A View from Laputa

The Nanny State Can’t Last | Homeland Stupidity

2011-04-14T07:17:00.000-04:00

Ron Paul comments on last week's "budget crisis" - definitely worth the read. The Nanny State Can’t Last | Homeland Stupidity

Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!

2010-07-12T10:02:00.000-04:00

This post has absolutely no political content whatsoever. It's entirely personal, so if you're not interested in personal kinds of posts, go ahead and mark it read now, and move on to the next blog in your list.

My name is William G Hartwell. My father’s name was Clarence Vernon Hartwell. He was a Japanese POW for nearly four years. His unit was a Naval hospital that (according to him) was across the street from the American Embassy in Manila, that the Japanese didn’t even know was there for several days after they took over the city. I’m not saying this to claim he was a war hero or anything - in fact, based on things other men who knew him said, that may be the farthest thing from the truth. I don’t know for sure, because all I have is hearsay to go on. In any case, he did survive four years as a Japanese prisoner. This has a bearing on what I’m going to be saying.

My mother is, as far as I know, still alive, so I will not be mentioning her name. I will, however, mention that she wasn’t even born when WWII was going on. She was a mere 18-yo girl when I was born, just about six months after she and my father married. As later years would reiterate, my father liked them young.

Other than her age, another difference between my mother and father was that she would occasionally apologize for her actions. Her apologies would always be accompanied by attempts to shift the blame on someone else, but she would, sometimes, apologize.

My earliest memory of my father isn’t, as I hear from so many other people, of playing ball with him, or doing things around the house. My earliest memory is of him, out of the blue, asking one day if I wanted to go into town. I was eight or nine years old at the time, and I had already developed a healthy suspicion. My response was to ask him why. When I did that, he decided we didn’t really need to go into town after all. You see, by that time, I had already learned that when he offered something like that, without building up to it first, one of two things was going to happen: 1. the trip itself would be an occasion for some unpleasantness, or 2. I would spend the next week paying for his “kindness” in the form of various small indignities, extra “chores” to make up for the things we supposedly had not done while in town (things that had not been scheduled in the first place, but mentioning that was a good way to get a beating), etc. So, I already knew that by asking “why”, I would short-circuit the whole process before it got started.

My earliest memory of my mother, on the other hand, goes back to when I was seven. She was, for a short time, a Cub Scouts den mother. That lasted until one day after a den meeting - one in which one of my sisters had spent the entire meeting making faces at me through the living room window from the front porch. The sister in question was five and knew it all. After all, she was in KINDERGARTEN. I was tired of being tormented constantly. After the meeting ended, I did what a lot of kids that age would do. I stuck my tongue out at my sister. My mother, in the process of putting away the materials she had used for the meeting, saw the fateful tongue - and disowned me. That’s right, she disowned me, when I was seven years old. That started the pattern for the rest of my life.

When I was nine, I started having migraines, bad enough to drop my grades from straight As down to As on my good days, and Cs (or worse) on the days I had migraines. She and my father decided I had to be faking it, and started shopping for military schools to send me to, because I was no son of hers, and he wasn’t going to have a malingerer in his house.

When I was twelve, I forgot one day to drop hay in the horse stalls on my way out to catch the school bus. Once again, I was no son of hers, and if I wanted to live like a guest in her house, I should expect to have to pay for it.

When I was thirteen, she decided that a friend of mine (who has since grown up to be, the way I hear, a successful lawyer) was unsuitable, and I was given the choice of dropping the friend or being sent away to live with my father during the week in the city where he worked, where I would go to school away from my friend’s unsavory influence. And if I didn’t want to do that, I could just start looking for somewhere else to live, because I was no son of hers.

When I was fourteen, my parents split up and my mother began proceedings to divorce my father, because he threw a shoe at me, missed, and hit one of my sisters. Now, he’d been battering me my entire life, and she hadn’t so much as raised her voice in protest. But when he accidentally hit one of my sisters in the process of attempting to hit me, that was suddenly a whole new ball game - one that she wasn’t going to play.

My parents fought over custody of my sisters - in fact, the court proceedings were apparently quite nasty, because my sisters had all (from the one who was only 2 years younger than me, all the way down to the two who were only seven and eight) independently accused my father of attempting to molest them, and despite the court-appointed psychiatrist testifying that they had all been traumatized by his actions, his lawyer managed to get the psychiatrist’s report ruled inadmissible. Funny thing is, my father specifically said he didn’t want my custody, and my mother said she didn’t care where I went.

It continues in a similar vein: my mother hears a new rumor, or imagines she sees or hears something, and states that she is disowning me, frequently accompanied by ordering me out of the house to find somewhere else to live. Inevitably, until I left to go to college, she would relent and pretend the whole thing had never happened after she cooled down.

Things were pretty quiet while I was in the Air Force - there wasn’t much she could do, after all, when I was on the other side of the world (or, at least, stationed in a remote base in northern Michigan). But, once I got out, moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and started looking for work, things started in again. My wife and I (and her two children) would get visits from CPS every month and a half or so for nearly two years, due to anonymous reports they had received that claimed we were abusing and neglecting the children. The visits would always demonstrate that the girls were in fine shape, happy, etc., and we would have assumed it was a crank neighbor, except that my mother phoned once after the visits had been going on for over a year, and when she asked about the girls, expressed real shock and dismay that they were still in our custody. Suddenly, we had a suspicion about who the “anonymous” caller was.

After that phone call, my mother began making a point of being a part of our lives again, visiting whenever she was in the state, phoning occasionally, etc. When I divorced my wife, it was during one of her periods of being out of touch, and when she found out about it later, she told me that she wished I had contacted her, because she would have happily testified about how, when she visited my wife on that base in northern Michigan, my wife had shown her the spot she and her lover used to meet in the woods outside the back fence of the base. She wished I had contacted her--conveniently forgetting that she had never once, in the entire time, given me her phone number, mailing address, or any other means of contacting her. As for what she claimed, I don’t know how real it is. I do know that neither of my first wife’s children carry my DNA, so she had to have been sleeping with at least two other people while I was in the Air Force. Whether she was stupid enough to show my mother her favorite meeting place with whoever she was cheating with at the time? It’s possible. Or my mother could have been imagining it, the same way she’s imagined so many other things throughout my life.

