opening the borders for wage competition.. doesn’t sound like public interest to me.

Noami Klein goes on to mention the IMF and its policies towards third world countries. She points out that the policies that Greenspan advocates are similar, and it has failed to lift the poverty in those countries. So his policies would not improve the conditions of the average worker in the US either. Populism was systematically removed by the CIA, and Greenspan cannot rest his argument to blame populism for the failures of the IMF’s policies.

According to Greenspan, the problem is in short-term gains that cause damage in the long run.

Greenspan, towards the end, asked if Naomi Klein was implying socialism or populism in the interview, and then finally asked, “…what are you changing in favor of?” Sounds like he does think rather ideologically himself.

Ideology can go two ways - it can sprout out of facts, experience, and idealism (in other words, the way it is now, and the way it could/should be); it can be a perspective that makes someone not surprised at some news stories. Or, it could be a doctrine that one adopts and filters everything through. Y’know… believing is seeing, right?

Klein is obviously the former definition, for she has a lot of facts in her research. In an interview where she asks Greenspan the questions, it is only the process to narrow down the questions to find out what he thinks on certain facts. He started getting defensive towards the end - a nightmare on his conscious resembling true public opinion?

The facts revealed by Greenspan himself… find out more details on the War on Iraq, his ideological policies, his book, and his actual accomplishments at work. He lowered interest rates before the sub-prime crisis, continues to advocate the sub-prime market, he sells contracts to private firms.. and more! In particular, see why! Go look it up on DemocracyNow.org, and think for yourself!

Technorati Tags: Naomi Klein, Alan Greenspan, Democracy Now, Alan Greenspan federal reserve, bush, clinton, economic adviser, socialism, populism, ideology, tax cuts, privatization of social security, selling government, IMF, structural adjustment programs, trickle-down economics, education reform, income inequality

One of the key differences between a 200 dollar guitar and a 800 dollar guitar is the quality of their pickups. There are other differences, such as body material, tunning peg quality, and overall craftsmanship, but none of those has as big of effect on your sounds as your pickups.

When you buy a low end bass guitar or electric guitar the stock pickups are going to be noisy and unclean sounding. Kind of like a low bit rate mp3. Swapping those pickups out for a quality set will make the world of a difference. A set of pickups can cost between 70 and 240 dollars, but luckily the low end pickups are acutall as good as quality as a 600 dollar guitars pickups. Still quite the upgrade.

The basic steps to replacing pickups are

1. Unscrew the old pickups
2. Unsolder the pickup wires from the guitar
3. Screw in the new pickups
4. Solder the new pickup wires in(follow your pickups instructions)
5. Done!

Not the hardest thing to do in the world, but the soldering can be a bit tricky. If you have trouble, there are plenty of guitar shops that will install your pickups for a reasonable price.

Another suggestions with low end guitars and bass guitars is to replace the tunning pegs. Inexpensive tunning pegs are sticky and have a tendency to come out of tune fast. Replacing them with a new set cost next to nothing and will make tunning your guitar a lot easier.

Remember most guitars and bass guitars under 600 dollars are made out of the same body material. That means replacing the pickups and tuners on your guitar can have it competing with a guitar twice it’s price overnight.

Technorati Tags: guitars, bass guitars, pickups, guitar pickups, bass pickups, replace pickups, replace guitar pickups, upgrade pickups, upgrade guitar, how to guitar pickups, install guitar pickups, wiring guitar pickups

Here is a short list of tips and guidelines on how to not make money blogging online. If you follow these tips and guidelines you will be on your way to making almost no money at all!

Have only one goal and that goal is to make money.
Place a ad above your content, to the left of your content, below your content, and to the right of your content.
Make your content a ad. Why write for people that don’t pay you to write? That is why we have advertisers.
Content? Forget about it. Don’t you know? People don’t read anymore.
Support the status quo. Uniqueness is confusing.
and last but not least, make sure you never have a opinion of your own. Individualism is not popular.

*Disclaimer - The State of Affairs neither claims nor does not claim you will or will not make money with these tips and guidelines.

Technorati Tags: don’t make money, not make money, make money blogging, money blogging, how to, satire, blogging satire, make money, blogging

Lately I’ve noticed that my skin was much more oilier than usual. The anti-bacterial soap we use at our house is much too strong for the face, so I thought about purchasing a facial wash. I surfed online to sephora.com to check out what kind of products they have. I was curious enough to look through some of the ingredients and came across a useful website - cosmeticdatabase.com.

