Hailing from Georgia

State of the primaries

2012-01-22T14:54:00.008-05:00

Our most recent primary, South Carolina. counties won by Romney in orange, Gingrich in purple. Released in to public domain

New Hampshire primary by town. Orange is Romney, Gold is Paul, Crimson Huntsman. Public Domain

Iowa caucus by county. Orange is Romney, gold is Paul, dark green Santorum, dark blue Perry. Public Domain

At this point in the Primary season, all three primaries thus far were won by separate candidates. Iowa was taken by Santorum, New Hampshire by Romney in a landslide, and South Carolina by Gingrich in a landslide. The number of delegates so far per candidate is 31 Mitt Romney, 26 Newt Gingrich, 10 for Ron Paul and 8 for Santorum. 2nd placers include Romney in South Carolina and Iowa, and Paul in New Hampshire.

Prior to this point, there were a whole bunch of shooting star candidates, starting with Michelle Bachmann at the beginning of the year and continuing with Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and then Newt Gingrich. All of them followed nearly the same trajectory, a steep graphed chart for the RCP Polling Average in all 50 states, reaching a peak, and then coming down with the same velocity that they arose, like a little boy throwing a ball. Then, Gingrich took South Carolina, by a landslide, and all the sudden everything changed. What's more, the very last of these trajectory candidates, Santorum, is still on the map and is looking strong in the Florida Panhandle.

Even before this surprising result of three states in three hands, we should've known we would be in for a very different primary season. The historic nature of this election had forced turnout way up. The Tea Party had greatly changed the Republican Party in the last 2 years. Several major candidates (including Gingrich and Santorum) failed to make the ballot in a couple states. Lastly, RNC rule changes made all early primary states proportional representation out to at least 3rd place, bringing the traditional early state landslide to an end. Now, at this moment, we see not a short primary season of the 2004 or 2000 variety effectively ending on Super Tuesday but a protacted 50 state duel between Gingrich, Romney, Santorum and Paul. Paul inevitably wins Virginia, as he is the only candidate on the ballot besides Romney and 60% of Republicans will not vote for Romney under any condition, and so then Paul too shall be right up there with the victors of our three early states.

So what precisely brought us to this point? There is a growing sense in both parties that the same puppet masters control both, and yet there was always a percentage that either refused to accept this conclusion or was comfortable with it. Add in a few Mormons and a few New England moderates, and you have Mitt Romney, the inevitable one.

But this time around, too much had been done, and the Tea Party was too fully aware that it had rescued the GOP from the dustbin of history. Revenge was desired. Many candidates came forward, and the GOP being a new movement with few experienced members, most of them were of fairly low caliber. As a result, they were catapulted with vengeance, recognized, and then forgotten. Eventually they even took on a member of the establishment who sympathized with them, I believe you the reader can figure out who that is. Then something happened with the very last two, Santorum and Gingrich.

In the case of Gingrich, it was finding his old fire as the glorious speaker of the House of Represntatives from 1994-1998. We saw him, in those last days of the election, command the respect that had made him palatable to the Tea Party to begin with. See, Gingrich was never a natural choice, he had BEEN a member of the establishment, and as a result of this fact had to prove himself. Having proved himself, the voters knew how he had proved himself, and when he proved himself once again, he returned.

In the case of Santorum, many people still did not accept Gingrich. He was still dirty, and lets face it, he made many questionable decisions and pseudo-decisions, including support for the Individual Mandate at the federal level, which he calls "a tactical decision against HillaryCare" [divide and conquer?], his decision to support TARP, which is probably more then anything else his university professor side coming out, and his decision to continue supporting social conservatives despite hardly being a role model for them, which, in Georgia, is called winning your election. Being a real politician, he doesn't come out looking real clean. For these malcontents, Santorum and Paul were the remaining choices, and Paul is considered by many to be of questionable judgement and temperament, leading to a vote by elimination for Santorum. Combine some social conservatives and Iowa farmers, and you have Santorum.

Ron Paul voters, of the typical kind, are simply too unique to be explained in this small space. However, in addition to his regular supporters, Ron Paul has received an edge from both malcontents of the kind that supported Santorum, and states where, in this remarkable election, two of the major candidates did not make the ballot, and Romney is still not accepted.

But aside from all of this there is the simple fact that the election is now on. The trajectory candidates were around when there was still time to find someone new - that time is gone. We, the Tea Party, can't replace shooting stars anymore. We are at our last chance. The time is now, the election has begun.

Pipelines and Spoiled Brats

2012-01-20T00:49:00.004-05:00

Obamas decision to reject the Keystone Pipeline was very disturbing in two ways: first, because it was precisely what was not needed right now here in America, and second because it shows our President to have no understanding what he is doing or why. At a time when the number one issue should be jobs, and the Keystone would not only provide these jobs in terms of construction and further development of the new oil shale fields that are Americas fastest growing industry right now, but also provide demand for manufactured goods like steel and foundry items from the suffering East and Midwest, our President, already facing a potentially difficult reelection, has decided that he will give up the last chance he has to make his reelection a cakewalk. If the economy booms, then none of the assorted clowns currently running for GOP candidate will even have a chance against him, but alas for Obama, this is one boat he has missed. His reason for this dismal choice for both himself and his country: the claims of some environmentalists.

Now the ball is in Canadas court. An alternate pipeline could run from the same locations in Alberta westward to a small, undeveloped port on an inlet 70 miles long called Kitimat in British Columbia. Not only would it carry oil to China, but it would also carry oil along the well developed Inside Passage seaway to the Puget Sound for refining at Anacortes, WA and the American market. But here, again, the Greens are not satisfied.

So why, precisely, are they not satisfied? The biggest reason they are not satisfied, though it is not the only reason, is because it will "delay the development of non-carbon energy sources." Now for environmentalists in America today, this means wind and solar. Wind is extremely unreliable, and solar is astronomically expensive. What's more, the fact that solar can operate off-grid gives it a natural niche market outside of the regular electric grid, so if it can't be successful with substantial government subsidies plus a niche market, then you know it really stinks. Wind, of course, is unreliable, and a smart grid that would make it more reliable by sharing power from different geographic points would also be so susceptible to electromagnetic storms from space as to naturally be completely destroyed and take months to rebuild every 8-10 years. The alternative proposition of battery farms would be outlandishly expensive and require constant maintenance. How precisely something that requires constant input of material resources can be "sustainable" is quite beyond me.

Another reason they're not satisfied is because extracting tar sands is energy intensive. This charge is true. However, extracting oil from shale by current methods is not energy intensive, and as shale drilling becomes more and more common (tar sands is slightly older technology) the less expensive energy cost will be a deciding factor in terms of switching away from tar sands production to shale production. Right now, the massive expansion of shale drilling, especially in North Dakota where unemployment is only 3.5% (and lower near Williston) as a result, has driven up the cost of purchasing equipment for shale drilling. This is a good thing in the long run as it means more capacity will be available in the future, but in the short run means that shale is unlikely to replace any existing production until this bottleneck is widened. In the long run, this capital cost will be gone and shale will replace tar sands, especially since just the (much smaller far southern tail) of the Bakken Formation in North Dakota contains at least 3.65 billion barrels of oil, and I suspect that this analysis by the USGS was understated partially by pressure from the Obama administration and paritally by laziness, or as the report puts it: "They also combined their findings with historical exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates." The first rule of engineering is if you want to be lazy, always understate your result so that nobody cares.

Then there is simply the old environmentalist hatred of economic development. This is somewhat connected to the very last concern of environmentalists to be listed here, but this really is where I begin doubting the character of environmentalists as people. The reality is that, far from being some Garden of Eden, the third world is a place where illegal loggers destroy rainforests, poachers with machine guns kill off endangered species, massive sprawling cities come up over night and coal plants put mercury and radiation in to the air by the bucket full. It is also a place where in Monrovia, Liberia, the people poop on the beach, allowing untreated human sewage to go straight in to an aquifer while also stinking up the air and despoiling a beautiful 5-mile strip of pristine sand. The problem with environmentalists is they expect the full regulatory ability of a first-world country without the society or, frankly, resources, that made it possible. In short, they are spoiled brats.

And that brings us to our final environmentalist objection: locality. I shall begin by discussing the Canadian pipeline, as it is simply their most egregious abuse. All throughout the internet and journalism, we find various environmentalists and journalists, who know nothing about how development takes place, put up pictures of this pristine, perfect wilderness of tremendous natural beauty (that is, for the record, almost completely contained in an archipelago of Canadian National Parks and Provincial Parks) that supposedly will be completely destroyed by the pipeline and economic development.

To put it bluntly, no it won't. People only think it will because they don't live there. If they did live there, they would know that mountains rise straight out of the sea on both sides of the Kitimat Inlet, making any kind of construction enormously expensive, and that Kitimat is at the eastern end of that inlet and the beginning of a long, and nowhere near as pristine or beautiful, flat typical river valley. It also is located SEVENTY MILES EAST of where most of the wilderness is. In fact, this is why the pipeline is sent so far north instead of simply going to Vancouver - to avoid those eternally annoying in the sense that only an engineer can understand mountains. They would also know that if there's one thing the coastline of British Columbia has an overabundance of, its beautiful, pristine, undeveloped coastline. There are no roads on the coast of British Columbia and Alaska running North-South from the Vancouver Suburbs to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of 800 miles, the reason why the most common accidental death in Alaska is plane crashes. It also won't because these areas are already protected as parks, both at the provincial and Canadian federal level, and there are far too many flatter, more valuable, riverside pieces of real estate nearer to Kitimat and the pipeline for lobbying by the businesses to even be profitable to them. It is also true that with a tidal range near 20 feet, any oil spill would not last very long but be swept out to sea pretty fast. But environmentalists think their asinine, immature, irrational fears justify the shutting down of an entire part of the world in economic activity, when everything that even can be done to protect that wilderness already is.

The original locality makes somewhat more sense, but only somewhat, to protest. That of course is the lands through the plains that the original Keystone XL would've run through. Of course, unlike BC, there are plenty of roads in the Plains, and even more in Texas. Lots of 2-lane or 4-lane roads going passed corn fields, unused infrastructure, tiny cities and all. This is true. It is also true that the Great Plains aquifer is pretty big, though one could counter that being so big its really not that easy to substantially impurify, and what oil would do is certainly no worse then what farmlands already do with fertilizers and pesticides. Oil also has the advantage over farmlands with their pesticides and fertilizers that it is not generally to the advantage of oil companies for their pipelines to be constantly leaking. It has yet another advantage that increasing land prices may drive the farms with their pesticides and fertilizers out of business. Further, there is the little matter of refining at Wood River, Illinois and Steele, Nebraska, right over the aquifer and the Mississippi River, where oil leaks and all manner of chemical spills are much more likely to happen then at the pipeline, and where the final expansion to Houston and Port Arthur could've eventually replaced those refineries by economies of scale, in the middle of a swamp where bacteria and a chemical-recycling ecosystem already can handle most water purity issues.

Yet even here, the same picture of the environmentalist as a spoiled brat emerges - unshaking, unwilling to compromise, loud, sort of like a toddler. Instead of seeing that some development, even if not constrained by the great mountains of the Kitimat Inlet, is neccesary to finance and safeguard environmental protection, they would rather shout and scream and yell and let everything go to some third world country where no chance exists for proper controls or procedures to prevent what they want to prevent. The result is that for every ton of smog they prevent in Southern California, two tons come across the pacific blown by winds from China, and the prairie starves, and no one even really pays close attention to what they are saying or any way of making a reasonable solution to the problem. There answer is to criticize China, a country doing its best to get out of poverty, who has no special interest in listening to much of anyone who lives on this side of the Pacific. The result also is that eventually, as people become poorer and poorer, the toddler who cried wolf may really get eaten after all.

We'll all be sad that day, just like any parent would be, but it doesn't change the fact that it happened, and that the child is gone forever and not coming back. When you yourself feed on irrationality, don't be too surprised if you eventually get fed to it. Environmentalists with no respect for reason will not be given reasonable attention, and this will be a collective judgement, not an individual one, applied to all environmentalists everywhere, whether they were part of the problem or not. They will not be heard, nor will anyone else about our very real environmental problems.

Evolution of a Meme

2011-11-07T17:04:00.012-05:00

When the world-created the mind-numbing abberations of 4chan and reddit, I don't think anyone expected us to unleash a Golden Age of photography and art. Alas, it seems to have occurred!

Starting from the same birth group, 4chans /b/(random) board, also known as the seventh circle of Hell, as all the "Advice Dog" series, a simple, elegant and professional photograph of a wolf by Montana artist Jeff Vanaugha was cut up, cropped on to a pattern of colored rays and finally, TA-DA!!!:

But wait, there's more! We can't have too much of a good thing right? No, not possible, or as courage wolf would put it, "Get there, get more there!" We had to find more wolf pictures:

Sir Courage Wolf Esquire. This art is wonderful in that nearly anyone can claim it as their own, in this case a Britain and world in a crisis of identity.

Baby Courage Wolf, classic comedic juxtaposition. Did I mention that every one of these, has come in to being (including the original Courage Wolf) since June of 2010?

Insanity Wolf, a classic nightmare image with background clearly conjuring the emotions and thoughts required to contemplate it.

Finally, beyond adding to the great library of Meme, there are modifications of existing images:

Monsieur Le Courage Wolf. It may be art but it is not above the stereotype. It also is nowhere near as popular as the other deeper images that convey a far truer message or at least use better comedic forms. This brings up an important point: are unartistic television shows profitable because its what people want, or because they cost less to make and are more predictable, a crucial consideration for those who will spend money to advertise a product on TV, and they are still tolerable to the audience?

Insanity Wolf in turn became a major meme all its own, inspiring numerous spin offs. In the interest of limited bandwidth, we will largely no longer be showing many additional images. However, nearly all memes originated in similar ways - a first, followed by a second, followed by seconds of seconds, each time taking on the watermark and unique thoughts and emotions of the people who created in anonymity before it. I believe it was Ronald Reagan who once said "You would be surprised what you can achieve in life if you don't care who gets the credit."

Some memes also originated as spoofs of the websites where memes originate. Included are "Pedobear," an image of a "Protection Bear" posted whenever child pornography was posted in a 4chan thread, the joke, of course, being that he must show up for the wonderful child pornography, while his smiling bearish face juxtaposed with a creepy pedophile creates humor too good to buy! Also Redditors Wife, who is constantly being ignored in the interest of Reddit, and the various Pokemon memes (including one of Ash Ketchum as a Hispanic) that obviously spoof the fascination of 4chan users with such ridiculously retarded things - in both cases spoofing the readers as opposed to the site itself.

Lastly, let us consider the Baron Ducreaux, in some ways an expression of the longing in our society for civility, depth, and sophistication as it juxtaposes good manners and rap music:

Centuries ahead of his time, the French court painter Baron Joseph Ducreaux famously painted himself using body language that would not become the norm for another 200 years in imitation, according to the artist, of a Mockingbird. (Painting title: Portrait de l'artiste sous les traits d'un moqueur, translated Self-portrait of the artist in the guise of a mockingbird by KnowYourMeme.com) This is far from the only unusual painting that the Baron did in his time with the doomed court of Louis XVI, as he experimented often with facial expressions and features as a vehicle for describing personality, a crucial problem in an era before photography and easy travel, when portraits were used to show wealthy women and men their prospective mates. Though his painting are in the Louvre, what likelihood is there that the Barons work could've achieved such notoriety and widespread appreciation without 4chan, reddit, facebook, and the other pathetic wastes of time of the unwashed masses?

Unfortunately, such widespread appreciation has also inspired modification, including famously the Steve Buscemi Ducreux where Steve Buscemis face is inserted in the place of Baron Ducreaux's, but since in doing so the authors have satirized Steve Buscemi's manner and personality, have they not, albeit unwittingly, contributed to Ducreaux's legacy? By satirizing the satire, a new work of art has been born. Andy Warhol, in particular, DESIRED imitation with his simultaneously kitsch and inspiring works on Marilyn Monroe and soup cans, and purposefully sought out the field of advertising as a place to find true beauty.

There is too often a tendency to call putting weird strings and things on paper modern art, when the true modern art is right underneath our noses, evolving, as always, with the modern world. If any of you wish to further inquire about the art of Memes, I would suggest KnowYourMeme.com, a specialty news site that analyzes online trends, as a broad-based and reliable source.

All images from MemeGenerator.net, and with clear legal intent, discarded works.

Rivers & Navigation

2011-11-06T21:10:00.012-05:00

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Public domain work of Army Corps of Engineers.

Very early in Americas history, before railroads and airplanes and highways successively made America more reachable, there were only two alternatives for transit: the covered wagon/horse and the ship. Even in the 1600's, shipping was surprisingly well-developed at sea, and a trip across the Atlantic often took far less time then a similarly distanced trip across land, while the ship itself could carry far more cargo far more affordably then a similar number of covered wagons. The result was that coastal areas with ports became highly developed centers of wealth, while Appalachia and those areas away from ports became the distinctive "redneck" culture of charming economic ne'er-do-wells we all know and love.

In between theses two extremes were the lands along improvable seaways, and these would prove critical to the further development of America away from the East Coast. The most famous of these is the Erie Canal, built in 1825, from Albany to Buffalo through New York State. Combined with the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal, built 10 years later, linking the Chicago River to Lake Michigan, you had for the first time a true continuous seaway from New York City to the Mississippi River and the vast new lands beyond. The immediate result was a massive outflow of westward settlers, filling out the areas we now popularly know as the Midwest, and creating a market for mail-order goods that would be essential for the further development of the West. In addition, the vast cattle and grain lands of the West supplied the Chicago Stockyards, Chicagos first great manufacturing industry. Lastly and still importantly, the economy of all the great centers of upstate New York was built by cargo passing through the Erie canal.

In more recent years, the Chicago Canal and the Erie canal have both become largely irrelevant due to the increasing draft of freighters, but before they did, the intense increase in interest and investment in Great Lakes Shipping built the iron boat fleets. The iron boats now criss cross all 5 Great Lakes and the rivers that feed in to them carrying Iron Ore from Ontario, Minnesota, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to steel mills in Pennsylvania (through Erie, PA) and Indiana (through the Port of Gary). Stepping in to their place, the brand new Saint Lawrence seaway, easily deep enough for all but the biggest ocean-going freighters, has replaced the Erie Canal running from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence along the Saint Lawrence River, and a new steel mill has opened up in Montreal to harness the iron fleets, while grain boats now dock at Duluth, Minnesota and Lake Winnebago (connected through the Winnebago river) to use the Saint Lawrence Seaway to reach Europe. Unfortunately, the Chicago canal has not been replaced, and the Chicago river is too shallow for a canal improvement to be sensible, so it is primarily used by local barges, often carrying iron ore from Tennessee and Alabama to Gary.

