Tomato

When is a war not a War?

2009-07-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

The answer seems to be when Americans are not dying.

Throughout the 1990's, the United States (through Bill Clinton) and Britain lead a bombing campaign in the country of Iraq that killed an inestimable number of people and caused an untold amount of damage to property and wealth in an already impoverished nation. One of the reasons the estimates of damage are impossible to know is that is the chaotic and insane nature of war. Another reason is that this war was not called "A War". By and large, it wasn't called anything. It was hardly referenced in our media, certainly not to the degree the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were later covered by 24 hour news shows, even if that coverage is now dwindling despite the never ending violence that seems to continue.

This campaign was so under-covered that many of our own ruling elite seemed to be unaware of it's existence as evidenced by Rudy Giuliani's reaction to Ron Paul evoking this campaign during a debate in 2007. Giuliani says, "I don't think I've ever heard that." And he wasn't alone it seems, as the crowd cheered on his ignorance and repudiation of Paul's statement of simple fact.

Now *everyone* knows about Iraq War II, because that was a War (with a capital W). We know this was war because that's what most every media source referred to it as. But why? What was the difference between that War, and the non-war during the 90's? One simple explanation would be that there was no declaration of war during the 1990's. But then, this CAN'T be the reason for not calling the war in the 90's a War (with a capital W), because there was no declaration of war for the second Iraq war either.

Yesterday the United States sent predator drones from Afghanistan, a country we ARE at war with, to Pakistan, which we are NOT at war with, and killed dozens of people. This attack is the fourth in the last week and has brought the death total for this week alone to nearly 100 people. This attack also marks the 25th time the United States has bombed Pakistan since Barack Obama has taken office, and the 61st attack since the beginning of 2008.

BUT, we are not at War (with a capital W) with Pakistan. There's no American's dying, the use of predator drones have ensured that as the use of Cruise missiles did in the 90's over Iraq. There's no "boots on the ground" so to speak, despite the claims on the Air Force's propaganda videos that these planes are being used to support troops and "save lives." They are in fact being used to TAKE lives. Lives of children and lives of innocents, but not lives of Americans. So there is no War.

Blowback is a bitch, as the United States learned in 1979 when 53 Americans were held hostage for over a year, and then RE-LEARNED on September 11th. The seeds the Federal Government have planted through their non-Wars take time to grow, but grow they do. It's impossible to say what will be harvested from these consistent and deadly attacks in Northern Pakistan, or if the consequences will be so clearly consequential that they will self-evidently a direct result of these attacks. But actions have consequences nonetheless. And as long as the United States Federal Government continues to act with hubris, ignoring all calls to end it's non-war with Pakistan, it runs the risk of inciting more violence against Americans, which could possibly lead to a "real" War.

The kind with a capital W, and sadly the kind with lots of American deaths.

torture

2009-05-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

Report: Unreleased Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos 'Show Rape'

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the U.S. President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj. Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

"The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."

In April, Mr. Obama's administration said the photographs would be released and it would be "pointless to appeal" against a court judgment in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr. Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: "The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr. Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: "I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr. Obama said the individuals involved had been "identified, and appropriate actions" taken.

Maj Gen Taguba's internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found "credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses."

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under U.S. Freedom of Information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: "I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn't covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid's ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures."

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the U.S.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman's "stick" all of which were apparently photographed.

What a sad state of affairs.

2009-05-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

Tom Woods on the difference between tooth fairy economics and grown up economics at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Why anyone would want to speak there, I don't know, but it's a very good short speech.

Ron Paul Marijuana debate

2009-03-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

Baldwin embarrasses himself by spouting his opinion and stating that is unquestionable fact. "No doubt about it, I don't care what anybody says."

Worse, Baldwin proclaims his position as the Christian one. I have to disagree that putting people in cages for ingesting the wrong chemicals is the position of love.

Baldwin really has no answer for anything Paul says, and I swear at the 8:00 minute mark his face shows that he knows it. This may be the second time that Dr. Paul changes someone's mind on an issue during on air interview as D.L. Hughley gives Paul credit for changing his mind on the necessity of the Civil War during an interview on Bill Maher's show in which they were both guests.

2009-02-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

A Picture

2009-02-05T07:21:00.001-08:00

I promise a post with a tad more thought in the near future.

Hope.

2009-01-23T11:48:00.000-08:00

At Least 20 Killed in Twin US Attacks in Waziristan

Click headline to read the story.

One has to wonder if his highness signed off on these attacks personally, or if the machinations of the Federal Government's War Machine is such that it can make deadly strikes on the sovereign soil of a country we are not at war with, without the green light of the Commander in Chief, but as a matter of course or momentum.

American Empire Celebration Day: New King Edition

2009-01-20T07:06:00.000-08:00

It's awfully hard for me to hate a man on a personal level who wears a White Sox hat, takes pot shots at the Cubs and their fans, and sends random text messages to his friends saying nothing more than "Sox!". I'm just immature like that, I make no apologies.

Though no doubt Obama will do his best to make me despise the man as he does immoral act after immoral act that damages the life, property, and liberty of millions of innocent individuals, I will make every attempt to be fair in my judgments. And will no doubt find myself defending the man from time to time as I've defended Bush in the past despite my ill feelings for that man. I'm actually somewhat fearful of the next few years and the misguided and wrongheaded economic ideas that are being thrown around. I fear we are in for much harder times in the coming years due to the New Deal 2.0 that is being promised. But then, as my adorable wife has reminded me on several occasions, it's hard to imagine a situation in which the practical alternative would be "better".

Good luck to Obama, and G-d save us all.

Current Events

2009-01-04T21:20:00.001-08:00

War, the force that gives us meaning.

I believe many of those photos are not from the current conflict because I'm fairly certain I've seen more than one of them before. Though admittedly it's hard to tell one picture of a child with it's face torn off from another.

My money helped pay for this destruction. I've never received a satisfactory answer as to why that is.

"Peace" Officers

2008-12-19T07:18:00.000-08:00

Thugs attack 12 year old in Texas

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2008/12/galveston_false_arrest.php

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.

All this is according to a lawsuit filed in Galveston federal court by Milburn against the officers. The lawsuit alleges that the officers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker due to the "tight shorts" she was wearing, despite not fitting the racial description of any of the female suspects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the reported illegal activity, Milburn's attorney, Anthony Griffin, tells Hair Balls.

After the incident, Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.

Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond's school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day, says Griffin. The new trial is set for February.

"I think we'll be okay," says Griffin. "I don't think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who's just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she's a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She's scared to death."

Since the incident more than two years ago, Dymond regularly suffers nightmares in which police officers are raping and beating her and cutting off her fingers, according to the lawsuit.
Griffin says he expects to enter mediation with the officers in early 2009 to resolve the lawsuit.

We've got calls in to the officers' lawyer; we'll let you know if we hear something.

Update: This is from the officers' lawyer, William Helfand:

Both the daughter and the father were arrested for assaulting a peace officer. "The father basically attacked police officers as they were trying to take the daughter into custody after she ran off."

Also, "The city has investigated the matter and found that the conduct of the police officers was appropriate under the circumstances," Helfand says. "It's unfortunate that sometimes police officers have to use force against people who are using force against them. And the evidence will show that both these folks violated the law and forcefully resisted arrest."

The legal positivist defenders of the thugs who make up the police officers in these United States tell us that the majority of cops who patrol our streets are good guys just doing their job. The problem is that according to the Galveston Police department, the “appropriate” execution of that job is beating up innocent twelve-year-old girls. And if that girl’s father happens to attempt to defend his innocent daughter, it’s perfectly cool with the Police officials if the cops go ahead and beat the crap out of him too.

Appropriate.

Just doing their job, appropriately.

Is it appropriate for cops to assault suspects? Is it ever appropriate for cops to attack 12-year-olds? Is it appropriate for cops to treat 12-year-old prostitutes as criminals rather than victims? This is happening everyday. We only know of this story because they got the wrong girl, but would it really be okay if it was the right girl?

There is something very wrong with our republic.

The Troubling Views of Rick Warren

2008-12-05T08:19:00.000-08:00

Rick Warren claims that, according to the bible, the legitimate role of government is punishing evil-doers. Presumably this interpretation of scripture comes from Romans 13. However, for the first 3 chapters of Romans Paul lays out a logical and thorough case that ALL are evil-doers, proclaiming that "None is righteous, no, not one" and "no one does good". It appears then, that either God is openly advocating that the governments of the World punish ALL men, or that maybe Rick Warren's interpretation of the legitimate role of government is maybe a little bit off. Which, for most people is not a big deal, but for an incredibly powerful ~~opinion maker~~ pastor like Rick Warren who is openly advocating the assassination of a foreign leader, it's a tad disturbing.

Imagine the hysteria that would come from Hannity were a Muslim cleric to call for Bush's assassination...

Pesky Reality

2008-12-05T07:06:00.000-08:00

If the addition to Obama's staff by warhawks like Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and Jim Jones weren't enough to get you in the holiday spirit maybe this article will help.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/nyt_obama_betrayal.html

Campaign Promises on Ending the War in Iraq Now Muted by Reality

By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to “end the war” in Iraq.

But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.

“I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said this week as he introduced his national security team.
Publicly at least, Mr. Obama has not set a firm number for that “residual force,” a phrase certain to become central to the debate on the way ahead in Iraq, though one of his national security advisers, Richard Danzig, said during the campaign that it could amount to 30,000 to 55,000 troops. Nor has Mr. Obama laid out any timetable beyond 16 months for troop drawdowns, or suggested when he believes a time might come for a declaration that the war is over.

In the meantime, military planners are drawing up tentative schedules aimed at meeting both Mr. Obama’s goal for withdrawing combat troops, with a target of May 2010, and the Dec. 31, 2011, date for sending the rest of American troops home that is spelled out in the new agreement between the United States and the Iraqi government.

That status-of-forces agreement remains subject to change, by mutual agreement, and Army planners acknowledge privately that they are examining projections that could see the number of Americans hovering between 30,000 and 50,000 — and some say as high as 70,000 — for a substantial time even beyond 2011.

As American combat forces decline in numbers and more provinces are turned over to Iraqi control, these military planners say, Iraqi security forces will remain reliant on significant numbers of Americans for training, supplies, logistics, intelligence and transportation for a long time to come.

There always was a tension, if not a bit of a contradiction, in the two parts of Mr. Obama’s campaign platform to “end the war” by withdrawing all combat troops by May 2010. To be sure, Mr. Obama was careful to say that the drawdowns he was promising included only combat troops. But supporters who keyed on the language of ending the war might be forgiven if they thought that would mean bringing home all of the troops.

Pentagon planners say that it is possible that Mr. Obama’s goal could be accomplished at least in part by relabeling some units, so that those currently counted as combat troops could be “re-missioned,” their efforts redefined as training and support for the Iraqis.

In Iraq today, there are 15 brigades defined as combat forces in this debate, with one on its way home. But the overall number of troops on the ground is more than 50 brigade equivalents, for a total of 146,000 troops, including service and support personnel. Even now, after the departure of the five “surge” brigades that President Bush sent to Iraq in January 2006, the overall number of troops in Iraq remains higher than when Mr. Bush ordered the troop increase, owing to the number of support and service personnel remaining.

At his news conference in Chicago on Monday, Mr. Obama emphasized his willingness to listen to the advice from senior officers and that of his new national security team, which includes Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the first Pentagon chief in history to continue serving under a newly elected president; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and, as national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, the retired four-star Marine officer who served as NATO’s supreme commander.

Since the election, Mr. Obama has held unannounced consultations with both Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen, described by Obama aides and Pentagon officials as having focused less on tactics and operations and more on broad, strategic views for American national security. On Wednesday, he made a telephone call to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, according to the Obama transition office.

To date, there has been no significant criticism from the antiwar left of the Democratic Party of the prospect that Mr. Obama will keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for at least several years to come.

At the Pentagon and the military headquarters in Iraq, the response to the statements this week from Mr. Obama and his national security team has been akin to the senior officer corps’ letting out its collective breath; the words sounded to them like the new president would take a measured approach on the question of troop levels.

“I believe that 16 months is the right time frame, but, as I’ve said consistently, I will listen to the recommendations of my commanders,” Mr. Obama said at that news conference on Monday. “And my No. 1 priority is making sure that our troops remain safe in this transition phase, and that the Iraqi people are well served by a government that is taking on increased responsibility for its own security.”

An apparent evolution of Mr. Obama’s thinking can be heard in contrast to comments he made in July, when he called a news conference to lay out his Iraq policy in unambiguous terms.

“I intend to end this war,” he said then. “My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war — responsibly, deliberately, but decisively.” And in a news conference that month in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Obama acknowledged that the American troop increase had bolstered Iraqi security but declared that he would not hesitate to overrule American commanders and redirect troops in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates, speaking at the Pentagon on Tuesday, a day after he appeared with Mr. Obama to announce the new national security team, made clear that the direction of troop levels now had been decided, with the only decisions remaining on how fast and how low.

“And so the question is, How do we do this in a responsible way?” Mr. Gates said. “And nobody wants to put at risk the gains that have been achieved, with so much sacrifice, on the part of our soldiers and the Iraqis, at this point.”

Vietnam Wall in Terms of Vietnamese Deaths

2008-11-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

A quick algebra problem for Veterans Day. Feel free to correct my math or dispute my numbers.

The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. catalogs the names of 58,260 Americans who died during the Vietnam War. The wall stretches an ominous 246 feet 9 inches, (2961 inches) which I had the opportunity to walk when we visited D.C. a few years back.

In adding up the average death calculations for Vietnamese soldiers and civilians I come up with about 1,255,000 dead. I do believe that would be a conservative estimate.

So....

2961 inches divided by 58,260 names gives us about .05 names per inch of wall.

So if the wall documented Vietnamese names instead of Americans we would take 1,255,000 million dead multiplied by our .05 names per inch gives us about 62750 inches of wall.

Or about 5229 feet.

Or about one very solemn mile.

Next four years.....

2008-11-05T20:15:00.000-08:00

...same as the last.

Juror'd

2008-10-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

I have been summoned as a juror in Kane County. Presently I am sitting in a large room with about 250 of my fellow jurors. Jury duty is one of the only functions of the State that I actually don't need to be threatened with violence to comply with. I'm rather hoping I am selected and get to sit on a trial for some poor schmuck who committed one of the State's innumerable imaginary crimes.

We've been told a handful of times that we will be waiting for the majority of our time here, and thus I am currently waiting. The first
20 or so jurors were called up right before I started this post and since then nothing has happened. Free coffee and donuts are being served to keep us pacified. Can't say I mind that.

One thing I've definitely noticed is that while over 23% of Kane County's population is Latino, I would estimate that 99% of the juror pool here is white. I see two black people, an Indian, and ZERO Latinos. Jury of your peers indeed. I wonder what percentage of crimes are committed by Latinos in Kane County?

Well, more updates later if something interesting happens. Though I'll be forced at gun point to turn off my BlackBerry if I get called upstairs. So much for free speech I guess.

Update: (9:30 A.M) twenty more jurors called, myself not included. One annoying factor is that there are 8 overhead televisions providing limited entertainment. As soon as I sat down the channel was changed from ESPN to Home and Garden Television. I think the guy who controls all the TV's thinks he's getting points with the ladies or something.

Update:(9:45). I've been called.

Update: (12:00) Well the jury selection went like this. Twenty-five of us were called upstairs to the court room and told to sit in audience section of the room. Then four jurors were called (apparently randomly) to sit in the juror box where they were questioned first by the judge, then the prosecutor, then the defense. If any of those three had objections to the juror being questioned the juror was sent home. All in all sixteen jurors were called to sit in the jury box. Three were released to go home, and one was set as an alternate. After this was done the trial had enough jurors and the remaining nine of us who were never questioned were sent home.

I am convinced that had I been questioned I would have been excused. Among the questioned asked of the jurors two of them would have made the prosecution, if not the judge, excuse me immediately. The first was, "do you have any opinions on the legalizations of drugs?" Well yes, I do, actually. The second question was, "If the judge instructs you of the law would you be able to follow the law even if you disagree with it?" I find this question to be appalling. I think it should be illegal for the prosecution or judge to ask this question before a jury trial. What the question basically means is that if I find their laws to be morally repugnant, I still have to abide by them and convict people of them. It means, for instance, if there were still laws legitimizing slavery, I would have to convict black men who ran away from the captors. It means, if there were still laws segregating race, that I would have to convict a black woman who sat at the front of the bus.

After we were excused the judge gave some ridiculous speech about how were were all doing our civic duty by serving on a jury, even if we weren't selected. And that "Your government wouldn't work, and it is YOUR government, if you as citizens didn't serve as jurors. That is what democracy is to me." Well apparently this judge does not believe his own rhetoric. If this were a free society the jury box would be the last stand against unchecked government power. See, we don't REALLY have much say when it comes to voting. I mean they'll tell us our vote counts, but really your one out of a hundred thousand, or even hundred million, hardly effects the governments actions. Sure, you can vote for a different legislator but how much say do you have over what the person legislates? Case in point the recent bailout vote, which the public was overwhelming against passed anyway.

But one place in which we do have a direct say on the matter of legislation is in juries. There, one vote can stall the State's legislation. And just twelve votes can overturn it outright. But jury votes in favor of the State's laws lend them legitimacy. Which is why, when you take people out of the pool who object to the laws legitimacy, you stack the deck in favor of the State. I mean all trials are already stacked in favor of the State since every person except for the defense lawyer (and even him in some cases) who is executing the trial is on the State's payroll. Taking people out of the courtroom who think independently, who do not believe in the laws of men but the Rule of Law, or who do not see legitimacy in the State at all, expose the whole system for the sham that it truly is.

Well, it made for an interesting, yet boring day. And in the end somewhat pointless.

UPDATE: Jeez, I totally forgot to mention that the trial was for a young latino man (maybe 19 or 20) for the imaginary crime of "possession of a controlled substance." All the jurors selected save one were at least 50 years old and white. And like I said earlier, 99% of the jurors that were called were white.

lol camping

2008-10-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

It's a wonderful World in which a man can sit by a camp fire in the Middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin and write a blog post on his Blackberry as I am now. I don't particularly like camping, but having even a small piece of the digital age helps some. I am, however, posting this without the benefit of a spell checker. Hopefully this will provide some entertainment for an otherwise uncontroversial or particularly enlightening post. Which is not to make the claim that any of my posts ARE particularly enlightening.

We're here with Crystal's family for a little get together, and thankfully won't be spending the night. I am not one for intentionally exposing myself to nature's elements a good century after the glorious Industrial Revolution reached the American shore. I understand that there are some people who enjoy this entirely pointless activity, so I would not advocate making the practice illegal. I do think that rigorous counseling should be strongly advised, or even compelled.

Back in the real World my White Sox are in a two game hole in the ALDS against the Devil Rays. What's disappointing about this is not that they are losing, I actually expected them to lose. It's that they actually played well enough to be competetive in the first two games. And on the road in a dome at that, where they have been absolutely terrible all year. Still, they have a chance to send it back to Tampa Bay if they can simply win two games at home. That won't be the difficult part of winning the series though, the tough part will be going back to that dome and stealing one there. A task that will most likely prove beyond this team's abilities.

Across town the Cubs are in even more a dire situation. Somehow managing to lose the first two games of their series to a lesser team in the Dodgers. At home no less. I am a Cubs hater for the most part, so I can't say I feel much in the way of sadness for their demise, but I do feel a tinge of sympathy for their fans who had their hopes sky high for this year. Just a tinge though as Cubs fans are certainly nothing if not an annoying lot. What with their stupid Go Cubs Go song and blue W that never seems to come down even when they lose.