What Cosmetic Database does is publish the reports from various sources of their findings of the effects of certain chemicals. You can search by chemical name AND brand name! They rate each product on a safety meter and they cite their sources for further inquiry. Another chart that was interesting is the ‘percentage of ingredients that had no data, or haven’t gone through FDA, or have a high hazard.

During my teenage years, I was loyal to the cosmetic brand Shiseido. However, reading about the chemicals now, I realize the “fresh tingling feeling” may not have signified cleanliness. A lot of their products actually contain toxic chemicals that promotes further skin irritations and form allergies. I even found a couple that violated chemical concentration standards!

Here’s a quote from one of their reports:

Environmental Working Group (EWG) detected 16 chemicals from 4 chemical families - phthalates, triclosan, parabens, and musks - in blood and urine samples from 20 teen girls aged 14-19. Studies link these chemicals to potential health effects including cancer and hormone disruption.

The 20 teens we tested had an average of 13 hormone-altering cosmetics chemicals in their bodies.

You can learn a lot with a little bit of curiosity from this website. For example, I learned of “bioaccumulation” and other human and environmental biological terms. You find information on environmental effects as well as human effects.

Cosmetic Database goes beyond just the industry of cosmetics. For example, they have reports of food items & chemicals too. Wait till you see what you’re ingesting…

Technorati Tags: toxic hazard, toxic exposure, toxic drugs, cosmetic product, cosmetic make up, cosmetic ingredient, food, carcinogens, neurotoxins, immunotoxicity, shiseido skincare, shiseido pureness, shiseido products, shiseido UV, beauty products, cosmetics, sephora, cosmetic database, chemicals, food, make up, FDA, FDA approval, FDA regulations, FDA drug, FDA standard, hazard

This is a video from DemocracyNow with Ralph Nader speaking about what he thinks of Obama’s win and Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.

Technorati Tags: ralph nader, barack obama, nader, obama, rahm emanuel, emanuel, obama presidency, nader views, views, barack views, nader news, raplh nader, nader debate, nader democrats

Strange how the top articles on Nader post-election give him such a bad rep. The majority of people who care to vote (which is about 45% of the country) think so lowly of him, especially after his challenging commentary towards Obama… Will Obama be an “uncle tom” or “uncle sam”?

Nader has been blamed for allowing another Bush term, is regarded as a “loser” for running 3 times for presidency, and should “get out of the way” when Obama is trying to pave the way for change. I have found many comments in response to these articles, and the most encompassing response I’ve found was posted by “Kim”:

“…In the state that decisively made Bush president over Gore (Florida), a poll of Nader voters was done to determine who they would have voted for had they not voted for Nader. 25% said they would have voted for Gore, 38% would have voted for Bush, and the rest would not have voted at all.

It is so easy to blame Nader for all of the failings of George W. Bush. How about blaming the millions of idiots who voted for him? How about blaming Gore for not being the candidate that people wanted? How about blaming the man himself for being the worst leader a “democratic” nation has ever seen? It was during the election between Gore and Bush that I first heard the phrase “voting for the lesser of two evils”, and “voting for the candidate you dislike the least”. In retrospect, we all wish that the election had gone a different way, but at the time, not many people liked either.

And all that Ralph Nader has done his entire career is work for a change that America needs. Look up vehicle safety standards and Ralph Nader… We wouldn’t have crash tests or air bags or safety belts were it not for him. All he wants is to make Americans completely independent from foreign oil while being environmentally savvy through the use of alternative fuels, give people a minimum wage that they can actually live on, ensure that ALL people have quality healthcare, and stop illegal wars that never should have been waged to begin with.

So go ahead and blame Ralph Nader for the problems that America faces now, after 8 years of failed policy, because it is easier to blame him than it is to blame the people truly at fault… The American people.”

I wanted to share this quote with you because I feel it important to at least combat some of the bad myths out there. Thank you “Kim” for posting, and I hope people out there will go look for themselves at what is going on.. and TESTIFY!

As for the “uncle tom” or “uncle sam” statement, I agree with Nader. Obama being the biggest receiver of corporate campaign money in US history, while appealing to the country by the color of his skin, he can be defined as an “uncle tom”. Obama, also a big supporter of increasing the military budget and Israel’s military occupation, can be regarded as an “uncle sam”.

Technorati Tags: Ralph Nader, bad rep, uncle tom, uncle sam, obama, vote lesser of two evils, bush, gore, campaign, blame, kim, myth, consumer, issues, unreasonable, unsafe at any speed, nader campaign, ralph nader views, views, nader unresonable, nader issues, nader consumer

What are people inquiring on the day after the election season? I went to Google Trends to find out what the top 10 searches were for the day.