When I got married again, against the advice of everyone who knew the woman I married, my mother expressed her displeasure by disowning me again. I didn’t hear from her again until my wife’s children were taken into emergency custody after one of her lovers molested them. The only reason I heard from her then was that the county had decided, rather than calling the man who was paying child support as their adjudicated father, they would give them to this total stranger who claimed to be their grandmother. I didn’t even know what had happened until my mother called me--the county didn’t notify me until I received the notice of summons for the court date on the question of their custody. You ever notice how governments determine things based on how convenient it is for the government? For instance, when it came to paying child support, I was legally the father of my ex-wife’s children. When it came to taking custody of them, I was not their biological father, so I should have no rights in the matter. Consistency? Logic? Who needs that when you have courts and cops? Funny thing is, by the time the court date came along, my mother had already vanished from the picture again. The county had taken the girls from her and put them into foster care, and she was out of the picture entirely. Not even called to testify regarding their condition, family relations, etc.

After I left my second wife--with the help of a friend from another state who could no longer stand to sit by idly and watch me being abused--my mother suddenly decided to get in touch with me again, and offered me a place to live with her, while she built a house on property my sister had bought in New Mexico. Here’s a hint: If you aren’t stinking filthy rich, don’t buy a “ranchette” in New Mexico. It’s always twenty miles from nowhere, with no electricity, no phone, and no water. You have to pay to bring it all in. At a price of several hundred, to several thousand, dollars per foot. Unless you’re really lucky, and your neighbor brought in phone and power, you can count on paying that several hundred dollars per foot for a distance of several miles. As for water? Any reliable well is going to be over a thousand feet deep. And that’s not even getting into neighborhood association covenants, which any “ranchette” is going to have, because you’ll always be buying into a developer’s planned neighborhood when you buy one.

I was able to stay with my mother for less than six months before I couldn’t take the crazy any more (United Nations troops setting up camp in the next valley over, and the demons of the Apocalypse being set loose on the world, anyone? Those were the SANE ideas she was spouting.) and moved out, into a nice small apartment where I lived while I worked on putting together a Voc Rehab package that would get me into college. Yeah, I’m disabled: 300+ hours of exposure to concentrated CS (military tear gas, used in chemical warfare defense training) can do really NASTY things to your nervous system.

Things were relatively quiet, now that I was safely a couple hundred miles away, going to NMSU. At last, they were until I got too sick to continue school, and my niece decided to go to NMSU, too. That was when things took a sharp (I’m talking 160-degree) turn to the left. One day, I came home from buying groceries, to find a voice mail on my phone. It was from my mother, informing me that I had been disowned (how many times does this make it? I’ve lost count), and that I was hereby ordered (ORDERED, mind you!) to have absolutely ZERO contact with ANYONE in the family until I had pulled my head out of my ass and gotten my life turned around. (The caps are an attempt to show the way my mother emphasized things in the phone message.)

Now, other than the disability, I thought I’d finally gotten my life pretty much on track. I’d recently started seeing someone (who I am happy to say, I am with today, nearly ten years later, and plan to spend the rest of my life with), was getting my things packed to move to Florida, and was, in general, pretty happy with life. So, this phone call was like a blackjack to the base of my skull. After listening to it a couple more times, just to make sure I’d heard it correctly, I phoned my mother to ask WTF?!? As soon as she heard my voice, she hung up, and then took the phone off the hook so I couldn’t get through (where she lived at the time, there was no voice mail and no electricity for an answering machine). I tried my sister (the one whose kid was going to NMSU) and discovered I was call-blocked. I was boggled. But, I figured it was another one of my mother’s fits, and it would wear off in a few days, the way they always did.

THEN, I discovered that my mother had, somehow, managed to get her hands on the phone number for the charity my girlfriend volunteered for, and phoned them, demanding to know how to contact my girlfriend, and demanding that they warn her about how I was a child molester and she was in danger if I got near her. This struck the people at the charity as so utterly batshit crazy that they warned my girlfriend--about the crazy woman who was trying to get her phone number.

It wasn’t until nearly five years later that I got an answer as to what had happened. It seems that the sister whose daughter was attending NMSU had somehow gotten it into her mind that my expressions of “God damn, girl! Here’s a salad! EAT! EAT” translated as “I want to screw my hot and sexy niece until her brain bugs out.” Needless to say, when I finally got that explanation, I wanted to vomit. Aside from the fact that she was my niece, I got over the “ana is sexy” idea when Karen Carpenter died. All I saw when I looked at my niece was future medical problems, not to mention the current emotional problems that had to be driving her apparent anorexia.

When my sister told my mother what she thought, my mother, as she has done my entire life, did not consider the source (a woman with a traumatic brain injury who had a history of delusional behavior because of it), nor did she so much as call me to ask if it was true. She immediately leaped to the worst possible conclusion and acted on it, not only messing with my life, but attempting to mess with the life of my girlfriend, AND freaking out the other volunteers at her charity, who were apparently actually afraid this crazy woman might attempt to contact them in a more direct way than by phone.

I learned about the reason for the crazy in a letter I got from my mother, five years after the fact, in which she apologized for what she did by blaming all of her actions on my sister. Some apology, huh? When I wrote a letter in reply that called her on it, pointing out that this was only the latest in a long line of similar acts, going all the way back to my very first memory of her, her response was, a ten page litany that she herself summed up on the last page with, “Get over it. Your father was abusing me, too.” There’s this look I get, that my girlfriend calls my “baroo?” face. It’s kind of like the expression a dog gets when they’re looking at you, wondering why you did such an insanely human thing. Apparently, I spent the next day or two with that expression on my face. “Get over it. Your father was abusing me, too.” Baroo? This is supposed to excuse repeatedly disowning your child, until he ends up believing he has no inherent worth, and so it’s OK for any woman he’s in a relationship with to abuse him as she sees fit? This is supposed to excuse teaching your son that any behavior is acceptable, as long as a woman does it? This is supposed to excuse teaching your son that he is worthless trash, who can be sacrificed to his father’s brutality, but that a daughter is so precious that even an accidental blow is enough to justify tearing apart the family she had claimed was inviolate, holy, and undefiled before that accident? Baroo?

Once I got over that, I did the only thing that seemed right. I wrote to her, informed her that, due to her past history of disowning me whenever she got a bug up her ass, and due to her past abusive behavior toward me, I was disowning her. I wanted no further contact with her, in any way. Period. No apology, no groveling for forgiveness, no admission that I was wrong for not seeing her actions in the best possible light. After 45 years, I couldn’t take it any more, and I finally cut the cord.

Things are a lot better now, except during May and June.

Mother’s Day is obvious.