Well it's log splitting time so I should probably be signing off.

Later.

Can Joe Biden be the Vice President of a Change administration?

2008-10-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

We are told, time and time, from both the Obama campaign and the majority of grassroots supporters of the democratic ticket, that Obama is the "Change We Need.". That the country needs change seems beyond reproach. Even McCain has shifted his message to be that of reform rather than Bush's "Staying the course." And it was in this climate that Obama gained the nomination from the Democratic Party. He was nominated, I believe, in large part due to his opposition to both the war in Iraq and his willingness to tone down the United States’ aggressive foreign policy toward it’s perceived enemies. This is how he established himself as a “Change” candidate and differentiated himself from Hillary Clinton. However, despite his well stated sloganeering, his first executive action as said “Change” candidate was to nominate someone who has followed, and even preceded, the Neo-Conservative agenda every step of the way in both action and philosophy. An action that totally contradicts his message prior to that point.

To me, this means one of two things:

1. Obama was vaulted to prominence by his Party who saw him as an electable candidate, and in return for the favor Obama agreed to nominate the Party’s pick for VeeP.

2. Choosing Biden was purely political in that Obama is hoping it will help him avoid the weak-on-national-security smears used against Democratic candidates generally. However, this speaks no better for Obama’s “Change” candidacy because *IF* his selection of Biden was his way of showing he is strong on national security than Obama’s views on what national security is are similar to that of the GOP's. In other words, if I were going to pick a VP candidate that was strong on national security I would maybe pick someone who I felt might make us safer by toning DOWN our rhetoric to places like Russia, for instance. However, Obama selected Biden, a man who takes an aggressive and threatening position on any country he sees as our enemy. Which is quite similar to how the GOP runs their foreign policy.

I’m more inclined to think the former true because I’m probably more cynical about the American political process than most people. But neither scenario bodes well for Obama and his so-called “Change” campaign. At least not to someone who is actually interested in a change from the foreign policy of the past seven years and not just the expansion of power for the Democratic Party.

Now, as for Biden, if you want a long term view of his history I suppose his approval of the war in Iraq is a good place to start. Oh, I know, that was a long time a go and since the Surge WORKED(!) it's silly to go back and actually hold the people who authorized the thing in congress accountable, but I think it's still a significant point that he didn't have enough of a disagreement with the neo-Con theology at that point to actually raise a voice in protest. In fact, you'll remember he was at the time the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and had the power to select any speaker he wanted when his Senate hearing happened in '02. But, when the witness list came up, it was void of a single dissenter on the issue. The only people who disagreed with the war that were asked to participate were those who only disagreed with the motive, not the final outcome, such as humanitarian interventionists who argued we should invade to dispose Saddam, not to get the WMD's.

Even as the war grew more and more unpopular Biden maintained his position never demanding we exit the country, only that we add more troops to the area. His goal has always been to improve Iraq by "leaving Iraq better than we found it". Of course it's American minds that can better Iraq, not Iraqi minds according to Mr. Biden.

Though, I should not paint Biden as a totally Republican Neo-Con in his foreign policy view because, while most Republicans were opposed to Clinton's invasion of Yugoslavia, Joe Biden fully endorsed it! Calling it "absolutely correct," and claiming that if we didn't bomb them, "our interests will be badly hurt." So I suppose you could call Biden more of a bipartisan warmonger than just a party shill

Bully for him.

Also, Biden was pretty hawkish against Iraq even before 9/11. He did his fair share of saber rattling in 1998 when then UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter came to the Senate for a hearing:

http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/ritter-nuke-sen.htm

"But that doesn't guarantee, if these sanctions are in place, that the program is going to be curtailed. Anything other than curtailed doesn't guarantee that we're going to be able to stop it. I think you and I believe and many of us believe here as long as Saddam's at the helm there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam's program relative to weapons of mass destruction.

And you and I both know and all of us here really know, and it's a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we're going to end up having to start it alone -- start it alone -- and it's going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a -- the -- taking Saddam down. (Laughter.) You know it and I know it."

Hahahahaha

AMIRITE?

So basically, in 98, he supported preemptive strike, unilateral attack, and regime change before the Bush doctrine existed. Hey, well at least he probably knows what it is. And all of this says nothing of McCain, Obama, Biden, and Palin's insistence that we need to give a war guarantee to Georgia. Because offering war guarantees to tiny countries in the middle of border disputes with super powers has never started World Wars or anything.

Change indeed, Mr. Obama.

On the issue of written constitutions and supreme courts

2008-09-24T17:20:00.000-07:00

What do you think of abolishing the Constitution of the United States of America?

I've been thinking of this some lately and I think I've come to the conclusion it's a necessary endeavor. Like most small 'l' libertarians I believe in strict construction-ism when it comes to issues of constitutionality. I firmly believe there is no point in having a written constitution if it is loosely interpreted or thought of as anything less than or anything more than a shackle on government power. However, given the fact that we have failed to update it, we’ve basically forced the Supreme Court to legislate from the bench, as it has come to be known.

Take for instance the most recent major case, the gun ruling. Some claimed it was the correct ruling, others claimed it was legislating from the bench. I’d personally fall on the side of those who think it was correct in the framework of our current constitution, but understand the argument from those on the left claiming those who wrote the thing had no idea what type of firearms would be available 200 years later. The thing is, the correct course of action is not to give the Supreme Court the power to rule on these matters, it’s to amend the constitution to what We the People want.

But we’ve abdicated our responsibility to update our constitution. WE should be having these debates, not judges. But given the fact that we refuse to do it, they are forced to. We are essentially passing off our responsibility to them. We force them to rule on their sense of fairness when we ask them to rule on issues that don’t exist in the document.

I do believe that the World belongs to the living. Just as you’d probably agree that someone in Canada has no right to determine your form of government, wouldn’t you agree that someone from 200 years ago has no right to determine your form of government? IMO, the libertarian stance should be #1 yes, strict adherence to written constitution. But #1A, demand the thing be repealed then re-written (or more better would be repealed and not rewritten).

There are other problems of course.

The Supreme Court has much more power than it ever was intended to. The idea that one of the branches of the Federal government has the final say on what is or what isn’t constitutional is a gross conflict of interest and entirely contrary to the idea of checks and balances.

And maybe more importantly the constitution is spelled with a capital C. It’s looked at as if it’s some sacred document touched by the hand of G-d. It’s put in a shrine, when it should be re-written with every generation, and amended in-between.

Terrorism Debate

2008-09-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

This is what presidential debates might sound like in this country if we actually had an opposition party. You won't hear discussion like this in the upcoming debates because McCain and Obama have fundamentally the same beliefs on these issues.

Live TV : Ustream

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/705336

If the video streaming gives you problems you can download the audio only here.

500,000 dead children okay with democrats

2008-09-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCdR0tGuZOc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S1YkQs5nXQ

But, they hate us for our freedoms.

Change

2008-09-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

From Ron Paul's press conference this morning with Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, & Cynthia McKinney:

Ron Paul Statement to the National Press Club

The American Majority

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."

Carroll Quigley – Author of Tragedy & Hope

The coverage of the presidential election is designed to be a grand distraction. This is not new, but this year, it’s more so than ever.

Pretending that a true difference exists between the two major candidates is a charade of great proportion. Many who help to perpetuate this myth are frequently unaware of what they are doing and believe that significant differences actually do exist. Indeed, on small points there is the appearance of a difference. The real issues, however, are buried in a barrage of miscellaneous nonsense and endless pontifications by robotic pundits hired to perpetuate the myth of a campaign of substance.

The truth is that our two-party system offers no real choice. The real goal of the campaign is to distract people from considering the real issues.

Influential forces, the media, the government, the privileged corporations and moneyed interests see to it that both party’s candidates are acceptable, regardless of the outcome, since they will still be in charge. It’s been that way for a long time. George Wallace was not the first to recognize that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two parties. There is, though, a difference between the two major candidates and the candidates on third-party tickets and those running as independents.

The two parties and their candidates have no real disagreements on foreign policy, monetary policy, privacy issues, or the welfare state. They both are willing to abuse the Rule of Law and ignore constitutional restraint on Executive Powers. Neither major party champions free markets and private-property ownership.

Those candidates who represent actual change or disagreement with the status quo are held in check by the two major parties in power, making it very difficult to compete in the pretend democratic process. This is done by making it difficult for third-party candidates to get on the ballots, enter into the debates, raise money, avoid being marginalized, or get fair or actual coverage. A rare celebrity or a wealthy individual can, to a degree, overcome these difficulties.

The system we have today allows a President to be elected by as little as 32% of the American people, with half of those merely voting for the “lesser of two evils”. Therefore, as little as 16% actually vote for a president. No wonder when things go wrong, anger explodes. A recent poll shows that 60% of the American people are not happy with the two major candidates this year.

This system is driven by the conviction that only a major party candidate can win. Voters become convinced that any other vote is a “wasted” vote. It’s time for that conclusion to be challenged and to recognize that the only way not to waste one’s vote is to reject the two establishment candidates and join the majority, once called silent, and allow the voices of the people to be heard.

We cannot expect withdrawal of troops from Iraq or the Middle East with either of the two major candidates. Expect continued involvement in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Georgia. Neither hints of a non-interventionist foreign policy. Do not expect to hear the rejection of the policy of supporting the American world empire. There will be no emphasis in protecting privacy and civil liberties and the constant surveillance of the American people. Do not expect any serious attempt to curtail the rapidly expanding national debt. And certainly, there will be no hint of addressing the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationship with big banks and international corporations and the politicians.

There is only one way that these issues can get the attention they deserve: the silent majority must become the vocal majority.

This message can be sent to our leaders by not participating in the Great Distraction—the quadrennial campaign and election of an American President without a choice. Just think of how much of an edge a Vice President has in this process, and he or she is picked by a single person—the party’s nominee. This was never intended by the Constitution.

Since a principled non-voter sends a message, we must count them and recognize the message they are sending as well. The non-voters need to hold their own “election” by starting a “League of Non-voters” and explain their principled reasons for opting out of this charade of the presidential elective process. They just might get a bigger membership than anyone would guess.

Write-in votes should not be discouraged, but the electoral officials must be held accountable and make sure the votes are counted. But one must not be naïve and believe that under today’s circumstances one has a chance of accomplishing much by a write-in campaign.

The strongest message can be sent by rejecting the two-party system, which in reality is a one-party system with no possible chance for the changes to occur which are necessary to solve our economic and foreign policy problems. This can be accomplished by voting for one of the non-establishment principled candidates—Baldwin, Barr, McKinney, Nader, and possibly others. (listed alphabetically)

Yes, these individuals do have strong philosophic disagreements on various issues, but they all stand for challenging the status quo—those special interest who control our federal government. And because of this, on the big issues of war, civil liberties, deficits, and the Federal Reserve they have much in common. People will waste their vote in voting for the lesser of two evils. That can’t be stopped overnight, but for us to have an impact we must maximize the total votes of those rejecting the two major candidates.

For me, though, my advice—for what it’s worth—is to vote! Reject the two candidates who demand perpetuation of the status quo and pick one of the alternatives that you have the greatest affinity to, based on the other issues.

A huge vote for those running on principle will be a lot more valuable by sending a message that we’ve had enough and want real change than wasting one’s vote on a supposed lesser of two evils.

Palin

2008-09-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

Well if nothing else I should at least update this thing from time to time with stories that catch my attention. This is a pretty good article by a Mr. Hornberger that maybe over simplifies God's will a touch, but I think all in all makes some excellent points. It might also be added that while Mrs. Palin is ardently pro-life, even going so far as to admirably sacrifice much of her own future to care for a special needs child, she is also inexplicably urging her first born son to kill or be killed in a war that has no self evident moral or just cause.

Palin’s Wrongheaded View of God’s Plans
by Jacob G. Hornberger

In an address to an Assembly of God Church in Alaska, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin suggested that church members pray “that our national leaders are sending [soldiers to Iraq] on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”

It would be interesting to hear Palin explain her understanding of how God’s plans can possibly involve violations of His sacred commandments.

The commandment is simple: That shalt not murder. God did not provide exceptions to that prohibition, not even for agents of the CIA and the U.S. military.

Lest we forget: Neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States or threatened to do so. No matter how many contortions that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have engaged in (e.g., WMDs, the war on terrorism, 9/11, spreading democracy, UN resolutions, and radical Islam), the simple truth remains: The U.S. government attacked Iraq, not the other way around.

Thus, we should never forget: In the Iraq War, the United States is the aggressor nation and Iraq is the defending nation. That means that no agent of the U.S. government had any moral right to kill even one single Iraqi, much less the million or so that have been killed.

Some people calculate the wrongful Iraqi deaths only in terms of civilian deaths. They have it wrong. Since the U.S. government had no right to invade Iraq, U.S. agents, including those in the CIA and the military, had no moral right to kill any Iraqi, including Iraqis who were defending against the wrongful invasion and occupation of their country.

The standard neo-con religious position is that whatever the U.S. government does overseas against foreigners is right and moral as a matter of law because the government is operating as an agent of God and simply fulfilling His plans.

The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by the pre-invasion sanctions? A million Iraqis killed in the invasion? Well, you see, those killings can’t be murder because it was the U.S. government that did the sanctioning and invading. It would only be murder if, say, the Russian government committed those acts. Since it’s the U.S. government that killed all those people, it’s all good and moral because it must be all part of God’s plan.

Moreover, keep in mind that in the neo-con mindset the U.S. government and the American people are one and the same. Since everyone knows that the American people are kind, caring, and charitable, that means that everything the U.S. government does, including kidnapping, renditioning, torturing, and sexually abusing people, is all good and moral. It’s all part of God’s plan, you know.

This attitude, of course, is what distinguishes Christian libertarians from Christian neo-cons. Christian libertarians adhere strictly to God’s commandments, refusing to draw an exception for agents of the U.S. government. Unlike them, we hold that murder is murder, even when committed by agents of the U.S. government. Since the U.S. government had no right to invade Iraq, it had no right to kill any Iraqis, much less a million of them. The same principle holds true with respect to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by the pre-invasion sanctions. The same holds true for the murders, torture, and sex abuse committed by U.S. agents against Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.

Christian libertarians, unlike Christian neo-cons, do not conflate the American citizenry with the U.S. government. As such, we are capable of recognizing immorality and wrongdoing committed by the U.S. government and we are unafraid to take a stand against it. Unlike the neo-cons, we don’t try to excuse away evil and immorality by claiming that they must be part of God’s plan.

Indeed, unlike the Christian neo-cons we Christian libertarians don’t view the government as an agent of God but instead as simply a bunch of ordinary people who use government force to satisfy their self-interests, including the ever-growing lust for more power and more money.

2008-08-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

Joe Biden co-sponsored the original Patriot Act. Obama voted to renew it.

Change.

Speaking of change this blog really needs to. Or it needs to die. Decision coming shortly.

2008-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

You can look below to see my personal reaction to Super Tuesday. However, I just read this article from a best selling author who put to words my feelings in a way only best selling authors can. It's worth posting here.

The man is Doug Wead, who in no way should be considered a Ron Paul supporter. In fact Wead has worked with both of the Bush presidents and is thought to be the man who coined the phrase "compassionate conservatism", a phrase that Ron Paul has actually mocked.

According to Mr. Wead, the real winner of yesterday's elections... Ron Paul.

The Mouse that roared: Why Ron Paul won the election

Well now, Republicans say, we have a nominee. That may very well be but there was only one clear winner in the confusing GOP nominating contest and it was not John McCain. The winner was Ron Paul. And the effects of his win will be felt for years to come.

Ron Paul made a classic political mistake. He told the truth. In debate after debate he pointed at his party, his president, his fellow contenders for the GOP nomination, shouting aloud like the little boy in the proverbial story, “they have no clothes” and lo and behold, we looked and they didn’t. They were all naked.

He showed that the conservative movement has lost its way, its moral authority and its logic. He showed us that we have become a red team versus blue team. That since we have decided that this is a political war and all normal rules are suspended, conservatives can do liberal things to win it. Conservatives can run up big deficits if it helps their side win. They can dole out needless pork if it elects another “conservative” to congress. They can go to war if it makes their president look like a leader and wins him another term.

But in the process, Ron Paul showed us, that we have lost our way. We are no longer conservatives. We are fighting for power not for principles. We have become corrupted by the process and the only way back is to retrace our steps and find all the things we discarded along he way.

Barry Goldwater lighted a similar fire with his Conscience of a Conservative. Its truth and arguments were so obvious and so honest that one laughed aloud while reading it. But Goldwater, himself, was doomed to political defeat. And Ron Paul had no chance to win this election either. One could see that when he first opened his mouth.

And yet, the words and arguments of Ron Paul are still resonating. They still hang over this election. They are haunting and troubling. They are producing blogs and papers and books and like Goldwater’s revolution they will one day very likely produce their own Ronald Reagan. And when those heady days happen a small but hearty band of pioneers, who first had the nerve to join him and start shouting from the street, “They aren’t wearing any clothes,” will be able to say that they could see what the country missed. They were there when history was made.

John McCain and his poorly chosen words, of staying in Iraq a hundred years, have almost guaranteed that he will be the answer to the trivia question, who was the Republican candidate who lost to the ticket that claimed the first woman and black for the presidency? Another question may very well be, “What other candidate ran that year and launched the movement that has dominated national politics for the last generation?”

And the answer will be Ron Paul.

Clinton vs. McCain '08?

2008-02-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

It's looking more like it. I know the Democratic nomination is no where near finished but I really think Clinton has it for no other reason than she gets the old vote, and the old are typically the people who decide who our rulers are.

It's astonishing to me that anyone can vote for some of these people, but what really just blows my mind is that the majority of Republicans who are against the Iraq war are voting for John McCain. The guy who wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years. The guy who jokes about bombing Iran. There is a complete lack of principle in the Republican party, which is apparent through the complete disarray the party is in. It's now split up between social conservative, (mostly christian militarists) NeoCons, (mostly military idealists) and a large clump of confused individuals who argue about what it even is to be a "conservative". My theory of why this mass confusion and indecision exists is that the first two groups are not at all "conservative" (that is limited government) in nature and are both much more organized and easy to define than the third. Thus they can wrongly claim to be the true conservative and influence and confuse the third group.

I guess the silver lining to all this is that the foolish Republicans who have been blindly following their party for the past 7 years are now going to get exactly what they fear most and deserve: President Hillary.

"One must always remember, when extolling the virtues of democracy and free elections, that by definition half of the population has below average intelligence." -me

McCain wants to bring troops home NOW!

2008-02-02T08:42:00.000-08:00

Not when democracy is flourishing.

Not when order is restored.

AS SOON AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT LOSING ANY MORE AMERICAN LIVES!!

That is when it's not a Republican's war....

When the Republicans start a war, we can stay there for a hundred years for all he cares.

What We Have Done

2008-01-14T08:13:00.000-08:00

If you vote for Obama you are complicit in this. If you vote for McCain this is what *YOU* want.

There are three candidates in the race for president that are left who will bring troops home starting day one. They are Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel.

What do YOU want?

The Huckster Revisted

2007-12-21T13:07:00.000-08:00

Last week I posted on the nature of Mike Huckabee's relationship to warmongering Christian Zionist John Hagee. Just how close is that connection?

Huckabee is scheduled to speak at Hagee's church this Sunday.