1. Ryan Leaf
2. Real World Brooklyn
3. Neurosyphilis
4. Taylor Swift Pregnant
5. Wasilla Hillbillies
6. Secure our Dream
7. Wes Bergmann
8. Michael Crichton Died
9. Kellyanne and Wes
10. American Exceptionalism

The top 10 searches post-election day appear to have a mix between football, the ‘Real World’ TV show, and a few ideological searches.

The next 10 have more to do with the topics above, but only one had an iota of a connection with politics. “Funny Obama Jokes” made it to number 13.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter what are the top searches on the internet today. It isn’t going to be a completely accurate assessment of the American ‘buzz’ - we have newspapers, magazines, and other forms of publication that we rely on to inform us. But what I am getting at is this - will the political determination during the political campaign stop now and rest on faith?

I’m curious as to whether or not people are going to maintain their “hope” that our new leader has sloganized during the 8 month long campaign trail. Will people continue following through with their expectations, or is everything made better by simple political rhetoric and the symbol of “change” in the skin color of our president? Are jokes about hillbillies and other stereotypes all we got from the campaign fodder?

This election was important. For some people it was “history”. For most people, the post-Bush era revitalized interest in politics and the election was a compromise to the angry reactions of his administration. The election was stolen. We don’t trust the government. The state is more for the corporate interests instead of its people. People even began to ask about socialism, universal healthcare, what we should do in Iraq, and talked about the immorality of corporate welfare. Voters invested a lot of hope in our new chief.

News flash! Obama has appointed Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff. Rham Emanuel, pro-Israel and pro-steak-knifing his enemies’ names while shouting “DEAD!”. Does this sound like a good start? Hmmm, I hope we’ll keep following behind the scenes. I hope the political debating and discussion before the election will continue, and that it doesn’t end with a new president.

Technorati Tags: Top 10 Searches, November 5 2008, real world, obama, rahm emanuel, chief of staff, post election thoughts, election, history, bush administration, hope, change, sloganize, expectations, political determination, socio-politics

On November 5th, 2008, Snoqualmie Tribe celebrated the opening of their brand new casino. The casino marks a new beginning for the tribe, as they have finally received recognition, a means for a new life, and a way to participate within their local community.

In the ceremonial speeches, I have picked out a few good highlights of the tribe’s vision. They hope to provide their people with a hospital, schools, and a good income. They also want to return profits back towards the local community to develop inter-cultural programs and etc.

As we have seen with previous openings of casinos, the tribes have been able to recover from their destitute poverty and provide their people with the basic needs of life and to move on towards re-establishing their identity and culture.

The Snoqualmie people have gone through a long struggle. Beginning with colonialism, poverty, alcoholism, no recognition, and now through generations of efforts, the tribe has pulled together and pushed for the making of the casino. Tonight has been a fairly emotional night for the tribe elders.

I spoke to some of the employees there to validate the good will they have towards their local employees. Apparently the word is that their starting wage is 10.50 an hour, all employees receive full health insurance, as well as money towards tuition.

The entertainment of their ceremony included Frankie Avalon, Whiskey Falls, and a cover band playing boogie songs. The guests received free drinks, complimentary Pendleton blankets, good food, and were treated to things like free valet & coat check.

Inside the casino, they have very trendy looking clubs, restaurants, and high-tech concert stages. They also offers a large selection of wine and hard alcohol (although their beer selection was rather lacking). Guests are allowed to smoke indoors and carry their drinks in and out of the bars.

The real opening night happens tomorrow, November 6th at 10 pm. They are expecting to have 30,000 guests on opening night.

Technorati Tags: snoqualmie tribe, snoqualmie casino, opening ceremony, november 5, 2008, snoqualmie falls, casino, jobs, snoqualmie valley, snoqualmie ridge

I was recently asked to create a text link that would submit a form as part of a design for a client of mine. Through the process we eventually decided that using a text link is much more work and much less attractive then styling the button with CSS.

1. Using a text link to submit a form requires Javascript. If a visitor’s browser does not support Javascript the form will not function.
2. A text link is not very exciting. Text links do have high click through rates, but that does not apply to forms.
3. Creating a CSS styled button is easier and loads faster.
4. With creativity, a CSS styled button can be much more attractive

Here are a few simple examples to get started with.

Examples

To use simple add class=”buttonstyle” to any form for example.