In the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, land still largely undeveloped except for the least of uses, even less then agriculture, the Osage river was once targeted for improvement. Many attempts were made to allow ships from the Missouri to access the resource-rich and mountainous regions of the center of the state. The constant turns and rapids of the Osage made it difficult, and finally, the building of a dam at what is now the Lake of the Ozarks without locks ruined the dream of Ozarkian navigation forever. A few wealthy people and vacation homes exist on the Lake of the Ozarks, and very little significant economic activity.

A similar but somehow more lucrative Upper Missouri received major improvements throughout the 1800's and 1900's. Originally ending at Kansas City, where it meets up with the Kansas River, the navigable stretch of the Missouri was extended first to Omaha, and finally to Sioux Falls, Iowa. The region is now a hive of industry and transportation, and used to be even more so. Even with competition from the railroads, the barges were still more useful for many needs, and remain so to this day.

Yet another story of gradually expanding navigation is the Columbia. The navigation head on the Columbia was Portland, Oregon, and indeed for this it was named, from the late 1700's until the late 1870's, where thereafter an intense rapid prevented most further transportation. It was only one unnavigable site, however, and otherwise the river remained well navigable to what is now the Tri-Cities of Washington where the Columbia meets the Snake, and so even in the relatively undeveloped West it made sense to add a couple locks bypassing it. Shortly thereafter, a railroad, one of the oldest in the state, was built from Wallula to Walla Walla, Washingtons' oldest settlement, carrying fresh farm goods and resoures to port to be loaded on to ships and taken downstream, and in some cases even continue north to Alaska where they were needed absolutely and supported the gold rush. Ice also was transported, due to the divergent weather patterns of Eastern Washington (which freezes readily) and Western Washington (which stays fairly warm all year) on opposite sides of the rapids. Finally, in the 1930's, a couple hydroelectric dams were built on the Snake River, and it was realized that with one additional dam navigation could continue to Lewiston, ID; Lewiston, Idaho today is a center of the paper industry due to its location as a transportation center, in the desert halfway between two great timberlands.

Just because a river was unnavigable, however, did not mean it could not be useful for transit. Wagons too benefited form the relatively flat land and easy trails and abundant fresh water and game that even a tiny river provided. Five different wagon trails, to points in Oregon, California, Montana and Utah, all continued along the Platt River through Nebraska, a river known for being too shallow and unsteady even for canoe traffic. Likewise, sometimes navigability is in the eyes of the beholder - many of the rivers Lewis and Clark used are, even today, considered largely unnavigable, while many rivers in Texas, a state usually regarded as being all but without navigable rivers, such as the Trinity were once frequented by steamboats. Starting in the 1830's, short navigable sections of the Chattahoochee, mostly unnavigable that far north, near Atlanta were used for wagon ferries - the ferries have long since been replaced with roads that still bear their names, and they are still many of the most major roads in the city.

Fast flowing rivers, of the sort that are seldom navigable, are also often power sources for industry, and any river navigable or not can be used as a source of water and silt. Silt makes good farmland, and carries downstream minerals like the Gold that was famously panned along the various rivers of Alaska, and also the Diamonds found on the banks of the Ganges that introduced Europe to the Diamond in the 1700's. As a meeting place of navigable deep and broad and unnavigable fast moving rivers, fall line cities such as Hartford, CT, Augusta, GA, Pittsburgh, PA, Trenton, NJ, Baltimore, MD, and the great Industrial center of the confederacy Richmond, VA, where rivers come off a major incline, have been a valuable location for industry. Sometimes though, you can eat your cake and have it too: modern hydroelectric dams provide the same electric power that the old watermill provided mechanically, and can have a concurrent lock for shipping, such as the various dams on the Snake River that bring shipping in to Idaho, often times even making an unnavigable reach navigable.

Georgia has gone the opposite of the Missouri and the Columbia - once home to three navigable rivers, two of them, the Oconee and the Savannah, have been largely cannibalized for irrigation and drinking water. Former ports such as Augusta are no longer reachable to even the most basic of traffic. A movement now exists to do similarly to Georgias last remaining navigable river, the Chatahoochee, which is navigable from Columbus, Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico, despite many dams and improvements made over the years to make river navigation possible, all in the interest of Atlantas (which is not served by the river) literal thirst and growth. In addition, environmentalists in California are trying to bust CA's hydroelectric dams - those don't support shipping, but they do support electric power.

There are also the stories of navigation never completed. A canal project from Washington DC to Ohio was going to create a westward route for shipping traffic from the Chesapeake bay, but was canceled largely because of the availability of the railroad and the Great Lakes system providing too little remaining demand. The Nicaragua Canal was a viable alternative to the Panama Canal that could have potentially served far more local traffic. The latter may still be built simply because the Panama Canal is beyond capacity, the former however will largely not be built because the Potomac River, like the Chicago, is too shallow for modern oceangoing craft.

In general, though, riverine navigation is no longer a priority for modern government infrastructure, and Georgia is frankly a sign of things to come, a world that has largely lost faith in progress and edges more and more to mediocrity and an assumption of good results nearly every day. Less and less are people interested in expanding outside of existing centers and ways, preferring instead to blindly favor what already exists. This combined with radical environmentalism seems to indicate that America, and most of the worlds, days of canal building and extending the great seas to where they are needed are over. It is no wonder that Americas middle class and business base does not grow, as America itself does not grow, favoring only what already exists to the obvious benefit of the current wealthy.

Current Marine Highways of the United States, 2010, public domain work of US-DOT

The EPA versus Arlo Guthrie

2011-10-31T17:11:00.004-04:00

It is well understood that pretty much all members of the Guthrie family of musicians are staunch liberals, but when listening to Alices Restaurant tonight, I realized that if Obama wanted to know what is wrong with his whole approach to things, he doesn't even have to talk to a conservative, he just has to talk to ole' Arlo Guthrie:

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving,
when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn't
live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the
bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower
like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in.  Havin'
all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they
didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a
friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump.  So we took the
half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and
rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying,
"Closed on Thanksgiving."  And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving
before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another
place to put the garbage.

Here you have it, a small naive (and the narrator of Alices Restaurant is VERY naive) gesture of friendship on Thanksgiving, and because no one can be at the dump guarding it, the dump is closed.

We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road
there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another
pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and
rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our's down.  That's what we did, and
drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep
and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie.
He said, "Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage,
and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir,
Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage."

Not finding any available bureaucracy, they use their common sense outside of the bureaucracy, and do something that seems reasonable. The officer, never available to help them sort this out at the beginning of the story, is now suddenly very very available to sort them out.

After speaking to Obie for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down
and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the
police officer's station.  So we got in the red VW microbus with the
shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the
police officer's station.

He's available for fourty-five minutes to talk about the "consequences," after the fact, and schedules an appointment to see them in person, having never been available to prevent the problem to begin with. Why? Because it was Thanksgiving, and he's entitled to not talk on Thanksgiving.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at
the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and
we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again,
which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station
there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was
both immediately arrested.  Handcuffed.  And I said "Obie, I don't think I
can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on."  He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the
quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of
Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop signs,
two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the
Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest
crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper
story about it. And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had
hanging around the police officer's station. They was taking plaster tire tracks,
foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour
glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one
explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.  Took pictures of
the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not
to mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail.  Obie said he was going to put us in the
cell.  Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt."

Not only has "Officer Obie" encouraged them to, in the future, lie and cheat when he should've known that without their "kindness" he could have not done his "job", instead of simply giving them a good yelling and telling them to pick it all up, he has to make a scene, bring in all the police cars and airplanes and special teams, do massive investigative work wholly unnecessary to the situation at taxpayer expense, and then, when finished, throw them in jail as a reward for their original honesty and with no seemingly good reason.

And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?"  And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings."  I
said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?"
Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the
toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took
out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the
toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape.

Undertaking more rash and unneeded steps, and adding additional uncomfort to the individuals life, for no apparent reason except the "Precautionary Principle," better known as cowardice.

Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember
Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on
the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another
thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning,
when we all had to go to court.

After all these herculean efforts and expenditures, for a long time in jail, the fellows are bailed out.

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy
pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down.  Man
came in said, "All rise."  We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven
eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye
dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the
twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph
on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven
eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of
each one and began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case
of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge
wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the
circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to
be used as evidence against us.  And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the
snow, but thats not what I came to tell you about.

Having gone to all this trouble to stack the deck against these young lads for his own personal benefit, his mechanations and manipulations fall apart against a single loose cog in the plan - a blind judge who will not be condescended in to sentencing by fancy pictures and paragraphs, quite a metaphor for our current Academic elites and their tendency to use "settled science" (LOL!) to rule anyone who disagrees with them unfit to speak. Thankfully, the judge can't see, much as the American Redneck was never overtaught to overrespect these dishonest manipulations and crass overreaches. "Blind Justice" indeed. In many ways voters are, when you get right down to it, a judge of elected officials.

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.  I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning.  `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the phsychiatrist, room 604."

Not caring one bit what they put people through or the pride or dignity of anyone, government agencies poke and prod and inspect, and says "yea or nay" without any regard to the humanity or sensible value of what they're looking at. They have their quota, and if it kills them, or anyone else, they'll fill it.

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill.  I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill.  Kill.  I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth.  Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL."  And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL."  And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Although his job is to be a Psychiatrist, the shrink at Whitehall Street suspends his duty when he hears what he wants to hear, that being far more important then actually carrying out his job, much like Green Energy and Mass Transit engineers who apply standards and bigotries that would never consider outside of these sectors when analyzing the plans of the environmental left, selling out their professional integrity for the sake of an ideological warpath.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched.  Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, "What do you want?"  He said, "Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

Finally, after having jumped through all the hoops, a single malfeasance is found, a single problem or trouble in something that otherwise fits, much like the Cape Wind project in Massacheuttsets. From the link: "The decision signals further delays for the $2.6 billion project, which was under review for about a decade and which has struggled to find financing."

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever go to court?"  And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

A couple bad answers and the kid finds himself a virtual pariah, all for the minorest and most senseless of violations.

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there.  Mother rapers.  Father stabbers.  Father rapers!  Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!  And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me.

Having given a bad answer, the organization, or individual, finds itself in a category that it does not fit, associating with those far worse then it is.

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna- know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing- you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting- officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there

Doesn't this sound a whole lot like the Healthcare Bill, you know, the one we have to "pass to find out what's in it?" (Madame Pelosi) And then, finally, of all great and horrible humiliations and slanders and acts of true hypocrisy:

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

They have the gall to ask have we fixed ourselves, when they were the problem all along, when they have no right to judge, when they have done far worse things to this country then refusing to buy health insurance or keeping the lights on too long. But it's all us, it's never their fault, they're above being at fault, above the law, above manners and procedures, above morality.

One must understand them

2011-10-17T12:56:00.004-04:00

So often we hear about Israeli "atrocities," about all the evil they supposedly do and these "poor Palestinians" (though one must admit, they are in poverty) who are sitting right under their thumb. In this narrative, Israel was taken from "peaceloving" Arabs.

The reality though is that the people who say these things have never once tried to understand Israels actions. Never once have they put themselves in Israels shoes before they judge. Instead, they use their own European mores, made from a totally different history and social fabric, while judging a nation that they could not possibly understand in a time and place they could not possibly know.

Not once but three times since 1945 have the Arab states tried to squish Israel, and two of those were when they were staying within "appropriate borders." In 1968, after yet another attempt on them, Israel went ahead and took the "lands of others" that had been used as bases and fortresses for the attack on them.

Since 1973 however, the Arabs have realized that attacking Israel militarily is not the way to get anywhere, so instead of attacking straight on, they amass tremendous monetary funds for the families of suicide bombers so they may encourage one of their starving children to blow himself up to continue the war against Israel, without endangering themselves. The result being that because their least favorite child has blown himself up and taken Jews with him, the rest of the family can eat.

With the exception of Jordan, their previous overlord, none of the Arab states have allowed Palestinians to immigrate to their soils and away from the violence. Yet they will rant on and on about the suffering of these Palestinians at the hands of Israelis.

The Jews, meanwhile, are left in a world where nothing is certain, where behind every streetcorner is a bomb waiting to destroy them, and in this world, the rest of the Earth demands that they behave normally. They are left in a world where, because of constant threat of attack from many nations at once, they must resort to a conscription army, which has never led to low civilian casualties (including when America did it in Vietnam) and causes anger against them to rise as a result. Meanwhile, the obvious solution is rejected, simply because the rest of the world wants to fell "good about it self." The obvious solution, of course, is removing the Palestinians to somewhere far away.

On their own land, the Jews have created one of the most brilliant, prosperous shining lights of civilization the world has ever seen in the middle of a desert. Here in their small desert homeland, they have excelled in Agricultural Genetics, built a tremendous education system that Microsoft trusts as one of only three sites worldwide (Tel Aviv) for coding, created a huge middle class, and, perhaps most importantly, a democratic government that protects the rights of all those involved. They've done all this while the Arabs have been shooting at them from every direction and every way, every day of the year. The Isrealis are a true blessing to humanity, while Palestine continues to stagger in non-development, even with its generous gifts of land that they certainly did not deserve for pursuing a constant, unending war with Israel, and ever more bitter poverty.

I do believe that the Palestinians should have a homeland, but it should not be anywhere near Israel. Perhaps Canada or Amazonas can accommodate them? The Sea of Ohktosk is a possibility, even has rich grounds for fishing, and certainly more land then they presently have. The proof is in the pudding, a very bloody pudding filled with the blown off parts of human beings, whole lives snuffed out for no purpose besides Arab greed.

Tattered battle flag of Jerusalem, photo by David Shankbone, license c.c. a.s.a. 3.0 unported

The Great Confusion - a critique of "socially-conscious" enterprise

2011-10-16T16:55:00.008-04:00

Wind farm in the Techape Mountains, CA, by Stan Shebs, license c.c. a.s.a 3.0 unported

Whether its renewable energy, microlending in Asia, or low-income housing, we end up hearing "socially-conscious" or "social entrepreneurship" frequently enough to nauseate. As I look through the news, at "socially minded entrepreneurs," I cannot help but notice just how insignificant they really are. For all of their "changing the world," only microlending appears to have changed much, and microlending was not started as "social entrepreneurship" but rather adopted by the figurative guild of "social entrepreneurs" later.

One of the great dangers of social entrepreneurship is the tendency to treat profit as a hurdle instead of an objective. Whereas standard business aims to sell enough at a good enough price to justify its existence, expand and attract others to compete, social entrepreneurship does just barely well enough to exist. Worse, sometimes it doesn't even do that, but rather siphons off funds from the taxpayers through government edict that could be put to better use. In the end, this destabilizes governments and entire economies, as America is only now finding out.

Sometimes people claim that social entrepreneurship can fulfill aspects of true progress that standard entrepreneurship could not. This, simply, is a lie. Take green energy for example. The claim is that we cannot create carbon-free/pollution-free energy without some kind of government investment, but the reality is that we already have such things. We have at least two extremely profitable carbon-free power sources: hydroelectric and uranium-based fission nuclear. We also have a moderately profitable one called Geothermal. Detractors will argue that uranium creates nuclear waste, hydroelectric floods land and threatens biodiveristy, and geothermal takes land in natural areas like the Valles Caldera. And yet they advance wind, which takes up far more land in natural areas then geothermal ever would, and hydro would in some cases, and harms biodiversity by destroying migratory birds, and solar, which, like all semiconductors, requires dangerous chemicals and chemical wastes in the production of solar panels, or else, in the form of solar-thermal, takes up vast land and destroys entire habitats like wind, while taking astronomical costs to build and in the end not being sustainable for the simple and basic reason that nothing built can last forever.

Another claim is bringing third-world countries out of poverty, but alas, every first-world nation was once a third-world nation, and every one of them was brought out of this condition by the expansion of private business. And today, in India, Brazil, Russia, Rwanda, Uganda and China, private business is bringing a few more home. Does this mean there is no role for government or charity? Hardly, this is all collectivist we have not even looked at taking care of individuals yet, but it does mean that your "social entrepreneuers" are wrong about precisely what that role is.

And then there's the matter of precisely what profit is. When most people here the word, they think of some fat guy in a suit who already has too much money (in this day and age, that more accurately describes politicians.) Most business today is done by a combination of ma and pa business and joint stock ventures, depending upon the sector. Indeed, "fat suit guy sole proprietor" has not been the dominant model since the late 1800's.

Joint stock ventures are made up of 1,000's of investors of every social status, both wealthy seeking more wealth and workers seeking a retirement through 401K's, putting money towards a limited liability venture that they are not in control of but still suffer the gains and losses of through stock price and dividend. When you create profit for your joint stock venture, that's a larger 401K for a soon to be old man as well as a larger portfolio for a serious investor (who is not always, but usually is, rich.)

But that's not all profit does! Profit also means that a large enough number of people will contribute a large enough sum to your product to make it more then worthwhile to produce. It also creates new investor groups, both ma and pa and joint stock, to create more production of the desired thing. This virtuous cycle puts out WHAT PEOPLE WANT IN THE GREATEST SENSE, instead of what is desired by a small "ecologically friendly" elite. Indeed, it is far more democratic then democracy, as democracy only considers yes or no and not the degree to which something is desired. Democracy is like a net of thick rope with 4 inch gaps and the free market is like the finest of satins - its holes nearly invisible.

Profit too prevents the waste of resources - if building space, workers and raw materials are demanded by a more profitable enterprise, the price will increase until finally the less profitable either go out of business or rearrange their assets, freeing up the building space, workers and raw materials. As our society decided "getting off of foreign oil" was the highest of all goals, E85 drove up the price of food to cause many of our poor to starve by taking tons of corn and turning it in to small quantities of motor oil. Meanwhile, oil prices continue to rise astronomically, and a few foolish legislators suggested increasing Ethanol content beyond what engines can take without corrosion.

The reality is that profit is a very lofty and socially honorable thing, that very much does empower all of society, and create the best world the given conditions can create for the common man. Treating it as a problem, instead of a solution, will lead to hubris and a small elite dictating things as "the right thing to do" instead of allowing nature and the common man to decide amongst themselves. There is no one so ignorant as one who thinks he knows what's good for his neighbor, and so much of the 20th century has been ruled and ruined by such men.

Full Extent of the Pacific Electric Railway, circa 1920. Public domain work of US Federal Gov't.

Guest Post - Jamie B Musing

2011-10-14T11:54:00.004-04:00

With all that's been happening in the news in politics lately, it's been a while since this blog hosted a true culture article. In the spirit of both this and advancing the blogosphere, I present you a guest post from the esteemed Jamie B Musings of "Culture Shock: Everything Pop Culture 5 Days a Week." The above blogger image is authorized for use on this blog only.