Andrew Sullivan officially becomes a Paulite

2007-12-17T09:33:00.000-08:00

From the Daily Dish:

By now, readers will know who I favor in the Democratic race. Here's my most considered case. But what of the GOP? For me, it comes down to two men, Ron Paul and John McCain. That may sound strange, because in many ways they are polar opposites: the champion of the surge and the non-interventionist against the Iraq war; the occasional meddling boss of Washington and the live-and-let-live libertarian from Texas. But picking a candidate is always a mix of policy and character, of pragmatism and principle. And what these two mavericks share, to my mind, is a modicum of integrity. At one end of the character scale, you have the sickening sight of Mitt Romney, a hollow shell of cynicism and salesmanship, recrafted to appeal to a base he studied the way Bain consultants assess a company. Paul and McCain are at the other end. They have both said things to GOP audiences that they knew would offend. They have stuck with their positions despite unpopularity. They're not saints, but they believe what they say. Both have also taken a stand against the cancerous and deeply un-American torture and detention regime constructed by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. In my book, that counts.

I admire McCain in so many ways. He is the adult in the field, he is attuned to the issue of climate change in a way no other Republican is, he is a genuine war hero and a patriot, and he bravely and rightly opposed the disastrous occupation policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. The surge is no panacea for Iraq; but it has enabled the United States to lose the war without losing face. And that, in the end, is why I admire McCain but nonetheless have to favor Paul over McCain. Because on the critical issue of our time - the great question of the last six years - Paul has been proven right and McCain wrong. And I say that as someone who once passionately supported McCain's position on the war but who cannot pretend any longer that it makes sense.

Let's be clear: we have lost this war. We have lost because the initial, central goals of the invasion have all failed: we have not secured WMDS from terrorists because those WMDs did not exist. We have not stymied Islamist terror - at best we have finally stymied some of the terror we helped create. We have not constructed a democratic model for the Middle East - we have instead destroyed a totalitarian government and a phony country, only to create a permanently unstable, fractious, chaotic failed state, where the mere avoidance of genocide is a cause for celebration. We have, moreover, helped solder a new truth in the Arab mind: that democracy means chaos, anarchy, mass-murder, national disintegration and sectarian warfare. And we have also empowered the Iranian regime and made a wider Sunni-Shiite regional war more likely than it was in 2003. Apart from that, Mr Bush, how did you enjoy your presidency?

McCain, for all his many virtues, still doesn't get this. Paul does.

Paul, moreover, supports the only rational response: a withdrawal, as speedily and prudently as possible. McCain, along with Lieberman, still seems to believe that expending even more billions of dollars to prop up and enable a fast-devolving, ethnically toxic, religiously nutty region is somehow in American interests. Given the enormous challenges of the terror war, the huge debt we are piling up, the exhaustion of the military, the moral and financial corruption that has its white-hot center in Mesopotamia, I do not believe that an endless military, economic and political commitment to Iraq makes sense. It only makes sense if we are determined to occupy the Middle East indefinitely to secure oil supplies. But the rational response to oil dependence is not to entrench it, but to try and move away from it. Institutionalizing a bank-breaking, morale-busting Middle East empire isn't the way to go.

But the deeper reason to support Ron Paul is a simple one. The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul's federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul. He is a man of faith who nonetheless sees a clear line between religion and politics. More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left to the Christianist meddling of the right. The Paulites' enthusiasm for liberty, their unapologetic defense of core conservative principles, their awareness that in the new millennium, these principles of small government, self-reliance, cultural pluralism, and a humble foreign policy are more necessary than ever - no lover of liberty can stand by and not join them.

He's the real thing in a world of fakes and frauds. And in a primary campaign where the very future of conservatism is at stake, that cannot be ignored. In fact, it demands support.

Go Ron Paul!

Tea Party '07

2007-12-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

You know you're a cultural phenomenon when....

2007-12-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

Sporting books set lines on how much money you'll raise for your presidential candidate.

http://www.gambling911.com/Ron-Paul-121507A.html

While the news media continues to talk about Barack Obama passing by Hillary Clinton in the early primary state polls and Mike Huckabee seemingly coming out of nowhere to overtake both Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani in the very vulnerable Republican race for the 2008 White House, all eyes this weekend (at least when it comes to the bookmaking community) are focused on who many consider to be a long shot candidate - Ron Paul. That long shot, however, is the focus of a much ballyhooed "money bomb" on Sunday forecast by oddsmakers to reel in around $6 million.

"The $6 million mark is where the oddsmakers have set the shortest odds," says Payton O'Brien, Senior Editor of Gambling911.com.

Bookmaker.com had been offering odds on the range of money taken in on Sunday. By Friday evening they had ceased taking any more action on this bet for reasons unknown.

The range was as follows:

How much money will Ron Paul raise on December 16th?

- $1-3 million 3 to 1

- $3-6 million 5 to 6

- $6-10 million 11 to 10

- Over $10 million 2 to 1

Revolution indeed.

Tomorrow is the day!

Why we Fight

2007-12-13T08:35:00.000-08:00

Mike Huckabee claims he's ordained by God to be President

2007-12-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

I guess if he fails in his presidential run God himself is to blame.

Almost overnite, Mike Huckabee has become the darling of the Religious Right in America. Christians are suckers for political a candidate who talks frankly and non-apologetically about his faith and says nice things every once in a while on the issue of abortion. Huckabee fits the bill to tenth degree and has all the charisma and vernacular of the Sunday morning minister he used to be.

It's no problem looking past all the questionable ethics of Huckabee's past for these people. Never mind his aggressive push for the pardon of a convicted rapist who went on to murder. Never mind the destructions of public property on his way out the door when he left office in Arkansas. Never mind he raised taxes during his stay there more than Clinton did during his tenure. Never mind the non-Christian attitude towards members of the media who cross his path. All these things can be easily brushed aside for a soft spoken southern baptist who "says what he believes" even if he doesn't act on those beliefs.

The fact that words speak louder than actions for the Christian Right is, of course, nothing new and Huckabees behavior as a Governor is not exactly earth shattering. Indeed, corruption in politicians is as common as politicians themselves (Ron Paul excepted of course). All these things can probably be tolerated as typical political shenanigans. I've come to expect those type of activities from politicians and have based a lot of my political philosophies on those expectations. Those dishonesties aren't the real problem with Mike Huckabee.

The real problem with Mike Huckabee is that he's a warmonger.

John Hagee is a Christian Zionist and televangelist. He's known for his books Jerusalem Countdown and more recently In Defense of Israel, a pair of books that make outlandish and fear-based claims about end times and biblical predictions. Like Huckabee, Hagee purports to know the very will of God in order to further his own agenda. In older days these type of men were known as charlatans, now-a-days we call them leaders in the Christian Right.

Hagee's evil beliefs are based on a twisted theology of fundamental dispensationalism is comprised of the belief that the nation state Israel is the fulfillment of Bible prophesy and that thus, it deserves full political and military support from the US. But any friendly gestures from the likes of Christian Zionists like Hagee or Pat Robertson are merely formalities, because the ultimate prediction is Armageddon VIA nuclear war and the conversion of the Jews that survive or some such nonsense I can't be bothered to fully learn. Of course all of his prophesies are dependent on war, so he preaches and writes and gives interviews encouraging preemptive war with Iran.

Worst of all, his theology is that which 99% of practicing Christians would instantly reject. Watch here as he openly claims Jesus Christ DID NOT come to Earth to be the messiah.

And this is a man who is shaping the politics of the Christian Right. And endorsing Mike Huckabee.

You might be wondering what any of this Hagee business has to with Mike Huckabee. Well Hagee's publisher and long time friend Stephen Strang is directly linked to Huckabee. Just before fall Strang's magazine The New Man endorsed Huckabee. Likewise, Huckabee added Strang to his Faith and Values Coalition, an event for which John Hagee was in attendance. Strang has written and supported Hagee's threat's to Iran.

The Huckster sounds eerily like Hagee in this interview with Wolf Blitzer making the case to first starve the children and poor in Iran in the same way we did to Iraq inbetween Iraq Wars I & II, then using a preemptive nuclear strike to bomb Iran into compliance with his will. Of course all this tough talk of preemptive war against Iran sounds altogether more frightening with the NIE report that came out recently saying that Iran has long abandoned it's nuclear program. Imagine what a preemptive strike would have done to our country's security and prosperity if Huck and Hagee had their way already.

Compare Huckabee and Hagee's warmongering tones to those of Ron Paul at a debate earlier this year speaking on the subject of preemptive war with Iran:

“I do not believe that [pre-emptive war] is part of the American tradition. We, in the past have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or [to] go to aid somebody.
But now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war. We have rejected the just-war theory of Christianity. And now tonight, we hear that we’re not even willing to remove from the table a pre-emptive nuclear strike, against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security!
We have to come to our senses about this issue of war and pre-emption. [We have to] go back to traditions and our Constitution, and defend our liberties and defend our rights, but not to think that we can change the world by force of arms and to start wars.”
-Ron Paul

Who sounds like the true Christian candidate?

Fellow libertarian Christian William N. Grigg (one of my new favorite bloggers) recently posted on the ties between Hagee and Huckabee and posited the follwing:

"The only authentic conservative in the race, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, disqualified himself in the Christian Right's eyes by taking the teachings of the Prince of Peace too literally, and applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy. The Mullahs of the Mega-Churches, and many of their followers, are mortally offended by the notion that decades of bellicose interventionism by Washington might have something to do with the antagonisms that breed and feed anti-American terrorism."

....

"I suspect that if Mitt Romney is elected president, Hagee would have no difficulty reaching across the theological divide -- as long as Romney remains true to the gospel of militarist bloodshed. If Huckabee makes it to the Oval Office, it's likely that Hagee would be part of the Inner Court. Either prospect would be troubling to the Christian Right, were it more interested in defending Christian principles than in accumulating and preserving political power."

Amen to that.

Rudy supporters are really proud of their little warmonger!

2007-11-15T12:01:00.000-08:00

This is an actual Rudy Giuliani support video. It's not a satire piece making fun of Rudy for being so gung-ho about war with... everyone.

In other news I am now on Facebook. If you're a Facebooker and enjoy Facebooking as much as I, show yourself.

Ron Paul is money

2007-11-06T17:06:00.000-08:00

A pretty good interview with Tucker Carlson on his November 5th success.

The message is decentralization of power, and the movement is decentralized in nature.

November 5th!

2007-11-05T06:41:00.000-08:00

Zombie Tag

2007-10-06T17:09:00.000-07:00

Zombieslayer tagged me to motivate me to update my blog. That was like a week a go. lol

The object of this exercise is to list 7 things about myself and elaborate.

1) I am a Christian private property anarchist who, all things being equal, prefers: the Austrian School to the Chicago School, Praxeology to Objectivism, Rothbard to Rand, professional sports to amateurs, Coke to Pepsi, Wendy's to McDonald's, indie music to the RIAA, T V s h o w s to Hollywood movies, and above all love to violence.

2) I am almost entirely socially inept. I've been told most people who know me assume I don't like them very much. While I'm sure that's true in some cases for the most part I love people. I just don't know how to relate to them very well, which I think is why the Internet is so attractive to me. It's not exactly how I want to be though, and I've ~~made~~ attempted to make strides over the past few years to learn why I am the way I am and change it. Which brings me to number 3.

3) I am extraordinarily introspective. I've spent large quantities of time over the past few years examining who I am, what I believe, what I want to be, the way things should be, etc. I ponder these things so frequently hardly a day goes by in which I don't come about something that I think needs to change. A feeling, a reaction, a thought process. I'm so self analytical that it often spills over and I start analyzing other people's thoughts, feelings, and reactions. This doesn't help number two really.

4) I am going to vote for Ron Paul next year. It may very well be the last time I ever vote in an election as I don't really see anyone else with the chance at actually sparking change the way Ron Paul does. I have very little faith for the Republic. I'm incredibly pessimistic about the prospects of liberty and the future of Liberalism in general. I believe the American Empire will be bankrupted in my life time. Sad really.

5) Despite my love for the recent television golden age, I don't have a TV. We haven't had one in about 5 years and I don't really miss it all that much except of the being able to watch the Bears and White Sox. But then that's always a good excuse to head over to my Dad's for a game which I usually enjoy quite a bit. Plus, due to number 2 it's probably good for me to get out of the house once in a while.

6) I've recently fallen in love with Rugby. I've never watched a match before just about three weeks ago when I downloaded a couple of matches from the World Cup that is going on right now. In fact it concluded today but I won't be able to watch it for a few days so PLEASE DO NOT let me know who won if you have any idea at all. Fantastic sport though and I've had an absolute ball watching the games.

7) I'm a big fan of office pranks. In fact I recently wrapped by friend's desk at work and all of his supplies in shrink wrap while he took a day off.

Socially inept, socially inept....

The So-Called Sub Prime Mortgage Crisis

2007-09-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry all for the blog lapse again. If you're a long time reader here you know I go through stages where I don't write much. If you're new then you're probably not reading this now because you figured I up and quit. I didn't respond to any of the comments on the last post and for that I apologize. Bad blog form I know. I will say this, Godwhacker: absolutely brilliant ad. You need to find someone with some basic video editing skills and get that thing up on YouTube. Sadddie, yes come back to the blogging thing. Good times will be had.

To the rest of you I will try to form my own thoughts on the mortgage issue since the last time all I really did was post an article which is something I don't really like to do all that much.

Everyone will point the finger at the banks here (and believe me when I say banks in general are not AT ALL something I am fan of) but we must realize the sub-prime mortgage companies are losing their butts on this as well. So the question, as is the question with all recessions, depressions, panics or what have you, is how is it that all of these brilliant entrepreneurs who make their living by speculating market circumstances all of a sudden CHOOSE WRONG in a giant comedy of errors. An entire corporate failure on the part of an entire industry. I mean sure, at any given time you'll have some companies growing and some going under, that's natural in a free market, but what's not natural is for an entire industry to suddenly get really really stupid.

I said the "so-called mortgage crisis" because while this current market bubble has manifest itself inside of the house lending business, it is not at all specific to the mortgage business anymore than the tech bubble that popped after the 90's boom was specific to the computer industry. The crisis is not in mortgages or microchips, it's in our monetary system.

Our inflationary system pumps money into banks who in turn, at the beckoning of the FED who ARTIFICIALLY lowers interest rates, give out loans to borrowers who wouldn't be qualified under a NATURAL market-defined interest rate. This goes on for a while (market boom) until enough bad loans are given out and people who shouldn't have lots of money to invest do. Then the whole thing collapses due to the large number of bad investors in a given sector(market bust). It's really pretty predictable if you think about it.

On top of that banking itself is a flawed anti-capitalist institution that uses fractional reserve banking which CAN exist in a free market but would be much more rare if banks were in danger of actually losing their butts if they made bad decisions and people wanted to collect their money. Instead we have the subsidized system of FDIC, which protects banks from the dangers of risk and keeps bad banks in business instead of letting them go under like they're suppose to.

Tie all that to inflation in general which is way up and will continue to go up while we pay for the war (not to mention the BILLIONS(?) we are borrowing from China to pay for this fiasco of a foreign policy) and it's really kinda scary where this whole thing is heading.

Now, on the topic of "predatory" lending, it's important to remember that A) value is subjective and B) people act rationally in their own self interest. Once we understand that we can throw away all this unreasoned approach stuff. We know that the only way a loan (or any trade for that matter) to occur is for it to be mutually beneficial to BOTH parties. Now that loan may not look beneficial to YOU based on your value determination or rationale, but it is to the two parties involved based on their value scale and their rationale.

Therefore, any lending regulation ultimately results in the limiting of economic freedom, usually on the side of the borrower, who has the State deciding for them what is and isn’t “predatory” or financially responsible. As if those are objective values. All of this infringes on one of our most basic natural rights, which is even enumerated in the constitution, the right to contract.

For instance in Illinois we now have new lending laws that “protect” consumers, which in actuality limits what lenders can offer and therefore makes loans that might otherwise actually benefit borrowers illegal. This also leads to MORE fine print and MORE difficult to understand loans which in the long-term hurt consumers.

Take another so-called “predatory” loan, the cash advance payday loan. Sure these will have ultra high interest rates but if a borrower can pay them off quickly they can actually be quite beneficial as opposed to, say having their checking account overdraw and having to pay the bank for their overdraft fees. I hear all the time how these banks will charge upwards of $35 PER ITEM that is overdraft and if you have 5 or 6 items that go under which are just 5 or 6 each can easily end up with loans that have astronomical interest rates. If a person can get one of these payday loans to deposit the cash as the bank to cover their overdraft for a few days and pay of the loan as soon as they are paid they can easily save themselves a few hundred dollars. Now according to the government, the payday loan is “predatory” and the overdraft loan is moral and legal. I’m not critical of either as long as both parties agree upon the terms, but I see hypocrisy in making someone else’s subjective value judgment OBJECTIVE by calling one legal and one predatory. It’s rubbish.

Now it’s important to go back to my first few paragraphs here and remember, the reason borrowers and lenders have a hard time evaluating long and short-term risk and reward is due to the inflation and artificial interest rates determined by the Federal Reserve. So when that borrower signed up with his 3-year ARM it checked out with his value determination and rationale that it would end up benefiting him in the long run. But because the FED is unpredictable and because it is run by fallible humans (who act rationally in THEIR OWN self interest) it is harder to determine whether or not that long term investment is going to pay off.

Housing Market Problems

2007-08-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

Things are looking bleak.

High-Risk Credit
by Ron Paul
As markets went on a rollercoaster ride last week, our economy is coming close to a day of reckoning for loose credit policies being followed by the Federal Reserve Bank. Simply, foreign banks we have been relying on to buy our debt are waking up to the reality of much higher default rates than predicted, and many mortgage-backed securities have been reduced to “junk” ratings. Wall Street fears the possibility of tightening credit and the tightening of America’s belts. Why, they say, “if Americans spend only what they can afford, think of the ripple effects throughout the economy!” This is the cry, as the call comes for the fed to cut rates and bail out companies in trouble.

More inflation is, however, never the answer to inflation.

The truth is that business involves risk, and businesses that miscalculate risk should be liquidated, so their assets can be reallocated to businesses that correctly judge risk and make profits. Instead, the Fed has injected $64 billion into the jittery markets, effectively amounting to a bailout that keeps these malinvestments afloat, but eventually they will become the undoing of our economy.

In addition to the negative reactions in financial markets, many Americans have taken on too much personal debt owing to exotic mortgage products and artificially low interest rates. Unfortunately, these families are now in the position of losing their homes in unprecedented numbers as the teaser rates expire and the real bills are coming due.

The real answers are, and always have been, found in the principles of the free market. Let the market set the interest rates. If we had been functioning under a true and transparent free market system, we would not be in the mess we are in today. Government, like the American household, needs to live within its means to get back on stable fiscal ground.

We’ve been headed in the wrong direction since 1971. This week marks the 36th anniversary of Nixon’s decision to close the gold window, which convinced me to seek public office to call attention to the runaway money train that would come in the aftermath of that decision. The temptation to print and spend money with impunity, like the temptation to max out lines of credit, is too strong to for government to resist. While Nixon brokered exclusivity deals with OPEC to prop up demand for the tidal wave of green pieces of paper the Fed pumped into the markets, the world is tiring of marching to the beat of our drum in order to secure their energy needs. The house of cards Nixon built is now on the verge of collapsing on our heads, and on our children’s heads.

As the dollar weakens, it becomes ever clearer that we need a return to sound, commodity-based money for a secure future. Money based on real value, not empty promises and secretive backroom machinations, is the way to get out of the current calamity without causing even bigger problems.