Father’s Day . . . let’s just say that, when my therapist analyzed my family history when I was undergoing therapy as part of dealing with surviving an abusive marriage (when he looked at letters my second wife had written me after our separation, he told me that if a man had written them to a woman, he would be in jail), my therapist told me that it seemed to him that my father had used our family as his own personal POW camp, except in his case, he was the commander, instead of the Japanese.

I guess that’s proof that understanding something does not imply forgiving it, and that a good explanation is not a good excuse. My father spent the years from when he was 21 to when he was 25 exposed to actions that (until the American occupation of Iraq) were considered torture, sufficient to justify war crimes trials of those who committed them. While he was smart enough to not duplicate the war crimes he had witnessed, he did duplicate the rigid and inconsistent rules, harsh punishments, inconsistent doling out of favors and scapegoats, etc., that he had often described when talking about his years in the camp. It took an outside observer to make me understand it.

Just because I understand why my father was so messed up does not mean I forgive him for what he did to me and my sisters. Some people may think this makes me a lesser person. I don’t care. Evil should never be forgiven. You may understand it and its reasons, but you can never forgive it. What my father did to us was evil. It can not be forgiven, any more than I can forgive what my mother did when she attempted to destroy my life, my girlfriend’s life, and the lives of the people in the charity my girlfriend volunteered for. (No, I’m not going to name the charity. They get enough shit from insane parents as it is. They don’t need more.)

So, thank you Mom, and thank you Dad, for teaching me that a good reason does not make a good excuse, that evil should never be forgiven, and that May and June are two months that should be stricken from the calendar. Or, at least, two particular days should be.

"Knights in Tarnished Armor" finally available as an ebook

2010-04-24T18:33:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's right. I've finally strapped on my patented Shinji Ikari portaspine, stopped compulsively editing and re-editing, and handed Knights in Tarnished Armor off to a publisher. It's now available as an ebook, in Kindle, Epub, LRF, PDB, HTML, PDF, RTF, and Text formats, for $4.95 a copy (or, if you use Coupon Code SX84W when you check out, you can get your copy for free, until May 7, 2010). For people who prefer a recycled tree edition, you can get it as a 6"x9" paperback for $15.55.

Now, before I lose my nerve, I need to make sure First Contact is clean, set it up for publishing, and then package all the various short stories I've written into an anthology (still working on a title for that) that will get the same treatment.

If anyone can recommend a good, high-quality FLOSS TTS program that I can use to produce an audio version of the book, I'd be grateful enough to send them a free copy of what comes out when I process it through the program.

If quality TTS just isn't available in FLOSS, I may just have to bite the bullet and burn out my vocal cords. If that's the case, so be it, but I really do want an audio version of the book available for my friends who are blind or otherwise need a copy they can listen to.

Sometimes, you just need to decompress.

2010-01-25T15:57:00.002-05:00

I pop bubble wrap at 2.05 bubbles per second!

I popped 196 bubbles in 1 minute and 35.8 seconds
at www.Virtual-Bubblewrap.com!
Can you beat my score?

You wouldn't be fat if you just ate right!

2010-01-13T18:23:00.000-05:00

If I had a penny for every time I've heard that (including from people I otherwise respect, like El Neil), I'd be wealthy enough to eat "right". As it is, though, the best answer to this moralistic declaration has to be this post.

Go. Read. Understand. THEN you can talk to me about whether or not I'm eating "right".

Medicine is all about science - most of the time.

2009-11-14T19:40:00.002-05:00

Medicines, treatments, even devices get put through a rigorous placebo-controlled, double-blind study process before they are declared fit for use in medicine. Anecdotal tales of how something worked for someone, no matter how much that someone is convinced a particular treatment, drug, or device worked for him, are considered unscientific, and therefore not sufficient evidence to support whatever it might be.

This is true, with the exception of one particular treatment, where anecdotal tales are the only evidence supporting that treatment, because there has never been a single placebo-controlled, double-blind study of that treatment, during the entire time it has been used in medicine.

Does that treatment work? It might. The problem is, as far as scientific evidence goes, that particular treatment has just as much support as prayers to Khonsu, holding a rabbit's foot, or sacrifices to Talona.

The treatment I'm talking about is vaccination. Regardless of what you may believe about its efficacy, the fact remains that it has never been subjected to what is considered the gold standard of proof in medicine, and any attempts to suggest that maybe it should be subjected to that standard result in the person making the suggestion being branded a kook, a radical, "antivax" (whatever that is), and various other terms that are synonyms for "crazy", and the person making the suggestion is informed that a placebo-controlled, double-blind study of vaccination is "unethical" - which makes it the only form of medical treatment to hold that status. In every other form of medical treatment, it is considered unethical to not perform such a study.

Why is it crazy to want a medicine that is being injected into your body - or your child's body - to have been put through the same degree of testing that your migraine medicine had to survive before being approved? For that matter, why is it crazy to want to know that your doctor is relying on something more than anecdotal tales when recommending that you receive a particular medication?

Is it really so bad to question the efficacy of a treatment that has never been subjected to a single placebo-controlled, double-blind study, especially when its supporters respond to questions about such a study with the same hostility that an Inquisitioner responds to questions about the legitimacy of the Church?

Think about it. If there is scientific evidence supporting the treatment, all those questions could be satisfied by simply producing the study. Responding to those questions as if one's religion had been blasphemed against does nothing to advance a claim of credibility.

For that matter, why is it that every other form of medical treatment demands placebo-controlled, double-blind studies to be considered ethical, yet suggesting the same standard for vaccination is considered unethical?

Dear FTC: Go Fuck Yourself

2009-10-06T22:43:00.001-04:00

This is not your blog. This is my blog. Until the day you put me in jail for my writing, I will write whatever I damned well please, whenever I damned well please, for whatever reasons I damned well please.

Regardless of any authority you may claim (which, as we both know, is unlawful under the United States Constitution), I do not recognize your authority over my writing, nor do I recognize your authority over my thoughts, associations, or any other form of expression.

I will continue to write whatever I damned well please, whenever I damned well please, for whatever reasons I damned well please, and I'll disclose, if I choose to disclose, whatever I damned well please.

If you want to try to get your $11,000 out of me for my writing, you're going to have to do it the same way every other mugger does: at the point of a gun. Don't be surprised if I respond to you the same way I would to any other mugger.