<input class=”buttonstyle” type=”submit” value=”Submit” />

Button 1

Simple button

.buttonstyle {
background: #186DC2;
border: 1px solid #000000;
color: #FFFFFF;
}

Button 2

Simple button with rounded corners (not supported In IE)

.buttonstyle {
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 3px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomright: 4px;
-moz-border-radius-topleft: 3px;
-moz-border-radius-topright: 4px;
background: #186DC2;
border: 1px solid #000000;
color: #FFFFFF;
}

Button 3

Simple button with border

.buttonstyle {
background: #FFFFFF;
border: 1px solid #000000;
color: #000000;
}

Button 4

Text link button

.buttonstyle {
background: #FFFFFF;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #FFFFFF;
}

Button 5

Orange button with black border

.buttonstyle {
background: #F3BC2F;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #000000;
}

Button 6

Orange button with no border(inherits default border style)

.buttonstyle {
background: #F3BC2F;
color: #000000;
}

You can also use images and add hover effects to buttons as well, but I tend to feel that going that far is almost overkill. Plus IE doesn’t support :hover and requires a entire workaround to make it usable. If you are interested in using images or the hover effect I recommend you do a Google search to learn more details until I have more time to cover those options as well.

Technorati Tags: submit form text link, text link, submit form, html form, button style, styling buttons, html text, javascript text, javascript, css, css style, submit css, css class, form button, form, input form, javascript submit, form submit

Ralph who? If you find yourself asking this question, the reason why you haven’t heard much about Ralph Nader is because the news barred him from the political debates on television. The fact is, six GLOBAL corporations own about half the media that we consume, not to mention the large companies at home. Whether they view Nader as a threat to their interests or whether they have chosen their presidential candidates for us, we have a threat to our democracy simply because media control skews our votes by controlling our information.

Would you like to hear more about Nader? I hope so. Because his is a radically different point of view.

The Middle East
Between Obama and McCain, they both agree that the goals in Iraq need to be accomplished. They say they’re fighting for peace. The former wants a time-phase withdrawal that will take several years, the other speaks of staying in until ‘mission accomplished’. Ralph Nader has a goal for immediate withdrawal within six months, making Obama’s timid measures appear like he wants to win a war. Ralph Nader is a proponent of peace, acknowledging the death toll of Iraqi civilians (that Obama and McCain fail to even mention), add also the fact that the Middle East wants peace (and so they’d be willing to negotiate). Other things that Nader acknowledges that Obama and McCain fail to mention are the public opinion polls, the peace groups forming all over the Middle East, Israel’s military occupation of the Gaza (controversial to Fox news), the cost (in real numbers) of a failing war, and the Tibetan rights and dignity.

The Market
The political debates have not even began to mention anything about Fair Trade. And Fair Trade is more than consuming responsibly when you’re choosing your coffee beans at Trader Joe’s. Fair Trade has to do with reversing the problems caused by our policies - namely, what the World Trade Organization does, and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. These agreements are made to benefit American corporate interests so that poor countries can “develop” by having American companies come in and take their resources without regard to environmental, labor, or political costs. Isn’t this like the more sophisticated form of imperialism? Nader wants to make international standards - and this is important in a globalizing economy.

Environmental Policy
Nader’s environmental policy has a larger scope than Obama and McCain’s. Obama goes one step further than McCain - a Cap-and-Trade system (which I am not opposed to at all), while Ralph Nader in addition plans to take action to defend the environment itself. There are more issues out there beyond the scope of the news media. To read more, go visit http://www.votenader.org/issues/environment/environment/

The Military Budget
Did you know that the US spends more than the REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED on the military? Add also, the militarization of space - out of the global expenditures, 95% belongs to the US. Between Obama and McCain, they both have not talked about diverting superfluous tax expenditures to something like healthcare… or jobs… or education. How these things will be funded for in the Obama plan is unknown. He claims that he will decrease taxes; however, McCain supporters feel he’s going to increase taxes despite what he says. Not to mention, both Republicans and Democrats alike both want to increase the $600 Billion military budget. Why? They fail to ask why on the news.

Minimum Wage
Obama says the problem is that the government hasn’t increased minimum wage. He hopes to raise it to 9 an hour by 2011. The problem with that proposal though is two things - is it a livable wage? And is it going to matter according to the cost of living and inflation rates by 2011? Ralph Nader wants a livable wage for people, as well as a “Bill of Rights” for workers - accident protection, retirement, the right to organize into unions, anti-Wal Mart contracts, etc. Nader also acknowledges the distribution of wealth and how the gap is widening between the CEO and bottom employee 300:1. On average a CEO in a large company takes home over $150,000 A WEEK. Need I mention the minimum wage to you? $5.25 an hour.