Super short movie review

2007-08-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Superbad

Uh, not so good.

I came into this thinking it'd be a somewhat original film. Turns out it's about some kids trying to get beer and get girls drunk enough to have sex with them. I somewhat knew it was going to be crude going into it, but I was hoping it wasn't going to operate under the flawed premise that teenagers being crude is inherently funny. This is nothing but an updated American Pie.

Don't get me wrong, Michael Cera really is quite talented and funny and the movie does have plenty of laughs, but the overall product is nothing new.

Well, maybe I was foolish for thinking this would be a little smarter than lol drinky and OMG BOOBIES.

C-

New song - Old songs

2007-08-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

New stuff out from two excellent bands, the Broken Family Band and Okkervil River. The first video is from the new Broken Family Band album, Hello Love. The second is from last year's Okkervil River EP, The Presidents Dead. It's not what you'd expect from the current political climate though, it's actually completely sincere like most everything else Okkervil River does. As a bonus we'll add some Man Man because... well because Man Man and therefore awesome.

The Broken Family Band - Love Your Man, Love Your Woman

Okkervil River - The President's Dead

Man Man - Feathers and Engrish Bwudd (Live)

War and Economy

2007-08-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

There is a keynesian myth that perpetuates that war is "good" for an economy.

There is no way one can logically show that taxation, inflation, slavery, destruction, and mass murder (A.K.A. war) is good for an economy. Such a notion is usually based on some drawn out version of Bastiat's broken window fallacy. Or one might say war is good for an economy in the same way a hurricane or tsunami are good for an economy.

The usual line of reasoning is that war helps motivate "industry" by employing tank builders and gun makers. And that the aftermath of the destruction of private property results in new industry from the rebuilding.

This, as Bastiat said, is what is seen.

But consider what is not seen. Those tank builders and gun makers could have been bakers and cabinetmakers. They could have been producing for the economy in an industry that has actual consumer demand. Remember, those tanks and guns are funded my tax dollars, money extorted from the public at the point of a gun. That same money could have been used on cakes and kitchen cabinets if it was not necessary to steal it for corporate mass murder.

And what of the destruction and re-building? It is true that in the wake of destruction new construction will ensue. Clearly money is given to builders who are rewarded for their work. But at what cost? Couldn’t that money given to the builders just as easily be given to a different professional?

In other words the man whose house is destroyed by a stray bomb needs to use his own capital to replace his house. And while that money is given to the building industry, it could have just as easily been given to the auto industry. Isn’t it true that in the case of the house the man has gained no new pleasure or satisfaction from the house? Didn’t he have a house to start with and is now only wasting his capital to replace it? Couldn’t he have used it to purchase something new altogether to satisfy his needs and preferences? So we see that while this destruction may help one industry in particular it does not help industry in general.

War is the culmination of everything evil in Man. It is the absolute corporate failure of humanity. It is the death of reason, civility, and charity. It has no redeeming qualities.

No. Not. One.

We'd know all this if we taught Mises (who was right) in our schools instead of Marx and Keynes (who were wrong). But then the State tends to like schools of thought that perpetuate the myth that *WE* need *THEM*.

2007-08-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

A few months a go Ron Paul had a little debate with Giuliani over foreign policy in the war with Iraq.

The crowd at the time was notably on the side of Rudy Giuliani.

Well the tides are changing...

Ronpaul
Uploaded by krs601

He's more confident.
He's got a consistent message.
The Romneys and Giulianis have no answer.
They look befuddled.

And most of all, he's the same thing he's always been.

Right.

Let's Not Kid Ourselves

2007-07-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

Iran is no threat to America.

It's not apparent to our elected representatives in the Senate, however. Many of whom were elected with the sole purpose of ending the Iraq war, not starting a new one. Yet the Republicans and Democrats voted in a 97 to nothing vote to censure Iran for their alleged part in arms sales to sectarian groups in Iraq.

We're also positioning a new floating war fortress off Iran's coast and conducting secretive CIA missions of "non-lethal covert operations against Iran using propaganda, disinformation and the squeezing of Iran's international banking transactions."

Also we're holding Iranian diplomats hostage, apparently. Why?

I've said it before, but it seems more obvious now and it's worth repeating; We're already at war with Iran, they just haven't faught back yet.

Meanwhile Iran's economy is on the verge of collapse. President Ahmadinejads printing money like it's going out of fashion to pay for their dreaded nuclear program, and the inflation is beginning to take it's toll on prices. Early this month the government enacted rationing on it's gasoline after price controls caused shortages. (price fixing always cause shortages, btw) The result was mass protests by the Iranians.

Iran is no threat. They hardly have an army, no real navy or air force. They'll run out of money long before they'll be able to produce any WMD's. Yet we seem on a collision course for war with them with the Republican and "anti-war" Democrats leading the way.

Test Results

2007-07-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

Well the scan results came back kinda good, kinda okay.

The good news is that Emily's neck is completely free of any cancer. This is great because the masses in her neck absorb a lot of the iodine before it has a chance to get into her lungs, so everything she is given from this point out will be concentrated in her lungs. This also means for sure that there will be no more surgeries in the foreseeable future.

The okay news is that Emily still has some thyroid cells left in her lungs. This is okay because there is actually less than there was 6 months a go, and even more less than there was a year a go. So we know the radiation treatments are working. However, she will have to receive another does of radiation, which is always dangerous and increases her risk of long term cancer re-occurrences.

The next step is to admit Emily Monday morning where she will drink a large does of radioactive iodine. Then she will sit in isolation for 3 days while we can only see her for a half hour per day. The hard part of that from the last two treatment has been that the doctor ordered a catheter and an IV for the three days. This time around he is going to go without those so Emily will be much much more comfortable. She doesn't mind alone time all that much because she's a bit of a loner like her old man. :)

Other than that it's another 6 month wait to do another scan and see what our progress is at that point.

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments on the last post!

Emily Update 7-11-07

2007-07-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

On Monday we took our daughter Emily to Loyola to take a "tracer" dose of radiation which is absorbed by only thyroid cells. Since she had her thyroid removed last February any thyroid cells left in her body will be cancerous. Tomorrow morning we will take her back the hospital for a scan of her entire body looking for any of the radiation left in her from the tracer.

The hope is that this scan will come back negative and we need not endure another dose of radiation treatment. If there is any thing left in her lungs we will be heading back on Friday to admit her for three days of isolation and her third dose of radiation in the last year. Which will be followed by another 6 month wait while the radiation does it's work then we start the process again looking for more thyroid cells.

This is pretty much the course of treatment we're in right now until things come back different.

Crystal and I are honestly pretty tired from this entire situation. Since everything started 16 months a go we've lost a lot of sleep, a lot of energy, and as anyone who's dealt with week long hospital stays and radiation treatment knows, a lot of money.

We'd give anything to see a clean scan tomorrow so we can begin to put this chapter behind us. But if not, we'll continue with whatever course of action our radiologist recommends and be grateful for the fact we've been so fortunate as to have an amazing doctor help us through this whole thing.

2007-06-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Well I've been blog lazy again. Plus I've been listening to a couple of lectures on Mises which are 15 hours each, so you get the picture there. I'll try to post something substantial soon, but in the meantime I give you to evolution of Frank Black.

Small (*warning bad bad words*)

Medium

Large

Sweden's Heavy Metal Obsession

2007-06-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

It seems that in Sweden, the country many people mistakenly title the "Highest Standard of Living in the World," you can't name your child Metallica though if you listen to enough of it they'll subsidize your paycheck.

Man gets sick benefits for heavy metal addiction

A Swedish heavy metal fan has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability. The results of a psychological analysis enable the metal lover to supplement his income with state benefits.

Roger Tullgren, 42, from Hässleholm in southern Sweden has just started working part time as a dishwasher at a local restaurant.

Because heavy metal dominates so many aspects of his life, the Employment Service has agreed to pay part of Tullgren's salary. His new boss meanwhile has given him a special dispensation to play loud music at work.

"I have been trying for ten years to get this classified as a handicap," Tullgren told The Local.

"I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against."

Roger Tullgren first developed an interest in heavy metal when his older brother came home with a Black Sabbath album in 1971.

Since then little else has mattered for the 42-year-old, who has long black hair, a collection of tattoos and wears skull and crossbones jewelry.

The ageing rocker claims to have attended almost three hundred shows last year, often skipping work in the process.

Eventually his last employer tired of his absences and Tullgren was left jobless and reliant on welfare handouts.

But his sessions with the occupational psychologists led to a solution of sorts: Tullgren signed a piece of paper on which his heavy metal lifestyle was classified as a disability, an assessment that entitles him to a wage supplement from the job centre.

"I signed a form saying: 'Roger feels compelled to show his heavy metal style. This puts him in a difficult situation on the labour market. Therefore he needs extra financial help'. So now I can turn up at a job interview dressed in my normal clothes and just hand the interviewers this piece of paper," he said.

The manager at his new workplace allows him to go to concerts as long as he makes up for lost time at a later point. He is also allowed to dress as he likes and listen to heavy metal while washing up.

"But not too loud when there are guests," he said.

The Local spoke to an occupational psychologist in Stockolm, who admitted to being baffled by the decision.

"I think it's extremely strange. Unless there is an underlying diagnosis it is absolutely unbelievable that the job centre would pay pay out.

"If somebody has a gambling addiction, we don't send them down to the racetrack. We try to cure the addiction, not encourage it," he said.

Henrietta Stein, deputy employment director for the Skåne region, is also puzzled by the move; "an interest in music" is not usually sufficient to qualify for wage benefits.

"Certain cases are confidential but in general there is always a medical reason that is well-documented," she said.

Tullgren currently plays bass and guitar in two rock bands and says that he tends to get a lot of positive reactions for daring to be himself.

"Some might say that I should grow up and learn to listen to other types of music but I can't. Heavy metal is my lifestyle," he said.

RON PAUL'D!

2007-06-20T05:52:00.000-07:00

Not exactly a substantially informative video but it made me crack up laughing.

From 1988

The Gun Post, Part Two

2007-06-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

You can view part one here.

Continuing on the notion of natural rights, the right to self-defense is perhaps the most basic of all. In fact, you cannot have any other rights without first having the right to protect your most basic of possessions, your body. Surely the right to life enumerated in the Declaration of Independence is inseparable from the right to self-defense.

The most obvious extension of the right to self-defense is not arming as many people as possible or restricting guns to private citizens, but rather allowing individuals to decide for themselves the best means of self-protection. There is no one size fits all solution to defense, and best person to decide for you how to protect your person is you, not a non-responsive overbearing government that can only pretend to know specific solutions to a broad number of individual situations.

The ignorance and arrogance towards the natural right of self-defense in the anti-conceal carry lobby is the most infuriating of all positions. They think not of society, but only of themselves. Because they are in a stable and most likely affluent environment they see no need for others to protect themselves. They think a quick call to 9-1-1 is the only defense a person should ever need. These are the Rosie O’Donnell types who are more than willing to trample on the rights of others as long as it doesn’t affect them.

Lastly, the misogynist position on guns is control or abolition. Why? Because males physically have advantages over the vast majority of women when it comes to strength. Most men, stronger than most women. In society, the only thing that can, when it comes to an attack, create 'equalization' is a firearm. White men have tried to keep guns out of the hands of all downtrodden and oppressed peoples, they tried to keep them out of the hands of the "negros" post-slavery, they tried to keep them out of the hands of the Jews during the Nazi reign of terror, and even today, they and the morons that support anti-firearms restrictions attempt to keep guns out of female hands. If we de-armed society tomorrow, we'd still have to worry about the worst of all arms control... the trained and fit arms of aggressive and idiotic males. Society would be at the mercy of the physically strong in all matters as the lack of equalization that firearms bring would then unleash the oppression of numbers (gangs) or strength (most males vs. most females).

So what of all the gun violence in American then? Surely the numbers tell us that we are more apt to kill with a gun than any other industrialized nation in the World.

If people were really interested in curtailing the use of guns to end the life of others they’d attack the source of that violence, not the symptom. Simply repealing our unnecessary and oppressive drug laws would eliminate, almost overnite, the vast majority of needless violence in this country.

Switzerland has MORE guns then the United States; they actually issue the same assault weapons that have suburban moms in America fretting day and nite over to their citizens. Yet the Swiss don’t even register on statistics measuring homicides using firearms. Gun control advocates who rattle off statistics need to explain these numbers before they can use their selective figures to 'prove' guns cause more violence.

The Europeans I work with tell me the solution to America’s societal ills is more government control. Stricter drugs laws, stricter drug laws, censorship of our media, even prohibitions on our right to petition government. This, to them, is a ‘conservative’ approach. The conversation usually starts off something like, “You know, America is the greatest country in the World, but….” Followed by some sort of logic in which we should change our laws to be more like Europe. Ignoring the obvious conclusion that being NOT like Europe is the very thing that apparently made us “the greatest country in the World.”

Less government intrusions in our personal matters is the forward and progressive course of action. It is the true liberal approach. When government intrusions like unconstitutional drug laws create more violence, the solution is eliminating the government intrusion, NOT adding more nanny state regulations turning us more and more into a 1984 style regulated state in which “Big Brother” tells us what to eat, drink, smoke, where to go, what to think, who to interact with, and ultimately when to die.

America was, at one time, the greatest nation on Earth. And while most people can name something from the other side of the aisle that has tarnished our status, few can see that it is the sum of government itself that is the problem. Until we stop attributing moral value inanimate objects like guns and drugs, and start recognizing the truths that were the foundation of our nation, we'll only regress not progress.

The Gun Post, Part One

2007-06-15T23:43:00.000-07:00

It is sometimes said in Libertarian circles that if you could just get the anti-drug people to see that drugs are okay, and the gun control people to see that guns are okay, then the vast majority of people would be Libertarians. I’m not sure how true this is, but I suppose for the average American anyway those two issues are pretty paramount to their formation of left/right thinking, at least where moral issues are concerned. I’ve already delved into the issue of drugs here, and today I will give a go at my thoughts on firearms.

This was going to be one post, but as I wrote more and more I decided to post in two parts. This first part will have to do with the legal and philosophical issue of guns rights. The next part will have to do with the more practical aspects of firearms and violence.

It seems to me the first issue one must examine in dealing with firearms is rights. The standard line of reasoning for gun advocates is to appeal to the U.S. Constitution, and specifically the second amendment. However, to do so shows an incredible lack of understanding on what the constitution is and the philosophy of the founding fathers.

Our country was founded on the philosophy of Liberalism. We are not a country spawned from nationality, but rather one born from a philosophy. That philosophy was that all men are created equally and with the same natural rights. Rights that can neither be given, nor taken by a governing State. They are indeed unalienable; they cannot be taken away, they can only be infringed upon. They are dependant on no other person to obtain, as the only requisite for having them is human DNA.

Understand that any time something is needed to obtain a so-called “right”, such as a permit, license, or the express written consent of Major League Baseball it is no longer a right at all, it is a privilege.

After the country gained independence from Britain the Founders were so frightful of government they formed an extremely limited, loosely bound confederation of States rather than an overarching strong Federal government. The problem came when the States began to print too much money to pay off debts to France after the Revolution and in order to curb inflation some proposed instating a new Federal government that would have the power to coin money over the States. Thus, the U.S. Constitution was written and sent out to all the States for approval.

Immediately objections were raised, the Anti-Federalist claiming that the new government would have too much power. To answer these objections the Federalist Papers were written as a series of essays that are basically a comprehensive commentary on the entire constitution. One of the biggest objections to the constitution was that, while it did limit the powers of the government, it did not offer any written protection for the rights of the People.

Ultimately, the answer to this criticism was the Bill of Rights.

Alexander Hamilton, whom I am not much of a fan of, was astonishingly correct in his assessment of the faulty nature of such a listing of rights in the Federalist No. 84.:

“I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.”

So to put that bolded piece in modern terms it might say, “Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of individuals to own whatever firearm they choose shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions on owning inanimate objects may be imposed.” And yet we’re currently living in an age where the constitution has been completely circumvented and those very restrictions HAVE been imposed.

Hamilton was afraid that the government could use the limited amount of rights listed in the Bill of Rights to make the claim that rights are, in fact, limited. That they were dependent on the government itself to be granted. To make sure this would never happen, the framers included the ninth and tenth amendments in the Bill of Rights to give any rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution to the People or the States, NOT the Federal government. Ironically, these amendments have been discredited by modern day statist for being too ambiguous and giving too many rights to the people, the very thing they were designed to do.

Without question, the myth that has been most debilitating to liberty in American history, is the myth that our Bill of Rights gives us our rights. This myth is why we have people dissecting the language of the second amendment trying to figure out it's true intent, whether it is meant to provide rights to individuals or to a collective mass. However, this is totally irrelevant, because the power to restrict gun ownership is not given to the Federal government in the Constitution.

Please limit comments on this post to the issue of gun rights. The next post will delve into the practical issues of guns and society; there we can talk all we want about violence and such.

Part two now posted here.

A Pretty Good Way to Spend a Weekend

2007-06-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

Taking before pictures probably would ave given this a bit more of a dramatic effect, but since I didn't just imagine a lot of really tall weeds where the mulch is now.

And if anyone can help me and identify this ground covering I will offer them a very special ePrize.

They Want Us Out

2007-06-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

They being the Iraqi government.

While most observers are focused on the U.S. Congress as it continues to issue new rubber stamps to legitimize Bush's permanent designs on Iraq, nationalists in the Iraqi parliament -- now representing a majority of the body -- continue to make progress toward bringing an end to their country's occupation.

The parliament today passed a binding resolution that will guarantee lawmakers an opportunity to block the extension of the U.N. mandate under which coalition troops now remain in Iraq when it comes up for renewal in December. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose cabinet is dominated by Iraqi separatists, may veto the measure.

The law requires the parliament's approval of any future extensions of the mandate, which have previously been made by Iraq's prime minister. It is an enormous development; lawmakers reached in Baghdad today said that they do in fact plan on blocking the extension of the coalition's mandate when it comes up for renewal six months from now.

Reached today by phone in Baghdad, Nassar al Rubaie, the head of Al-Sadr bloc in Iraq's Council of Representatives, said, "This new binding resolution will prevent the government from renewing the U.N. mandate without the parliament's permission. They'll need to come back to us by the end of the year, and we will definitely refuse to extend the U.N. mandate without conditions." Rubaie added: "There will be no such a thing as a blank check for renewing the U.N. mandate anymore, any renewal will be attached to a timetable for a complete withdrawal."

Without the cover of the U.N. mandate, the continued presence of coalition troops in Iraq would become, in law as in fact, an armed occupation, at which point it would no longer be politically tenable to support it. While polls show that most Iraqis consider U.S. forces to be occupiers rather than liberators or peacekeepers -- 92 percent of respondents said as much in a 2004 survey by the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies -- the U.N. mandate confers an aura of legitimacy on the continuing presence of foreign troops on Iraq's streets, even four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Read the rest of the article.

President Bush said two weeks a go that if they wanted us out, he would leave. My guess is he won't, and the Democrats will continue to provide him the resources and authority he needs as long as they get their pork.

Ain't politics fun?

Video of the day

2007-06-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

Lest We Believe the Myth....

2007-05-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

.... that foreign policy some how changed in America when George Bush was elected or 9/11 occured, or the now popular stance that America was somehow at peace during the Clinton years. Or the ever prevaltant myth that Democrats and Republicans are, you know, different. A short, two minute John Stossel clip from the 90's (aka the Clinton years) showing quite the opposite. And who's that lone man speaking truth in the face of the mainstream tide?