If you want to shut me up, you're going to have to either kidnap me or kill me. Either way, you will be behaving as pirates, bandits, highwaymen and muggers have done through the centuries. I know I'm just a small fish in the blogging universe, but even a small fish knows one or two other fish, and those one or two other fish each know one or two more, and so on, ad infinitum.

Kidnap or kill one blogger, the news gets out, no matter how small a fish that blogger is. All you'll be doing is pissing off the rest of the blogging universe, and making it more likely that more bloggers will respond to you as the scum-sucking low-life maggots you are. Who knows? Maybe the gene pool will be improved by the response. One can only hope.

America's National Health Care System

2009-07-19T22:36:00.003-04:00

Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything--except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the "welfare" of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only "to serve." . . . I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind--yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?
— Dr. Thomas Hendricks, Neurosurgeon, explaining why he chose to cease practicing medicine

I suspect that we'll soon be seeing a lot of doctors following in Dr. Hendricks' foosteps, until all that are left are one of two groups:

Those who are so devoted to their patients that they would continue practicing, even in a concentration camp, or
Those who are so incompetent that the only way they could get patients is at the point of a gun.

And we're supposed to be grateful for the government's "management" of health care?

Computer Death

2009-03-11T14:04:00.002-04:00

Well, my computer has reached the point of giving me a

KERNEL_APC_PENDING_DURING_EXIT

message whenever I exit a large program (OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, World of Warcraft, whatever), and the BIOS has ceased to recognize the existence of my DVD drives, which means I won't even be able to restore my system when Windows craps out.

Looks like I'm going to be learning how to do my writing with a pen and paper again, real soon now, unless a miracle happens and I manage to find money to buy a refurb or used computer somewhere.

Yay. Hurray. Whatever.

An Open Letter to the New Hampshire Victory Fund

2008-09-29T04:22:00.003-04:00

When I originally posted this, I erroneously believed that the New Hampshire Victory Fund was affiliated with the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund. I have since been informed that the Gay & Lesbian Victory fund DOES NOT have any affiliation with the NH Victory Fund - in fact, they do not have state affiliates of any kind. Not only that, they do not conduct polling, and they are not involved in the Presidential election. Thanks to Denis Dison, from the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, for giving me the correct information, so I could address this more accurately.

I am writing because I received a phone call this evening from a poller who claimed to represent the New Hampshire Victory Fund. The phone call is one I found insulting.

The reason I found the phone call insulting is that your caller began by asking whether I intended to vote for Obama, McCain, or Undecided. The very content of the question is an insult to every single voter who has examined the candidates and determined that he is not willing to give his vote to either, but prefers, instead, to vote for someone else. Ralph Nader, for instance, or George Phillies, or any of the other candidates who DO NOT represent either the fascists from Denver or the socialists from St. Paul.

Not only was your caller's question on the Presidential race an insult to intelligent voters, he followed it up with identical questions on the race for Sununu's Senate seat and my district's House seat. In all three cases, his question identified ONLY the Republican and Democrat candidates, and offered "Undecided" as the ONLY alternative for voters who reject the Republican or Democrat alternatives.

Was it your intention to insult voters in this way, or did you simply not consider that intelligent voters might possibly choose to refuse to throw away their votes by voting for either of the two corporate candidates? You might want to consider that possibility when performing polls in the future, if you want to avoid insulting voters in the future.

File this under: I should know better...

2008-06-20T15:22:00.002-04:00

I made the mistake of reading talk.politics.guns today, and am reminded why I unsubscribed from pretty much all usenet news a long time ago. The pro-gun posters were just as bigoted, just as arrogant, and just as obnoxious as the anti-gun posters. Sure, it's easy to forget that the people reading your posts are people, but is that any excuse for making yourself look like an utter ass? Apparently, it is - at least, it is for the people who post on newsgroups.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Oh, the irony...

2008-06-07T21:27:00.003-04:00

NEVER talk to the police!

2008-06-07T21:17:00.003-04:00

Professor James Duane (a law professor in Virginia) explains reasons why you should NEVER talk to the police, under ANY circumstances.

Did you know?

2008-06-07T08:45:00.002-04:00

In times of war, the U.S. Constitution gives the President the power to ignore the Constitution? Including wars that are not declared, as required under Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution? Apparently, the people who published the copy of the Constitution that I've read neglected to include the portion that gives the President that power. Or maybe it's in a classified section of the Constitution, that's only available to members of the Executive Branch?

Did you know that the President does not condone or authorize torture or inhumane treatment of prisoners? I guess that means that Manadel al-Jamadi, Abed Hamed Mowhoush, and Nagem Sadoon Hatab, among nearly a hundred others, are still alive and well and being treated with basic human dignity? And I guess that means that those photos from Abu Ghraib were just Photoshop jobs? Oh, that's right, that's neither torture nor inhumane treatment - it's "enhanced interrogation techniques." After all, America doesn't torture its prisoners. Never mind that when other countries used the exact same techniques, their officials were charged - by America - with war crimes.

Did you know that the President insists on the preservation of the human rights of all American prisoners? But then again, habeas corpus isn't a human right, apparently.

How do I know all this is true? Because I've been assured so by Nancy Theis, Special Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence.

So, from now on, when someone tries to tell me that America is engaged in an illegal war, I'll just point them at that super-secret, classified portion of the Constitution that only the President has access to, that gives him the power to engage in war without the need for a pesky Declaration of War, and without the need to obey any of those pesky rules in the public portion of the Constitution.

And when anyone tells me that America tortures and mistreats its prisoners, I'll just point out to them that it's not torture when America does it - only when other countries do it.

And when anyone tells me that America violates human rights, I'll just point out to them that little things like habeas corpus aren't really human rights after all.

After all, I have been assured this is so by the Assistant to the President. And she wouldn't lie, would she?

If you have fibromyalgia, you are a woman who murdered her unborn child

2008-06-04T14:35:00.005-04:00

At least, that's what you are according to Beverly, at Motherhood and other Ramblings.

Not only that, if you have HPV, you are a slut, and if you have HIV, you are a gay man who indulges in unsafe sex. All this, based on the word of a Catholic priest and a child psychiatrist who founded an anti-abortion group in Canada.

So like an HPV diagnosis in someone would almost guarantee that others would know the person's potential morals or lack there of, and HIV almost always denotes a gay man, a diagnosis of fibromyalgia could potentially indicate a woman who has aborted a child. Just a thought.

Here's "just a thought": Beverly is a moralistic bigot who deserves to be considered with the same level of thoughtfulness you'd give to Fred Phelps, George Lincoln Rockwell, or Khallid Abdul Muhammad.