Back in college, I was listening to the radio when I heard a story that disgusted and irritated me. It was about two boys, ages 15 and 13, who were molesting their 8-year-old half sister. The mother had left the girl in her brothers’ care while she was at work, and the child reported it to a teacher at her school. The boys claim they got the idea from watching Jerry Springer. It wasn’t just the molestation of a child that bothered me. It was also the fact that, once again, someone is blaming their own actions on media and this case would more then likely stir yet another debate on the effects of media of small children.

This is not the first time this has happened. Different forms of media have been blamed for everything from rape to armed robbery. Different songs by artists such as Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne have been blamed for suicides. Not only that, but the artists have been sued because of it as well. Then there was "The Catcher in the Rye", which has been linked to several celebrity stalkings, including the death of John Lennon and the attempted assassination of former President Ronald Reagan. Once, Christopher Pike, an author of young adult horror novels was asked if he felt responsible for the suicide of a kid who had read some of his books, even though he never promoted suicide in his work. In fact, he portrayed negative consequences for the act in his "Remember Me" Trilogy. What is even worse, many conservative groups use these cases as ammunition to censor certain materials which is not the answer and one step towards creating the world Ray Bradbury wrote about of Fahrenheit 451. What it all comes down to is too many people are trying to use the media to make excuses for the crimes they commit.

I find it hard to believe any sane and rational person would commit a crime just because they saw it in the media. It is time for people to stop searching for the easy answer. Let's face it... there are no easy answers in life. The human mind is a complex machine and I believe when someone commits violent acts, we need to look much deeper than the media to understand them. We also need to be more aware of what's going on around us and act accordingly instead of burying our heads in the sand. Look at the Virginia Tech shooting, for example. The shooter was known to be a problem on campus and had scared more than a couple of students and teachers and that wasn't the first time something that that had happened somewhere. Nothing will ever stop all violence, but I really do believe that we can only make it better if we're willing to look deeper than media to solve the problem.

Operation Northwoods - 49 years later

2011-10-14T10:48:00.011-04:00

Joint Chiefs of Staff 1962. Public domain work of US government.

Beginning with the title “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba”, the Joint Chiefs of Staff set out to produce evidence of a phony attack to justify an invasion of Cuba in 1962. Among the "evidence," shooting down a civilian airliner, burning crops, and carrying out a terrorism campaign throughout Florida and even up to Washingotn DC are considered par for the course, acceptable prey for the beast. In a nation founded "For the people, by the people," a small intelligence elite contemplates killing thousands and blaming it on someone else to kill thousands more and gain influence with the grimmest of sobriety. Even law it seems is worthless to them. In typical bureaucratic fashion, the majority of the concern on the first page is with whose agency will be assigned responsibility for doing it.

Prior to the Freedom of Information Act, both this operation and an experimentation with human mind control known as MKULTRA were totally classified, with no clear timeline for the information to eventually be released. Even with such an act, many executive level documents can remain classified with a proper judicial review. However, in 1976, less then 9 years after the law had come in to effect that revealed these horrifying actions of our government, the "Government in the Sunshine Act" created the following exemptions:

Information relating to national defense,
Related solely to internal personnel rules and practices,
Related to accusing a person of a crime,
Related to information where disclosure would constitute a breach of privacy,
Related to investigatory records where the information would harm the proceedings,
Related to information which would lead to financial speculation or endanger the stability of any financial institution, and
Related to the agency's participation in legal proceedings.

That "protects" nearly all documents worth declassifying. As if this wasn't enough, further legislative and other actions have extended exemption 1 (Reagan, executive order 12356), created a new exemption for law enforcement (Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986), increased response time deadlines to act requests (20 days instead of 10, Electronic Freedom of Information Act of 1996) and restricted access to presidential records (Bush, executive order 13223). Later, a ban on foreign requests (Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002), further extending the deadline to 30 days (Open Government Act of 2007), and allowing reclassification of previously declassified work (Obama, executive order 13526) after undesirable requests were added to the bill. Later executive orders revoked some extent of 12356 and 13223, while the OPEN act also required extensive paper trails on redactions or deletions from declassified documents, but the fact that IT CAN BE DONE remains troubling.

Now it is true that some military materials really must be protected, but surely we can find a better, more legally protective phrasing then "Information relating to national defense"! What does that even mean? And why does law enforcement get a free pass, except for the case of harming a judicial proceeding? Wasn't law enforcements protection in clause (5) more then enough without this additional "Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986" thingamajigger? And what, precisely, would "lead to financial speculation or endanger the stability of any financial institution"? Just how much would that cover, when one considers how many actions have an effect on the economy? And why do executive orders get to extend the act, should that not be the responsibility of congress?

The reality is that government will always be up to evil deeds, and the only thing that stands against them is the common people and interested parties. We must learn to "counter ambition with ambition" as James Madison phrased it. Secrecy except when 100% necessary is the best way government can thwart that process, and the best way that government can eventually take all power for itself. Even when it is necessary, it is a tragedy, and still harms our nation.

John F. Kennedy eventually rejected Operation Northwoods, but it was at his desk, ready to sign, and with the stroke of one pen thousands of innocent people would've died to start a pointless war with a nation that did not attack us. Since then, the act that released the information about Northwoods has been curtailed and limited by amendment after amendment from bill after bill and many executive orders. The court system would also be subverted to frame innocent men and women of bombings and murders. In the foulest of all corruptions, government would shatter law.

Northwoods showed once again, along with what Congress has done since, that the only one you can count on to look out for you is you, and that there are no limits to the cruelty and lies of an over-expanded government. There is no reason to believe that a Northwoods could not occur today, and even less reason to believe that man like Obama, unlike Kennedy, would sign it. Indeed, it is even possible that "Fast and Furious" may be part of such an operation, a thought that occurred to me immediately after it happened. Though I am not personally of the opinion that 9/11 was such an operation, and part of my reason for this comes from my own examination of Al Qaidas apparent game plan, it is easy to understand from whence the paranoia came. Truth is, we have much reason to be afraid, and more reason to act to end the tyranny of an oversecretive, overextended, legally subversive government, and to end this tyranny in the most law-abiding, peaceful way possible: at the polls. Just as the British did with HM James of York, so we can do with our own corrupt elites.

Leading the Party - How Romney would be a disaster for the GOP

2011-10-06T20:45:00.008-04:00

The Black highlights significant dips in the Generic Congressional Vote relative to the democrats, while the red lines and green lines indicate where Romneys vote has rapidly increased (red) or staggered to gradual decline (green). Screenshots from RCP Polling Averages, Fair Use, with a few basic visual annotations. I apologize for the hazy quality - Blogger could not fully handle the image.

The RCP Polling average, at realclearpolitics.com, averages a whole series of generally accepted polls while discluding major outliers to form a scientific estimation of the actual vote. Mitt Romneys slip in the polls in June corresponded with an improvement in the Generic Congressional Vote. Later, when Perry also appeared to have many of the same problems to Conservatives and, given the evidence above, others, the Congressional Vote slipped once again. In short, Romney, though popular himself, as a standard-bearer for the greater Republican Party is a disaster, and the fruits of this disaster would show itself in (at best) stagnation in the congressional races of 2012 should he be the nominee. At worse, the Republicans could end up not only failing to take the Senate, but losing the House, as their generic congressional ballot is often underperforming the Democrats.

Most reasonable Republicans agree that getting rid of the Reidosi dominated congress is as important as getting rid of Obama. Romney looks presidential, talks soberly (though I wouldn't say well, as that requires that you actually say something), has a nice suit and nice hair, and isn't Obama. Because of this, a lot of people are willing to vote for him for President. But a lot of those people will also see him as the representative of the Republican Party, and will conclude that it is every bit as corrupt, unethical, lukewarm and openly fat cat Wall Street elitist as it was in 2008. They'll still vote for Romney, because he's not Obama and looks like a President regardless of what he does, but they won't vote for Republican candidates outside of Romney. It will also prevent the discussion of ideas that leads to congressional majorities, instead having a presidential race focused entirely on personalities and handing the congressional races directly over to California Environmentalists and Wisconsin Public Sector Unions.

And why would it be any different? Most Americans, outside of the most venom-filled, unthinking and partisan branches of the Republican party, know that George W. Bush is just as responsible for our nations current situation as Barrack Obama. Romney represents the Republican party of Bush. Romney represents Republicans with no principles, who will do anything to get elected, will accept bribes like Ted Stevens, know nothing about Main Street or the physical economy (Romney is, after all, the quintessential Wall Street number cruncher who thinks that the economy is a math equation) and have no trouble trampling on the rights of ordinary Americans or casting all good economic sense to the wind (including what he actually knows) simply to be "popular."

Romney represents the kind of thinking that forces Americans to buy a private good and favors a gradual government takeover of the economy - something which he has not only done, but seems rather proud of. Romney, frankly, should move to the countries that follow his way of thinking, putting everything in the hands of corrupt elites, namely the Sudan, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Chad, the Central African Republic or any number of other African Kleptocracies. Maybe then he would realize why an Ivy-Leagueized America is not a good idea and that public-private collusion is not a virtue.

And should we elect him, just what will he do? Will the man who inspired Obamas entire economics agenda really depart from them substantially? Will he kowtow and get along well with the Democrat Congress that he helped elect? Just what will he do?

Update 10/9/11 - As Mr. Presidents approval ratings continue to drop in the RCP average to their lowest point ever this week, now approaching that crucial 40% mark, it seems that more and more the legitimate interest of the Republican Party needs to be selecting a man who can lead the entire party to victory in all 50 states. Winning the electoral college by more votes is not going to help the Conservatives govern. Winning the electoral college, and then winning the Senate and House by more, will.

Mannies wanted

2011-09-25T13:22:00.005-04:00

Eugen Keler with his black nanny, 1874. Public domain by copyright expiration.

Not long ago, really only a matter of decades, entire generations of wealthy Southern males and females were raised not by their mothers, but by, usually black, servant ladies who went by names like "Miss Marcy" and "Miss Denise" and who were given the important job of raising the next generation of a wealthy, Southern family. When these men came in to town, the first person they visited was not their parents, it was who raised them.

It was a good deal for the Mannies too. The pay may not have been much, but their erstwhile "masters" were often very generous in the form of gifts and benefits, and this member of the family was taken care of exactly like that - a member of the family. And they could live in a nice room in a nice mansion, and when the family got Filet Mignon or ate out, so more often then not did they.

Today, wealthy, intelligent women with hard careers aren't having children. Now it is true that there is the little matter of passing a bowling ball through a tiny hole (it may be hard to "put a camel through the eye of a needle" in the words of scripture, but women do it on a regular basis), and no one can really help you with that, besides the obvious possibility of cutting you open, but we as a society can help you with what comes after. We can provide Mannies, people to take care of the child you are too busy for, and he will still be yours, and family, but if you are too busy with your career what is not neccesary need not be minded.

It seems that today we have a resistance or hate or even unnegotiableness to the notion of Mannies, to the notion of someone else raising our children, but we shouldn't. Why shouldn't someone who has time look after our kids? Is it better if no one is there for them just because you can't be? Is it better to simply never have children, and never experience any of it, just because you can't handle all of it? And obviously this solution only works for the wealthy. But why shouldn't it work for who it does?

The Gospel of Joseph Stalin, Chapter 5: The Parable of the Green Fool

2011-09-24T15:58:00.005-04:00

Secretary General and Loving Father Stalin, who only sends those who really need it to Siberia to be worked to death. Photo taken by CCCP, public domain for all good comrades. Here

"Someone in the crowd said to him, “Liberal, tell my brother to divide the tax money with my solar power company.”

"¹⁴ Comrade Stalin replied, “Individuals, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you? Can't you tell I have the general will to look out for...” ¹⁵ Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; you might turn in to a conservative! But for now you're just a useful idiot...”

¹⁶ And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain country yielded an abundant economic harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no way to prevent the world from changing.’

¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my coal power plants and build bigger solar panels across miles of beautiful, open Desert, and there I will have my electricity. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of power laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

²⁰ “But the general will, now extended to include the cute, furry creatures of the forest, said to him, ‘You fool! Yellowstone will erupt this very night, cover the Western United States with lava and block the sun for 50 years. Then where will this stable world you have prepared for yourself go to?’

²¹ “This is how it will be with whosoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich towards the general will."

Meet the Proles

2011-09-23T15:56:00.010-04:00

Public Domain image by Pearson Scott Foreman

One thing that never ceases to shock me is the tendency of the electorate to hold on to oft repeated lies, even resfuse to hear statements to the contrary of them, and with no candidate has this been more true then Sarah Palin. What do people get out of speaking venom and lies against her? What is it about Palin that makes people not only swallow the lies about her hook, line and sniker, but then dismiss any challenge to those lies as unworthy of their hearing?

In "1984", there were some, shall we say, non-characters called the Proles. They are humans who are non-people, are so lost in their hate, anger, fear and willful ignorance that they will simply hate upon without question whoever the small elite decides as a target, not even quoting their own memories against it. They can be controlled by a single broadcast of the radio.

I don't know what brought America to the brink of becoming Oceania, but something did. Something made us so thoroughly lose ourselves in hate, anger and political parties that we will ignore all reasoning thereafter. Something made us that lazy, that cowardly, that inhuman. I'll leave you to figure out what it was, but when was the last time that someone attacking Sarah Palin gave a good reason why?

Any particular lies you would like addressed will be handled in the comment section.

UPDATE 10/5/2011: Sarah Palin will not be seeking the highest office in the land. She announced that family concerns have simply become too great. The only person in the world who can defeat Sarahcuda is her own daughter, and it seems that she has proved this adage once again.

What Congress Knew

2011-09-18T10:42:00.005-04:00

From the document. Public domain work of the US Congress, "THE SIZE AND FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT AND
ECONOMIC GROWTH", 1998

With all this talk of Keynes, and stimulus, and this supposed "great debate," I wanted to take a moment to look at what Congress actually does know.

"The Size and Functions of Government and Economic Growth" was written by three economists, James Gwartney, Randall Holcombe, and Robert Lawson, all closely tied to Florida State, and presented before the Joint Economic Committee April 1998. Using a great survey of all OECD countries and their trends with regards to time in terms of the size of government and the rate of economic growth, they observed a major decline in the ability of economies to grow quickly as the size of government increased, and a major decline in private reinvestment in the economy.

At the time they also accredited government size with helping prevent major slowdowns and bring stability, though recent economic events put serious doubt on that hypothesis. More though, they also observed that America has not seen any truly great gains in prosperity since the early 60's, with the economy gradually edging down to a mediocre level of growth that can barely keep pace with population and really only improves the well-being of the top 10%. Poverty rates have remained unaltered since 1978.

As part of their introduction, they also propose several mechanisms by which economic growth slows in the face of government: "First, the higher taxes and/or additional borrowing required to finance government expenditures exert a negative effect on the economy. As government takes more and more of the earnings of workers, their incentive to invest, to take risks, and to undertake productivity-enhancing activities, decreases."If people, who aren't business owners, don't purchase cars, how can they go vast distances to work at better jobs that make better use of their time to produce for the economy (and in the end, as a result, are able and willing to pay them more.) If farmers don't purchase tractors, you end up with not enough food.

"Second, as government grows relative to the market sector, diminishing returns will be
confronted." Hoover Dam, good. Solar panels on your roof so you can genertate 3 lightbulbs worth of electricity, not so good.

"Finally, the political process is much less dynamic than the market process." Indeed. Our system was specifically designed by the Founding Fathers to NOT be dynamic. Why? Because something that's dynamic can tear away at your rights and freedoms, whereas something thats not dynamic can at best gnaw at them. A quickly changing society is a society where no one knows precisely where they stand, where people are imprisoned without good cause, and where nothing is sacred. That's why we've set up two houses of congress, a presidency that can block congress and a constitution that limits congress.

But first, they point out that their assessment of the actual size of government expenditures is likely over generous: "If government expenditures were measured in constant purchasing power units or on a per capita basis, the increases in the size of government would be substantially greater than those presented in Exhibit 1." In other words, relative to what the money actually buys, its much higher.

Jim Saxton, chair of the Joint Economics Committee and the one who called for the report, is a blue state Republican from New Jersey. The Northeastern United States have not been characterized by their extreme Republicans, and Jim Saxton was elected from a district of suburban Philadelphia, New Jerseys 3rd, including Cherry Hill, a major "edge city," and Willingboro, one of the original Levittown-style suburbs.

Dr. James Gwartney, Professor of Economics and Policy Studies at Florida State University, "holds the Gus A. Stavros Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida State University, where he directs the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education. He is the coauthor of Economics: Private and Public Choice, (South-Western Press, 2008), a widely used principles of economics text that is now in its 12th edition. He is also the co-author of Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity (St. Martin's Press, 2005), a primer on economics and personal finance designed for the interested lay person."Glancing briefly at Amazon.com reviews for both books, I noticed that even his most ardent detractors seemed to admit he had a good grasp of the economics. It is also worth noting that getting 13 editions of a textbook published (and professors do shop around for textbooks even if students do not) is not easy in a world where textbooks are often the main moneymaker for professors.

Dr. Randall Holcombe has written extremely prolifickingly, with twelve books and 100 articles to his name. "His primary areas of research are public finance and the economic analysis of public policy issues."He still teaches at Florida State University, where he is the "DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics."

Dr. Robert Lawson, at Capital University Columbus, Ohio, was also a student of Florida State before coming to teach at Capital. A quick glance at his Curriculum Vitae reveals a man driven by data and studies of what actually happens in real states and nations, and also an open-minded creative thinker who will more then readily drag comic strips in to the classroom.

All three of these professors work together on a regular basis, and you can often find their names on the authorship of the same texts. Although tied together well, their success has been borne out in publications, empirical evidence, and the simple fact that a moderate Republican from New Jersey would be interested in hearing them. In addition, the sheer wealth of information the draw on to reach their conclusions is a credit to them, as any scientific man must admit.

California Nightmares

2011-09-16T21:03:00.007-04:00

The Delta Smelt, Work of USFWS, public domain

It seems, not long ago, the world dreamed of California - its gold, its industrial power, its great cities and farmland. Today, the state is in massive debt, farmers are strangled of water for a 2-inch fish, unprecedented regulation strangles every aspect of innovation and industry, the notion of private property becomes less and less meaningful, and unemployment in the once-fertile Central Valley skyrockets to over 50% in some places. Worse, it seems somewhere down the road California lost its soul, as even where business is still strong, it is driven by people from out of the state.

What we find today is a coastal California more interested in complaining about insensitive jokes in the film "Juno" then building business or making things work, and an inland California slowly being sacrificed at the altar of a fish. We find a state legislature that refuses to cut spending or authorize new industry, preferring instead to bleed their state dry with taxes as fat cat administrators take home six-figure salaries. We find a constitution with specific language banning an entire industry, nuclear power, and communities that plot to prevent new industrial development because they're scared for their land values, while factory after factory shuts down. We find a state that has totally lost touch with who or what built it, and a new race of man who not only does not know how to provide for himself, but refuses to, preferring instead to take and take and take and finding building too ugly for his tastes.