Interview Meme

2007-05-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

I volunteered to be interviewed by tshmom as part of this interview meme thing. Goes like this...

1) I've noticed, from your comments on my husband's blog, that you enjoy PC gaming. What's your favorite game?

I’m not too good at the all time favorite type questions. I usually can’t narrow it down to one game/movie/song, etc. I’m definitely a fan of PC gaming over the systems, though I have been enjoying my son’s Wii that was a gift from my wife’s sister and her husband. I think the game I’ve played more than any other in terms of hours is the John Madden football series, so I suppose that’s my favorite sport game. I like strategy games more than action games, stuff like SimCity, the Sims, or Civilization are always enjoyable. Though there have been some good times with a few action games like Half-Life or Mafia. So it’s really all over the place I guess. Like I said it’s hard to narrow it down.

2) What role do you fill, in the homeschooling of your children?

Beyond helping with homework I haven’t taken on any subjects yet. We’ve been focusing on the basics up to this point (reading, writing, math, basic science and history) but starting this summer I’m going to be doing more advanced history and philosophy. Plus I’m planning on doing a logic course of some type.

3) You seem to be a fellow history geek. What is your favorite period of history?

Nothing too ancient I suppose. I like the period around the American Revolution and shortly after, when Liberalism was somewhat at its peak. War times are of course always interesting, though its tough calling periods of mass death and famine that always accompany war as a “favorite”. The years leading up to World War 1 and 1919 are all very fascinating, just to see how much things were screwed up for the whole World by just a handful of men.

4) Do you cook? If so, what is the best meal you prepare?

I do cook, though not all that often. My best recipe is a slow cooked chili that I make with steak and NO beans. Beans are the worst thing you can do to good chili.

5) What's your idea of the "perfect" vacation?

lol vacation

Really we’ve never been able to afford much of a vacation. Even our honeymoon was a two day trip to Iowa. Yeah, Iowa. The only thing we’ve ever done really is take a trip to Washington D.C., which really was quite enjoyable. I guess I like road trips with the family. Not all that exciting, I know, but we have a good time. I’d like to drive to California with the family, that’d be fun. Anything is better than the way I’ve spent all my vacation time this year and last; in a hospital room with my daughter.

Well that wasn’t too difficult. A nice break from all the politics and what not. I think I’m supposed to offer to interview anyone else, so if you want 5 questions of your own say so in the comments and I will supply them.

Later.

Little stuff

2007-05-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

A few things to chew on while I do tshmom's interview questions.

First, for Zombieslayer, it turns out fully automatic weapons do come in handy during a zombie invasion. Also we saw 28 Weeks Later last nite and it's really pretty intense. Not exactly a "zombie" movie I guess, since it involves a virus not the undead, but still pretty good.

Second, for Rudy Giuliani, if you ever do take Ron Paul up on his offer to debate foreign policy, it might help if you read this first. Facts are fun!

And lastly, regarding this article. I'm fine with the silly little photoshoped picture of Ron Paul and Micheal Moore. I don't really care if someone wants to call Ron Paul nutty. I don't expect much more from left/right political "thinkers", but this quote really got me upset:

Strict constructionism and original intent are fine things, but shoving every problem and every issue through the Founder’s Intent meat-grinder is lunacy. Besides, this rigid orthodoxy brings him down on what both Andrew and I consider to be the wrong side of the gay marriage question.

Heck yeah, if the NeoCons want to kill a few thousand innocent Iraqi's and Iranians we, as good Christians, can live with that. Just so long as they say some nice things about gay marriage being bad.

When did Christians sell their souls to the Federal government in exchange for the privilege of ruling over a minority of gays? It makes me rather ill. We sure as heck can't support a guy who doesn't think the federal government shouldn't be the enforcer of God's Will. No, what we need is a man who will kill us some Muslims and hate us some gays. That's the kind of leader we need. That's conservatism.

Anything else is just nutty.

Non-Intervention 101

2007-05-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

Watch it.

Giuliani is a fool.

Hearing that made my blood boil. Ignoring his absurd assertion that his proximity to the event somehow makes his opinion more valuable, his statement and demand for a recant from Paul is totally baseless.

We don’t have to guess why we were attacked on September 11th, we’ve been told by the very person who planned it. In Bin Laden’s manifesto he stated the exact reason why he declared war on the United States a full 5 years before the 9/11 attacks.

The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places -the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims- by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. (We bemoan this and can only say: "No power and power acquiring except through Allah").

In fact, Bin Laden wanted to make the point that our intervention was one of the main reasons he declared was so clear that he entitled the declaration “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.”

I’m not at all justifying their actions so don’t even bother getting all worked up about that. That’s not even the issue. Read again what Dr. Paul said (Paraphrased):

I believe the CIA is correct when it warns us about blowback. We overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and their taking the hostages was the reaction. This dynamic persists and we ignore it at our own risk. If we think we can do what WE want around the World and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They’re not attacking us because we’re rich and free, they’re attacking us because we’re over there.

Why is Ron Paul the only one suggesting we don’t have to take part in building and running other countries? Why is he considered a “fringe” candidate anyway just because he’s anti-war? The vast majority of the country wants to end Iraq TODAY and there are only three anti-war candidates from both parties. (Paul, Kucinich, and Gravel) All of whom are considered long shots.

The United States citizens did not invite 9/11, its government did. 9/11 was the culmination of one hundred years of US politicians playing a game of chess with the World as its board and our money as its pawns. While THEY (politicians) experimented with regime changes, foreign aid, and alliances WE (citizens) did nothing to piss off the rest of the World. Just a handful of men have decided for the rest of us who around the World should be pushed around and for what reason, doing it all in the name of the United States and democracy.

On September 11th a few thousand innocent civilian lives were ended as a result of that game.

Anti-War.com needs help

2007-05-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

Please keep going on the King for a Day post, but I wanted to bring up the fact that AntiWar.com is having a fund raising drive. They are on the verge of bankruptcy and need help. If you were frustrated with the mainstream media's lack of information leading up to the Iraq war, then you should know that not only did AntiWar columnists like Ron Paul write and predict the chaos that is now Iraq, others called the lies the government was telling. And just in case you think they're simply anti-Bush, or anti-Republican, they actually started the site to speak out against Clinton's actions in the Balkans and Iraq.
You can read about their history here and their mission here.
If you have a few bucks, consider helping. If not, carry on with your day. Later.

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.~Joseph Goebbels

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.~James Madison

King for a Day

2007-05-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of next year we’ll all be able to run to the polls and use our immense power of voting to influence our World leaders. But imagine for a moment that YOU were the one elected King of America. Suspend reality long enough to think about how you’d run things.

What three things would you do first to change the country?

You have complete dictorial power here. Forget about that pesky Constitution thing, it has no binding power anyway. A little piece of paper has never stood in the way of any of OUR greatest leaders. Want to bomb Iran? Go ahead! Heck, bomb Canada while you’re at it, what good have they ever done us? Nothing is off limits. Want to raise taxes to pay for your brilliant health care plan? Want to seal the borders with a 20-foot wall and armed military guards? This isn’t some utopian fantasy, whatever you say should be what you REALLY would do, it should make economic sense, and it should make sense for the country and it’s citizenry, not just for you it’s benevolent King.

Crazy foreigners can play too, even though all us Americans know you’re crazy. Either rule over your own country, or you can even rule over ours. After all, we’ve already disregarded the Constitution.

I’ll start:

1) I would abolish the Federal Reserve. The Federal Government would lose the ability to print money from nothing and to regulate interest rates. We’d go back to a commodity-backed dollar. No more inflation.

2) I would dramatically alter foreign policy to make it neutral to all nations. In accordance with this all military bases in foreign lands would be shut down and sold to those countries and all military personal would be brought home day one. This would also entail immediate withdrawal from the United Nations and elimination of financial aid to other governments. Private citizens would still be free to trade with other countries.

3) An immediate end to the War on Drugs and the de-criminalization of all narcotics, including a presidential pardon for all current inmates who are convicted for nothing other than use or possession. This would not only put thousands of violent drug dealers out of business, it would cut funding to criminals and terrorist regimes around the World. Not only that, it would change drugs from a legal issue, to a health issue. Making it a issue to treat with medicine instead of jail time.

Comment on my list or post a list of your own. Or both.

Post

2007-05-08T07:23:00.000-07:00

I’m struggling with what to blog about. On the one hand I know this blog didn’t start out as all that political and has evolved to being maybe overly political, and that may bother some people. On the other hand, politics really interest me so I like to write about it. I’m really not sure why anyone reads this blog other than the people who I know personally, but the tracker seems to suggest that the readership numbers are increasing for whatever reason. (Which, by the way, I really appreciate)

I think for this post at least I’ll just share a few stories I’ve had my eye on. First, the guy who wrote the story I posted in my last post, the man who was leaving the Republican Party, is back and wrote about where he is heading since he left. Here’s the link and I’ll just post a few lines here (read the whole article if it interests you, it really is well done)

The country has devolved so much into a two-party system that many folks believe that if you abandon one party, you must necessarily take up common cause with the other one. Yet if a restaurant gives you a choice between eating food laced with rat poison or with arsenic, you might want to eat somewhere else, even if it's a long drive until the next rest stop and even if the new restaurant hasn't gotten great reviews.

Indeed. This gets back into the discussion at the end of the last post. The choice between murder and suicide is no choice at all. I’ll take the path to escape, no matter how unlikely the chances of surviving.

I'm convinced that if many Dems had their way, there would be virtually no area of life beyond their prying eyes, no source of income beyond their prying hands (hence their hostility to property rights), no place where we could retreat to get away from their unceasing desire to regulate us, tax us, prod us, improve us, instruct us, educate us and control us. And, of course, there's nothing Dems love more than a good moral crusade (i.e., global warming) to bludgeon the rest of us into giving them more money and power.

Yep. The thing is, at least the Democrats come out and SAY they are the party of big government and social control programs. The Republicans still are trying to promote themselves as the party of personal liberty, despite doing quite the opposite since it’s inception. I believe most people who vote Republican, like Greenhut are not and never were Republicans, they are just anti-Democrat and their desire to run people’s lives. Hence, they vote and pledge allegiance to the “other” party. Correct me if I’m wrong, please.

Now, for the answer to the question that most people have asked me: What party am I joining? Nothing wrong with registering as "Decline to State" and avoiding any new entangling alliances. But I'll hang around the GOP long enough to vote in the Republican primary for Rep. Ron Paul, the only consistent defender of freedom in Congress. Then I'll probably re-register as a big "L" Libertarian, if they don't mind having me. I've got some issues with the Libertarian Party – i.e., I wish it were more serious about fielding winnable candidates in local races, and it has sported some weird candidates on the ballot at times. But it's filled with good, albeit cantankerous folks who love freedom. So I should fit in pretty well.

The second story is one involving our hate-hate relationship with the RIAA.

Record shops: Used CDs? Ihre papieren, bitte!

New "pawn shop" laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints. Such is the state of affairs in Florida, which now has the dubious distinction of being so anal about the sale of used music CDs that record shops there are starting to get out of the business of dealing with used content because they don't want to pay a $10,000 bond for the "right" to treat their customers like criminals.

Even more attempts to stop piracy by making buying legal music even harder than it already is. Will they never learn?

2007-05-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

It's sometimes lonely promoting the virtues of individual rights. Nothing can be more clear to me than the fact that we live in a post-liberal world. The idea of live and let be is gone and the new age of happiness manufactured through good governance is upon us. So, one might ask, why bother really? What is the point of railing against the inevitable?

Well the answer to that is that there really was something to what the Founders envisioned. The thought that the sum of individuals, operating in their own self interest, can manage themselves and that Government's only task was to preserve the rights of those individuals. That these wars, these national debts, these shortages of resources, they are all nothing more than symptoms. Symptoms of big government, not our leaders, but the only possible result of bureaucratic rule. It's the system, not the officials that are corrupt.

There are also occasional moments when you find a person who agrees and puts those ideas into words better than I can. My only disagreement with the man is that the Republican party never WAS the party of limited government and maximum personal liberties. From the word go it was the party of Internal Improvements through Federal corporate welfare and fighting any wars necessary to meet those ends.

The biggest scam in American history may be the Republicans claiming to be the party of the Individual.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/columns/article_1673189.php

Breaking up with the GOP

Is the battle of individual liberty against big government over? A lot of Republicans seem to have declared 'mission accomplished'
By STEVEN GREENHUT

Senior editorial writer and columnist for the Register

Have you ever been in one of those destructive long-term relationships that, at some point, you really just needed to end?

I'm not referring to my marriage to my lovely wife of 23 years, but to my 25-year relationship with the Republican Party. In recent years especially, I have found fewer things in common with the party. I feel used and abused. We've obviously grown in different and incompatible directions.

It's a groan-inducing cliché, I know, but it applies here: I didn't leave the party; the party left me.

I grew up in one of those East Coast Democratic households, where FDR, JFK and even LBJ were lionized, and where the GOP wasn't so much loathed as ignored. I never met an actual Republican – at least anyone who admitted as much – until I went away to college. I became a Republican during Ronald Reagan's first term, having been inspired by his appeals to liberty, to his recognition of the freedom-stifling aspects of big government, to his unabashed embrace of the traditions of America's founders.

Reagan never actually rolled back government, but I can forgive a failure to achieve lofty aims. I cannot forgive abandonment of those aims. And it has been obvious for years, especially under the leadership of our current Republican president and our previously Republican-controlled Congress, that the "pro-liberty" stance has become nothing more than an applause line at those syrupy Flag Day dinners.

Under Republican leadership, the federal government has expanded – without even including war-related spending – far more quickly than it expanded under Bill Clinton. And when it comes to security matters, Republicans have been zealous in giving the feds additional powers to trample our privacy and liberties. Republicans have been unwavering in their support for embarking on nation-building experiments of the sort that traditional conservatives would abhor. The presidential candidates most committed to a muscular central government – Rudy Giuliani and John McCain – are leading the pack.

Now even the rhetoric of freedom is mostly gone. Most "mainstream" Republicans don't talk about liberty anymore. The advocates for this emerging New Republican Party are becoming surprisingly outspoken. A good example is New York Times "conservative" columnist David Brooks, a former editor at the Weekly Standard, the neoconservative journal that shilled vociferously for war in Iraq. (Hint: The results of that policy might offer some warning to Republicans before they jump too quickly on his latest advice.)

In a column reprinted today (beginning on Page 1 of Commentary), Brooks rebutted those of us who argue that "in order to win again, the GOP has to reconnect with the truths of its Goldwater-Reagan glory days. It has to once again be the minimal-government party, the maximal-freedom party, the party of rugged individualism, and states' rights. This is folly."

Obviously unaware of the ever-growing Leviathan around him, Brooks claims that the old days of oppressive government are over. The idea of limited government – that silly, fuddy-duddy notion advanced by our Constitution, and ensconced in the Bill of Rights – is so 18th century. Time for something more appropriate for our time!

He's got a new idea (actually, the oldest of ideas, the one that says that government and power are what matters, and that freedom and individualism are outdated). And he's even got a catchy slogan for it. He calls it, Security leads to freedom.

Forgive me a Dave Barry moment, but I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Doesn't this sound like something out of an Orwell novel? War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Security is freedom. Brooks argues that the "liberty vs. power paradigm" is passé. Government doesn't necessarily mean less personal liberty, he writes. Modern voters aren't worried about an overweening state. Instead, the public wants to be protected from the complex modern threats to their existence: "Islamic extremism, failed states, global competition, global warming, nuclear proliferation, a skills-based economy, economic and social segmentation."

Maybe a large segment of the public wants those things, but it's the job of statesmen to lead the People, to frame the relevant issues, to set a course that is at times bigger and more noble than the current small-scale debates – not just to slavishly follow the People's basest desires. By the way, I'm not picking on Brooks per se, but using him as an articulate example of a form of thinking common today among many in the GOP.

Has the world been turned on its head? I see no signs that the classical liberal thinkers were wrong, that government is no longer wasteful, abusive and corrupt. Government continues to grab a larger share of our resources, even as it becomes less capable of doing its legitimate jobs with any degree of competence. Yet Brooks and others like him believe that the government can save us from all our neurotic worries, even ones as nebulous as "economic and social segmentation" – whatever that means.

When people are secure, Brooks wrote, they are "more free to take risks and explore the possibilities of their world. ... People with secure health care can switch jobs more easily. People who feel free from terror can live their lives more loosely. People who come from stable homes and pass through engaged schools are free to choose from a wider range of opportunities."

At this point I want to tell the People to grow up already. Brooks' point in the paragraph is true enough. But – here I go again with an arcane notion – in a free society, individuals need to take care of these matters mostly themselves, rather than to plead for bureaucrats and politicians to take care of things for them.

Our government is based on the radical idea that government should be limited to a handful of tasks, most of which revolve around protecting our natural rights. These are negative rights. They implore the government to leave us alone to pursue our own dreams and desires. Positive rights demand a positive response. If I have a "right" to education, then you must be forced to pay for it or provide it for me.

Traditionally, Republicans believed in negative rights. Yet Brooks thinks that's a mistake. He writes that the GOP needs to be "oriented less toward negative liberty (How can I get the government off my back?) and more toward positive liberty (Can I choose how to lead my life?)."

Instead of worrying about government spending, and regulating and snooping and launching foreign wars and eroding our civil liberties and imposing crushing tax burdens, and all those silly old fixations, Brooks argues that Republicans have to compete with Democrats in appealing to every soccer mom's desire for more social programs, more regulations, more protections from hobgoblins. He argues, in a refreshingly albeit frighteningly direct manner, for the final, total rejection of the American founding experiment.

Sure, the Republicans will focus more on terrorism and security issues, and the Democrats will focus more on health care and domestic regulation, but in this Brave New Paradigm, no major party will echo the words of that outdated crank, Thomas Jefferson, who argued that "the sum of good government" is one "which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned."

Perhaps that world already is here. Which is why I'm divorcing myself from the Republican Party, and keeping my distance from any group that doesn't place the defense of liberty as the prime goal of the political system.

Wilco

2007-04-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

A Ghost is Born sucked. Here's to hoping their new album is a major rebound for them.

See, they're not all that country. :)

The Myth of Society and the Common Good

2007-04-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

If you were to look up the definition of society in the dictionary it would be listed as a noun. But if society is a person, place, or thing than what does it look like? How big is it? How can it be described? Truly, society is nothing more than a theoretical mental construct. Actual society is made up of nothing more than a number of individuals, who operate in their own self-interest, and have their own values. But belief in society as a noun is what allows people to claim society has it’s own set of hopes, fears, wants, needs, emotions, and values. All the things that make actual individuals different and individual.

We can claim that “society” wants certain laws passed, and so passing those laws benefits the common good. Individuals, of course, have no rights versus this imaginary common good, and yet it is individuals themselves who suggest these laws, not society. Society is the concept that allows a small group of people to tell a large group of people what they can and cannot do.

The belief in society and the common good is what drives men, who would otherwise be bakers and butchers, to goose-step with rifles in their hands. It is the myth that allows the rights of the minority to be stripped in favor of the majority. It is, above all, the complete absence of rational thought, and the surrender to romanticism that allows a few leaders to bend the will of many people.

After all, there really is no answer to the common good, or worst of all “The Children”. A politician can sell anything if it’s under the guise of being for The Children. Every rational argument can be repressed and refuted by just the emotional call to an imaginary group of children who supposedly all share the same hopes, fears, wants, needs, emotions, and values. We all know that private individuals are better at providing hot dogs and shoes than the government, so what’s the rationale argument for Public Education? There is none, only an appeal to the romantic ideas of society and the common good.