Alternative Energy
Ralph Nader once said something along the lines of ‘the reason why energy companies hasn’t invested in solar energy is because they cannot own the sun’. Frederick Bastiat made a joke once saying something similar, ‘the lamp makers are arguing against the sun, telling people to close their windows for the sake of free trade’. Wait, how was the economy supposed to work for us again? Almost anyone can manufacture solar power cells (in fact, I have a book that teaches me how to make one!) - this will decentralize the energy monopoly, and with something like the sun, it will be truly the people’s asset. I am not against this. Nader’s plan is predominately invested in solar energy. Obama? He wants to take cap-and-trade revenue to fund research in all forms. McCain? He wants to expand oil production and natural gas.. somehow. *Edit: McCain also has plans for a cap-and-trade system, alternative energy, as well as acknowledgment of speculative oil pricing. His alternative energy plan is largely invested in Hydrogen.

Conclusion
I’m sorry to cut this short, especially if you’ve found use to this article. All I want to say really is that McCain is FAR TO THE RIGHT of public opinion (he doesn’t want much to change), Obama is still hanging on the right of public opinion (he proposes incremental changes), and Nader is more in tune with it. In fact, he has statistics with public opinions on his website. Nader is a candidate that reflects the public. Why he doesn’t get any airtime is another reason why our democracy is failing. It is sad that some people have also told me (after I informed them that there was a third person running), “a vote for Nader is a wasted vote for Obama”, when the two aren’t even the same at all! And even though my hero Noam Chomsky said “there’s nothing wrong with voting for the lesser of two evils”, I beg to differ. Who wants to participate in an authoritative election where which ever way we choose, it will still pertain more to corporate interests?

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, comparison, alternative energy, labor, minimum wage, military budget, middle east policy, environment, market, WTO, IMF, NAFTA, fair trade, media bias, news bias, energy monopoly, Iraq withdrawal, democrat, republican, green party

I was reading an article in the Seattle Times by Danny Westneat, “S-word is Suddenly Hot Subject”. Obama is now being called a socialist by many of the McCain supporters as well as those who are slightly to the left of him. However, despite his lefty appeal to the democrats, let’s look at a few of his policies as delineated on his website and see how well he fits under socialist ideas.

Immigration
Obama supports a more secure Mexican-American border. He supports the arrests, deportations, fines, more technology and personnel. Socialists are supportive of open borders, no deportations, and a comprehensive transition for illegal immigrants (and their families) who have lived and worked here to become citizens.

Iraq War
Obama wants a responsible time phase withdrawal and hopes that Iraq will use its oil revenue for their reconstruction. Socialists think this war was for the oil in the first place, so if Iraq was to use its oil revenue for reconstructing their war torn city, wouldn’t they be in a more economically desperate situation? Oil would be more readily available for big oil companies’ distribution.

Poverty
Obama is going to raise the minimum wage to 9.50 by 2011 and pour $1 billion towards getting low income workers to higher paying jobs. Socialists would support minimum wage increase… but to a level that is a livable wage. Moving people from low to higher income jobs doesn’t change the fact that there are still low income jobs. Socialists have a more radical proposal - to have state control over the top 500 US companies.

Taxes
Obama plans on making tax cuts… which one would call “progressive”, but according to the socialists, it would do little to redistribute the wealth in this country.

Homeland Security
Obama wants to fight terrorism worldwide and prevent nuclear proliferation. Socialists would remain skeptical as to whether or not he will use this as an excuse to propagate American corporate interests worldwide. Afterall, he has received the largest amount of contributions from corporations in American history.

So why does McCain call Obama a “redistribution-in-chief”? I’ve talked to a few McCain supporters, and they all seem to be afraid of “socialist Obama”. I’m not sure where they’re getting this from in terms of policy. They think having somebody young (or ’socialist’) is something to be afraid of. Funny thing, is on the supporting side, they have more imagery to go with too.

I’ve watched a little bit of campaigning on television, and as a college student working as a nanny, the amount of name calling and imagery that dominates political discussion reminds me of a battle between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston for Brad Pitt. Then you have all those tabloids picking a side.

Technorati Tags: socialism, obama, seattle PI, Danny Westneat, S-word is suddenly hot subject, mccain, immigration, iraq war, taxes, homeland security, poverty, campaign, redistribution-in-chief

Introduction
With the failure of markets to factor in external costs, the government has to regulate the economy in order to maintain fair practice as well as uphold the common interest. The Great Depression during the 30s resulted in massive reforms within the economy in order to stabilize it’s boom-bust cycles, and gave the state more control over financial markets (ex: separating people’s savings accounts from the stock market, or drafting a charter on the savings and loan associations).

