I recently heard that Cindy Sheehan is running against Nancy Pelosi in 2008 as an independent. I don't like either of these women, but the situation doesn't surprise me at all considering how the war turned out.

If you don't know who either of these people are, look them up on Wikipedia.

I searched Cindy Sheehan on YouTube to find out more information. I saw a clip from an episode of Hardball where Chris Matthews tells her that she should know the motives of people in Congress before personally attacking them based on one issue. The video is ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT_faGwBr1Q ). Listen to the last two minutes.

When I heard that, the light bulb on my head turned on. The motives drive the productivity (or lack thereof, as it is now) in every branch of government. The Congressmen have reasons for voting the way they do and if you do some research on their backgrounds, you can figure out why they're doing things a certain way.

Look at immigration, for example. There's a reason for the deadlock and lack of progress in the illegal immigration debate, from both Democrats and Republicans. The big businesses own a lot of politicians and are the group that benefit the most from illegal immigration.

Think about it: the desperate Mexicans jump the border looking for work. The corporations hire them for below minimum wage to make more profits for themselves and their investors. The illegals are stuck working the same menial jobs for the rest of their lives for little pay. They can't speak any English and don't have many skills, so how do you take care of them? Be generous with the taxpayers' money and give them generous benefits that many Americans can't afford like free healthcare and education for their kids from a Hispanic perspective in the Spanish language.

There isn't much reason for us to worry about the illegal aliens taking our jobs. You don't see any illegal alien investment bankers or illegal alien astronauts. Instead, they're sweeping the floors of McDonald's or picking Granny Smith apples for shipment. If anything, they're actually helping you by reducing labor costs so the companies can supply goods you can't imagine life without at rock bottom prices.

What's the solution? There are none. If you give them amnesty followed by full benefits of American workers, there would be a surplus of labor and shortage of work. If you round them up and send them back home, we have a shortage of labor and surplus of the kind of unskilled work that people don't want to do. If you keep things the way they are, you'll have proponents from both sides bitching about what a huge problem illegal immigration is right now.

The fact is that producers are greedy and consumers are stingy. They create this whole mess by electing politicians who will act based on their own selfish interests, then complain when they can't come up with a solution that works out for everyone.

I don't see any real progress in this issue no matter who controls the government.

I recently bought a video converter that lets me rip videotapes into my computer and convert them to MPEG-4, DVD, VCD, DivX, etc. videos that can play on most DVD players.

Videotapes were the latest and greatest thing a few decades ago, but they wear out easily and their quality is usually less than great. If you have a lot of old videotapes like I do, you probably hate how big they are and the fact that you have to rewind them after watching. They're also a hassle and wear out every time you watch them.

I've been thinking about making extra money by converting videotapes for people. I'll charge a relatively low amount for rip-and-burn but more if you want me to edit the tapes and do stuff with them.

Let me know if you're interested. I won't charge excessive amounts unless you give me really complicated orders. This is something I'm not planning on starting until after band is over when I have a lot of free time.

Oh, and I haven't decided on the price yet. Any suggestions for what a reasonable fee would be?

http://hs.facebook.com/marketplace/listing.php?classified_id=6604916501