With all the scientific and medical evidence that shows that fibromyalgia is a neurological condition that affects both men and women, the idea that anyone could still spew bigoted, ignorant garbage like that is simply mind-boggling.

My Response...

2008-06-03T20:49:00.002-04:00

...to the people who have taken over the Libertarian Party.

If you're interested in a party that is still truly libertarian, follow me to the Boston Tea Party.

Congressional Guidelines for Abusing Women

2008-03-21T06:45:00.002-04:00

I knew that men were victimized on a daily basis by the domestic violence industry. What I didn't know is how badly the domestic violence industry abuses those it supposedly protects.

Praise Xenu!

2008-03-15T12:59:00.004-04:00

A message that needs to be spread:

Message From Anonymous to the Public:

It has again come to the attention of Anonymous that there are a number of you who do not fully understand the scope of the threat that Scientology as an organization poses to the public at large and to their own members that espouse themselves to the teachings and practices of the institution known as the Church of Scientology. Many are still confused about what "Anonymous" is and who we are.

This press statement should answer many of the most common questions. If you would like clarification on any statements or would like to ask specific questions to Anonymous, there are many sources for information available that will oblige your needs. These resources will be listed in the references section of this release.

The Various Organizations of Scientology

+ Are directly responsible for the deaths of at least 7 people and countless others indirectly through emotional abuse, physical abuse, or medical malpractice.
+ Have wrongfully imprisoned at least 24 people since 1976.
+ Have infiltrated the Federal government, Local governments, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
+ Continues to Payroll off-duty police officers for private security
+ Circumvented due process by tampering with and obstructing evidence and witnesses.
+ Aggressively censors the media both on the national and international level through unscrupulous methods.
+ Driven lawsuits launched against them into the ground through malicious litigation.
+ Aggressively litigates, blackmails, slanders, harasses, and spread misinformation about: critics, former members, current members, psychiatry, psychology, and pharmacology.
+ Violates basic human rights both outside and within its walls.
+ Drains billions from the accounts of its member who were only seeking help that they could have otherwise obtained for free from legitimate sources.
+ Destroys families by perpetuating an internal culture of paranoia, isolationism, and total censorship.
+ Stolen paperwork, property, and identification from its members as a means of subjugation and coercion.
+ Is suspected of violating child labor laws.
+ Refuses vital medications to its members.
+ Convicted of fraud in many countries and multiple times.

Keep in mind that Anonymous represents an idea that people from all over the world, from all backgrounds, races, and creeds, and from all walks have life have come to embrace. It is a constantly evolving, adapting group dedicated to the principles of free speech, human rights, and upholding national and international laws.

Thanks to some very wise guidance from Emmy-award winner and critic of the Church of Scientology, Mark Bunker, as well as many other veteran critics and ex-Scientology members, Anonymous has pursued policies of peaceful protests, letter righting campaigns, and an effort to educate the masses on the documented cases of abuse, fraud, and illegal activities of the organization known as the Church of Scientology.

Current projects include world wide peaceful pickets at Church of Scientology sites across the world on March 15th 2008. Anonymous has also focused on lobbying for the repeal of the Church of Scientology's tax exemption status as an organization that operates under the legal definition of a business, and enjoys tax exemption status for religious education not currently allowed for any other religious group in the United States.

Outside of the protests, the mining of information by Anonymous and its supporters, both inside and outside of the Church of Scientology, have uncovered a wealth of new information and will continue to do so. Those that did take action on the protests of February 10th are now seeing ever increasing throngs of support appearing to increase their ranks. The protests on March 15th are already expected to be much larger in scale than previous dates.

There are already plans that extend out beyond the protest planned for March 15th, including Operation Reconnect where ex-Scientology members and those who have lost friends and family to the Church of Scientology's Disconnection policy will speak out to their loved ones. If you would like to participate directly or indirectly to aid our cause, please visit the forums at enturbulation.org

Our Anonymity is but a tool. It protects us from the threat of illegal harassment, malicious litigation, and Fair Game policy that is standard practice in dealing with all critics who speak out against the abuses and fraud of the Church of Scientology. It is a way to provide safety to those hurt by the Church of Scientology who have been too afraid to speak out. It is a way to unite peacefully behind an idea of justice, of human rights, and of law.

Our true strength is truth.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

While I did not find this message until today, I support it wholeheartedly.

Ron Paul and the GOP

2008-02-15T04:32:00.003-05:00

Stephen Dinan makes the usual mistake that political pundits make when talking about Ron Paul and his supporters. He assumes that people who support Ron Paul are Republicans, and that the GOP just has to figure out how to keep them "in the fold."

I'm afraid Mr. Dinan is a little confused. OK, make that a lot confused.

Ron Paul doesn't appeal to Republicans. He doesn't even entirely appeal to Libertarians. The people he appeals to are those who have this silly idea that the U.S. Constitution means something, and that the U.S. government is supposed to obey it.

That's never been the Republican ideal, except in the rhetoric they used during the 1980s and 1990s to try to sell the Democrats as the party of socialism. The Republican Party is the party of high taxes, corporate welfare, large government projects, and empire. It's been that way since the 1850s. The whole image of the GOP as "the party of small government" is nothing but a marketing gimmick. Sadly, it's a marketing gimmick that the average American (and most Republicans in particular) believes.

Since the GOP has done everything from threatening Ron Paul voters (using Glenn Beck as their mouthpiece) to outright vote fraud (in New Hampshire, Louisiana, and Washington state, at the very least) to keep Ron Paul from getting the nomination, I have to ask, why should anyone who supports Ron Paul even give the GOP a second look? It's obvious they don't want you. It's obvious they think they can manage quite nicely without you. Well, why not take them up on it and show them just how well you can get along without the GOP?

Vote Libertarian. Vote Constitution Party. Vote Boston Tea Party. Hell, write in your own name on the ballot. Just don't vote for either of the "major" parties. If you support Ron Paul, it's obvious you're not a Democrat, so you wouldn't be voting for their candidate, and since the GOP has shown it doesn't want you, why should you vote for its candidate?

Immigrants and Idiots

2008-02-02T11:17:00.000-05:00

A couple days ago, I was debating with one of those no-nothing anti-immigrant morons, when he came up with what he imagined was an utterly devastating reply to the facts I presented showing that immigrants are, despite his fevered imaginings to the contrary, not a detriment to society.