The recent trend in the agenda of the White House has been deregulation. And with that, now we are seeing recession and insecurity in the national economy. In fact, we find it historically all over the globe - check out the IMF and how it deteriorated Third World Countries’ development and policy autonomy. Look at the events that led up to the Great Depression. Look at foreign financial investment and how it makes one person wealthy by borrowing from a low interest-rate country and invest it into a high interest-rate country. Only the general public, working 40+ hours a week stand to lose. Capital controls are necessary for more reasons than one.

The recent trend of deregulation also goes hand in hand with the framework of Free Trade. This is important because many of our politicians lean towards this idea written by Adam Smith in the 1800s. Reviewing the economic history of America, its success is hardly due to Free Trade but more so with Protectionist policies. Not only does the market economy cause and fail to respond to recessions, we are now in a new era of capitalism, where we have corporations, globalization, and deficit spending. State intervention and regulation are necessary so that we ensure that everything valuable invested into this way of economic life does not go unstable.

And now here’s the article from Chomsky!

Markets have inherent and well-known inefficiencies. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These ‘externalities’ can be huge. That is particularly true for financial institutions.

Their task is to take risks, calculating potential costs for themselves. But they do not take into account the consequences of their losses for the economy as a whole.

Hence the financial market ‘under prices risk’ and is ’systematically inefficient,’ as John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalization and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and also proposing solutions, which have been ignored.

The threat became more severe when the Clinton administration repealed the Glass-Steagall act of 1933, thus freeing financial institutions ‘to innovate in the new economy,’ in Clinton’s words –and also ‘to self-destruct, taking down with them the general economy and international confidence in the US banking system,’ financial analyst Nomi Prins adds.

The unprecedented intervention of the Fed may be justified or not in narrow terms, but it reveals, once again, the profoundly undemocratic character of state capitalist institutions, designed in large measure to socialize cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice.

That is, of course, not limited to financial markets. The advanced economy as a whole relies heavily on the dynamic state sector, with much the same consequences with regard to risk, cost, profit, and decisions, crucial features of the economy and political system.

Technorati Tags: financial markets, financial liberalization, state regulated economy, risk management, under pricing risk, socializing cost, market failures, market inefficiency, externalities, participatory economics, great depression, capital controls, stock market, recession, boom-bust cycle, reform, economy

The other day I received a letter from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the company that owns Camel cigarettes. It says:

Hey good-looking,

Hopefully, you’re one of the millions who got a nice fat check from the government. And hopefully you had some fun with it. But chances are more of it went into your gas tank than that new whatever you’ve been wanting but couldn’t afford.

More relief is here. And this time it’s only good for one thing - a little break on your favorite style of Camels.

It ain’t a flat screen…. But maybe you could hang a stuffed marlin or something on the wall instead. Just a thought.

Enjoy!
Camel

What a way to sell relief in times of a recession! But R.J. Reynolds is not the only company in this kind of marketing.

Denny’s restaurants had their recent television commercials advertising their Weekday Express Slam, saying “It’s one thing to bail out Wall Street. But who’s gonna bail you out?” Denny’s is going to help you ‘carry the burden of the price of breakfast’.

Brooks Brothers clothing company revived an old ad jingle saying, “it pays to buy at Brooks Brothers,” because the most economical clothes “are those that are made to last.” Given today’s context, such an ad tells the viewer that the longevity of clothes, like an investment, is sound because it is economical.

Venables Bell & Partners, an advertising company based in San Fransisco, generated slogans such as “Your 401(k). Now down to $4K.” Who knows what they were trying to sell with that one?

The recession-inspired slogans reminds me of the recent Wal-Mart commercials - “Save money. Live better.” Although Wal-Mart didn’t talk of recession, between the two kinds, we see that the target market is for the middle to lower classes of society who finds themselves in a tighter budget as a result of today’s economic recession. The idea is to sell them something while acknowledging that money is tight.

And similar to Orwell’s ideas of doublethink, these two ideas are contradictory. But it seems to be such a true statement - save money, and live better, right? But how can you save money by shopping? The bridge between the two is necessity and credit cards.

Technorati Tags: commercials, slogans, jingles, recession, campaigns, advertisements, denny’s, camel, reynolds, venables bell & partners, brooks brothers, orwell, doublethink, wal mart

It’s been 4 days since our last post here at The State of Affairs, but not to worry we have returned. I personally have been quite busy with a few different design projects. One that I am especially excited about is Mtsidesign.com which is moving to a new Wordpress powered theme.

I had been wanting to convert the static HTML version of Mtsidesign to a dynamic Wordpress installation, but held back due to my lack of knowledge of how to fully utilize Wordpress as a CMS. I must say that it was a learning process, but also a great creative expansion.