Local fire

2007-04-20T19:03:00.000-07:00

A few weeks a go the local lumber yard caught fire and turned into 5 alarm blaze. We didn't get to see it because we were sleeping I think, but there are pictures available on the web if you click here, as well as a press release for download here.

Declare

2007-04-18T09:53:00.001-07:00

Some time ago I wrote a post that quoted from Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason”. The post was centered on the obvious notion that tax is theft. I concluded the post with a disclaimer stating that while Spooner was an anarchist, I was not. There have, in fact, been many occasions in the past where I have found myself trying to distance myself from the anarchist label and all that it is perceived to mean.

Well people change, their worldviews evolve, their philosophies become more defined, and I am writing this to declare myself an anarchist. I know it’s a label that evokes a pretty strong, and often negative reaction from so many people. I also know it’s a movement that has been largely dominated by Luddites and those who use violence to get what they want. I fall under neither of these categories. If an adjective needs to be added to it, I’d call myself a Private Property Anarchist; one who sees natural law and private property rights as sufficient for society to run itself, without the presence of an organization that is nothing more than a parasite known as the State.

Comment and criticize as you see fit, but at the same time I’m curious how and why your political views have changed over the past year or so, if at all. Declare for yourself what you are, politically. I’m not talking about how you vote every 2-4 years, but rather what political philosophy you hold as truth more than any other.

Happy National Legalized Extortion Day everyone!

2007-04-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

Politics without rhetoric

2007-04-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul is running for President in '08, but will not make much a splash in the scheme of things due to lack of funds. Welcome to democrazy in America. His name doesn't show up much next to the likes of Giuliani or McCain, let alone the elites like Obama or Clinton II.

I wouldn't necessarily endorse Paul, but he certainly is better than any GOP candidate that's going to run in the next 5 elections. He is, in fact, not a Republican at all, but a Democrat. A Democrat in the line of Grover Cleveland or many of our political leaders prior to the Civil War. Part of a political party that exists only in name in America, as the principles that once loosely held it together have long since dissolved. Much in the same way the name Liberal is bestowed upon those who are anything but liberal.

This is how our political system has evolved. It matters little what a politician says, save the occasional "clean and articulate" slip of the tongue, and much more what they are called. Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, Greens, Libertarians, independents, and the worst of all, the cursed Neo-Cons! Now I'm not writing this to defend or persecute any of these groups, but does anyone really know what defines them? Neo-Con has become the most tossed around pejorative lately, slapped on anyone who dares to oppose the goals of the mainstream left.

Modern politics have become nothing more than a rhetoric filled sound bite with the left blaming "corporate fat cats" for all the ills of society and the right blaming crazy Muslims. Neither has a plan for change, and admittedly that is because the Federal Government can't fix many of the problems that we wish it could. But the sad thing to me is that so many have given up learning what is the cause of this out of control government. They're fixed on Government as the solution, not the problem. What's the solution to Neo-Conservatives? Vote Democrat.

But how did we come upon this Neo-Conservative movement? Where did this idea of preemptive war come from? How about the expansion of the welfare state during a Republican administration, is that something we could have foreseen?

Ron Paul laid out and assessment of the Neo-Conservative movement a few years ago and it has been preserved on Google Video (God bless the Internet). Sure it's a long lecture and starts out a little slow, but simply put some things take more than a 30 second sound bite to say. Maybe if we sat down and actually listened to what the Neo-conservatives believed BEFORE the past elections things could have been different today. Then again the only other option was Democrats so it's hard to believe it could have been all that much better.

Neo-CONNED! by Congressman Ron Paul

"Authoritarian rule is authoritarian rule, regardless of humanitarian undertones." -Ron Paul

Follow-up reading:

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (1996)
The End of History? by Francis Fukuyama (1989)

A dangerous ruling in Britain

2007-04-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

Britain bans paid military interviews

LONDON - Britain on Monday banned all military service members from talking to the media in return for payment, reversing its decision to allow the 15 marines and sailors held captive in Iran to sell their stories.

Defense Secretary Des Browne issued a statement saying the navy faced a "very tough call" over its initial decision to allow the payments, which came under sharp criticism. The new ban will not affect those who already gave accounts, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

On Monday, in one of the first accounts, Faye Turney, the sole woman in the detained crew, said that she "felt like a traitor" for agreeing to her captors' demands to appear on Iranian TV and that she believed they had measured her for a coffin.

The Sun newspaper also reported that Turney, 25, was told by her captors that her 14 male colleagues had been released while she alone was being held.

Another sailor, Arthur Batchelor, 20, said he was singled out by his captors because he was the youngest of the crew.

The financial arrangements for Turney and Batchelor were not disclosed, but Turney said the offer she accepted was not the largest she had been offered.

Browne said lessons must be learned from a review the Ministry of Defense is now conducting regarding the regulations that affect service members talking with media.

"I want to be sure those charged with these difficult decisions have clear guidance for the future," Browne said. "Until that time, no further service personnel will be allowed to talk to the media about their experiences in return for payment."

The British sailors and marines were searching a merchant ship on March 23 when they and their two inflatable boats were intercepted by Iranian vessels near the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, U.S. and British officials said. Iran claimed the British had strayed into its territorial waters, a charge that Britain denied.

During the crew's captivity, Britain accused Iran of using the group for propaganda for putting them on Iranian television in appearances in which they "admitted" trespassing in Tehran's waters. They were freed last week by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called their release a gift to Britain.

Turney, who also sold her story to British broadcaster ITV1, told The Sun that she feared at one point that she would be killed.

"One morning, I heard the noise of wood sawing and nails being hammered near my cell. I couldn't work out what it was. Then a woman came into my cell to measure me up from head to toe with a tape," The Sun quoted Turney as saying.

"She shouted the measurements to a man outside. I was convinced they were making my coffin."

Turney said she asked one Iranian official where her male colleagues were.

"He rubbed the top of my head and said with a smile, 'Oh no, they've gone home. Just you now,'" she said.

At another time, Turney said the same official asked her how she felt about dying for country.

By her fifth day in detention, she said she was told that she could be free within two weeks if she confessed that the crew had intruded into Iranian waters.

"If I didn't, they'd put me on trial for espionage and I'd go to prison for several years. I had just an hour to think about it," The Sun quoted her as saying.

"If I did it, I feared everyone in Britain would hate me. But I knew it was my one chance of fulfilling a promise to Molly (her daughter) that I'd be home for her birthday on May 8.

"I decided to take that chance, and write in such a way that my unit and my family would know it wasn't the real me."

Turney told ITV1 that she "felt like a traitor" when she was forced to write letters of confession that were shown on Iranian television.

Batchelor said in an interview with the Daily Mirror that he found his capture "beyond terrifying."

"They seemed to take particular pleasure in mocking me for being young," he said. "A guard kept flicking my neck with his index finger and thumb. I thought the worst."

Retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Cordingly said Monday he believes the sailors and marines were being used "almost as a propaganda tool" by the British government.

"I was depressed because I thought the team were so good on the press conference — they didn't overplay their unpleasant experience and we could all imagine what they had gone through," Cordingly said in a British Broadcasting Corp. radio interview.

Turney said she was offered "a hell of a lot of money" for her story and said she was not "taking the biggest offer."

"I want everyone to know my story from my side, what I went through," she told ITV1. She added part of the money she was paid would go toward helping personnel on her ship, the frigate HMS Cornwall.

After their release last week, the crew members told reporters in Britain they were subjected to constant psychological pressure in detention.

In an attempt to dispute that claim, Iran broadcast new video Sunday showing some of the crew playing chess and watching television during their captivity.

Some of the footage, briefly aired on Iran's state-run Arabic satellite TV channel Al-Alam, also showed crew members watching soccer on TV and eating at a long table decorated with flowers. The crew members could be heard laughing and chatting.

A newscaster said the video proved "the sailors had complete liberty during their detention, which contradicts what the sailors declared after they arrived in Britain."

At a news conference Friday, Lt. Felix Carman, who was in charge of the crew, said the sailors and marines were only allowed to socialize for the benefit of the Iranian media.

Apparently this isn't a permanent solution, but it sets a dangerous precedent. Governments should not be the only witness to the events of their own wars. Taking the incentive away from veterans to tell their story of what happened limits the amount of people who can afford to take time off of their normal lives to give an account.

This story calls to light the never ending need for historical revisionism.

What's there to say?

2007-04-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070403/K040323AU.html

Swedish couple fights for right to name their baby girl Metallica

Metallica may work as a name for a heavy metal band, but a Swedish couple is struggling to convince authorities it's also suitable for a baby girl.

Sweden's tax agency rejected Michael and Karolina Tomaro's application to name their six-month-old daughter after the legendary rock band. "It suits her," Karolina Tomaro, 27, said Tuesday of the name. "She's decisive and she knows what she wants."

Although little Metallica has already been baptized, the Swedish National Tax Board refused to register the name, saying it was associated with both the rock group and the word "metal."

In Sweden, parents must get the names of their children approved by the tax authority, which is in charge of the population registry and issues personal identification numbers.

Tomaro, who has appealed the decision, said the official handling the case also called the name "ugly."

The couple was backed by the County Administrative Court in Goteborg, which ruled on March 13 that there was no reason to block the name. It also noted that there already is a woman in Sweden with Metallica as a middle name.

The tax agency appealed to a higher court, frustrating the family's foreign travel plans.

"We've had to cancel trips and can't get anywhere because we can't get her a passport without an approved name," Tomaro said.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-03-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

Worth it just to hear from Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace who left the organization after seeing it for what it really is. Not a environmentalist group, but a anti-industrial political organization. If you're looking for an environmentalist view that's a little more sensible than sociopathic Luddites like ~~the Unabomber~~ Al Gore, than give Moore a listen. (Not Michael of course)

I lol'd

2007-03-28T07:08:00.002-07:00

Democrats with guns?!? What's next? Republicans increasing the size of the Federal Government?

Oh wait...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/03/28/MNG8LOT1K31.DTL&type=politics

Webb Aide Pleads Not Guilty to Charges

Washington -- Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., one day after his aide's arrest for carrying a loaded pistol into a Senate office building, called the incident "unfortunate" Tuesday and offered a ringing endorsement of the right to bear arms.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Webb said, it has been "a more dangerous time" for people in government.

"I believe that it's important for me, personally, and for a lot of people in the situation that I am in, to be able to defend myself and my family," Webb told reporters in the Capitol. "I believe that wherever you see laws that allow people to carry (weapons), generally the violence goes down."

Webb's aide Phillip Thompson was arrested Monday when, according to Capitol police, he tried to enter a Senate office building with a loaded handgun and two magazines of ammunition.
Police said the weapon was inside a briefcase Thompson placed on an X-ray belt. Thompson said the gun and magazines belonged to Webb, although Webb said he had not given them to Thompson.

"The defendant further stated that he inadvertently left the gun" in the briefcase, the police report on the incident said.

Webb told reporters that he was in New Orleans at the time of the arrest. He described Thompson as "a longtime friend."

"He has worked for me since the beginning of the campaign last year," Webb said. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. I think this is one of those very unfortunate situations where, completely inadvertently, he took the weapon into the Senate."

Webb, Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan before switching parties and running as a Democrat for the Senate last year, said he had long held a permit in Virginia to carry a weapon.
Webb pointed out that police are assigned to protect the president and other high-ranking executive-branch officials but not members of Congress.

"We are required to defend ourselves, and I chose to do so," he said.

Thompson, whose 45th birthday was Monday, spent the night in a District of Columbia lockup and was freed without bond after appearing at a Superior Court hearing, where he was charged with one felony count of carrying a pistol without a license. Another court hearing was scheduled for May 1.

Thompson is a former writer and Marine who fought in the Gulf War, said Robert Hodierne, senior managing editor for Army Times Publishing Co., where Thompson used to work as an editor.

"He's a fine fellow," Hodierne said. "He's married with kids, a family man, a solid citizen."
Army Times, a Gannett Co. subsidiary, publishes four weekly newspapers covering the military: Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times. Most recently, Thompson worked as an editor in the features and lifestyle section that appeared in the papers, Hodierne said.

He left last March to work for the Webb campaign, Hodierne said. According to an online biography, Thompson is from Mississippi and is the author of two books: "Into the Storm," a memoir of his time in the Gulf War, and "The Enemy Within," a novel.

So now police officers, secret service agents, and politicians have the right to defend themselves. No word yet on how long until the rest of us get the right. I think it's a good thing that we don't though, after all regular citizens are just plain crazy. They do insane dangerous things that enlightened people like government police officers and soldiers would. Just. Never. Do.

Главное Управление Исправительно—Трудовых Лагерей и колоний

2007-02-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

I started a new book called Gulag: A History which, as the title suggests, is a chronicle of the Soviet Union concentration camps from 1917 to the 1980's. The introduction of the book brought up a point that I had been pondering lately. Luckily the author, Anne Applebaum, included the full text of the introduction on her website so I can cut and paste it here for discussion. Speaking here about the tendency by Westerners to downplay Soviet crimes as opposed to the atrocities that Hitler committed:

I first became aware of this problem several years ago, when walking across the Charles Bridge, a major tourist attraction in what was then newly democratic Prague. There were buskers and hustlers along the bridge, and, every fifteen feet or so someone was selling precisely what one would expect to find for sale in such a postcard-perfect spot. Paintings of appropriately pretty streets were on display, along with bargain jewelry and "Prague" key chains. Among the bric-a-brac, one could buy Soviet military paraphernalia: caps, badges, belt buckles, and little pins, the tin Lenin and Brezhnev images that Soviet schoolchildren once pinned to their uniforms.

The sight struck me as odd. Most of the people buying the Soviet paraphernalia were Americans and West Europeans. All would be sickened by the thought of wearing a swastika. None objected, however, to wearing the hammer and sickle on a T-shirt or a hat. It was a minor observation, but sometimes, it is through just such minor observations that a cultural mood is best observed. For here, the lesson could not have been clearer: while the symbol of one mass murder fills us with horror, the symbol of another mass murder makes us laugh.

If there is a dearth of feeling about Stalinism among Prague tourists, it is partly explained by the dearth of images in Western popular culture. The Cold War produced James Bond and thrillers, and cartoon Russians of the sort who appear in Rambo films, but nothing as ambitious as Schindler's List or Sophie's Choice. Steven Spielberg, probably Hollywood's leading director (like it or not) has chosen to make films about Japanese concentration camps (Empire of the Sun) and Nazi concentration camps, but not about Stalinist concentration camps. The latter haven't caught Hollywood's imagination in the same way.

Highbrow culture hasn't been much more open to the subject. The reputation of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been deeply damaged by his brief, overt support of Nazism, an enthusiasm which developed before Hitler had committed his major atrocities. On the other hand, the reputation of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre has not suffered in the least from his aggressive support of Stalinism throughout the postwar years, when plentiful evidence of Stalin's atrocities was available to anyone interested. "As we were not members of the Party," he once wrote, "it was not our duty to write about Soviet labor camps; we were free to remain aloof from the quarrels over the nature of the system, provided no events of sociological significance occurred." On another occasion, he told Albert Camus that "Like you, I find these camps intolerable, but I find equally intolerable the use made of them every day in the bourgeois press."

Some things have changed since the Soviet collapse. In 2002, for example, the British novelist Martin Amis felt moved enough by the subject of Stalin and Stalinism to dedicate an entire book to the subject. His efforts prompted other writers to wonder why so few members of the political and literary Left had broached the subject. On the other hand, some things have not changed. It is possible--still--for an American academic to publish a book suggesting that the purges of the 1930s were useful because they promoted upward mobility and therefore laid the groundwork for perestroika. It is possible--still--for a British literary editor to reject an article because it is "too anti-Soviet." Far more common, however, is a reaction of boredom or indifference to Stalinist terror. An otherwise straightforward review of a book I wrote about the western republics of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s contained the following line:_"Here occurred the terror famine of the 1930s, in which Stalin killed more Ukrainians than Hitler murdered Jews. Yet how many in the West remember it? After all, the killing was so--so boring, and ostensibly undramatic."

These are all small things: the purchase of a trinket, a philosopher's reputation, the presence or absence of Hollywood films. But put them all together and they make a story. Intellectually, Americans and West Europeans know what happened in the Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn's acclaimed novel about life in the camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was published in the West in several languages in 1962– . His oral history of the camps, The Gulag Archipelago, caused much comment when it appeared, again in several languages, in 1973. Indeed, The Gulag Archipelago led to a minor intellectual revolution in some countries, most notably France, converting whole swathes of the French Left to an anti-Soviet position. Many more revelations about the Gulag were made during the 1980s, the glasnost years, and they too received due publicity abroad.

Nevertheless, to many people, the crimes of Stalin do not inspire the same visceral reaction as do the crimes of Hitler. Ken Livingstone, a former British Member of Parliament, now Mayor of London, once struggled to explain the difference to me. Yes, the Nazis were "evil," he said. But the Soviet Union was "deformed." That view echoes the feeling that many people have, even those who are not old-fashioned left-wingers: the Soviet Union simply went wrong somehow, but it was not fundamentally wrong in the way that Hitler's Germany was wrong.

Applebaum provides a few theory's as to why this clear and present bias exists. One is that information about the crimes of the soviets was simply not available. This, to me, is far too kind. Clearly information was available from the word go for anyone who wanted to know what was happening. Not only that, but there were outright lies from Western reporters about what was happening. For instance the case of Walter Duranty who lied his way to a Pulitzer Prize false reporting about how the Ukrainian terror famine never happened.

A second theory is that we like our World War II history to be cut and dry; Allies good, Axis bad. Seeing as Uncle Joey was a member of the Allies reminding people that he killed 20 million before Hitler touched his first Jew might make things uncomfortable for the masses. It might especially question the demigod status of everyone's favorite president, Mr. Franklin Roosevelt. After all, why would such a champion of the common man stoop so low as to shake hands with the man who slaughtered millions of proletarians? This is a theory I like for explaining why the general population might ignore the facts of Soviet rule, but it in no way forgives the intelligentsia.

So what do you think?

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda

2007-02-16T18:42:00.000-08:00

I suppose talking about a book is as good a place as any to restart with the blog. Soon I'll update the buttons and all since I canceled the web host I was using and all my images got deleted. For now I'll say I read this book:

Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire is the story of the Rwanda genocide in 1994 from the perspective of the Dallaire who was the head of military operations for the U.N. peacekeeping force of the time. The book is horrifyingly detailed and the last few pages when Roméo describes his own mental breakdown are quite moving, but I can't fully agree with conclusions that he makes.

He claims he would have been able to stop the genocide if given the proper amount of troops and money from developed nations and there's no doubt that's true, but one wonders to what end? The hate the Hutu's possessed for the Tutsis may have been contained for a time but would it ever have fully died? Are we to set up police states in every third world nation to prevent tribal warfare?

Another issue the book made me think of is the Wilsonian doctrine that Neo-Conservatives hold that spreading democracy will help sustain peace. Much was made in the time before the genocide began on the failures of the former warring sides to form a democratic government to stabilize the region. I fail to see how achieving this goal would have done any good as the monsters who were responsible for the genocide were some of the elected officials who were going to be installed. I guess I just don't see how, practically speaking, having government officials in place would have prevented the violence.