Perhaps most disgusting about California is the absolute willingness of the people on the coast to annihilate the welfare of the rest of the state, and that brings us to the point of this blogpost. A plan needs to be made to protect the people of the rest of the state from the coasters. What the coasters do to themselves is their own problem - I hope someday they will learn, but if they don't at least I won't be responsible for it. They must, however, not be able to destroy all of this land that has never agreed with them or signed on to what they do.

It seems most rational to cut California in to 4 states, so as to create as logical of a configuration as possible and best serve the needs of the people. A proposal already exists for the state of Jefferson, and for the Southeastern desertlands. For the Central Valley in between, I propose creating the somewhat historic land of American River corresponding to the area that the Spanish authorized for American settlement in the early 1800's and the famous river named for that event. In addition, I took the liberty of including conservative Orange County in the proposed "South California" (here renamed "Mojave") state. This way, the Coasters can be stupid in peace. We'll even give them a stretch of coastal wilderness, west of the Santa Lucias.

public domain

The Heroes of 9-11

2011-09-10T21:51:00.006-04:00

Recently declassified government photo of the work at the 9-11 site. Public domain

A lot of articles are going to appear about the threat of further terrorism, the losses, how America has changed et cetera, but for the moment, I want to look in to the past, not to see the evil that perpetrated these attacks, but the heroic people who rose to meet them. Some of the stories will be familiar, nearly common knowledge even, but some of them will not be. All of them, however, demonstrate what makes America great.

Todd Beamer

An accountant at Oracle, Todd also taught sunday school with his wife Lisa for six years and had two children, David and Drew. After their plane was hijacked, Todd and other passengers made attempts (13 successful) to call home by both in-plane and cell phones*. Todd, in his, did not quite get through but instead ended up on the phone with GTE Supervisor Lisa Jefferson*, and, as he and others were told of the attack on the WTC, a resolution was made to jump the hijackers. After briefly panicking when the plane jerked southeast, Todd recited the Lords Prayer with Mrs. Jefferson,* and then is quoted as having said "You guys ready? Lets roll." 4 months after his death, his youngest child and only daughter, Morgan Kay, was born.

Lieutenant Heather Penny

Stuck between a logistical rock and hard place, the USAF had a difficult choice to make that morning: take time to properly arm its aircraft, or catch up to the planes quickly. When the choice was made however, Lieutenant Penny didn't question it, but simply to the sky with her orders to ram flight 93. Not even equipped with gun ammo, her F-16 had nothing but its own physical force to stop the terrorist plane before it reached Washington. When asked about the experience, she had nothing to say but this: "We had to protect the airspace any way we could"

Fabrizio Bivona

Just as some are inspired to die for their country, some, in outrage, are inspired to live for it. That describes the fate of NYC Paramedic and Firefighter Fabrizio Bivona perfectly. Many of his fellow paramedics didn't come home that day, and left alive, he has seen firsthand the real impact that 9/11 has had on 1,000's of survivors and families. He describes himself as having served on counterterrorism teams "before it was popular," and appreciates the progress and attempts at progress that were made by the Bush administration, but also laments the "politicization of homeland security." Inspired to act, this common man made an unsuccesful attempt at a US Congressional Seat to raise hell, and though preferring the notion of others stepping up to fulfill this noble cause, has not ruled out making another attempt in the future, saying he is thoroughly disgusted by the Obama administration on this issue. "I see the frontline to the survival of America—where the front lines have been drawn—is now inside our government. For me, I always want to be where the fight is."

Joe Irizarry

Prior to 911, Joe had an ordinary boring life of driving the subway trains underneath Manhattan. At the Courtlandt Street subway station, at the foot of the towers, Joe arrived just in time to have his train literally shook by the impact of the planes. Knowing something was wrong, he looked around him, and saw people en masse fleeing the debris of 9/11, and kept his doors open several minutes to offer refuge from those running away from a mysterious smoke he did not know the source of. "The smoke was coming down so I had no idea what was going on in the streets. I just wanted to make sure the people were safe." According to witness Linda Di Silvio, he executed his good decision well, being in charge and keeping the whole train car of people under control. "Joe was, you know, the brick there." Finally, when he knew it was too close to collapse, he gunned it out of the station for Continental Avenue, the end of the line. Joe would not realize he was a 911 hero until he made it to the crew room, and was told about the towers collapse.

Mike Cammarta

22-year-old Mike Cammarta, a former Little League World Series participant, left just one last message to his family when he rushed in to the WTC on 9-11: "I am going to the World Trade Center, a plane just hit it. Just tell everyone I am all right." He was stationed at Ladder #11 as a student, hoping to graduate from Fire Academy to carry his Uncles badge and the tradition of his family. He was even to take his uncles shield number, 1138. Throughout all his days, he counted the experience of playing right-field in the Little League World Series at the age of 12 as one of the most fantastic of his life, and on the 5th Anniversary of the 911 attacks, Little League International commemorated him with his uniform number permaneantly affixed to the stadium walls and admittance to the Hall of Excellence of the Peter J. McGovern Little League Museum.
Welles Crowther

A successful NYC equities trader, Welles still found the time to serve his country as a volunteer firefighter, and in the finish, he would give far more time then he ever realized. Still a young man not even yet over his youthful eccentricity of carrying a red bandana, he helped someone to safety who then, wondering who had helped him, had somehow gotten a hold of his mother. His mother sent a picture, and immediately the helper was known to be Welles. Welles himself perished, but the people he helped lived.

Ret. Sargent Major Tony Rose

After his office was nearly taken out by the impact of the plane on the Pentagon, the Sargeant Major, feeling hot and dark like Hell, searched for a way out. Barely finding it, he heard the cries of those still inside, and with a few other survivors, found a flooded utilities that was just cool enough to pry through the wreckage. Working in shifts and having to tunnel their way around fallen electric live wires from the ruined walls, they gradually carried seven survivors to safety, while confronted with the sheer gruesomeness of the attack in the form of the body parts of a small child.

Gary Smiley

There's an old cynical saying that "No good deed goes unpunished," and certainly this maxim has been true for Gary Smiley. One of the most decorated living paramedics of 9/11, Gary Smiley suffered through extensive surgery and medical care to recover from the 9/11 attacks. During this process, he was shortchanged by the Fire Commisioner of NYC during his period in the hospital, not being given full pay and being held back for elite assignments as he recovered from his 9/11 injuries. He has had to face NYC in lawsuits as a reward for his heroism, lawsuits in which Commisoner Salvatore Cassano has claimed, and still claims, he somehow earned his current position. Cassano was responsible, according to His Honor Morgenthau, for ignoring a smoking gun warning that caused the fatal fire at the Deutsche Bank after the towers collapsed.

*APPENDIX - 911 Conspiracy Theories surrounding cell phone usage on flight 93

It is often said that cell phones cannot be used at 10000 feet. However, when looking at the assumptions behind the prediction that the cellular "handshake," could not be carried out, I noticed a few inconsistencies:

1 - Not all of the calls were cellular, some of them were using in-plane phones (including Todd Beamers.) The "handshake" phenomenon may also help explain why Beamer was not able to get through to his wife and kids, but instead ended up on the phone with a business manager for the in-plane phone service.

2 - Only a total of 13 calls out of 33 passengers on board were successful. Considering as nearly all passengers on the plane had cell phones, and most who failed would've tried several times, this seems somewhat consistent.

3 - Somerset County is flat and underpopulated. As a result, their will be fewer cellphone towers for the same area by far. This may also explain why similar phone calls did not occur on the other flights. It may also help explain why the terrorists were not expecting cell calls to be a problem - they may have been thinking like our conspiracy theorists.

As a result, I think we can conclude that the cell calls were in fact valid.

Fast, Furious, and Frightening

2011-08-06T19:58:00.004-04:00

ATF Logo. Public domain work of Federal government.

This is not news. In fact it has been forgotten. It shouldn't be though, which is why I'm bringing it right back up again.

According to Human Events, over 2000 guns were sold, 700 were located after crimes, and only 3 were given tracking devices, and those had bad batteries. While human tracking may or may not have been used, we do know that at least 2 federal agents have been killed in connection with Operation Fast and Furious and that at least 1300 guns have not been located. When compared with the ease of GPS tracking, it is clear that an inferior method, at the very least, was chosen.

The motto of the Mexican drug mafia is "silver or lead," and violence from Northern Mexico has spilled over the border in to the United States many times, most famously with Pancho Villa in the 1920's. Although highly romanticized by many, the violence with Villa led eventually to the burning of Columbus, New Mexico and a punitive expedition.

Narcotics trafficers in America have been known to firebomb houses, kill innocent citizens, despoil the desert and harm private property. They are the complete antithesis of law and order, and all things public spirited. I don't know exactly what the US had in mind when it armed these drug dealers, but being the legitmate government of the American people was not it. This is not something to be forgotten or forgiven, but something that the American people have a duty to hold their government accountable for in every way that they are able.

Man Lost in Missippi

2011-07-22T17:43:00.007-04:00

Roger Kenneth Wilson is missing, most likely somewhere in Missippi or Tennesee but Louisiana, Western Georgia and Alabama are possibilities as well. He was last seen in Memphis, TN, and is not at any mission or jail. Picture used with permission of Holly Brooks of Southaven, MS, who is searching very actively for this man. He was said to be 6'2" and extremely skinny at the time he was last seen, and the hair he had left was borderline red/auburn. He does know how to live in the woods. He had been driven away from his family but his family is now concerned for his safety and well-being. He has depression and severe drug issues. Hollys Facebook here and online search group here.

Roger Kenneth Wilson is the loved stepfather of a Missippi woman with great faith and joy in her heart. Holly loves him for what he once was. Now, however, drugs have taken their toll on the man. He was driven away from her for putting her children through serious issues that I will not specify and only Holly should ever tell, then he found another relative, who also drove him away, and so it went.

Today, Holly knows that he has done many bad things, that "drugs won the war." It was the drugs, and not him, but questions of what is and is not us are all in gray for good reason. Somehow, there is a distinction between what we are and aren't, but there is also what we are becoming.

Holly was motivated to find her father after a homeless man was found dead near where she lived. They checked out the body, and it was not him, but we don't know how much longer this man has, if any time at all, for death in the ordinary sense is not the only danger he faces. He also faces the retrorevision of his own soul.

Sometimes we need to be there for people, and we need to get involved, and sometimes we don't, but it is never true that we are islands. No matter how irrelevant or small you may feel, the reality is that your actions have an effect on others, and through that effect on others, the actions of others. An atomic bomb operates by a single atom, a particle too small to even be imagined, being smashed with a neutron, even smaller, and emitting two neutrons to smash others, eventually working to one of the greatest explosions the world will ever see. One will never see the atoms, but one will see the mushroom cloud.

We ask for your kindness in helping to find this man, and reunite him with his loved ones, before the war with drugs becomes a little more won then it already is. Please contact Holly (links above) with any information you may have.

Politics is Comedy

2011-07-13T16:52:00.005-04:00

The Clown Chili Peppers. Attb: Rick Dikeman at the English Language Wikipedia, license c.c.a.s.a. 3.0 unported.

Any frequent reader of this blog will know that there are few more enthusiastic supporters of the Tea Party then me, but I must give one mild criticism.

It has often been said that in many ways the Tea Party needs to learn. Being a new "organization" (more like "tribe") this is undoubtedbly true, but what precise due they need to learn? If one says "learn to tax people and give bailouts," then surely we have already seen the fruits of these decisions, the very standing on which the Tea Party was organized against the establishment of the Republican Party. Indeed liberals, your prayers against the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration have been answered.

If one says dealing with racism, while there are certainly racists in the Tea Party (and every other party I might add), I challenge you to give any example where a poilcy that could be considered racist was supported simply because it was racist. You will find none, but rather, a plethora of wasteful, ignorant and dangerous policies that undermined American law and order, or laid waste to our federal budget. It seems once again that the "unwashed masses" are more intelligent then our isolated, and steamed in a lost and perverted academia till no nutrition remained, vegetables of elites.

Rather, there is something far more fundamental, far bigger, and far more important at this moment in time that they must learn. If they do not learn it, they will fragment, and unlike a traditional party the Tea Party has no answer for such a fragmentation, all will be lost, and politics as normal will continue.

To understand what and why, let's step back for a minute and look at a great and foolish debate taking place in the tea party today: whether to increase taxes. It's easy enough to see why this debate would happen, and easy to deride the opposition to doing so. As a Texans put it, and what greater pleasure is there in life then hearing Texans speak, "do you honestly think not going to the mall and not using your credit card will pay off your debt?"It's easy enough to dismiss this crowd as toddlers, infants, those who were born yesterday.

Yet they have a very real intuitive fear, and one that is correct. For every dollar saved from the deficit by "Revenue Increases," there is just a little less pressure on congress to end our dangerous habits. Then there is a little more pressure to expand existing government entities and assets to facilitate new ends, possibly even ends with some merit, bringing us to precisely where we are now 4 years later, with less ability to borrow and, thanks to higher tax rates depreciating our economy, less ability to pay off. This is a very valid fear.

Why is it so hard to believe that one thing can be done at one instant and another at another? If you rearranged the lines in a movie, would they neccesarily make any sense? Or would the very point of the film be lost on its viewers?

Sometimes one must hold a gun to the head, must threaten and coerce, especially when one possesses only one house of congress, and has substantial detractors even among its own adopted party in the other. Sometimes one must also rearrange the scene to rearrange the decision. Politics is not a game for straight-talk or fairplay, especially not when dealing with other politicians, and exceptionally stubborn and heartless ones as we've found.

Politics is an art of timing and discretion. If the claim that increasing tax rates is indeed true, there will come a time for it, but that time is not now, especially since government can also raise revenue by selling government assets, such as public land with substantial mineral and oil reserves or quality soil for farming, and that dilapidating spending not only will help balance the deficit, but can alleviate the burden facing businesses with their excess of regulation and paperwork, a burden that currently equals $10,585 per employee for a small business, and close to $8,000 per employee for larger firms. The cost to our federal budget of regulation is $1.75 trillion, or more then the current budget deficit. This is a figure that comes from the Small Business Administration, a entity that the Obama administration has some ability to control and doctor with spinning.

Not only would selling these lands and relieving these costs to business reduce our deficit through spending cuts, but as Senator Marco Rubio recently pointed out, they would also unleash an economic torrent of growth likely far greater then the "10 day reprieve" the tax increases offer. As one can tell, things are not as they once seemed. The "balanced approach" folks really do not have the sense that the mind would conjure for them. We need to cut spending, and any attempt to raise revenue artificially will only slow such a process and damage the economy. Eventually, revenue will be raised - if we do it right, tax increases may not even be neccesary.

Take your turn, wait your time. It may seem hypocritical, but it's a fight we didn't start and we're in it. Know what to say and when, and realize who it empowers and who it humbles. Control your tongue, and let all the chips fall in place, for "there is a season and place for everything under the sun." (King Solomon, translated from book of Ecclesiastes). Don't let haste make waste, rather realize that politics is comedy, and your power is also a grave responsibility.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Selling the UN to Reduce the Deficit

2011-06-27T21:48:00.003-04:00

Sitting on six blocks of top notch Mannhattan riverfront, the UN Headquarters has overseen active attacks on the United States, massive continuing demands in terms of money and prescence from the US treasury, and helped aid and abett organizations, such as the various Sustainability organizations behind Agenda 21, that are impoverishing and ruining the world as we speak with windmills and other stupidity. They continue to embarass and harass not only the United States, but the poor countries of Africa, making irrational demands in terms of notions of "modernity" that are not desirable and maybe not even possible for the so-called "dark continent." They also have stood by and abetted the slandering of George W. Bush during the run up to the Iraq War, claiming, despite every piece of evidence to the contrary, that there was no reason to think Saddam Hussein had weapons. In addition, the IMF and the EU, two other "world government" organizations, have together impoverished 4/5 of the world.

The UN is, frankly, a rat, and an expensive one. Even the tiniest piece of Mannhattan real estate can fetch top dollars and motivate tremendous economic development. We are 1.5 trillion in debt. May I suggest a sale of 6 ideal building sights for skyscrapers?

Outside influences in Christianity, the Maypole, and the Great Dilemma

2011-06-24T10:52:00.008-04:00

Raising a Maypole in Ostra Insjo, Dalarna, Sweden. Work of Axel Pettersson. License c.c.s.a 3.0 Unported

People often wonder what a Christian Humanist is. A Christian Humanist is a true believer in the Great Commandments, and the commission for a truly community-spirited, invidividual-loving, and God-loving Christianity and Christian relationship they represent. The Great Commandments are more then rules or a rephrasing of "If you love me, you'll keep the Commandments," they're a direct statement of the most central part of Gods will. It is with the spirit of these commandments in mind that we address the Great Dilemma.

The Great Dilemma is the reason the Pope is the "Pontifex Maximus," the reason for Christmas trees and Easter Eggs and Santa Claus, and the reason, unfortunately, for a lot of the apprehensions and misunderstandings inherent in Christianity. It is, among other things, a big part of the reason for our notion of Hell, a word taken from heathen faiths, originally spelled Hel, and referring to the Norse Goddess of the Underworld, while the place was called Helheim. It is also the reason why Heretics were once burned at the stake, and power in the Catholic church reached its most unbearable and abusive extremes in the 15th Century. It has also allowed for the cheap commercialization and secularization of Christian holidays, by removing, through pleasant Pre-Christian traditions, the Christian holidays from Christianity, or even Judaism.

But that's just the thing, they are pleasant traditions. And the larger point of most of Pauls letter to the Phillipians is that one shouldn't be too likely to cut people apart on tiny details, while Romans 1 does point to the small grain of truth in the notion that there is some of God in all religions and humanity, though the rest of Romans warns us also of how they seperated themselves from Christ, and why Christ needed to come.

In the later part of Romans, we are warned that these pagans separated themselves over time from Christ, creating portraits of lizards and animals and vile things (roughly paraphrased from the last part of Romans 1), and making themselves wise to negate the truth. And we see, in both Romans and also the human sacrifices and grotesque rituals that they, the real pagans, conducted in real life outside of books and learned truths, they among other things cut themselves away from Grace, heavenly grace, and forgiveness, and Love, the very things Christians today are criticized with cutting themselves away from.

As we isolate ourselves from the real truh of the Gospel, and the Bible, and embrace instead Santa Claus, and Hell as taught by authorities, and Easter Eggs and not what Easter really is, we too cut ourselves off from grace, and come to not worship God, but the vile images of lizards and serpents and animals that pop culture and TV and Sunday School tainted and contaminated with the teachings of self-interested men and all these vile things put before our eyes teach us, and becomes hard, in fact, even to teach the truth, as we have so thoroughly buried our minds in the mirk of our delusions that one cannot even speak the truth without seeming to say something else. 2000 years have not done us well, we have not aged well, and the entire history of the Church speaks to this.