His so-called argument was that, since immigrants send the money they make home to their families in whatever country they come from, they're stealing it from the American economy, and that's bad.

Let's pause a moment while you consider the sheer mindlessness inherent in the argument presented. What's that? Yes, you, in the back of the class. You don't understand why I say the argument is mindless? Well, let's review some basic economics then, shall we?

The American dollar, like most other national currencies, is what we call a fiat currency. What this means is that the dollar has value only because the U.S. government says it has value.

I'll repeat that, because it is very important to understand. The U.S. Dollar has value only because the U.S. government says it has value.

So what does this have to do with the argument above? It's really quite simple.

Unlike a representative currency, which is backed by something of real value (gold, silver, crude oil, diamonds, whatever), a fiat currency is valuable only in relation to the country it represents. In addition, a fiat currency is not removing something of real value from the treasury of the country it was printed in, because there is nothing of real value backing it.

So let's take our hypothetical immigrant, who is working his tuchis off in America, saving his money, and sending it home to his family. What is he actually sending home? Pieces of paper that the U.S. government says have a certain value. But -- and this is important to remember -- it is only in relation to the U.S. economy that those pieces of paper have the value promised by the U.S. government.

In other words, those pieces of paper are worthless anywhere else in the world, until the bearer chooses to exchange them for his own government's fiat currency. When those pieces of paper are exchanged, they begin their journey back to America, whether as a part of a string of exchanges, or as the currency used in purchase of American goods. Either way, it is only when those pieces of paper are used in an economic exchange that returns them to America that they are of any value at all.

The only way you could believe that an immigrant sending his savings overseas is somehow stealing dollars from the American economy, is if you believe that the dollars have intrinsic value, rather than merely being glorified IOUs with nothing but trust in the government to support them AND you believe that the immigrant does not have the right to engage in economic exchanges on his own behalf. Even those beliefs are wrong, but they're not the point of this post. If you want a discussion of them at a later time, we can go into them, but the point I'm making is that as long as the currency in question is a fiat currency, it has no value except in relation to the economy of the nation in which it was printed, and therefore can not be"stolen" from the economy merely by being temporarily in another nation.

If Cars were treated like Guns

2007-11-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

Found on a mailing list:

Convicted felons could not own or drive a car.
You'd pay for a car, register it, and then wait from 5 to 15 days to pick up your car.
Purchasing a used car from a neighbor requires the same waiting period, and you would have to transact the sale through a licensed car dealer.
If you trade in your old car for a newer model, you still have to wait 5 to 15 days to pick the new one up.
You could buy a car and register it, but you'd need a special permit to take it on the streets.
To get the above "street permit" you have to show good cause, and be of good moral character (as defined by the licensing authority).
Persons convicted of "domestic violence" could not own or drive a car, even if that conviction occurred 30 years ago.
Your car would have to be stored where no child could access it and hurt themselves playing with it.
In some places (e.g. NYC or New Jersey) you would first need a permit from the police department to buy a car, which sometimes takes up to 2 years to obtain.
If you buy a car, and then move to another state, you may have to leave the car behind since the other state may not accept the make and model you own.
If a minor child stole your car and hurt himself or others with it, you'd be guilty of a felony.
In some cities (e.g. Washington D.C.) you would have to store your car partially disassembled.
Failure to register your car would be a federal felony (prevents you from ever owning another one, for the rest of your life).
People under psychiatric care, or declared to be mentally incompetent, could not own or drive a car.
Some models of automobiles might be banned after you buy them, and you'd have to turn them over to the government without compensation.
"Assault vehicles" look evil and must be specially registered at extra cost. Hummers, 4x4 trucks, Suburbans, Dodge Vipers, Nissan NSX's, and Corvettes are likely targets.
Cars under a certain size, or having certain features, could not be imported.
You could not modify your car to allow more fuel, more performance, or better cornering.
The government would allow some states or cities to not issue licenses at all, for any reason (or no reason at all).
Cars could not be operated on city streets with gasoline in the tank. (Kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?)
In some states (e.g. Virginia, California) you could only buy one car per month.
There would be no traffic "infractions". Instead, all violations would be criminal misdemeanors or felonies.
It would be illegal to directly buy a car from an out of state dealer or seller.
Car dealers would have to allow government agents to review their records without a warrant and without notice.
Car dealers who sell a car to someone prohibited would be charged with a federal felony.
Car dealers would be subject to being shut down by the government, and charged with a felony, for failure to keep proper records. The government inspector defines what "proper records" means.
The inventory of car dealers could be seized and destroyed before the dealer is ever charged in court.
Your car could be declared to be one of the banned kind, even after you legally bought it, and you would be charged as a criminal, based solely on the word of a government auto inspector, who doesn't even have any written guidelines to what is required for a car to be banned.

We Have To Send A Message!

2007-10-13T21:38:00.001-04:00

Have you ever noticed that, whenever anyone tries to convince politicians to do anything that makes sense, like decriminalizing marijuana, restore the 2nd Amendment, protect people's privacy rights, or whatever, their response is some variation on "we have to send a message"?

Nobody ever asks them what kind of message they're trying to send.

Maybe that's because people know, even without being told, that the message they're sending is one of the following:

"You are stupid." - The politician believes you are too stupid to be able to live your own life without being told what to do by the government.

"You are evil." - The politician believes you are an evil person and must be constrained by government power to prevent you from doing whatever it is the government has declared to be "evil."

"You are insane." - The politician believes that you are crazy. You must be, because only crazy people would question the beneficence of the all-powerful government.

So let's be real here. Why should we trust, or believe, anyone whose essential message is any one of the three messages I've mentioned here?

Y2K Bug was real! Well, at least for ONE thing....

2007-08-12T17:45:00.000-04:00

It seems that James Hansen (yes, the same James Hansen who accused the Busheviks of trying to censor his views on climate change) was using a secret algorithm for calculating the global temperatures that he reported as "proof" of "global warming".

Leaving aside the fact that a real scientist would never use a secret algorithm to produce the data he claims as "proof" of anything, we have now discovered that Mr. Hansen's algorithm had a very interesting Y2K bug. Thanks to Steve McIntyre, of climateaudit.org, who reverse-engineered Mr. Hansen's algorithm when Mr. Hansen refused to reveal what he used to calculate his temperature data, we have learned that no matter what data you feed into Mr. Hansen's algorithm, you will always get a sudden jump in global temperatures right around the year 2000.