One final note, the current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, was the leader of the rebels fighting against the incumbent and extremist Rwanda government before and during the genocide. One would think the man would be a man of the people, a revolutionary, but instead Rwanda is still listed as "not free" by the human rights organization Freedom House. So in the end the people of Rwanda are still pretty much screwed.

Fantastic book, but I was left with more questions than others who seem to be convinced by Dallaire's call for a new Age of Humanity.

2007-02-15T13:42:00.001-08:00

Does anyone really read this thing anymore?

I mean really.

Immigration

2006-11-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

(I’m going to do a few posts on illegal immigration because it’s been bothering me lately. I’ll be doing them in parts though because lazy. So with out further comment I give you part one)

What’s with Lou Dobbs?

Is this man the most blatant racist in American media? I mean sure guys like Spike Lee and Kanye West work hard to spread their racist messages, but this guy is out of control. I don’t even have a TV, but everywhere I look I see this guy’s mug telling me how evil illegal immigrants are. He’s given us a detailed report on the conspiracy by the evil Mexican government to ship evil Mexicans over the border so evil companies can hire them and evil landlords can house them, only to have all the evil Mexicans evilly send all their evil money back to the evil Mexican lands so we can’t have any of it.

Dbackdad made a nice post about some of his experiences with some xenophobes a while back here. His post focused on the racial fears of the immigration issue. In these posts I’d like to focus on the financial issues with immigration, the tremendous “cost of illegal immigration” that Mr. Dobbs insists our own Government and big businesses are covering up.

The most popular claim by the anti-immigrant crowd seems to be that illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs. This fear is based on the incorrect notion that there are a fixed number of jobs available. That if we increase the number of employees in a marketplace, the number of jobs available to other people will go down. This is completely untrue. In fact the opposite is true. All of the immigrants come here and instantly become consumers. They eat, they drive cars, they buy entertainment, and they live in houses and apartments. Each need they bring requires a workforce to satisfy it. In fact it is estimated that one job is created for every consumer in America. So the supposed jobs that are being stolen are being offset by the jobs they create at a rate of 1:1. And that’s assuming that every immigrant that crosses the border is working, which in the case of families with small children is obviously not true. So it’s easy to assume that immigrants actually produce more jobs than they “steal.”

Another popular claim is that illegals flood the market with cheap labor. To this I say, “Good!” Cheap labor means cheaper products and services for the end consumer. Cheaper labor also offsets the negative effects that our stupid minimum wage laws on our poor. The fact of the matter is there is not such thing as “cheap” labor. Labor is worth what employees and employers agree on.

Well that’s about it for now. Comment as needed. Rinse. Repeat.

lol blog

2006-10-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while.

Just to recap a few things that happened while I was away for those who don't wander over the Crystals' blog all that much, my 60GB iPod was stolen and the transmission on my Elantra went out yesterday. Sooo, bad (read: expensive) week or so.

Caught up? Good.

Um, in other news I watched an episode of South Park for the first time recently. I watched it because it dealt with 9/11 conspiracy theories and there's nothing I like more than people making fun of idiots. Well that's not true, there are other things I like more such as Twizzlers, music, and people NOT STEALING MY IPOD, ACTUALLY, BTW!!!!!!!!!!!oneoneone

At any rate, it's a notoriously crude show and it certainly lived up to it's reputation, but at the same time I found some of the humor to be pretty intelligent and the moral of the story was spot on. It's basically very similar to how I felt about Team America.

The elections are coming up soon and Illinois finally has a Libertarian candidate for Governor. He's a write in, since the Libertarian party in Illinois is not very organized, but it's good enough for me. I was afraid I was going to have to vote for the Green party candidate, but that wasn't something I really wanted to do. Still, it would have been better than wasting my vote on a Republican or a Democrat. Anyway, his name is Mark McCoy and if you live in Illinois please consider writing his name on your ballot. He's even got a sweet MySpace page. Whatever you do, please don't waste your vote by voting for one of these goofs.

I suppose that's enough for now. Hopefully this will get me back in the rhythm of updating this thing a bit more consistently.

BOOYAKASHA!! Hijacked again bro!

2006-10-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

YO YO YO!!!!! You bes' start respekkin' your 2 reader peeps and get to steppin' on writIN a new post yo!

The reason I haven't been blogging lately

2006-10-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

In other news it was raining in my dinning room last nite, which I think is probably a bad thing.

More insightful commentary later. Maybe after this one last turn...

HA HA! I'm blog hijacking YOU!!! =D

2006-09-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

k, luv, bie,
your gal pal

2006-09-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

lol packers

The theft of your private property

2006-09-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

From Lysander Spooner's No Treason in 1870:

It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected.

But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: "Your money, or your life." And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands.

He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

It should be noted that Spooner was an anarchist. I am not, but find his assemsment of taxation spot on.

LEAP

2006-09-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

LEAP is a coalition of judges, district attorneys, law enforcement officers and other government officials who support ending prohibition of illegal narcotics for principled and intelligent reasons. Watch the video with an open mind. Remember, there are very few people in the anti-prohibition camp that think drugs are a great thing. Personally, not only have I never done drugs, I don't drink or smoke. I think they are all pretty lame habits. However, the way we choose some drugs to be legal and some to be illegal is extremely illogical.

Again, let's make this clear. NO ONE IS SAYING DRUGS ARE GOOD. We're talking about prohibition here, not the benefits of a chemically induced temporary high.

So what are the reasons for making them illegal?

1. Drugs are unhealthy!

Indeed they are. So is alcohol and so are cigarettes. So it might be said, "Ban them too!" But then where are we drawing our lines? Do we ban all unhealthy food as well? Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America, isn't it? We need to protect people from themselves! Okay, what else? Driving? After all, accidents are the leading cause of death in persons between the ages of 15 and 24. How many lives can we save each year by eliminating cars? Come on, we've got a moral obligation to protect our citizens!

I think the logical flaw in banning things for being unhealthy is obvious. We, as informed Americans, ought to have the right to put in our bodies whatever we see fit. We all know the risks of alcohol and cigarettes and make our choices accordingly. Personally, I think doing drugs would be a bad choice, but would admit to doing other unhealthy well knowing the risks. Our bodies belong to us and ought not be regulated by George Bush, Bill Clinton, or any other politician.

2. Drugs are morally wrong!

Drugs being legal or not is not a testament or approval from the citizens to go ahead and use them. The idea that we should ban "bad" things is the whole reason we're in the legislative mess that we are in. The US Constitution (you'll remember that as the document that established our Government) affords no authority to Congress to ban consumables based on any moral principle. The longer we go on attributing moral value to inanimate objects (drugs for the right, guns for the left) instead of the people using them BASED ON THEIR DEEDS, the longer we allow the Government to abuse its authority. The Government has a job defined by its Constitution and that job is not the mindless banning of "wrong" things, it is the banning of things which violate our inalienable rights as defined by the Constitution (such as theft, murder, fraud... things people SHOULD be thrown in jail for, but often aren't because of prison overpopulation due to drug convictions).

3. People who abuse drugs become a danger to others.

I think a lot of this thought comes from propaganda that has been forced down our throats from a very young age. In an effort to curtail drug use the Government, for admittedly noble intentions, has funded a mass campaign to inform us of all the terrible things that drugs make a person do. This notion that drugs make people do wrong things is mostly without scientific research, and if you think about it most of us know that the violence associated with drugs has to do with those selling them, not those taking them. However, for the sake of argument let's suppose someone does do a terrible act under the influence of cocaine. Say murder. Isn't the act of murder already illegal? And if cocaine inherently makes a man want to murder isn't that going to happen if cocaine is legal or not? Obviously banning cocaine hasn't stifled it's popularity. Drug use in teens is UP since the inception of the Drug War. So this is happening anyway, but a crime is a crime. Murder is murder with or without drugs. Rape is rape with or without drugs.

In fact, I would argue that the legalization of ALL drugs would empower our police forces to better investigate these types of violent crimes. As it stands, roughly 40% of our police force nation wide is dedicated to drug enforcement. Those 40% should be on the street patrolling, not behind desks planning the next big raid. Response times for police calls would go up, the ability of police to deal with large scale crisises would go up, patrols of "bad" parts of town would be more practical, and the manpower to keep the real crime in check would be more plausible.

If someone is able to use drugs without doing any of these crimes, they are no danger and should not be locked up. The pursuit of said individuals is pointless as the very act of illegalizing drug possession is the primary reason people who are drug addicts disobey the law.

Let's look at a few other benefits that would almost immediately take place with the legalization of all narcotics.

A) It would immediately eliminate the black market. Money is power and the power is currently in the hands of street gangs. For those of us near major metropolitan areas we hear monthly reports of children caught in a gang war crossfire. Where did the money for those guns come from? Our drug laws. What are they fighting over? Who sells what to who. Put the drugs in the hands of pharmacists and take the money out from under street thugs.

B) It would eliminate the international drug manufacturing industry. This seems pretty self explanatory. Cocaine should be made in a factory by men in white coats, not by 8 year olds with machine guns pointed at their backs. Take the money away from drug lords and put it in the hands of responsible business men. I think even a leftie would agree with me that a corporate CEO is better than a violent drug lord. Right?

Long term effects?

The demographics of drug use would change. See, before prohibition of illegal narcotics, recreational users of these drugs were mainly upper class citizens who had expendable incomes. While we still see that today, we see an epidemic of poor users. This is because drug peddlers in the black market know hooking the poor user establishes them a wider, more potent criminal base of people who are more desperate. Poor people cannot afford the habit but since they are hooked young by teenage dope dealers hoping to earn a quick buck, they get stuck in a cycle of addiction. On the other hand, drug use amongst adults who can afford the product would rise, it is very likely that drug use amongst youngsters and the poor will drop noticeably. This of course creates a different drug use environment than what you see today.

That doesn't even begin to get into the racial implications of our drug laws, which I suppose entire books can be written on. The fact is though, that we incarcerate more people than any other industrialized nation. Most of our jails are overflowing, not because of violent crime, but because of victimless drug crimes. And the mass majority of these people are black. At the same time our drug laws have given uneducated poor black men a way to beat the system. They rise out of poverty through the black market and give younger children something to look up to. Hard work and dedication? No, violence and blood money. Which has become somewhat of a culture, hasn't it?

All thanks to banning something we don't like.

Good ol' fashion nonsense!

2006-08-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

I can hardly believe I just read this story.

I owe some people responses in the previous post, I know. Until then, read this story and mourn the death of common sense with me.

Rep. Harris: Church-state separation 'a lie'

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.

Harris made the comments -- which she clarified Saturday -- in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.

Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris said.
Her comments drew criticism, including some from fellow Republicans who called them offensive and not representative of the party.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, who is Jewish, told the Orlando Sentinel that she was "disgusted" by the comments.

Harris' campaign released a statement Saturday saying she had been "speaking to a Christian audience, addressing a common misperception that people of faith should not be actively involved in government."

The comments reflected "her deep grounding in Judeo-Christian values," the statement said, adding that Harris had previously supported pro-Israel legislation and legislation recognizing the Holocaust.

Harris' opponents in the GOP primary also gave interviews to the Florida Baptist Witness but made more general statements on their faith.

Harris, 49, faced widespread criticism for her role overseeing the 2000 presidential recount as Florida's secretary of state.

State GOP leaders -- including Gov. Jeb Bush -- don't think she can win against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November. Fundraising has lagged, frustrated campaign workers have defected in droves and the issues have been overshadowed by news of her dealings with a corrupt defense contractor who gave her $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions.

The Nature of Man

2006-08-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

I believe I have a somewhat diverse blog readership, and I rather like it. There used to be a man who linked to me who was decidedly gay, I don’t know how he found my blog or why he decided he liked it but I really appreciated the support. That was a while ago though and I don’t think he checks back here even though I think the link is still up.

I am a Christian, which (I think often times unjustly) tends to get people labeled as intolerant. However, the Libertarian in me is accepting of all races, cultures, and life styles that don’t victimize others or prey on people weaker than themselves. I also don’t think there’s any need for evangelism in America. We’ve all heard the story and those who believe it, do. There’s no way to ever make a person believe in something. You can make them agree, or even want to believe, but you can never convince someone to believe.

Not only that, but I have friendships with several atheists. I count them among some of my closest friends and there are several that I respect and admire more than many self-professing Christians. I find that in general atheists are more prone to logic and reason than Christians. Christians are prone to say things like, “God said it and so I believe it!” This, in and of itself, is not terrible logic. However, it’s usually used in reference to something that they believe, yet God never said. Furthermore, it’s used as a shield against logic and critical thought, which is exactly what God calls us to.

To that effect I’ve kept this blog pretty nonreligious I think. I don’t have links up to religious affiliations. I don’t typically promote religious ideas or suggest others do. For the most part I don’t have much respect for organized religion because it depends on the power and wisdom of Man, of which I have very little faith.

However, I am going to post now on a decidedly religious issue. In doing so I will be referencing the Bible, but not only that but also our ability to reason that I think even an agnostic can agree with. The issue I’d like to examine is the idea that we, as humans, have what is commonly known as a sinful nature. It is my position that such a thing does not exist. That, in fact, our nature is one that seeks to please God, not one that is inherently opposed to him.

There are several arguments against my line of thinking, and I’d go so far as to say the vast majority of Christians hold to the doctrine of Sinful Nature, though not always in the full fashion that Calvin himself did. Though consistently in my life I’ve talked to people about this doctrine (once my neighbor went so far as to invite his pastor over to correct my thinking) I’ve never been able to find a logical and biblical argument for it.

Logically, the argument for Sinful Nature usually revolves around the fact that, indeed, we all sin. This sin is directly attributed to our nature due to the shear volume. Let’s be clear about this: I’m not claiming that there are those without sin, only that when they do sin they are going against their nature.

Biblically there are two different routes that people will take. The first is to point out scriptures that say we are sinful from birth. I don’t disagree with this, but I will disagree that it is due to our nature. The second is to point out scriptures that actually have the words “sinful nature” in them. This seems logical seeing as the Bible is the inspired word of God and all, but I’d like to examine what is the actually word of God and what is translation based on theology.

The translation in your bible that may say the words ‘sinful nature’ come from the Greek word ‘savrx.’ The word is used 151 times in the New Testament. It is my opinion that it’s correct translation is flesh. This is made obvious by several passages that use it in a very literal way to represent body parts. Many modern translations, The NIV for instance, takes 24 of those instances and changes them to “sinful nature.” However, the phrase sinful nature never appears in the Greek text.

In fact let’s look at the Greek word for ‘nature’. It’s ‘fuvsiß’ and it’s used just 11 times in the New Testament. Each and every time it’s used it in reference to man’s nature it says that our nature is to do what is good. Look them up yourselves. I’ll give you the verses. Ro 1:26, Ro 2:14, Ro 2:27, Ro 11:21, Ro 11:24, 1Co 11:14, Ga 2:15, Ga 4:8, Eph 2:3, Jas 3:7 , 2Pe 1:4. That’s a list of EVERY verse in the New Testament that has the Greek word for ‘nature’ in it. I’ve not omitted any to prove my point. I'll post a few verses that are relevant to this discussion:

Romans 1:26: For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions: for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature...

Here Paul is describing some vile passions and appeals to nature itself for the argument against it.

Romans 2:14: (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law...

Here Paul makes a case that Gentiles that do not have Jewish Law taught to them still make an attempt to adhere to those laws (murder, stealing, etc.) Again he claims that the reason they know this is nature.

Now if Paul wanted to tell us we had a sinful nature wouldn’t he say it at least one time? ONE TIME? Was he really that bad of a writer that we need to correct his message with our own translations? Maybe the Holy Spirit just didn’t convey God’s message to him properly. Good thing we have enlightened bible translations to fix that problem!

The correct translation for ‘savrx’ is flesh. As in your body. Your body is not naturally evil; it’s naturally self-serving. "Oh! But Scott, selfishness is evil!" Wrong, not in it's natural state. Your body's natural needs are not evil. It needs to be fed. It needs to sleep. It needs to be touched. It needs emotional exchanges with other people. It needs sexual contact. It needs knowledge. All very natural things. It has all these needs and NONE of them are inherently evil or sinful. However, we can choose to fulfill them all with either godly or ungodly means. And when we make the choice to fulfill them with evil means it’s not because it’s in our nature to do so. It’s against our nature. It’s a perversion. It’s wrong and unnatural, which is why each and every one of us need a savior. After all, if we we’re just following our nature to sin then what exactly would we need to be saved from?

By claiming we have a sinful nature you’re in effect blaming God for your sin, because if we did have a sin nature who would have put it there? God is the only one who could create such a thing. And if God created it, it’s God’s fault that we sin and he would have no right to judge us. In fact if he did give us a sin nature it would be his moral duty to save us and there would be no grace involved.

Furthermore, if the sinful nature came about after Adam, why did Adam sin? And if he got a sinful nature after the fall then some sort of physical change would have taken place in him. And it would require a physical change for any of us to be saved. Why does the Bible never talk about that? There’s not mention of a change in Adam’s nature or a change in your physical makeup after being saved.

What caused Adam to sin is the same thing that causes you and I to sin. The neutral desire to fulfill the needs of the body, and the choice to use evil means to do it. What’s the biblical proof of that? Genesis 3:6:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

Why, it looks as though Eve was tempted by the same thing we are tempted by. Pleasing the flesh. The fruit TASTED good. It LOOKED beautiful. It would enhance her WISDOM. All fleshly needs that are not inherently sinful. It’s the same for you and I. And it’s the same for Christ who was tempted by the desires of his flesh but withstood in holiness like no other human being was able to. How silly would Romans 8:3 be if “God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” was translated, “God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful nature?” You’d agree, I’m sure, that Christ didn’t have a sinful nature. He just had flesh, the same as you and I.

There’s more I could say about this. I’ve thought about it a lot, I’ve pondered it, and I’ve studied it, and I've debated it. To finish I’ll just leave you with this:

If man had a sinful nature than we would have no reason to, as a society, blame him for wrongdoing. Just as we don't blame the tiger killing the zebra, for it is his nature. However man's nature is not to sin, but to please God. This is why we, as a society, call obviously immoral sexual behavior such as pedophilia “perverse”, because it is not “natural.” It is, in fact, against man's very nature.

Thoughts?

Book Meme?

2006-08-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what meme means but apparently it's similar to tagging.

I hate tagging. :)

1. One book that changed your life? Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Read it the year after I graduated High School. Helped form many of my ideas about what Governments should and shouldn't do and the idea that principles ought to guide man. Plus I never went to college and I've never had a professor explain to me all of the evilness of Capitalism, so this book helped me fall in love with it.

2. One book you have read more than once? Um, I've never read a book more than once. Except for the books I've read my kids over and over again. I could probably read Devil in the White City again.

3. One book you would want on a desert island? Boatbuilding for Beginners (and Beyond): Everything You Need to Know to Build a Sailboat, a Rowboat, a Motorboat, a Canoe, and More by Jim Michalak. Seems like the obvious answer to me.

4. One book that made you laugh? I don't laugh. Ever.

5. One book that made you cry? No Compromise by Melody Green. It didn't make me cry, but it mad me sad.

6. One book you wish had been written? A Simple Explanation of Rights Afforded to the U.S. Government by the Constitution, Easy Enough For 21st Century Democrats and Republicans to Understand by Thomas Jefferson.

7. One book you wish had never been written? I'm pretty much opposed to this question as I believe truth should never be hidden and that lies are best put on display for critical thought to examine, but taking into account 158+ million dead by means of Democide in just three countries that practiced some or all of it's tenants, I'd have to say The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederic Engels.