Yet to those who have truly embraced the teachings of Christ and the whole bible as it truly is, the rewards are still great, and the service to humanity is great as well. People like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr, and William Wilberforce, the man who abolished slavery in the British Empire without destroying the Southeastern United States and ruining an entire generation and society doing it, a man who both treaded lightly and struck with the force of all righteousness, show that the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven have not closed, nor has the Kingdom weakened, no matter how weak and corrupt Gods servants have become, the Holy Spirit still speaks with force and conviction, and emboldens those He chooses. The Door has not closed, the Way has not ceased, the Life is not gone, nor will it ever be, for Christ is more powerful then all.

And of the Pagan, yesterday I danced before a Maypole. A pole, with a mast-cross, decked in great vines of ivy and pine, with flowers strung through it, a rooster on the top, and a wreath lain on each side of the mast-cross and from the top, all before the bright mid-day sun, as all of us linked hands and danced many processions, with good will and love and solemn observance of the miracle of spring and life around the great display with songs of rejoicing in the languages of our ancestors. Yes, we were truly a living sacrifice, and with proper dedication and forethought, it can indeed be truly to the Father.

I also remember, waking up on Christmas morning, to presents from my parents, to a day of love, and to a dinner with family before the fire. And on Easter, I remember looking for eggs, adventuring, running faster then all the other kids and demonstrating my youth as I grabbed life for myself. No, these are not bad things to celebrate, but they are misplaced. As we are taught in Ecclesiastes, "[there is] a time to laugh and a time to weep," "a time for all things under the sun," and that time, for this, is on Mayday and the Winter Solstice. I propose the following prayer for Mayday:

"Oh heavenly father,
Who makes the bear rise from its winter slumber,
Who brings forth fields of flowers and gentle rains to nourish the earth,
Who grants all life and death and childbearing,
And looks out for man as the animal of the wood,
We dedicate this pole, a symbol of a fraction of your gift, to you
As an aid to help us understand your great mysteries to the extent that you allow us,
And to celebrate all that you have given us,
And will grant us for however long we shall live,
In thanksgiving we pray. Amen."

We must reclaim Christian holidays for Christ, and we must dedicate Mayday and the Winter Solstice for Father and Spirit more directly. We must understand the limits of the human mind and spirit as we created our spiritual crafts, embolden and grow good lives and good people in our church. "Three in One" does not say much when dealing with fallible human beings who cannot comprehend God, as man cannot.

The solution of the Great Dilemma is an additive solution, a loving one, not a destructive one, and as Paul reminds us in Romans 13 , all that is under heaven exists for a reason, including unjust authorities. Evil is just Good misplaced, rearranged and wrongly so by the taking of the apple from a tree of knowledge that was wrong for man. God did not create Evil, and man cannot create anything, he can only make connections between things that already exist, from the realm of chemistry and engineering, to the realm of politics.

Lastly I should note that Halloween too is a Christian holiday, All Saints Eve, a solemn procession for those that have died and must be remembered, a time to fix grief, atone for sins in the spirit of mortality, and set things right before Christ. Currently it is used to search for candy. That is quite alright for children, but where do the adults fit in, and don't you think children too need to mourn for their dead when those they know have died? I propose that we relocate current trick or treating and other halloween festivities for the current day of the dead, as celebrated in Mexico. Valentines day should be a celebration of what St. Valentine was about, marriage, and festivities related to love, like all fertility, should be held on Mayday. A more fertility inspired festival, closer to the heart of life and lover, may also help create a culture of life and childbearing in our society, helping to fight the evil of abortion in a way that Christ would want, through Love, Hope and Faith, not through the always dirty and destructive business of law. All couples can hold hands around the maypole, as the entire community celebrates its love of each other and the heavenly gift that Life is. Passover, too, can be reestablished, as there is no reason that the deliverance of Gods people should not be celebrated by those dedicated to God.

Therefore, we see the solution of the Great Dilemma, Christianity versus its history and the human condition, and we see it in a spirit of Love, as the Great Commandments would stipulate. All Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost forever. Amen!

The Story of Kenmore

2011-06-23T19:51:00.006-04:00

The City logo of Kenmore, WA

All along the lake, east of Seattle, are mighty hills and muggy swamps, but there was one place in the far north, right where the lake ended, where the hills turned in to a plain. This spot had plentiful timber, and since it was the termination of the lake, and also flat, the first roads built eastward and northward ran through it. Further up the Sammamish River, which runs through it, was a great floodplain, but here, at this one place, the floods did not occur. Instead were great strands of timber, 20 feet in diameter and 300 feet in to the air.

A young McMaster from Kenmore, Ontario came to Seattle in 1889. A month after he got there, the city had burned down, and his future looked bleak. Kenmore, Ontario was in turn named for the Scottish village of Kenmore, on the Loch Tay in the highlands, by a McLaren who came there long before, from Kenmore, Scotland, and always had the Highlands in his blood. McMaster was not willing to throw in the towel, and heard tell of the great virgin timbers of the lakes northern shore, and knew of the roads that crossed there and the flat plains. He also knew of a river that, with the taming of the floodplains, was now deep enough for steamboats, and a canal they were building from the lake to the sea.

Not much later, he started a Shingle Mill at this point on the lake. There were many sawmills around, but shingle mills were less common, and greatly in demand as the population grew. He also built a great log boom, that both helped feed his shingle mill when demand was high, and helped feed sawmills on the lake when demand was low. Though the entire logging operation was abandoned in 1920, the growing community of Kenmore, named by McMaster for his former home, preserved the boom, maintaining it as a fishing and swimming dock for the good of all.

The community also took an abandoned barn, and in 1952, made it in to their first library. They built a school, and roadhouses, and restaurants, and expanded the road. They built parks, great ones that are still around, and preserved a beautiful old Mission style Seminary as part of St. Edwards Park. The road they maintained and expanded is now 522 Highway, a "State Route" that is a major eastward path in to Seattle. The road north, however, now runs further West, though the older road is maintained for local traffic as 527. St. Edwards Park is now a State Park.

In 1946, a swamp in Kenmore, unused for anything for many years, attracted the attention of three high school friends united after World War II. Jack Mines, Reg Collins, and Bob Monroe built a hangar in the swamp, and purchased a single plane, an Aeronca Model K. Over the years, service would increase in both volume and respect, and today, Kenmore Air is one of the largest seaplane operators in the world, and they are still based out of Kenmore, WA. The managerie of planes, dozens upon dozens of them, on the lot by the road is one of the richest sights you'll ever see.

In 1978, a science-based naturopathy university named Bastyr built itself in Kenmores southern outskirts. The university was started as extensive new legislation at both the state and federal levels had made times for natural medicine turbulent. With the National College of Naturopathic Medicines departure to Portland, Washington state legislators were threatening to suspend all licensing of naturopathic professionals as no college any longer existed in the state. A series of determined NCNM graduates understood that a school firmly built on scientific principles would not only save licensure in Washington, but grow respect for naturopathy nationwide. In the words of Dr. Mitchell, one of its founding fathers, "It was built on the best visions of what a really high-quality naturopathic institution could be." Far from being a stereotype, Bastyr sought full accredation and a scientific basis, and in my personal experience, also created one of the most helpful and down-to-earth professional climates I have ever found anywhere.

For many years they fared well with no city government, growing in population, wealth and serviceability, though they were recognized by the post office as an address, but in 1990, a bill by the Washington Legislature known as the "Growth Management Act" created development committees. These development committees told Kenmore that they would either start a city government, annex in to a neighbor, or let the county decide. The GMA also created a massive bureaucracy for the rezoning of land that leaves abandoned malls unused for decades and creates a major shortage of land for the kind of manufacturing and industry that any state but Washington would love to have. The GMA even, according to a farmer from Stanwood I spoke to, forces paperwork to be filed and consultation with bureaucracy to be made before any field larger then 10 acres can be tilled or planted. By 1998, against the will of its citizens, Kenmore was a "city," though it had been the size, stature and utility of a city for many years.

Despite the fact that Kenmore was built by individuals doing their thing and giving, voluntarily, to the communty, the State had to slip their greedy hands in to it. They forced Kenmore to do the "right thing" and waste tax dollars that never needed to be spent hiring people who never needed to be hired. And all in the interest of "Growth Management."

Sources: (In order of usage)

The public displays at Log Boom Park, Kenmore, WA

Kenmore Air Harbor Inc., "history"

Bastyr University, "At A Glance: Founding of Bastyr University"

Reagan Dunn, son of former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn (R-8, till 2006), with regards to Totem Lake Mall and other underdeveloped or abandoned commercial properties. (GMA)

A farmer from Stanwood, WA with approximately 100 acres of vegetable growing land (GMA)

Image: Public Domain, official logo of city of Kenmore, click here for link.

The Vain Hubris of Sustainability

2011-06-17T21:54:00.003-04:00

Whenever anyone talks about sustainability, there are three basic facts that need to be understood:

1 - Nothing you build will last forever.

2 - There's no such thing as something for nothing.

3 - Throughout history, industrial economies have changed from one resource to another, usually without so much as a headline in the newspaper.

Since number three is the fact that is most surprising to many, I will begin with it. 200 years ago, houses and buildings were constructed almost exclusively from wood and brick. In those days, efficient methods for making both were common, but steel took days to manufacture, and had to be made from already well processed pure iron. Both the fuel and time needs were tremendous to conduct two separate chemical processes each taking days. Further, the quantities made were whatever you could fit in a single crucible.

Bessemer discovered a fast process for making steel in 1855, so fast in fact that it only took 10-20 minutes. The result was the first steel buildings and ships. With Steel, the size of structures increased tremendously, and the skyscraper, along with its steel elevator, became not only a possibility but something neccesary to provide commercial space for the fast growing cities. It also allowed for the internal combustion engine, whose fine moving parts cannot be made effectively from other materials, and with it the car and the airplane.

The Bessemer process could remove many impurities from the original iron ore, and together with the Blast Furnace, silion and silicates, manganese and permanganates, carbon, and sulfur could all be effectively removed. The one thing it could not effectively remove, however, was phosphate, so for the process to work, low-phosphate ores had to be used.

Unfortunately the world began running out of low-phosphate ores in the 1950's, so what did the invisible hand "do"? It introduced two new processes. The first was the Basic Oxygen Process, which took slightly longer (30-40 minutes) but could remove phosphate from the molten steel and had tighter control over the chemistry, allowing new alloys such as Boron Steel to be produced for the first time, and Stainless Steel (also known as Chromium Steel) to be produced inexpensively, and the exact carbon content to be dictated to a hundredth of a percent. The cost is a little higher, but you get higher quality with it. The second was the Electric Arc Process, which for inexpensive steel needs would recycle scrap metal effectively. Between these two, quality improved, new resources were used, and the world did not end, while the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur would set a record for the tallest building in the world a few decades later.

This is not the only example. When strikes and labor politics made the price of coal more expensive, Americans switched to heating with oil and natural gas. Before this, Europeans had switched from firewood to coal as the great forests of Europe were gradually axed away during the Middle Ages, but those castles, those great Cathedrals, and all the splendor of medieval art and music was made with fireplaces burning wood, and those were still around when the wood went away, and before then, it was far easier to go outside to axe a tree then to go underground and risk your neck mining for coal.

No power plant or road we build today is going to last 60 years, so why are we thinking in terms of 600? We should only consider what power sources will still be available 60 years from now when building that plant, and the free market has a device for that too, it's called a futures market. Investors buy up resources now to sell them later at a higher prices, creating a clean and smooth and flat distribution of resources when the market is sufficiently large and well informed, and they do try to be both for their own self-interest. And if people really will benefit from more expense now to avoid expense later (e.g. flourescents), they will buy them, but they probably don't, as they are already in debt and one dollar not repaid now will be a dollar repaid with interest later.

Lastly, and addressing number two, whenever something is used, something is lost, and that includes the materials to build solar panels, and the materials used to make the materials to make solar panels, as plastics and long complex molecules are almost always involved. There is always chemistry involved, and always wasteage, and the free market is a far better evaluator of what the true costs of that wastage is then some government bureaucrat whose never had a job outside of bureaucracy, or scientist specifically trained to only see from the perspective of his field. There is more to cost then electricity and fuel - even things like transportation, labor, land, and the space and finances lost from holding inventory are significant. The reality is that sustainability is not sustainable, as nothing is and we will see when the climate changes and the wind no longer blows where it did, or we run out of some chemical required in the manufacture of solar panels, or even great dust and ash from a supervolcano eruption block the sun. Everything must shift with its right and proper season, and this includes all sources of energy. Sustainability is a vain and impossible notion.

Transportation and Time

2011-06-16T13:21:00.005-04:00

Public domain, courtesy of Jorge Barrios

At a certain time during the Dark Ages, there were no cities in most of Europe, but just thousands of farms, spread across the clearings and meadows of Europe, and old Roman roads built long ago, crisscrossing between them. At the junctions of these roads, there might be ruins, that would go unnoticed as would whatever tiny, insignificant traffic crossed through them. The ports didn't operate in Europe, even as far away as Italy and Turkey, because of Viking raids, except in a few areas like Ireland, Danegild, and Normandy where the Norse set up there own, and the regions became wealthy as a consequence. In those days, all was done out of the manor house, and trade was very limited. Manors were extremely, bitterly poor, and highly self-sufficient, and noble lords had extreme authority and martial responsibility.

But then technology, bit by bit, began to improve. Castles allowed for the defense of harbors, opening the ports and the seas. Modern quarying developed, and with it a supply of marble. Trade with the Islamic empire brought spices and coffee to the new ports, while increases in population and the size and number of manor houses brought about an ecological disaster, the destruction of Europes forests, and with it the need to travel ever further for lumber and its replacements, clay brick and coal.

At the intersections of roads, you have the fastest route on average to anywhere. While going down the road your travel time to one particular place would decrease, for a few limited industrial enterprises that is indeed good enough, your travel time to all the other places those roads go to will increase so much more. Further, more customers and workers and material will cross through the intersection then anywhere else. Lodges, markets and taverns would set themselves up first, and then manufacturers and stables and warehouses would set up near the market, and with all of these little brick houses would sprout along every alleyway and available road as workers too chose the fastest transportation for their life.

Eventually, highly specialized businesses, utilizing the economic base of the city, would set up as well. These would include law offices, accountants, computers (in that day meaning people who would crunch numbers for you), moneylenders, and craftspeople like blacksmiths serving both sword and plowshare. Church and Government too would notice the city, and the workers and citizens serveable through it, setting up bureaucracy and courthouses, which in the dark ages didn't exist, along with fortresses, great cathedrals, universities and libraries, and comissioning artists and clockmakers to celebrate their authority in great squares and plazas. Criminals too would benefit from the economic base of the city, utilizing its many highways, services and people, as would entertainers.

The reality is that cities are a giant device for the conservation of time, by quickening transportation from one place to another, and the conservation of energy, by decreasing the distance that freight and people must travel to get to its customers and clients. Cities, in the end, are the product of their transportation, and the customers, employers, industry and resources they afford within a reasonable distance. If a city loses this, it has nothing, and is only an overpriced piece of land, but it is because of the ability to save people time, and as a result, allow them to live more, and do more, that people will pay 300 times as much as the same quanity of land in the country to own it. In the words of Ali from Burlesque, when talking about why she left Iowa, "I looked around and realized that I didn't see anyone I wanted to be." You can be more and do more in a city because where you go to do what you want to do is reachable in reasonable time.

Now in the recent past, people would live sixty miles out of the city and commute to wherever it was they worked. When people lived and worked in one place their entire lives, that made sense, but in a world where people change jobs on average every 2 years, it makes sense to be as close to as many employers as possible, and since industrial employers will opt for cheaper land along whatever railroad line leads to their suppliers, while extremely common businesses (e.g. drugstores) will opt for more minor, inexpensive junctions that they have the capacity to serve, not all of them will be in the big city. As we go in to the future, we find the employees act more like businesspeople, and the need for speed (and with it, the city) becomes greater then ever.

Some cities, like Seattle, are still stuck in the past imagining that transportation is just a quality of life issue, something we can tinker around with in social engineering and throw immesaurable costs on to, but across the lake from Seattle, Bellevue, on I-405, the eastern bypass of I-5, and the third city eastward on I-90, has expanded and improved its interstates, with its own money. The result has been a building boom, dozens of new towers, 40 stories tall, going up and new businesses moving in. Meanwhile, Seattle has lost its largest bank, Washington Mutual, to the financial slowdown, and no one seems quite set to replace it. But they still continue to toy with forcing people on to trains that zig zag at 35 mph instead of heading straight where they go. Voters constantly complain about transportation expense, but what they don't realize is that transportation is the heart and soul of their city life, is what allows them the opportunities they have.

Abolish Property Tax Now!

2011-04-08T13:24:00.005-04:00

Thames Tow Boat Company, New London, CT, 1975. Source: Wikimedia, public domain.

Imagine you are a rancher, on 10,000 acres, about what is needed to have a profitable Cattle ranch. You and your fathers have lived on this land for many generations, essentially since there were Europeans in the area. You don't have any debt, and you wake up every morning to a Montana sunrise against the rockies before a hard day of work.

Unfortunately, a bunch of wealthy Los Angelinos find out about these beautiful Montana sunrises, and move in to megahouses just next door. Your property values go through the roof. The government forces you to sell, as otherwise you can't pay your taxes. You never really owned the land to begin with.

Then we cry and scream about poor people who can take out loans that they can never pay off, but if those poor peoples property values ever went up, they would be driven off their land anyways, and at least they KNOW how much the bank will charge them (or think they know.) But why should they have a balanced checkbook? What benefit do they get? Why should they work hard and save when nothing truly qualifies you as an owner.

And then there are city councils that limit what you can do with your land, telling you you can't raise chickens, you can't raise horses, you can only have two dogs. People next to you decide that because they want high property values, they can tell you what to do with YOUR land. I think if George Washington saw modern suburbia, he would be perfectly ashamed.

And no, I'm not a property owner myself. I live in a 15 by 15 foot room that I rent, and I am offended and ashamed that my country, which call itself the "land of the free, home of the brave" destroys freedom and cowardly avoids productive activity in the name of land values. This is cowardice, and slavery, both.

These behaviors finally culminated in the Kelo decision. The city of New London, a long eclipsed New England city that was once a powerhouse of industry, decided it was going to make "hard choices" to improve its economy. Naturally, these choices were made with other peoples land. They took, by eminent domain, land from many owners, including Kelo, who challenged the constitutionality of this decision. By a narrow majority, the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional for the "public use" of reselling to a developer who will make "better purpose" of the land. In a twist of irony, the taken lands are now unused and fenced off, a decaying brownsfield, and I cannot help but think that the wrath of God is at work.