After eliminating Mr. Hansen's Y2K bug, that sudden jump in global temperatures no longer exists, and we discover that the actual distribution of temperatures falls into the normal variances you would expect, without having to call upon "global warming" to explain them.

Punishment Park

2007-07-30T09:39:00.000-04:00

This movie was banned in 1971. It seems to me that it's even more timely now than it was then - and it was pretty spot on back then.

Why the Gun IS Civilization

2007-06-27T01:30:00.000-04:00

Short and sweet.

Conspiracy Realists of the World Unite

2007-06-24T06:20:00.000-04:00

Wilt Alston has written one of the best debunkings of the official story of 9/11 that I've seen anywhere. He hasn't gone into the pesky details of how, if you believe the official story, you have to believe that the laws of physics were suspended for long enough for the WTC buildings to "collapse" - he's just pointed out the glaring errors in the story so you can do your own thinking.

Of course, doing your own thinking is something most people seem allergic to.

Why Even The Terrorists Need A Trial

2007-05-24T01:38:00.000-04:00

Why Even The Terrorists Need A Trial

I'm not going to quibble over his need for a spellchecker. The message is clear and unmistakable.

2007-05-16T20:28:00.000-04:00

Are you a terrorist?

Your score is 70%

Congratulations, you are a domestic terrorist. Well, at least you are according to the US government. Consider turning yourself in to your local authorities. There are FBI offices all around they country and they would like to talk to you. Pack your bags for Gitmo because the government doesn't like you.

Take this score !

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Join

| Make A Scored Quiz | Grab Code

Proof that MySpace is Censoring its Users who support Ron Paul

2007-05-11T18:38:00.000-04:00

If you go to this video at YouTube, you'll be able to watch as a MySpace user has his account blocked THREE TIMES, simply for attempting to post a bulletin supporting Ron Paul on his personal bulletin board.

He verifies in the video that it is his support of Ron Paul that triggers the block, thus proving that MySpace is engaging in active censorship of Ron Paul supporters.

So let's see what happens here, eh?

Are you a terrorist?

2007-05-11T17:43:00.000-04:00

The Dept. of Homeland Security has defined what they consider a "domestic terrorist" - and their definition includes anyone who:

Believes the Constitution has been subverted by the government.
Opposes gun control
Believes the government is violating their rights
Believes that the government's policies are criminal and/or immoral.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the following images, captured from a Homeland Security training website before the pages were pulled after being publicized by the Classically Liberal blog.

(Note that the page had to be taken in two shots, but you can clearly see where the text overlaps between the first and second shot.)

File This Under "It's About Fracking Time!"

2007-03-30T17:15:00.000-04:00

As reported on MSNBC, a woman in Texas is being charged with manslaughter after her husband shot her lover. The reason he shot her lover is that she falsely claimed the man was raping her. The husband was forced to face a grand jury, but the grand jury did the right thing by refusing to charge him. After all, the reason he shot his wife's lover is that he believed - based on her assertion - that she was being raped. A perfectly reasonable reaction for anyone who cares to protect those he loves. But she lied, presumably knowing that her husband would act to protect her.

If only more women who lie in similar situations were to face the same consequences, there'd be a lot fewer innocent men in prison. It probably wouldn't even take that many women facing the consequences of their lies - just enough to make it clear that lying in a situation where the consequences of the lie put an innocent person at risk of prison or death will not be tolerated.

Of course, any prosecutor who did require someone to face the consequences of her lies would probably be persecuted as "anti-woman", when all he really is, is anti-perjury.

The Price of Patriarchy

2007-02-28T18:08:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you all have heard all the horror stories of the evils of "the patriarchy" from your friendly local feminists. Well, let's look at some of those evils, shall we?

In almost every country in the world, men have shorter life spans than women. As you can see here, that discrepancy varies from 4.0 years (Israel) to 12.6 years (Russian Federation).
According to the World Health Organization, in all three major categories of cause of death, more men die than women.
Also according to the World Health Organization, "The rate of suicide is almost universally higher among men compared to women by an aggregate ratio of 3.5 to 1."
According to the WHO World Report on Violence and Health, men die in combat at a ratio of 3:1 vs. women.
Overall, violence causes 14% of all male deaths, while causing 7% of all female deaths.
In nearly 200 studies of domestic violence, with an aggregate sample size of over 177,000 people, women were found to be equally as violent as men, if not more violent.

Yup. We certainly pay a high price for patriarchy. Then again, isn't that true of any -archy? The only -archy I've seen so far that doesn't cost so much in human lives is anarchy, but what are the odds any of us (outside of the free parts of the former artificial state of Somalia) will ever see anything like that in our lifetimes?

Here we go again...

2007-01-22T02:28:00.000-05:00

Once again, Congress is seeking to declare that I am a criminal. Why? Because I dare to criticize the behavior of the government, even as sporadically as I do.

Don't believe me? Take a look here for details. The attack has been staved off for the moment, but the war continues.

In case it matters...

2006-11-12T14:51:00.001-05:00

Not that I post all that often anyway, but I'm currently involved in NaNoWriMo. What it means is that I have even less time than usual to comment on stuff, because I'm learning all about this "writing to a deadline" thing. For anyone who cares, my current status is:

Hacking Democracy

2006-11-06T21:50:00.000-05:00

HBO's special on how Diebold voting machines are unsafe, unreliable, and a sure-fire recipe for election fraud is now available on Google Video.

Go see it before you vote. If you still believe that voting is anything more than playing the statists' game by their rules, and not a repudiation of your ethics.

Who Are the Cylons?

2006-10-07T14:24:00.001-04:00

Just imagine:

You're trying to rebuild your homeland after a devastating war and years of continuous harassment and bombing by the enemy after the war ended. Just when you are starting to think you might be able to rebuild, the enemy attacks again, and your government surrenders. The enemy claims they are in your homeland to bring you freedom and enlightenment; to bring you a better way of life than the life you had under your old government.

So now you're ruled by a puppet government, which exists solely to rubber-stamp the orders of the invaders. The invaders have taken people from among your own ranks to form a puppet police force to put a "humane" face on the occupation, while doing the dirty work they don't want to be seen doing.

People are disappearing in the night, going into "detention" where they are interrogated, tortured, sometimes simply vanishing, never to be seen again. There are no trials, no courts; the enemy simply declares who is an "unlawful enemy combatant" and they are considered to be guilty from the moment their name is listed.

Some of your own are fighting back, but every time they strike at the enemy, the enemy responds by slaughtering more innocent people. The situation is so desperate that some of your resistance fighters have chosen to fight by strapping on belts of explosives and blowing themselves up in places that they hope will shock and terrify the enemy - and those who collaborate with the enemy.