With the new versions of Wordpress (I believe 2.5+), setting up any site you want possible is not a far fetched dream and you get to keep all of the great plugins and SEO options with wordpress. I’ll get into the details on my experiences in my next post on how to utilize Wordpress’ as a complete CMS.

Technorati Tags: mtsidesign.com, wordpress themes, wordpress cms, seo, wordpress powered, complete cms, design projects

What is the significance of a single Presidential election poll? It turns out, not much. Whether it be national polling firm or a major news network, following just one of them can be very misleading. The main reason for this is the fact that every poll is polled differently. So which one is the right one then? The answer, some of them.

What I mean by that is that for a true poll to be truly relevant, it has to be based off many different polls. Luckily this is not a new concept. The most accurate polls, based on fundamental statistics, would be the polls at FiveThirtyEight.com. I attribute their accuracy to the fact that they don’t simple take a average of polls, but instead ‘weight’ each poll based on historical data and performance.

I caution anyone that simply takes a polls value just from it’s numbers. Consider the latest IBD/Tipp Tracking poll for day 11 which gives McCain a 50 point lead against Obama in the 18-24 age group. Obviously that is far beyond reasonable data. I recommend you check out FiveThirtyEight.com and read about their polling methods for more insight on how their polling works.

Technorati Tags: latest polls, reliable polls, presidential polls, election polls, poll results, poll, political polls, democratic polls, new polls, voting polls, straw polls, fivethrityeight.com, mccain, obama, data, poll data

Performancing Ads is a new advertising network that can help you make money online with your website or blog. If you want to Make Money With PerformancingAds I recommend you sign up for a publisher account on their homepage.

A publisher account allows advertisers to buy ad space on your site in areas that you designate for ad space. For example you could have 4, 125×125 ads placed into your side bar and get payed by advertisers that book that space. One great feature is that you set the price for your ad space.

Another nice feature of signing up with Performancing ads is that you can participate in their Exchange ads program. How this works is, if their is unbooked adspace on your site, other ads will be shown in that space. When these ads are show on your site you receive credits. These credits are then converted into adspace for your advertisements on other sites.

So if you’re ready to make money With PerformancingAds I recommend you sign up today. It’s free and a great place to start monetizing your blog.

Technorati Tags: make money, make money online, earn money, fast, free, make money fast, how to make money, make money from home, make money quick, make the money, quick money, fast money, easy money, internet money, affiliate programs, work from home

As a young adult, I have seen too many times a friend or acquaintance of mine being stuck with large amounts of overdraft fees on their checking account. Overdraft fees have a tendency to snowball. It’s not unheard of to see a overdraft in the morning and by days end have over $100 dollars in charges on a account.

A friend of mine happens to work for a major national bank and had some tips on what to do if you get hit with the snowball effect of overdraft fees.

Call Your Bank

• Do this right away. Many times people assume that they are powerless to reverse or protect themselves from overdraft fees and do nothing.
• Once you finally get through to a real person, explain to them that you did everything you could to prevent any overdraft fees. Tell them you checked your account balance regularly online and tried to only use debit transactions.
• Also explain to them that your teller had told you to check your ballance online because it supposedly updates automatically.
• Finally reassert that you don’t know how this happened and that you tried to do everything you could.

There is no guarantee that the customer service associate will be able to or be willing to reverse the transactions, but for 3 overdraft fees totaling over $100 dollars, it’s worth a shot. Often times they will not all be reversed but perhaps reduced to a reasonable amount.

Remember banks make large amounts of money from people not standing up to these outrageous fees, but also remember that you should keep a written track of how much money you actually have and actually spent. We can’t rely on a digital balance that may or may not include all of our transactions.

The real lesson is to not let banks take advantage of you. If we are responsible with out money and aware of our funds, we can’t fall victim to these tactics. We can blame the bank for the size of the fees, but we can only blame ourselves for causing the fees.

Technorati Tags: bank, overdraft, fees, reverse overdraft, reverse fees, overdraft fees, overdraft charges, bank fees, bank overdraft fees, bank overdraft charges, remove overdraft fees, remove fees, overdraft protection, protection, bank account, bank account fees

If you have moved or thought about moving in the past, then you know how big of a challenge it can be. Luckily there are great resources such as Relocation.com to help plan and complete your task. If you’re still just contemplating moving or about to call the moving truck, either way, Relocation.com has help for you.