But then there's practicality. Supporters will argue that property taxes are neccesary for the funding of city coffers, but in reality property taxes are a very unreliable source of revenue that have impoverished far more cities then they have made wealthy. The desolation of the inner cities in the 1950's occurred because of wealthy whites fleeing the city, causing land values to fall rapidly. The city then raised property taxes, driving out business, and impoverishing it further. And it is not high property values that define a city. Rather, a city is defined by being the best place for business, a place to buy and sell, manufacture, import and export, a distribution center is the essence of a city, so why not tax THAT? The overall tax burden need not increase, in fact a thorough review of city budgets in the current political climate will likely lead to cuts.

In reality, property taxes serve no one but the wealthy attempting to eliminate the "riff raff" of their town, and those with a vested interest in delegitimizing the right to property. It violates the natural and legitimate right of property, harms the poor by providing subpar, underfunded city services, and encourages a mentality that can lead only to tyranny.

Megafeature: A Summary of the Stings

2011-03-15T12:33:00.005-04:00

Source Photobucket

One of the more remarkable innovations of the T.E.A. party has been the use of "sting" operations. These sting operations involve a hapless victim that the teamen in question feel is being disingenuous, and a disguise of a figure that they feel he or she will be honest to. Sometimes the plot itself is so absurd that its practicality serves as a lesson regardless of the result, and then even more absurdly, it is vindicated. Such an example was the sting operation against a ground manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic, who has since been fired:

Planned Parenthood Sting Video

The most disturbing part of this video comes at timemark 8:38, when the manager informs a pimp how to avoid being detected by the law, how to avoid arrest, so that he and his enslaved Columbian girls, scared and far from home, can continue violating the states prostitution law and abort the babies thus produced. The most troubling aspect, however, is the callous and unthinking way she talks to one of the most evil kinds of villains that can exist: a slaver, and not just a slaver, but one who violates females through forced prostitution.

Then there's the issue of government waste. For this we get the NPR sting, a sting against an organization that is supposedly a national radio station of the United States but has long been suspected of bias in favor of progressives. The NPR sting demonstrated (sort of, well get to that in a minute) numerous bigoted statements, from comparing conservative Christians to the Taliban, to hating upon gun owners and the federal standards enforced upon NPR that they do a more then good enough job bending already:

This sting is not without controversy, in fact it may be without support. Sources from all across the political spectrum, as far left as the Huffington Post and as far right as the Blaze (Glenn Becks newspaper/amalgamator) have criticized O'Keefes video for its extremely unethical and dishonest editing techniques. Many, in fact, the left-wing Brudowsky praised Glenn Beck for his extremely professional, objective, and powerful dissection of the "NPR Sting," and I am among many whose respect for Mr. Beck, an icon of the Tea Party and the right in general, has greatly increased. While Becks criticism is in general the most thorough and useful to read through, there is one particular quote from the Huffington Post criticism that I find especially potent:

While Schiller does say the Republican Party has been "hijacked" by the tea party and Christian evangelicals -- and is "fanatically involved in people's personal lives" -- it is evident in the full tape that he is not giving his own view but rather quoting two influential Republicans, according to reporter Folkenflik. Schiller does not challenge those assertions, but they are not his.

O'Keefe is also famous for his ACORN stings, including one where, with his girlfriend, he attempted (and nearly did, with extensive assistance offered) to acquire starting funds for a prostitution house that he would pay back on interest that ACORN could use for political campaigns. Before this, he attempted to have Lucky Charms removed from the Rutgers cafeteria because it is "offensive to his Irish heritage" and apparently caught a conversation with the dining chiefs on tape exposing the absurdity of the situation. He stated that he is "still in [his] bunker producing more videos. We're releasing another video in San Diego right now. I'm focusing on doing what I do best." Although congress looked to punish ACORN with a defunding bill, a Federal Court has ruled that such actions would be the exclusive remedy of the Judicial Branch. This is not the first time recently that we have seen our governments dormant constitutional protections awoken from their sleep, and everyone is watching as the American people push for reform and government officials pit "ambition against ambition" in a classic display of democratic, Madisonian magic.

The organization Life Dynamics dialed up 800 calls to Planned Parenthood stating that they needed an abortion for a 13-year-old to cover up impregnation by her 22-year-old boyfriend. This is illegal in all 50 states, but Planned Parenthood did not report any of these incidences. Just for the record, I actually support the actions of Planned Parenthood in this regard, as concealing a pregnancy is, at least in my mind, a good (if not the only good) reason for abortion as it is a case where putting up the baby for adoption is simply not good enough. This said, I know that many disagree with this sentiment, and technically it is against the (stupid) law, which requires all suspected cases of abuse to be reported to authorities by medical professionals.

And then finally, and greatest of all, is ClimateGate, the sting operation that may have fundamentally altered global environmental politics, and that the Democrat Party at large insists on ignoring the ramifications of. The product of a hacker, 1000 emails among staff at the UK's Climate Research Unit have been made public. Although FactCheck.org, in its examination of ClimateGate, disagrees that it disproves anthropogenic global warming, a conclusion a self-interested Saudi came to, it does agree that the emails show scientists "sometimes being rude, dismissive, insular, or even behaving like jerks" while the public has rightly responded to attitudes and interpersonal aggression, such as declaring global warming "settled science" along with the climategate emails, clearly not conducive to good science. While the ClimateGate emails may or may not (I have not read them myself) show the science to be false, they do show the scientists to be false, and with the alternative sources offered all being government entities (NOAA and NASA), we the public are left with little more then a few university degrees on which to trust theories that could fundamentally alter our lives.

Unfortunately, and we see this clearly with ClimateGate, named for the much lesser WaterGate, "operations" like these can only have a true impact (where the much better funded and marketed "Supersize Me!" failed) when a cultural context exists to support them.

To create such, we have a play with many characters. There's an arugula growing, elite talking, Harvard Law-Chicago Cesspool Obama intent on breaking the budget with spending in excess of even Bush. There's an irrepressible lady from California and gentleman from Nevada who seem intent on shattering any popular or political movement against them. There's a lightbulb ban, an "individual mandate" (thou must purchase something, approved by thine bureaucratic overlords, if thou seekest to breathe) and big shot corporations receiving welfare while "99ers" go cold and hungry in the street. There's government destroying cars to make people buy more and a liberal establishment that wants congress to pass a bill so they can read what's in them. There's an American people who do not even understand all the "Hope" and "Change" that their initially lauded leader has brought.

In short, political overreach, and too much game playing, manipulation and intrigue for an American people who know they will be the ones to pay the bill.

Responding to the controversy, Slate commisioned blogger Weigel held a twitter conversation with one of the publishers of the original, edited, NPR Sting video. The exchange is revealing. The actual conversation reveals an NPR chief quoting a top donor for the Republican Party as saying he voted for Obama because he's scared of the xenophobic, gun-toting, racist post-Obama Party. When Weigel challenges him on this account, the publisher responds: "No, it's really not. Go ahead and try to make the argument Schiller isn't CLEARLY agreeing with them. Go ahead. Moron."

To the publishers credit, the actual tone expressed in the original quote does indicate, at the very least, a fear that the Kingmaker may be right. And a Kingmaker is generally held in high esteem. Also to the publishers credit, while this "edit" is not good journalism, username "simon templar" is not a professional journalist, and clearly feels very overwhelmed as this tweet reveals: "nobody likes an access journalist/tweeter. we'll get you the info/emails you asked for eventually, I'm sure." It is also worth noting that every controversial remark attributed, falsely or otherwise, to the NPR head in the sting, is commonly found among liberals on the internet and in IRL, including, of course, the "gun-toting nutjobs" line that is argued over in this article.

"simon templar" is a common man, pushed in to uncommon work. He is, in fact, out of his league, but right now, who IS in their league?

Which leads me to my next point, what's become irrelevant. While teamen with camcorders flood the internet with "stings," documentaries by top Hollywood directors like Oliver Stone (e.g. "W") go totally unwatched and unremembered. I can't even remember the last time a story about a Hollywood star, a bigshot CEO, or a Harvard professor made the papers. The only "elites" who still seem to make papers, in fact, are the politicians we're all scared of and a few big media demagogues, like Krugman and O'Reilly, who are little more then highly paid whipping boys for the common citizens. In the words of Scripture: "the last shall be first, and the first shall be last."

And then there's the Middle East. While here at home we break our own elite peacefully, using the full well-oiled machinery of our democracy and a thousand years of Western legal wisdom, the streets of Benghazi are soaked in blood. The alleys of Bahrain lay covered in shell casings, and aircraft streak over the Mediterranean carrying every sort of explosive payload. In Egypt, the army, a traditional symbol of tyranny and distrust, is helping to provide for what the Arab world doesn't have, insisting on all parties respecting each other and disarming those who would hurt the people. That Army has so much to be proud of, and I know I would be proud to carry an Egyptian rifle right now. In this great moment to be alive, the long oppressed show the irrepressible, stubborn, freedom-loving and faithful spirit of humanity. They also almost exactly mirror the tea party, using many of the same methods, and the sheer tinyness of the media involved makes it nearly impossible for the government to stop the word. The government is stopping army ants with an elephant gun.

And then there's Japan, where ordinary men and women, Japanese and others, have volunteered their time by the truckload to rebuild and service the survivors*, and where the nations eyes lay flatly and squarely pointed towards the power plant workers risking their lives to bring a reactor under control. "She said in an entry on social networking site Mixi that her boyfriend, who also works at the plant, had tearfully told her "you go ahead to safety", before she evacuated in a company car." (Hindustan Times)

And in Britain, flash mobs have become a common occurence.

We find a world suspiciously popular and self-driven, where the elites find themselves unneeded and out of touch. This is the world where Obama is trying to force huge, coercive government actions and sweeping reforms led by, you guessed it, the elites. This is the world that Obama, half Harvard and half machine politician, an outdated relic from a time period that mostly ended in 1910, finds himself in. The past meets the future, my friends, and usually, the future wins.

*Source note: You will need to browse to the end of the article to find this information. Here's a quote:

Fumio and her daughter were among the roughly 600 people (men, women and children of all ages) who had taken shelter on the gymnasium's wood floor, beneath the basketball hoops and nets. Evacuees were offered food, such as warm milk and rice — some of which had been taken from a home economics class — and a place to sleep. A flat-panel television was broadcasting news of the unfolding catastrophe, which by then was focused on the potential meltdown of reactors within the Fukushima nuclear plants.

Collectivism Doesn't Exist - The Thomas Friedman Story

2011-03-02T08:45:00.007-05:00

300 degree panorama from the summit of Diedamskopf Schoppernau, Bohringer Frederich, c.c.a.s.a 2.0

I have to hand it to Thomas Friedman. Although much of the time his editorials are total partisan fluff, I believe there is a particular contribution he has made to the wealth of human knowledge that could well survive a thousand years: his splendid analysis of the human group and nation. In his magnum opus, "The World is Flat," which it has been many years since I read, he takes the world economy from both the angle of the nation, the producer, and the self-interested customer. Now, just recently, he has returned to what he is truly good at, with his recent editorial about Egypt.

In this editorial, he outlines Google Earth, a black president with Islamic last name, the rapid spread of information by way of the web, the ostentatious televised Beijing Olympics and a Palestinian populist as major influences on Middle East revolts. The bigger message is the notion of individual human beings connected to a plethora of information that teaches them, and causes them to change their decisions.

See, Friedman doesn't engage in abstractions. He doesn't know what a nation is, because he was never so overtaught as to ignore what his eyes and mind were telling him. Instead, looking at the businesses and the governments and the popular uprisings, he sees a pair of green eyes and a dark face, with a story of decades all his own, a family to support, a life to defend, and shame to carry, he sees a tall, confident businessman at the top of his game entrusted with performing well for his board of directors, he sees a top member of the Communist Party in China and a young child with his entire life ahead of him and an old man with his entire life behind him.

As the youngest child of a Minneapolis ballbearing manufacturing vice president and a navy mother in the 1950's, Friedman was always a bit strange. At a time when gender roles were preset, obligations were expected and life was supposed to be peaceful and sweet, Tom instead had a mother who alternated homemaking, bookkeeping, bridge championships, and telling stories about benchpressing on Navy destroyers, and a father who manufactured things that people don't buy in stores and don't usually know are important or in high demand. (The name of the company was "United Bearing.")

Thomas himself wanted to be a professional golfer, though this was not quite so unusual in the days of Bobby Jones and televised bridge, only to discover a love of journalism and the Middle East. What's more, he discovered a Journalism teacher who did a splendid job of keeping him out of Journalism college. She taught him well enough that he "never needed, or [took], another course in journalism since." As Thomas rightly points out, "Hattie was a woman who believed that the secret for success in life was getting the fundamentals right. And boy, she pounded the fundamentals of journalism into her students -- not simply how to write a lead or accurately transcribe a quote, but, more important, how to comport yourself in a professional way and to always do quality work." Now there's a lesson for all of us! Why not, instead of being Grammar Nazis and focusing on all sorts of ridiculous conventions and overtaught nonsense, we actually try to do our jobs? Still, she was no slouch: "Hattie was the toughest teacher I ever had." No one utters those words without meaning them.

Thomas, in college, took a major normally reserved for indecisive spoiled children and football players, and actually made good with it! He earned a BA in "Mediterranean Studies," and probably set a record for most classes towards a BA in Mediterranean Studies taken without falling asleep on a desk. He followed this up with a truly serious M.Phil. in "Middle Eastern Studies" from Oxford, then got a UPI job as a general assignment reporter in London, on Fleet Street. In London, he married an Economist, from Iowa, whose father built an asset-trading company that invested primarily in shopping malls. UPI later sent him to Beirut, where he would play golf next to a Palestinian military firing range.

From strange lives come important realizations, and when you live like Friedman, how can you possibly see people as groups? How can you ever again stereotype Navy sailors, Bookkeepers and Housewives when your mother was all three? How can you dismiss a business as unimportant when your father worked for a business once dismissed that way? Especially when, as it turns out, ball bearings are actually useful for a great many things...

Not surprisingly, many people are upset at Friedman, and the reason always seems to be the same. They drone on and on about corrupt officials, Halliburton, that administration from which only evil can be expected et cetera and so on! Every time, it's a group, a bunch of people, rather then one person making decisions. It's thoughts made long ago, against the efficient and effective clarity of living in the now. It's giving up on people, and in the end, life. We can't expect to achieve anything because the people are evil, and yet, not long ago, someone very different from Friedman suggested a way out:

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition" -James Madison

Even if someone intends on doing wrong, you can use their actions against them. Thus, you are still an individual, as other people themselves can be used as well as helpful. And I'm not even looking yet at the potential of teaching a person something they didn't know. So many people, however, teach us that you are not an individual, but that some kind of group or category exists, when in all my life, I have spotted many strange things but have never once seen a collective!

Thus, Friedman looks only at individuals, and leaves the stereotypes at home. Sometimes it really is that simple to create something truly great, a single good idea, a single good method. Stephen Marshall was write to label Friedman the scribe of the new revolution. The remarkable thing, however, is just how little Friedman had to do. Think of how short Friedmans career is, and subtract away how much of it he has spent writing shameful propaganda, and we see just how absurd the thing is that Friedman has rebelled against.

As an aside, I love High Tories, even though I will never be one. Why, you ask? Because they get it. They understand that there is no such thing as a collective, only individualisms with hierarchy, and individualisms without it, and any number of gray areas in between. You can say you're part of something bigger, but what THING is it? It can only be a person you owe fealty to, as a person is all that exists.

A Hippie and Me

2011-02-09T15:48:00.007-05:00

Walden Pond, MA, where Henry David Thoreau spent two years of his life living as naturally as possible. Work of QuarterCircleS, license: c.c.a.s.a 2.5 gen

One of the great joys of riding Greyhound is all the interesting people you meet along the way.

On my way from Atlanta to Seattle, I believe the Missouri portion of the route, I met a man who lives his principles every day. A radical environmentalist, not of the political sort but the real kind, he was on his way to a commune that his friend had set up in the mountains of Colorado. There they import nearly nothing, live almost totally off the land, and recycle every last thing they can.

They use no electricity and have no modern communications except a single old telegraph line to the ranger station reserved for emergencies. There are no roads near where they live, and they wake up every morning to a Rocky Mountain sunrise and a day of their own maintenance. He has been living this way for 40 years now, and is extremely satisfied with his life, where he eats the fruit of his own hands and sleeps under the roof of his own construction. He works FOR no employer, but rather works WITH his friends. He has little material wealth, but lots of heart, and a high quality of life.

As you probably know by now, I am not a radical environmentalist. Still, of this kind I can very much appreciate as I suspect anyone can who has an open mind. We talked of many things, about how you can catch rainwater on your roof, clean it, and drink it, about how vegetables made at home are better then the ones you buy at the store (which my family, many of whose members still grow their own vegetables, knows very much for certain to be true) and sensible policies towards hunting. We talked about business ideas, and how to bring recycling and good living to the people of the cities.

I brought up recycling human urine, a relatively easy process and one that can render high quality drinking water. He thought it was a great idea, for people like me. Unfortunately its greatest likely customer, California, probably wouldn't agree. They would think of it as icky, even if it makes sense and gives them cleaner, safer water then their own pipes, which it does, as there is not one ounce of open soil in a closed, above ground machine.

Here's another idea: theoretically, you can put nuclear waste in a highly shielded barrel, and then drop it in a large pool of seawater. The result will be that as the barrel absorbs the radiation, it will heat to a tremendous temperature, and then turn the seawater in to steam. The salt and impurities and all uncleanness will be left behind and you will have as close to pure water as can be acquired anywhere deposited in a pool by gravity, just like the earths own rain. This would provide a great practical use for nuclear waste, and lower the price of water throughout the world while saving the earths aquifers and ecosystems from drainage and tampering by urban water systems.

But California wouldn't do that either.

He thought it was interesting to meet someone on the opposite side of the spectrum from him, someone who works with society rather then removing oneself from it. Unlike the hypocritical SUV environmentalists of California, he had no anger, no venom, no dislike, and no insecurity. He knew he was doing what he was able to do, and he needn't do more. The peace he had inside of himself grew outward, and came to include anyone in his presence.

Perhaps the environmental advantages of environmental legislation are overwhelmed by the spiritual malaise they create. No law, no order, no head of state made my friend become a hippie, he did it out of his own heart, and he desired none, but the people of California grow old in a place where every aspect of economic action is dictated by government, where as a utilities company, I don't have the option of saving aquifers by using nuclear waste to desalinize seawater, because the government has a law against that. I don't have the option to recycle my own urine, because I don't have a license for that, and even if I did I couldn't mass produce the machine so I couldn't afford it. I don't have the option of creating a commune near San Simeon, because the land, though cheap, is off-limits to all development heavier then ranching. I can't collect my seawater, because that would be against zoning laws. I can't raise pigs and chickens in my backyard, because that would be uncivilized. Indeed, we are too civilized, far too civilized perhaps even to live.