Through it all, the enemy continues to insist they are "doing God's Will" and that only evil people would choose to resist them. They actually seem shocked and confused that anyone could possibly object to their occupation... detentions... torture... murders... reprisals... disappearances.... They honestly seem to be completely convinced that their cause is so righteous that you'll understand why they "had to" kill your sister, brother, mother, father, daughter, son, or even your entire family.

As I watched the season premier of Battlestar Galactica last night, I realized that it could have been telling the story of the American occupation of Iraq... Vietnam... the Philippines... the Confederacy.... In fact, it reminded me of every case throughout the history of Western civilization where someone has chosen to take up "the white man's burden."

How many repetitions of the same sad story are necessary before those who are "doing God's Will" realize they're not wanted? Will they ever realize they're not wanted? Probably not. And that's the heart of the tragedy. They're destroying lives by the thousands, all in the name of "doing God's Will" and are so convinced of their own righteousness that anyone who so much as questions it is their enemy.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

--C. S. Lewis

Day Against DRM

2006-10-03T06:05:00.000-04:00

DRM - do you know that term? If you don't, you should.

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, according to its creators. What it does in reality has nothing to do with rights, and everything to do with restricting your ability to use the software, music, or video that you paid good money for.

Imagine, for instance, you go to the iTunes store and buy a song. Well, if you only own one iPod, that's no problem. But if you own two iPods and you want to put a copy of that song on both of them, the Apple DRM scheme prevents you from doing it.

Or how about buying a CD of your favorite band? Last year, Sony demonstrated graphically what theyDRM is not about protecting anyone's rights. What it is about, is damaging the electronic media you buy so that you can only use it under the conditions the company you bought it from approves of. What it is about is restricting your right to use what you bought in the way you choose to use it.

If you want to know more about DRM, take a look at EFF's Frequently Awkward Questions for the Entertainment Industry as a starting place.

--
"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal." --Martin Luther King Jr.

Congress Destroys American Freedom

2006-10-02T05:46:00.000-04:00

A video made by a gentleman in Washington D.C. who tried to show up for a protest on the day Congress voted to repeal the Constitution, and found nobody even cared enough to protest.

America's Future

2006-09-30T23:04:00.001-04:00

John Hoffman wrote a story about the death of Habeas Corpus back in October of 2001 that seems rather appropriate to remember today.

Go read it, and think about what has happened in Washington this week.

--
"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal." --Martin Luther King Jr.

I am an Unlawful Enemy Combatant

2006-09-29T05:08:00.001-04:00

Well now, isn't this special? According to the version of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that was written by the Bush White House and passed by the House of Representatives, the definition of "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" is so broad that ALL of the following classes of people are at risk of being declared "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" under the act, if it passes as written:

Any attorney representing any of the "detainees" at Guantanamo or any of the other American prisons established in support of the Bushevik war
Any person who has given as little as $5 to a charity working with orphans in Afghanistan or Iraq, that turns out to be associated in some fashion with someone who might be a member of the Taliban or Al Qaeda (say, someone who works at the charity bought gas from a gas station owned by the second cousin of the landlord of the brother of a member of either group).
A tourist wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt at a public location, such as the Statue of Liberty
A protester at an immigration rally
Someone handing out anti-tax fliers on April 15th
An anti-government blogger

Not only does the act have an insanely broad definition of "Unlawful Enemy Combatant", but thanks to the bastards who voted against Senator Specter's amendment that would have stricken the following clause from the bill, it also revokes the right of habeas corpus for anyone affected by the "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" designation:

"No court... shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination."

Congratulations, you bastards. If you actually pass this abomination, you've just given the office of the President more power than King George ever dreamed of.

--
When you let people do what they want, you get Woodstock.
When you let governments do what they want, you get Auschwitz.

The Boulder Pledge

2006-09-28T20:53:00.001-04:00

Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.

Roger Ebert, Boulder Colorado 1996

--
When you let people do what they want, you get Woodstock.
When you let governments do what they want, you get Auschwitz.

McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Period

2006-09-28T03:46:00.001-04:00

That's right, boys and girls. It's that time of year again, when the only people allowed - by federal law - to comment on matters of national import are those already in office, "mainstream media" outlets, and those who are willing to put up with Uncle Sam digging through their underwear drawers for signs of partisan sponsorship.

You want to comment on what the Chimpanzee-in-Chief is doing? Oops! You're a federal criminal! You want to talk about the law Congress is currently trying to shove through that would eliminate habeas corpus for anyone who is even accused of terrorism? Gotcha again! Hell, if you just want to talk about the fact that the Violence Against Women Act bans anyone who receives federal money from utilizing any form of domestic violence programs other than those based on the "Duluth Model", and explicitly excludes male victims of domestic violence from any programs that receive federal funding, you're screwed again.

Well, guess what? If I'm going to be classed as a criminal because I believe the First Amendment applies to my ramblings in this space, I'm going to make the most of it. I hereby declare this blog to be a Free Press, published whenever I damned well feel like publishing it, as recognized and protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America.

-- 
When you let people do what they want, you get Woodstock.
When you let governments do what they want, you get Auschwitz.

King George of America

2006-09-18T21:48:00.000-04:00

An interesting, and far too accurate, comparison between George W Bush and King George the III, can be found at King George of America.

It's really worth your time to read and think about it.

Welcome to Laputa

2006-09-18T21:20:00.000-04:00

Why Laputa? Three reasons, actually.

I'm a fan of Jonathan Swift. Unlike so many commentators who write today, he was able to both convey a message and be entertaining at the same time. Some of his writing reads as if he dipped his pen in pure aqua regia, and I have no doubt that if he were writing today, he'd be the recipient of enough death threats to paper his walls.
I'm a fan of Hayao Miyazaki. Even the Disneyfied version of Miyazaki's Laputa deserves recognition for both its storytelling and its art.
In my own writing, the main setting of most of my stories is an anarcho-capitalist nation which was named Laputa by its founder, in a deliberate slap against the oppressive governments surrounding it. In my stories, just like in the real world when reading what Swift wrote, those who most need to get a clue from it are too blind to see it.

So, you can expect to find mostly rants, political and philosophical stuff here. I don't claim to be a commentator of the same order as Lew Rockwell or L. Neil Smith, but occasionally I just need to be able to spout off, whether anyone else reads it or not.