8. One book you are currently reading? The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland. Ah, free books.

9. One book you have been meaning to read? Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Ludwig von Mises. Mises is an incredible man who spoke out against collectivism during the height of anti-capitalism fervor in Austria just before Nazi take over. He wrote this in 1922, and at the same time predicted the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union, which unlike Marx's prediction of the downfall of Capitalism, actually came true.

10. Now tag five people: Erich, Sarah, Sam, Kim, and Albert Franken

OMG

2006-08-11T05:11:00.000-07:00

all teh peoples love the music

2006-08-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since a new song has gone up so this post is dimply to point out that there is one now. It's a few years old and I've liked it for some time, but I thought I'd share it with you all now.

Not much for discussion here so I'll ponder this:

What do you think of luck? Can a person be inherently lucky or unlucky, and how would you define such a thing?

Elephants vs. Donkeys

2006-08-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer:
I am not a supporter of the George W. Bush presidency. I did not vote for the man. I’m also not a supporter of the war in Iraq, which was not justly waged.

Democrats like to assure me that they are indeed quite different than Republicans. They do this by pointing out all of the terrible things that the current administration does and letting me know, “This would never happen if Gore/Kerry were in office!”

It is my belief, however, that Democrats and Republicans are quite similar in that they are both decidedly pro-government. And while both parties claim to believe in keeping Government’s power in check neither has much of a track record of doing so.

For the past year we’ve heard the Left heralding the horrible methods used by the Bush administration in detaining enemy combatants in Guantanamo. They’ve told us that the Bush administration has over stepped it’s power in the unlawful detainment of these prisoners without the right to due process. And while President Bush has defended these actions as being legal due to the fact that the detainees were not American citizens, Democrats have been quick to point out that human rights are inalienable to all men, American’s or not.

One would think that their valiant defense of human rights was based on their own beliefs and not on their political allegiance, and for many of the rank-and-file I’m sure this is the case. However, it’s also maybe assumed that the unspoken assertion is that a Democrat would not dare to commit such a grievous act of human rights abuse and that if Gore/Kerry were in office things would most certainly be different!

There is one man though, who seems to believe different. Brandt Goldstein is a lawyer and the author of Storming the Court, a non-fiction examination of a 1992 court ruling that is eerily similar to our present situation. Late last year Goldstein wrote an article showing the parallels between past and present. You can read it here. An excerpt:

A smidgen of history: Our first Guantanamo detention camp was established in the late stages of the George H.W. Bush presidency. The detainees there weren't terror suspects, but 300 innocent Haitian refugees seeking safe haven from the military regime that ousted Haiti's democratically elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in September 1991. These refugees—brought to Guantanamo after the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted their vessels on the high seas between Haiti and Cuba—faced a terrible predicament. In interviews with U.S. immigration officials, they'd all proved a legitimate fear of political persecution were they to be returned to Haiti. Under U.S. policy, they should have been promptly flown to the American mainland (as were a number of other Haitians). But then this small group of men, women, and children also tested positive for HIV. Fear of AIDS was still extreme at that time, and the Bush administration refused to let these hapless refugees into the country. So, instead they were detained in a remote corner of Guantanamo with no prospect of release.

As we all remember Clinton took office shortly after, but he also refused to release the detainees. The case was finally brought before a judge by a group of law students.

The Clinton White House justified this atrocious conduct in terms that sound strikingly familiar today. Justice Department attorneys maintained that foreigners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay have absolutely no legal rights, whether under the Constitution, federal statutes, or international law. According to this logic, the Clinton White House was free to treat the detainees however it pleased. (There was some plagiarism here. The Clinton folks took this argument from the Bush administration lawyers who'd first defended the camp.)

Now I am a fan of perspective and I understand the methods currently being used by the President in Guantanamo are not on the same level as what Clinton used and defended. However, using the principles of perspective we can also say that Clinton was not facing the same choices as Bush. Therefore we can look at the decision Clinton was faced with, whether or not to allow unwanted refugees in the United States. In addition, we can look at the reason he detained the refugees: Fear. Which is the same rational Bush used to defend his own unlawful detainment of prisoners.

And we can ask ourselves this; if a democrat were in office (presumably Gore, Clinton’s own VP) would things have played out differently in Guantanamo?

History answers a resounding, “No.”

Go again

2006-08-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

These guys are unstoppable. Their music pretty much sucks, (lol eric) but these videos are too much awesome.

Crystal said I need to post something

2006-07-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

I was just mowing my lawn and I got stung by a wasp on the top of my toe. The one next to my big toe on my right foot.

It hurts.

Still.

It's also hot out. And in for that matter. Sucks not having A/C.

I have to go finish mowing the lawn.

k, thnx, bye

Answers

2006-07-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

Crystal's Answers:

Scott will you buy me that pool I want?

No.

Why do most people think you don't like them?

I don't know. I think maybe because I don't talk unless I feel like I have something interesting to say. People seem to equate being silent to not having a good time, and take me not having a good time as not liking them. I think this would be a better question to ask people who don't think I like them.

What are you really like at work?

I think I'm pretty much the same at work as I am at home, but I would imagine a lot of people feel that way.

What is your favorite book/s of the Bible? Why?

I guess Romans. It's the easiest book to understand as Paul lays out a very logical argument.

Do you think I'm cute???

Yes.

Will you marry me again?

The idea of marrying a person again, or renewing your vows, makes no sense to me. When you get married, you make a promise to love and support that person until death does you in. Such a promise is permanent and binding by definition. To renew or remarry signifies that the first was only temporary or inadequate at best. The only logical reason to remarry a person would be if they were to first divorce for some reason and then fall back in love. I've seen this happen, it's a sweet thing. Very romantic. So a better question would be, will you divorce me?

What are your top 3 favorite movies and why?

The older I get the more I dislike movies in general. They're mostly all formula driven, unimaginative, brainless adventures. Furthermore the amount I like a movie really depends on the current mood I'm in, so it's very difficult to pin down 3 movies that I would consider my absolute favorites. To answer your question I'll just list my favorite 3 movies from the past few years in no order and with a short explanation of my love for them.

Good Night and Good Luck

Edward R. Murrow was a great American. Joseph McCarthy, like almost every Senator today and probably several of his contemporaries, was a power-hungry politician. It’s true that parallels can be drawn between McCarthy’s methods of accusation and the current administrations methods, but I believe Clooney when he says he didn’t make the film with that in mind. I think if you go in looking for that you’re missing out on a lot of other things about this movie that are quite beautiful and relevant. Namely our society’s appetite for escapism, the power of friendship, and maybe most importantly the lost art of civil discussion.

The Aviator

To look at Howard Hughes as simply a millionaire playboy is selling him awfully short. He was a genius, an inventor, a Capitalist, and he fought crooked politicians. Pretty much my kind of guy. Except for the whole OCD/womanizing thing. Not into that, actually, btw. Still a fascinating man and a great movie.

Million Dollar Baby

First and foremost a great sports movie with all the things that make you like sports. A well written script funny and emotional. 3 magnificent performances. And it was made by a Libertarian. Hands down best movie of 2004. Maybe the best movie of the decade.

Why didn't you like Superman?

There was nothing new about it. It was a re-application of the same old ideas. It wasn't well written or filmed. With the exception of Kevin Spacey it wasn't well acted. Also it was about 45 minutes too long and the last half hour dragged very slowly. A better question would be why would anyone like it?

Who are the people you admire and respect the most?

I know you’re trying to get me to list specific people here, but I’m not going to. See below.

What is it that makes you admire and respect people?

The people I admire and respect the most are those who know what they believe and why the believe it. Those who are not easily persuaded by the wind of public opinion. People who are intelligent, yet patient with those who don't posses the same level of understanding. People who work hard. People who don't expect other people to help them, but appreciate it when they do. People who don't try and sell themselves with their ideas OR looks. People who are content with their surroundings. There's probably more, but those seem to be the important ones.

Who are your greatest influences in life? Or mentors? Why?

Usually people who fit the description above.

What does it look like to love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and all of your strength, and all of your mind?

Joh 14:15
If ye love me, keep my commandments.

Joh 14:21
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

Joh 14:23 - Show Context
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Sarah's Answers:

What is Eric really like at work?

About 6’3” and really kinda smelly.

Did he really know that starbrites name was Twink?

He didn't know the name Twink, but he knew the picture I drew wasn't the doll he maimed.

Do you like Indie music a lot?

There's two things I look for in music.

The first is creativity. Usually music that can't easily be categorized as a specific genre. The artists who create this music are usually carried by an independent label because larger labels tend to demand albums that are sure fire hits. Music that is focus group tested and re-produced or re-recorded to fit what people want to hear. I want to hear music that an artist wants to make, not music that 14 year girls want to hear.

Secondly, I like emotion. Whether it's as happy as the Polyphonic Spree or curl up in the fetal position depressing as Okkervil River I need to feel something. Is this conducive to indie music? Maybe a little, as these are artists that have forsaken the chase of the "big contract," preferring rather to create music that they believe in.

Just as much as I like those things in music though, I hate the RIAA. They overprice their music in the face of declining demand, and seek to fix the supply of creativity through unconstitutional copyright laws. I'll listen to RIAA artists if they intrigue me, but I don't go out of my way to find them.

So yes, I likey me indie music.

Sadddie's Answers:

Why do people revert back to caveman language?
Example:

Long time, No see

No can do

see what I mean by this? We've come such a long way in our communication skills, why destroy centuries of progress?

No can say. Maybe lazy? Maybe stupid? Prolly lazy.

Sammy's Answers:

Oh yeah, and why do people always say, "can I ask you a question?" My response is, "You just did, now go away."

I think they ask you that to be polite. If this really annoys you I suggest answering all there questions with questions. I know this really annoys Crystal so I think it will probably work on other people.

Eric's Answers:

What is the best shoe in the world?

The best shoes in the world are Nikes, because Nike employees people all around the world instead of just in the United States. Through this they are doing there part to end global poverty. More than the G8 will ever do with their silly rock star ideas.

Why is a clock circular?

One answer to that is that they are operated by gears, which are circular. Plus there is the fact that the hours, minutes, and seconds of the day, like a circle, start and end at the same point. The other answer is this:

Where’s the circle Eric? Where’s the circle?

How is heat index measured?

Wipes/hr.

(The amount of wipes to remove the sweat from you forehead per hour.)

How long, in minutes, would it take me to walk from my house to Quebec, Canada?

What, are you kidding? You have an ingrown toenail and you’re gonna walk to Canada? You can hardly make it to your car at the end of the day. Canada, pfft.

Plus you’re lazy, so you got that whole thing going against you.

Did Al Gore invent the internet?

To understand the answer to this question first we must understand what the Internet is. Jon Stewart explains:

Yes, people want the Government to regulate things. Why? I don’t know.

But I digress, the Internet was not invented by one person but rather many people have contributed to its current state. The idea of “packet switching”, which is one of the main components of the Internet, dates back to 1961. And the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was invented in 1972. Al Gore, or any other politician for that matter, wasn’t involved in any of these inventions. Politicians are very rarely involved in inventing anything; they’re just there to regulate other people’s inventions that they know nothing about.

Hence the Internet is a series of tubes.

If you could be a power tool, what would you be and why?

What the crap is this question? I ask for good questions and this is what you give me? Does this blog look like the dating show? Am I suppose to say, “I would be a hammer so we could bang on the dance floor ALL NITE LONG!!!!”

I expected better from you.

Better.

Who is that john stossels mustache guy anyway?

Yes Eric, you can steal the question idea. It’s not exactly mine anyway.

Steph's Answers:

Why does Mark continue to sneeze in the morning (regardless of tempature) until he puts on socks.

Like all men your husband Mark has lungs.

Just below these lungs is a muscle called the diaphragm that makes him breathe. When Mark sneezes the diaphragm expands at such a rate that it causes his lungs to expel air at a rate of about 100mph. This can be caused my any foreign particles that may enter his nose such as dust, pollen, cat dander, or even cold air. Since this is a scientific process involving the nervous system and the lungs there is no reason to believe that the socks play any part in the equation. However, given the numerous possible irritants that could cause the sneeze, my recommendation for ending the sneezing problem quickly and efficiently is the removal of Mark’s lungs.

Jack and Sarah's Answers:

Are black holes a rip or tear in the space time continuum. And, what happens if you travel into a black hole?

Really these questions should be answered by a theoretical physicist, like Eric's neighbor. If I had to take a stab at it I'd say that if you were to travel inside of one, you'd find Laurence Fishburne in a bad movie about weird space things.

Computers and a game, but not a computer game

2006-07-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

I'm going to need to get a new computer. The one we have now, which I built about four years ago is starting to drive me nuts. I started looking at Dell and Gateway's websites and it's clear to me that I can still build my own system for much cheaper than what those companies offer, and get a much higher powered system. However, as we all know, much has changed in the world of computers over the past 4 years. When I built this one I spent a lot of time reading and trying to figure out which components were best for me. I pretty much have to start over a read about all those components again because everything is very different. What's amazing is how much everything has dropped in price. I bought a 100 GB hard drive then for $180 bucks and now I can get a 250 GB hard drive for 85 bucks. Yeah. And where I got my 512MB RAM back then for about $150 bucks, now I can get a whopping 2GB RAM for about $120. And the 1.8Ghz processor that I have now was 180 as well and now I can get a 3.0 Pentium D for the same price. I remember when I was shopping for parts for this computer the highest they made the chips was 2.4 ghz, and that was for about 600 bucks!

Ah, computer talk, you know I love it.

Anyway I've decided my next post will be in the form of answers. Answers to what? Well your comments of course. Comment to this post with any question you have and I will answer it in my next post. Can be a question about anything like, "What's your favorite color?", or "How can you call yourself a Christian when your clearly a greedy Libertarian?!?!!?!" Or my personal favorite, "HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?"

Anything goes, post as anonymous if you're scared to ask for yourself. Let's just get it all out in the open.

mmmmm-k?

More John Stossel

2006-07-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

What can I say? I like the man.

Here he does everything he can to show why America needs education reform and why "throwing money at the problem" is not only NOT the solution, but part of the problem. Also a great examination of unions in general and their inherent problems.

It's about 45 minutes long but very thought provoking and I highly recommend watching.

A Convenient Lie

2006-07-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

Fellow Libertarian John Stossel has written an article exposing what he believes are some of the lies Gore tells in his ~~propaganda~~ film An Inconvenient Truth. It's worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing. Otherwise maybe just ignore it or whatever. I've noticed political posts don't garner much discussion on this blog and really I'm fine with that but I'll still post stuff like this when it interests me.

geddit?

The Best Fireworks Display of Power Ever!

2006-07-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

On the 4th of July everypeoples love fireworks!

Hi, I'm Kim!

Hi Kim!

I have big fieworks!

You can see them from far away!

Yay! I ruv fireworks!

Oh No!

Oh nos!

Oh well!

Bollocks!

Oh darn!

Wait....what?

I hate Jews!

lol I mean... Yay! I love fireworks too!

DO YOU WANT TO PLAY A GAME?

Emily update

2006-06-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

Hello!

So things with the Tomato scores didn't really take off this round so we'll probably just put that whole project on hold for now. Truth is it takes up a bit of time and I don't really have an abundance of it at the moment. Plus I'm really kinda blog lazy right now.

Anyway, today I took Emily for the first stage of her latest scan. As some of you may know it was originally scheduled for last Friday, but due to a difference in opinions between two of the Doctors at Loyola the scan got delayed until today. There's really not all that much to report. We went to Loyola, Emily drank the radioactive iodine solution that she drank in March, and they did a photo scan of her whole body. In between all that there was the typical waiting in the hospital waiting room for hours stuff that bores the mind into submission.

Tomorrow we'll go back and they'll do another photo scan to measure how much of the solution her thyroid cells (cancer) absorbed. Then we'll do the same thing on Thursday to measure how much she expelled from her body. If the Doctor likes what he sees, we may start the treatments on Thursday.

I had a meeting with the head of Nuclear Medicine at the hospital and he told me that he has been doing research over the course of the last three months to find the best way to treat Emily. He said that he as been thinking of her every day since then. I'm sure it's something he tells a lot of his patients, but I will say that he answers his phone every time I call him. And he's the only Doctor I know that does that. I rather like the man and think he's very good at what he does.

Other than that things are normal. Or at least as normal as life is when your 9 year old has cancer. We went camping this past weekend. I hate camping. End of story.

I love you all very much and consider some of you to be my closest and dearest friends. I leave it up to you to figure which of you is which.

KTHNXBYE

P.S. Who ever is anonymous in the last post is the winner of the Tomato Championship this week. Too bad no one will ever know who it was.

P.S.S. Later I'll post a song in the Songs to Love if I have time and Crystal will let me. (We're suppose to watch Munich)

What's So Inconvenient About It?

2006-06-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well, Roger Ebert had his go at Al Gore's upcoming bit of propaganda known as An Inconvenient Truth. It's no surprise that Ebert would like such a film as he once referred to the "documentary" (I only refer to it as such because that's what people tell me it is) Fahrenheit 9/11 as "compelling."

Maybe most interesting is this quote from Ebert's review:

Global warming is real.

It is caused by human activity.

Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it.

The sky is falling! Save us Big Brother!

Scare tactics are certainly nothing new to big government fans. Who can forget the technique that Bush used to drag us into the war in Iraq? I'm sure Gore would have opposed the use of such tactics then, when it was some one on the other side of the aisle but he seems to be rather fond of them now that they support his mission.

Of course he would tell you that it's for the greater good (just as Bush did) and it's something that we all need to worry and panic about, but not everyone is quite as convinced as Mr. Gore would have us all believe.

I'm sure much of the science behind his claims is correct, even if grossly exaggerated. I'm sure humans have contributed to altering the environment. But Al Gore is dead wrong about how he would deal with such a problem. The truth is technological advances brought about by "evil" corporations in their "greedy" quest for profits will result in cleaner, sustainable cars, homes, agriculture, etc. The governments of the world will only continue to impede that progress through excess taxation.

Anyway, I'll go back and update the points from all your last comments when I'm feeling less lazy. The only reason I posted this is I was compelled by an e-mail my aunt sent me and this is pretty much copied right from my reply to her.

The First Ever Tomato Champion

2006-06-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

Well the scores for the first round of Tomato points are in and the champion has been named. I know I kind of skipped out over the past few days, but things have been busy for me lately. Here are the final standings:

Sarah: 190 Points
Eric: 164 Points
Sammy: 157 Points
Scott: 138 Points
Sadie: 129 Points
Crystal: 114 Points
Kristen: 110 Points
Steph: 12 Points

Everybody give Sarah a big round of eApplaudes as she is our first ever champion. As promised, each new champion will receive a very special and very valuable prize. This weeks prize for Sarah is recompense for years of suffering and torment from an older sibling. A sibling who is big, tall, and has an oddly shapen head. One who did perform a malicious act many years ago that has left scars to this day.

Sarah, I give you:

Starbrite's Revenge

So the scoring is reset, make sure to stop back next Tuesday for test day and between for quizzes and other opportunities for points.

The new song is actually two songs (lucky for you) by Chicago's own The Detholz! The exclamation point is for emphasis, btw, actually. This is ripped from a live set on WLUW in Chicago in October of 2003. It features an original song by the band and an excellent cover of an old classic.

Enjoy!

The most important question of all

2006-06-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

Luke 10:25-28

25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what
shall I do to inherit eternal life? 26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? 27 And he
answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy
neighbour as thyself.

28 And he said unto him, Thou
hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

Question of the day:

What does it look like to love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and all of your strength, and all of your mind?