One of the unsung virtues of the free market is that it actually creates hippies. This is something Jefferson understood as he confronted a form of big government far more minor then todays in the name of a peaceful agrarianism. Men in black ties and suits, unless they are volunteers, must be forced and manufactured, and business does not have the ability to do this by itself. Train systems only become irreparable when an AMTRAK takes over their routes.

The Amish built primitivist towns and small farms in the Midwest centuries before bureaucracy, but bureaucracy today creates Monsanto, Cargill, and other huge agricultural companies that have replaced the small family farmer with legions of Mexican, often illegal, immigrants, who do not even know the language of the land, have no real home or place to call their own, raise their children in a constant, hateful flux, and are entitled to almost none of the fruit of their labors. When they grow too old, they are illegal, so no one can take care of them, and they are illegal because the INS is too big. Monsanto also once patented a new biogenetically engineered seed, and when the wind carried it to a neighboring farm, sued the owner for copyright infringement. The name of that case was Monsanto vs. Schmeiser, a textbook example of the law being right, and the morality being wrong.

The reality is that no matter how we choose to live, like my hippie, we must take responsibility for our lives. If that means recycling our urine to support our urban resources and having factories by our houses, we must take this as the just price for living so well in other ways. The people of California had once seen their standard of living rise, and now that they have stifled their commerce, destroyed their car factories, ruined their peoples creativity, frozen their once dynamic cities and neighborhoods, and plundered their farmland, they demand to keep what they had when they were useful. Not only is this hypocrisy a damnable disgrace, and deserves the very wrath of God, but its consequences are seen in the spirit of the people, now a small, petty people of soft, worthless disagreements, judgmental notions of class, paranoia and hate. I suspect very strongly that these people don't live full lives, and their crime rate indicates a toxic level of personal brokenness. Just like my hippie, we must live with our cities maintained and our nation growing, or leave, with our way of living behind us, to somewhere we can live. Our tenacity is an illusion created by our prosperity, and our prosperity lasts only as long as we work to maintain it.

Out West Newspaper

2011-01-31T15:59:00.008-05:00

WyrdLight-McCallum www.wyrdlight.eu, license: c.c.a.s.a 2.5-gen

Have you ever wondered where to buy a wooden Indian? Do you want to know how the border between US and Canada was made, or what crazy German (hint) thought of it? Do you like puns made by extremely cheesy Western small business owners? Is your mind dirty with jokes about outhouses? Do you just love photographs of wide open roads?

If so, have we got a treat for you! "Out West was a quarterly "on-the-road" newspaper founded in 1987 by roving editor/reporter Chuck Woodbury, who spent much of the following 13 years exploring the two-lane highways of the American West in an RV searching for stories about whatever he found interesting." No longer published, having printed its last issue in 2000 with a final subscription base of 10,000, this gem of the open road is now almost totally available online for free, along with links to resources about RV's, RV camps, a bookstore in an RV, and lots of crazy odd pictures that once showed up in the magazine.

I found this magazine by mistake when searching for a good short history of the Pig War, the almost conflict (in some ways analogous to what is currently happening in Egypt, but a bit more toned down) that ended with Kaiser Wilheim I proclaiming an official, general, easily recognizable border between America and British possessions in North America. In finding it, the pictures and content immediately made me miss home, and the wide open spaces of Washington State along with the humor and charm of its people. In particular, no where else in the world would a electric company put up a sign saying:

"Let us remove your shorts"

Or would you find a business that specializes in shipping Wooden Indians!

The eccentricities and hopeful love that the writer, Chuck Woodbury, showcased are great attributes of the great land called simply the West, and though many people have cried and sung about its passing away, really, it's still there. It's changed a bit, the industries and jobs are different, and in a few places open space has been lost, but overall, the West is still live and well.

We'd recommend this great old paper to anyone!

Chuck Woodbury still runs a blog of short, about bi-monthly posts out of rvtravel.com. Our Prayers are with him over recent loss, and that he may stay as lively and curious as he has always been and, with promise, will always be. He still travels and lives life with wonder as he did in his Out West Newspaper days.

Is Anyone from Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, or Yemen Reading This?

2011-01-28T16:47:00.008-05:00

If they are, I think I have something to say

A Contemporary Military Map of the battle of RI. Library of Congress ID g3772n.ar300400. Public Domain.

There's always a tendency to speak only of current examples, but the great democracies of the Western world had centuries of, often very bloody, legal and political history leading to their current status, a history that the Islamic world does not have. They also have a culture that held certain things as sacred, certain non-biblical things in fact, that the Islamic world did not hold to.

Instead, we see in the Islamic world a great desire to keep Islam in the government, even as separation of church and state is necessary, and a great desire for a morality and justice that Feudalism long ago hardened Europes heart against. We see in the Islamic world a desire at once for freedom and order, at once for individual and group dignity, and we see fights within society that must be resolved.

As such, I wanted to share the story of a former democracy, one that was absorbed in to America in 1776, its traditions and system destroyed in favor of the federal constitution. A democracy created by a pastor, a Puritan pastor, with freedom of conscience for all and a work ethic that made its small, rocky-soiled state an early center of industry and commerce in America. That democracy is Providence Plantations.

The pastors name was Roger Williams. He grew up the son of a wise and just merchant and trader, who gave to the poor in life and in his will. His home parish in London was the sight of great religious tumult, including the burning at stake of many puritan martyrs who died for nothing more then their belief in God. Graduating from Cambridge with a degree in theology and great life experience, Roger Williams headed across the seas.

He may well have been driven out, as he was already at that time quite controversial, and in 1630 he began his mission to the puritans of New England, only to find just as much controversy in America. Among the places he preached the longest and loudest was the town of Salem, which if it had fully received him, might have averted its horrendous infamy for burning withces at stake 60 years later. Salem denied him, and thus Salem carried its shame, and still does to this day.

Salem denied him so thoroughly that he was about to be deported back to England, at which time he fled southwest, to the lands of the Narragansett Indians. There he befriended many, and was given the gift of land. He named it Providence, in honor and thanks towards God. In later years, the colony would repay the kindness of the Narragansett by housing Quakers and Jews fleeing form their own persecution, thus demonstrating the true refuge, forgiveness, justice and charity of Christ.

In 1643 he headed back to England to acquire a charter for his colony. The toes he stepped on long ago forgotten, the English granted it to him, and he incorporated three towns, Providence the capital, Newport, and Portsmouth. He also, on the way there, wrote a book on the Indians he knew, titled "Key into the Languages of America," granting him respect on his authority for perhaps the first time in his life.

He was not unknown to commerce, starting afterwards a Indian trading post at Cocumscussoc, but when the needs of his colony called him, he gave it up, selling it likely at a loss in 1651 in order to head back to England to have his bastion of freedoms charter confirmed. Thus he showed, at once, a skill with Mammon, and a willingness to disregard it for what was more important. He actually failed, but his fellow John Clarke succeeded, gaining a full and correct charter by 1663, while he handled important family business that held him back until 1654.

Unfortunately King Phillips War (1675) did see his colony burned to the ground, but he also lived to see it rebuilt. He stayed a preacher always, and kept his colony a free refuge always, open to all religious beliefs, and all religious debate. The example he set and the sheep he led would become the tolerant, but comparatively pious, religious traditions of modern America, even though his democracy was later swallowed up.

Samuel Slater, in 1790, built the first successful cotton textile mill in America at Blackstone River. Manufacturing would grow more rapidly in Rhode Island then almost any other American colony. The people of Rhode Island kept that free spirit alive, striking against unfair merchants in 1783 and refusing to participate in the war of 1812, and did away with all slavery in its limits voluntarily under the State Emancipation Act of 1784. Thus they let their religion, true religion (Isaiah 51), guide them as their hearts and law were free!

Sources:

http://www.rogerwilliams.org/biography.htm

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rigenweb/history.html

Bring in the Creditors!

2011-01-27T11:20:00.008-05:00

Photobucket

One of the greatest problems with government worker unions is the lack of a check on power. In private business, unions can never extort too much out of customers, shareholders, and owners because the company must at least break even to continue paying them, but in government, as just happened with the 66% increase in income tax in Illinois, the ability to tax and extort the people allows union power to grow unchecked. That's why Hailing from Georgia is giving the following proposal of Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich two thumbs up:

First, as with municipal bankruptcy, it would have to be completely voluntary. This means that neither the federal government nor state creditors could push an unwilling state into bankruptcy, no matter how catastrophic the state's finances may be, as this would violate the U.S. Constitution's protection for a state's sovereign immunity.

Second, as with municipal bankruptcy, a new bankruptcy law would allow states in default or in danger of default to reorganize their finances free from their union contractual obligations. In such a reorganization, a state could propose to terminate some, all or none of its government employee union contracts and establish new compensation rates, work rules, etc. The new law could also allow states an opportunity to reform their bloated, broken and underfunded pension systems for current and future workers. The lucrative pay and benefits packages that government employee unions have received from obliging politicians over the years are perhaps the most significant hurdles for many states trying to restore fiscal health.

Third, the new law should allow for the restructuring of a state's debt and other contractual obligations. In a voluntary bankruptcy scenario, states, like municipalities, will have every incentive to file a reorganization plan that protects state bondholder claims and their ultimate recovery. States will evaluate their future access to bond markets and their prospective borrowing rates as they formulate the optimal restructuring plan. (LA Times)

Now states, like private industry, will have a genuine check on union power - the ability to eradicate their arrangements if negotiations bring them to the point of bankruptcy! And just like in private bankruptcy, it can be challenged in court if states are abusing the system. Not state courts though...

This is probably not going to work for the Federal Government, which has no singular higher authority to turn to for such dispute resolution, and so we recommend that this motion be accompanied by a BAN on federal unionization.

This conclusion is from the facts. The facts show two things: 1) unions in government work every bit as bad in practice as they do in economic theory, as the recent affairs of California and Greece attest to, and 2) municipal bankruptcy, which has been an option for cities, counties, and towns since the 1930's, has helped many a municipality, from NYC in 1975* to Orange County in 1994, to fix their affairs. In fact, in Orange county, the restructuring was so successful that they were able to repay 100% of the principal without raising taxes a dime, while instituting useful reforms to prevent a rehash of the events (ERisk):

The new Orange County investment policy statement establishes safety of principal, and liquidity, as the primary objectives of the fund, with yield as a secondary objective. More specifically it prohibits borrowing for investment purposes (ie, leverage), reverse repurchase agreements, most kinds of structured notes (such as inverse floaters) and derivatives such as options. The same document bans the treasury oversight committee and other designated employees from receiving gifts, and obliges them to disclose economic interests and conflicts of interest. The county treasurer now has to submit monthly reports to the investors and other key county officers that contain sufficient information to permit an informed outside reader to evaluate the performance of the investment programme.

Now it is true that for munie investors, who will now see their risk in investment substantially increased, this isn't 100% a good deal. However, this too in the end is probably a good thing, as it makes selling government debt much more difficult, requiring higher interest, and will thus discourage state governments from running their bills so high to begin with in the future. Sorry munies, but we have bigger responsibilities then investors who, whether they knew it or not, volunteered to take a chance. It's time to bring in the creditors, and with them, bankruptcy court!

*Note: NYC did not actually declare bankruptcy. Rather, mayor Abraham Beame, used the threat of it to coaxe a overextended teachers union to invest 150 million of its pension funds in municipal bonds. He then acquire a large loan from the federal government. Not long after, Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani began confronting NYC's debt problems, and largely solved them, and the days of over extension by NYC municipal unions were largely over for decades. (NY Times)

Free Letter from K.L. Jamison

2011-01-26T23:44:00.005-05:00

The following letter, according to my friend Shane Seckler, is available to anyone under the following conditions: 1) the letter is credited to its author, the honorable and good K.L. Jamison, Attorney at Law of 28 years experience, specializing in self-defense and weapons, state of Missouri, 2) the letter is unaltered and a notice like this one is provided with it. Any variance from these terms will result in the right to publish it being waived.

Considering how many hungry lawfirms would love to swallow you whole for losing the right to publish this, I suggest you don't.

IT'S JUST THE LAW: Police Protection Law

by K.L. Jamison

The law allows a policeman to command a citizen to come to his aid. The reverse is not true. In 1849, Jonathan W. Pottle was held captive and forced to pay $2,500 for his release. Mr. Pottle thought that this was unreasonable because the sheriff was present during the extortion and refused to assist him. As a loyal American, Mr. Pottle sued over this failure to act, and lost. In an 1855 decision the United States Supreme Court perfunctorily recited the facts, and ruled that there is no right to police protection and no right to sue over its lack.

Since that decision, there has been no right to police protection recognized in the United States. It could have been worse. More recently, women in a Washington D.C. home were raped and tortured while other women, hidden upstairs, twice called for help. Twice officers drove past the house without investigating. The hidden women were then discovered and tortured over a fourteen hour period. They sued. The court was sympathetic, but ruled there was no cause of action.

The states have the same philosophy. In a Missouri case, an outraged community sued their sheriff demanding that the court order him to perform his duty. The requested order was to force the sheriff to close a facility that did not measure up to community standards; or at least those members of the loyal American community that filed lawsuits. The court refused to issue the order. A long chain of federal and state cases state that police have a responsibility to protect the community as a whole, but no duty to protect any individual within that whole. It may help to visualize the metaphysics of the philosophy to realize that the point is to prevent victims of crime from suing the police.

The courts have allowed that the police must protect persons with a "special relationship" to the police. Such relationships are so special as to be nearly extinct. In my early years at the bar, the courts found special relationships in cases involving drunk drivers and protective orders. Federal courts have put an end to these special relationships. On May 16, 2006, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in McCloskey v Mueller III, finding that the FBI had no duty to arrest a violent criminal. The criminal in question, Gary Lee Sampson, had called the FBI and advised them that he wanted to surrender on an armed robbery warrant. The FBI did not oblige.

Reacting badly to the perceived snub, Mr. Sampson murdered three people. Their estates sued, but the court ruled that the FBI had no duty to the victims.

Protective orders in adult abuse cases typically require police action to protect the subject. However, the Supreme Court has put an end to this fuzzy thinking. In Town of Castle Rock v Gonzales, Jessica Gonzales had obtained a protective order against her husband. The order contained a "Notice to Law Enforcement Officials" which stated:

You shall use every reasonable means to enforce this restraining order. You shall arrest, or . . . seek a warrant for the arrest of the restrained person when . . . the restrained person has violated or attempted to violate any provision of this order . . ."

The husband violated the order by kidnapping the couple's three children. Ms. Gonzales notified the police repeatedly, alerting them to the protective order and even the location of her husband. Mr. Gonzales subsequently murdered the children. The Court ruled that the explicit language of the order did not require the police to do anything and provided no cause of action.

There is not even the right to have the police patrol one's neighborhood. In 1972, Kansas City, Missouri conducted a patrol experiment to discover the impact of vehicle patrols on crime rates. Some neighborhoods received increased patrols, some the same level, some none at all. The neighborhoods involved were not informed they were part of a test, much less given a choice as to which group they could join. The experimenters were surprised to find that vehicle patrols made no difference in crime rates or citizen satisfaction. A later withdrawal of patrols was less popular. On June 1, 1996, drug dealers in the area of 27th and Benton in Kansas City became outraged at the arrest of one of their guild and rioted. Police units were withdrawn from the area in order to allow emotions to burn themselves out. While doubtless good operational practice, it was a trifle hard on the citizens at 27th and Benton. The rioters burned a passing car and attacked the owner.

It might have been worse. During the April 1980 riots in Miami, police headquarters was under siege by the rioters. It could be a great deal worse. National Guard troops assigned to guard airports after 9-11 carried unloaded weapons in many cases. It appears that some commanders were more concerned about a John Wayne mentality among their troops than they were about terrorists in the airport. It might have been a very great deal worse. In 1919, the Boston police went on strike for 102 days and Home Guard units formed for WW I had to be called in.

One can never be certain of police response. There are regular "blackouts" in Kansas City when no police officer is available for any call. When they are available, there is no guarantee they can be called. The Kansas City emergency communications system is notorious for dead spots, areas where it functions badly or not at all. Even the Plaza, a fashionable shopping district less than five miles from the communications building, has numerous dead spots endangering police, firefighters, and citizens.

A Kansas City police officer, while vainly radioing for backup, was shot and wounded by a drug dealer. Officers were a minute away, but the radio crackled and hummed ineffectively, telling the assailant that the officer was alone and vulnerable. The officer sued the radio system builders. It is possible to sue such outside parties, but not possible to sue the police.

When police are available and can be called, they may not respond. A New York City woman pressed a silent alarm when an armed robber entered her business. The alarm company called 911; the operator, however, garbled the name of the business. The lady was murdered while the authorities put it down as a false alarm. After her funeral, the company received a letter threatening no response if there were further such alarms.

A Kansas City businessman was alerted to a burglary by his alarm company. He went to his business, expecting to be met by the police, only to find himself pursuing the burglar alone. The alarm company had called 911, but the dispatcher refused to send police officers because the business' alarm permit had expired. In fact, the alarm permit had not expired. A permit system intended to limit false alarms has instead been used to limit police protection.

The ACLU has provided video cameras to residents of a crime-ridden St. Louis neighborhood. The cameras are not to provide evidence of crime, but to document police brutality. While police brutality does occur, the effort is not likely to speed officers to calls in the neighborhood.

The problem of "de-policing" has arisen since the Cincinnati riots of 2000. The term describes a demoralized police force which no longer initiates action out of fear of criticism, police discipline, civil suits, and even criminal charges. In the last twenty years, "community policing" has relied on aggressive enforcement of seemingly minor laws on the theory that lack of enforcement indicates a tolerance of serious crime. With criminals filing bogus criminal charges against aggressive officers, and wild charges of racism (some both wild and true) many officers are reluctant to exercise the requisite aggression.

When the system functions, and an officer is available, and an officer responds, it may still not be enough. One department's policy is to wait for backup when responding to domestic violence reports. This sensible practice had a woman stabbed to death while a police officer sat in his car three doors away, waiting for backup.

Police response is directly related to police contact. This contact is tied to cell phone coverage and the 911 system. Cell phone coverage can be eccentric and dependent on the reliability of electronic devices. Even today, not all of Missouri is covered by the 911 system, and there is no map of the places that are not covered (for those who like surprises). Some places have the equipment to locate a 911 call from a cell phone to within 75 yards, but most can only narrow it down to the nearest cell phone tower. A Missouri cell phone user can dial *55 and be linked to a Highway Patrol headquarters, but not necessarily the nearest headquarters.

Police are recruited from "Type A" aggressive personalities. They want to rescue people and charge into danger; it is their nature. However, they are ruled by bureaucrats and politicians both in and out of uniform. If these rulers decide that a person or persons shall not receive police protection, there is no recourse. One federal court has proclaimed that "there is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen." Fortunately, there is a constitutional right to the means to defend ourselves.

Kevin L. Jamison is an attorney in the Kansas City Missouri area concentrating in the area of weapons and self-defense.