Relocation.com can help you sell your house, find a new house, and find a moving company all in one site. Another great feature is the ability to get quotes from moving companies for whatever size of move you are planning. Don’t forget Relocation.com can also help you move a vehicle, move to another country, or find a storage solution as well.

If you’re like me and have been trying to come up with effective and original ways of promoting and distributing your Wordpress themes, then you know it can be a daunting task. The traditional way of promoting a Wordpress theme is to upload it to a popular theme directory site. The downside I have found to this is the lack of exposure, as your theme gets buried and almost never sees the light of day.

I had a spur of the moment thought last week about using torrents to promote my theme. I figured, I have looked up Wordpress themes on torrent sites, maybe somebody else has too. First, I set off to do some searches on some popular torrent sites such as mininova.org and btjunkie.org. What I found was only a small handful of torrents related to Wordpress themes. This was a good thing in my mind, not too much competition :).

My Results So Far

Since I created my tracker and torrent file last week I have had over 50 80 downloads requesting my Theme Pack. I must say I was blown away with the results. I think this goes to show that torrents can be a effective distribution tool for any free software.

According to mininova.org my torrent has been download 134 times in the last 6 days just from their site. I am not sure whether to trust my tracker or mininova, but either way my themes are getting download at high volumes and that was my only intent to start with.

How to set up a tracker… and what is a tracker?

A tracker is a centralized computer that acts as a portal between Seeds (people with the file) and Peers (people wanting the file). When you download a .torrent file it connects to the tracker in that torrent file and says, “is there anybody out there?”. A tracker doesn’t actually share the file, it simply tells Peers where they can find the file.

1. First you will want to download BNBT EasyTracker. BNBT is not a new program, but does everything you would need it too do. Plus its open source.
2. After you install BNBT, but before you start it, you will want to make sure your router accepts incoming and outgoing connections on port 6969. If you don’t know how to do that go to Portforward.com/routers.html to find out how.
3. Also you will need to open the ports on your computer. The first half of this tutorial will tell you how to open ports on your computer.
4. Now you can start your tracker by opening BNBT EasyTracker. This will launch a console window that says something like this “[Sat Oct 18 14:18:00 2008] server - start”. You will need to keep this window open in order for your tracker to run. You can of course minimize it.
5. Next login in to your tracker by opening your favorite browser and going to this address http://localhost:6969/. Enter admin for the username and password for the password. It is recommended to change your default password for security reasons to start off.
   
6. I recommend you make your tracker a private tracker to avoid tracker abuse. In your BNBT install directory, there is a file called Bnbt.cfg. You can edit this file with notepad or another text editor with these settings

How to create a torrent

1. Download and install MakeTorrent. MakeTorrent is a easy to use and free program for creating .torrent files.
2. Open MakeTorrent and switch to classic mode as it seems more simple then the simple mode to me. Click [dir] or [file] and select what you want to share. What I did was create a folder called “Great Wordpress Themes” and put all of my theme directories into it. There is no need to compress your files, but you may do so if you please.
3. Enter your tacker address. If your ip address was 245.254.245.254, your address would be http://245.254.245.254:6969/announce. Make sure you use the address assigned by your ISP and not the address assigned by your router.
4. Click make .torrent file and save the file in your BNBT EasyTrackertorrents directory.

Seed your Torrent

1. Seeding your torrents is important so that Peers will have a Seed to connect to. Remember you tracker simply connects Peers to Seeds so there has to be at least one seed. Open your torrent client of your choice, such as uTorrent or Bitcomet. Click file, then add torrent.
2. Navigate to where you saved your torrent file and open it.
3. When prompted, save the files to where you have them on your hard drive. You won’t actually be downloading the files because your client will see you have 100% of the download. You will want to keep your client open now to remain as a seed.

Finally Upload your Torrent file

Now that you have a running tracker, and one seed(you) you can upload your file to the larger torrent sites. When you upload your torrent to a site such as mininova.org you will appear in the search engine for Wordpress Themes. This will be the way people find your themes. With some sites you will need to register, while others you can upload as a guest. To start I recommend these two sites.

1. Mininova.org
2. Btjunkie.org

Your Done!

If you need more help setting up your tracker and torrent you can visit the Official BNBT Documentation Page for a more detailed walk-through. Torrents get a bad rap for being simply a pirate tool and not a useful file distribution format. I think this proves that torrents can serve a legal purpose as well. If you find this distribution method works well for you, drop a comment about you experiences below!

Technorati Tags: torrents, wordpress, wordpress themes, downloads, theme downloads, utorrent, bnbt easytracker, theme distribution, theme promotion, worpress theme promotion, promote themes, mininova.org, btjunkie.org, tracker, seed, peer