How Egypt can thwart the inevitable

2011-01-26T11:50:00.007-05:00

Sherif9282, c.c. s.a. 3.0 unported

"[El Bradei] said a transitional period should take place before the nation prepared for an election." -The Washington Post

This is a disastorously naive sentiment, and frankly must be stopped! Eritrea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a multitude of other nations all claimed that they needed "time for things to settle down" before elections could be held, the result was elites with power gradually corroding and destroying the system set out to dry too long, and in the case of Eritrea declaring a permanent state of emergency. Right now, it needs to be recognized that no matter what Egypt does, 1) there will be problems, 2) there will be people, like that spokesman for the Islamic Brotherhood, who have a vested interest in screwing things up.

The longer you insist on "settling" is one more day for the elites of the past to ruin the prospects of the future. So how do you get around this problem? The same way you prevent a navy ship from sinking when it's been hit.

It's called compartmentalization, allow one portion of the ship to get filled with water without the rest of it filling up. Egypt CANNOT be a national government, at least not yet. I may not know too much about Egypt, but I know enough to know that, no matter what the situation, that idea can only end in dictatorship when in the hands of the evil, satanic men who lay in wait in every nation for their moment to steal and destroy. For when Egypt is national, only one compartment need fill up for all of it to go under!

Egypt should be run as locally as possible. City and county level in smaller areas, neighborhood level in Cairo and Alexandria. NO Egyptian government, for the moment, should be bigger then 100,000. 100,000 is not worth the trouble of the Islamic "Brotherhood", but 79 million certainly is! If a few 100,000 strong units fall, the rest can react, and the worst that can happen is a small local conflict that progresses towards a great resolution of peace, dignity, and freedom, but if all of Egypt falls all will end up right where they started, and the sacrifices of the brave will be in total vain.

A compartmentalized Egypt is an Egypt of the right scale, cooperation, and economic interest to gradually bring its problem to a resolution before the evil ones reach their seats. A unified Egypt is a big, slow, cumbersome target. Don't ever forget that.

Politics in Quotes

2011-01-24T14:52:00.008-05:00

With so much dirt and horse handicapping in the news, and maybe even a little here, I wanted to take a moment to show politicians for who they really are, and I find no better vehicle for this then their most insightful quotes, and especially those insightful about themselves. These quotes were extracted from various places over the internet, primarily BrainyQuote but a few others as well, and I hope you'll learn a thing or two about how people who agree with you and disagree with you come to their conclusions.

Most of the politicians quoted here are current, but a handful of quotes from previous generations, and especially Ronald Reagan, Malcom X and LBJ, are provided as well due to the continuing impact of these figures and their political heirs:

"One thing about the Senate, it is not the most efficient organization." -John McCain

"You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” -Rahm Emmanuel

"I respect people who feel things passionately. I do. But when someone is a judge, that is not what they should bring to the bench. It is not really passion, except in rare instances, that serves the bench well. It is, rather, an ability to understand the law and follow it." -Charles Schumer

"Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them." -Ronald Reagan

"I didn’t come here to be partisan, I didn’t come here to be bipartisan..." -Nancy Pelosi

"After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land." -Barack Obama

"I sat next to [Sarah Palin] once, thought she was beautiful, and I think she's very happy in Alaska, and I hope she'll stay there." -Barbara Bush

"A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made." -Sarah Palin

"Change is not a destination, just as hope is not a strategy." -Rudy Giuliani

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, `You are free to compete with an the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." -Lyndon B. Johnson

"I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man's problem just to avoid violence." -Malcom X

"Faith crosses every border and touches every heart in every nation. " -George W. Bush

"A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about." -Newt Gingrich

"She wants a new California, I want the California of my forebears." -Jerry Brown

"Blunt? Direct? . . . maybe you might say honest and refreshing. Maybe we can see that in your paper tomorrow." -Chris Christie

Guest Post - Roy Sanders is Magic (and other discoveries at the CHoA Autism Conference)

2011-01-15T15:42:00.005-05:00

Yet another guest post from our good friend Walt Guthrie on the "social sciences." Enjoy!

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I wasn't expecting much from this year's CHoA Autism Confernce that was held last Saturday.
Boy, was I surprised.
Who knew that Roy Sanders had magical powers?

But I'll get to that.
Let's take the events of the conference in chronological order.

First up was Catherine Rice, a behaviorist from the CDC, who was there to give us the obligatory What-Is-Autism? opening presentation.
The talk actually touched more on issues of classification than anything else I have seen so far in these types of events. In the course of her presentation, she inadvertently raised a couple of interesting points. First, until 1980, the DSM classified autism as a type of schizophrenia.
Now here's a question (one that I didn't actually ask): In 1979, WAS autism actually a type of schizophrenia and in 1981 it WASN'T schizophrenia? The implication from Rice, of course, was that this is an example of how far the understanding of autism has come. But, as my numerous public questions to "experts" make clear, the classification of autism, even today, is divorced completely from empirical evidence. James McPartland, in my questioning of him, admitted that the use of the word "disorder" in the classification of ASDs was purely definitional.
If autism, or any word, is only whatever a designated authority structure says it is, then that's what it is. If autism is defined as schizophrenia, then it's schizophrenia. And if it's defined as a disorder, then it's a disorder. And if it's defined as two parts from this column of symptoms and three parts from that column, then that is what you have.
If you believe that the evidence points to the moon being made of cheese, then upon arriving on it, you may be forced to admit that no, the moon is not made of cheese. If you DEFINE the Moon as being made of cheese, then upon discovering that the orb revolving around our planet is actually composed of a different substance, you may be forced to admit that it is not, in actuality, the Moon.
If autism,as defined, is different from autism as experienced, then it's pragmatic utility as a useful term, even for the "science" of behaviorism, is questionable indeed.
Which was brought more into focus by Rice's second tidbit. She declared that there are those with autistic traits who are not counted as having an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. She compared it as the difference between neuroses and psychoses but then didn't really touch on it again.Yet, given how much of her presentation was related to doing counts of "ASD" cases in the general populace and whether or not the rate of autism is rising, this would seem to be highly pertinent Let's follow this line of reasoning. All autism is a disorder (thus ASD). Some people have autistic traits but, they are not disordered. So now, at least according to Rices' brief explanation, we find out that, a little bit of autism equals no autism at all.
Now, why not the easier explanation of: some people have autism and they're fine with it? Is it because that interpretation would be injurious to the autistic population? Or would the real victim of such an interpretation be the behaviorist money train for whom every diagnosis is a ka-ching?
I asked Rice, what the methodological procedure was for labeling the entire autistic spectrum as disordered (taking into account that she doesn't consider autistic-lites as part of the spectrum). It was at this point that Roy Sanders, the Medical Director of Marcus popped in to shut me off.
Hmm.

Next up was Felissa Goldsmith, a child psychiatrist from Marcus
Dr. Goldsmith treats a PowerPoint presentation like a teleprompter. And that's not a compliment.
There was little new here. However, there was such an underlying contempt for autistic kids in her talk that I had to check with Linda later to confirm that it wasn't just me picking up that vibe.
To give just the most egregious example: Goldsmith suggested more than once that parents should be encouraged to mourn their children's autism like a death. And to do this on special occasions like birthdays and Christmas. This easily was the most sickening thing I've been exposed to all week. ("Daddy will be down in a moment, Timmy. He's mourning the child he wanted that you'll never be.") This is the advice you'd expect to come from a monster and I said as much.
I asked Sanders, if this was the official policy of the Marcus Center. Boos from the audience. He curtly dismissed the question as inappropriate.
Well, it's not like I was the one who brought it up.

Dr. Michael Morrier, from the Emory Autism Center, gave a somewhat uneven presentation on ABA that ended up focusing on how his people do it over there. I want to say some good things somewhere and it might as well be here. As I told Morrier after the presentation, he is the least offensive behaviorist I have ever encountered. When asked about his center's use of aversives, he replied that they don't use any.
Giving Morrier the benefit of the doubt, if I was forced to send a child anywhere for the application of ABA, Morrier would probably be my choice.
Still, even if he seemed more of an actual human being than any other behaviorist that I have ever personally met, he still was, after all, a behaviorist. At one point, talking about instilling eye contact as a habit in children, he observed that one could be TOO successful. If children make eye contact all the time they become creepy staring machines. And Morrier noted that regular run-of-the-mill kids don't make eye contact all the time either. Instead, they do it 63% of the time. (Or something like that number, I neglected to make a note of his actual percentages and all the figures that follow in this paragraph are approximations of his actual numbers.) Morrier was quite explicit that the goal was to get the autistic kids to make eye contact at EXACTLY the same percentage of the time as normal kids. He even talked about making up the gap (as if this were some sort of missile crisis from the 1960s) between the two groups so that children who begin training at age three are 14 percentage points behind in eye contact percentages and those that begin at age 4 are 28% behind.
Morrier never felt the need to explain why a random sampling of non-autistic kid's eye contact percentages (or any other behavior) should serve as the golden mean against which all similar autistic behavior should be measured. There was no suggestion that it might be possible that regular kids might be indulging in too much eye contact and perhaps should receive some therapy to tone it down a bit.
There was no evidence presented that, having trained children to achieve the same percentage of eye contact to non-eye contact, that these children were indeed receiving the same benefits from this activity. Presumably, eye contact is a skill that delivers information to those engaging in it and that the everyday children doing it were themselves benefiting from the activity.
Certainly a question that you might think should be asked is: do autistic children, trained to make eye contact, receive the same benefits as regular children naturally engaged in the same activity? Or are they merely being trained to pretend that they are not autistic? A previous speaker at the AAC made a big deal about how his research has shown that those on the spectrum tend to gain their information about people from studying mouths rather than eyes. Assuming that this is indeed the case, and that all these babies haven't had laser pointers slapped on their heads for nothing, then wouldn't you want to know if forcing a child to shift his primary attention from mouth to eyes will be accompanied by an increasing ability to make use of this information? Or, will the child be left in a worse position, forced to concentrate on areas of the face he is less equipped to easily decipher?

Finally it was Sanders turn.
During his presentation, Sanders literally sat on his hands and continuously kicked out his legs and pointed his feet which might have been adorable if he was a shy, pretty girl in a sundress instead a self-conscious middle-aged introvert seemingly hyper-aware of his own poor public speaking skills.
Sanders attempted to use his own personal situation to illuminate what parents in the audience would face and the things they should do to prepare for raising a child on the autistic spectrum. And, as might be expected, it was the same old, tired checklist, although this time it was wrapped in a droning awkward wallow of self-pity and look-at-me-I'm-a-martyr-for-raising-an-autistic-child self aggrandizement.
At the conclusion of his talk, I asked the question why, in the two years of this particular conference, which seems to be aimed squarely at the parents of autistic children, that they had not chosen to include a single adult or teenager who was actually on the spectrum. Someone who might be able to explain to the parents what their own children were actually experiencing.
Sanders was dismissive of this question as well.
I then asked why, with all the usual suspects that he was recommending parents consult, he had not included actual people on the autistic spectrum who could possibly contribute a valuable understanding as to why their children thought and acted as they did.
His response was that not all people who claim to be on the spectrum actually are.
Well, THAT'S awfully cryptic, Roy.
His meaning became clear soon enough, right after the meeting. And it was at this point that I discovered that Roy Sanders' has magical powers. For he revealed to me, much to my surprise, that I am not on the autistic spectrum.
Wait a minute, I hear some of you saying. Don't you have to take a bunch of intricate expensive tests and pay a bunch of money to get an autistic diagnosis? Well, yeah. That's what I thought. A major part of this whole four hour plus drone-a-thon I had just finished sitting through was about the importance of getting special testing. Nobody said anything about just dropping Roy Sanders into the room and having him magically deduce it.
But his magic didn't end there. He had an even more dazzling trick up his sleeve.
It seems, rather than being on the spectrum I'm a "schizo" something-something-something. I'm afraid I didn't catch the full diagnosis. DSM labels are like your kid's Pokemon monsters. What grown-up with a life really has the time to keep up with them all? But I invite Roy to publicly post his diagnosis to this group so that I might be properly discredited as an autistic advocate in a public forum.
This later part was all relayed to me as he walked briskly to his car, making so little eye contact with me that he practically called out for a session of ABA and Christmas day parental mourning.
I'm sure you can imagine my internal dialogue:
"Huh? What? What are you doing? You can't walk away now after dropping that on me! I'm going to need counseling. YEARS of therapy! Preferably behavioral because that's science! I need to come to terms with this diagnosis! This changes my entire life! I need to know that there's hope for me and that I can live with this schizo-whatever-whatever and still have hope for a happy and productive life!"
Perhaps I'm being unfair. After all, was not the magical diagnosis enough, and, in his quick retreat, he sure seemed like he had some place he needed to be. Perhaps, and I'm only speculating here, Saturday is the day of the week he reserves for mourning his own adopted child's autism.
And, of course, declaring me off the spectrum was probably an easy call. After all, if I am on the spectrum, it's not like Sanders or the Marcus Center are in a position to make a buck off of it.

In reality, his is the game pseudo-scientists play all the time, employing the magical intuitive powers that their credentials supposedly convey to conveniently discredit their adversaries.
Sanders was explicit that if I continue to pursue matters as I have that I will soon find myself barred from meetings such as this one. How much easier that will be if he is in a position to use his special magical insight to claim that his critic doesn't have standing.

I have spent years now arguing just how untenable the behaviorists' and their allies position are. I have shown you how they can't answer the simplest of questions.
Sanders, being the stupid man that he is, thinks that if he bars me from the meetings that he will have won. If it happens it will instead be a complete and total vindication for myself. I have, since my early days in Bob Morris' group, argued that you can't do business with these people. Nonetheless, in the time since then, I have treated them as the scientists I know them not to be. I have asked them to justify their uses of simple words they use everyday like "disorder" and those from our community who have attended these meetings have seen their complete inability to do so. What more do I need to do to show their essential fraudulent nature?
When I am barred (and i think it is a matter of when rather than if) I will have demonstrated, once and for all and for everyone here in the autistic community to see, that the behaviorists and their allies are unwilling to engage the autistic community in any form of real dialogue or debate that does not at first begin with a servile acknowledgment of their superior knowledge and authority in all matters pertaining to us.

I was asked, after the meeting, why it was that I couldn't be nicer. Bob Morris was nice. And they repaid his niceness by treating him with contempt and running the clock out on him.
The people charged with fixing us, hate us. Loathe us. Talk about us as tragedy, a collection of deficits and disorders. They encourage parents to MOURN when their children are identified as us. They think the best that we can ever be is a crude approximation of them. They compare us to animals. They compare us to AIDS. They compare us to cancer. They compare us to death.
And in doing all this they enrich themselves.

The time for nice, from me, or anyone, is past.

Way, way past.

Walt Guthrie

Nihilism and Love

2011-01-11T11:24:00.006-05:00

I've been away for the past few weeks, travelling Greyhound and seeing family. This article is partially about Loughner, partially about me, and partially about God.

This may sound bizarre, but I think, to a very small degree, I can empathize with Loughner.

Loughners obsession with Giffords, according to his friend Tierney and Mother Jones, had almost nothing to do with any political movement. In fact, Loughner himself asked Giffords "what is government if words have no meaning?" When she inadequately answered his question, he became very angry at her, often calling her a "fake" in the presence of his good friend Tierney.

Loughner was mostly a loner, living largely by himself. Thus, he tended to encounter the worse side of people, the side that wants to control and push away. He also never really be He himself was a control freak, even keeping a dream journal to look for hints in how to control his mind, which he had faith in as a source of another reality he could conquer for himself. His obsession with words indicate a kind of politicization in its strictest meaning, but not the one we would be familiar with, rather the kind of politicization one would find in office politics or academic politics, the politicization of someone with no ideology and a lot of lust for power. In his safe, according to the AP, was found the name Giffords, next to his signature.

Why do I say I may empathize with him? After encountering someone ironically very similar to many profiles of Loughner, academic, obsessive, paranoid, and having a hard time with a Greyhound bus company where the employees take priviliges paying customers are not entitled to, and being told I wasn't humble enough, and being isolated from nearly everyone, I contemplated a killing spree, just because I felt, after 48 hours on a bus run by a company that had me totally under their control and didn't even permit me to drink alcohol or cuss or be five minutes late for the bus when I'm getting food but finds it quite reasonable to not keep a parts shed for when the windshield motors break down in Montana, like a total slave, and wanted something, anything, for myself. Everyone around me was rude, vicious, and would hurt me over anything. If I got in to an argument with one of these powder kegs, I would be kicked off the bus for making noise. I thought of bombing Greyhound especially, just to put them out of business. Eventually my desire for the blood for others turned to a desire for the blood of myself, when we came to a canyon out in North Dakota for a rest stop, and I looked down and contemplated jumping.

What stopped me from jumping? The thought of my mother crying. What stopped me from contemplating further a killing spree? The thought of my parents shamed. I felt like a marked man, having such horrible, capital thoughts, thoughts of actions that can bring shame to not only me but my loved ones, of such actions that both can and should lead a person to death, and also how easy then it seemed for a person to be totally disposable and hated, and for a long time I cried silently. I called my father, and that made me feel better, but still, the shame of having such an awful thought, the fear of such thoughts, and the realization of just how pointless people suddenly seemed at all levels, combined with an already stressed psyche, brought me nearly to suicide.

Later on, we encountered the little small town of Alexandria, Minnesota. We were only there for ten minutes, but a lady helped me when my coffee cup exploded, the driver kidded me around about my fear that someone would steal my laptop, and overall the warmth and openness touched my heart. I also heard a story, at the register, of a man from Tennessee who was traveling to Seattle by Greyhound and ended up being so sick and tired of the bus that he got off it, and is still living in Alexandria! And that's when I realized just how valuable people were, how complicated, loving, faithful, interesting and all other things people can really be, and why they would be so valued in the eyes of God. "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot." (Matthew 5: 13, NIV)

In addition, soon after one of the people who made me feel bad got his! That made me feel even better.

But back to Loughner, whose name could be pronounced "loner" in some languages, he was a very nihilistic man. "If you call me a terrorist then the argument to call me a terrorist is Ad hominem." -Loughner. In High School he engaged in drinking nearly to the point of death, and smoked marijuana nearly every day while talking to friends about conspiracy theories. He believed in very little. He was very atheist, and believed people were essentially sheep herded by government. Not only did he believe that God didn't exist, he didn't even believe the world existed. He didn't like guns until he finally wanted to use them. He apparently did volunteer time at a Book Festival, but his political diatribes were highly incoherent, and his obsession was always with control and meaning. He believed in nothing, and a little rudeness from Gifford was all it took.

Loughner had no one, and he saw only one side of people. According to neighbors and the AP, he "kept to himself and was often seen walking his dog, almost always wearing a hooded sweat shirt and listening to his iPod." He loved nothing but control. And how could he love more? His view of what was important was so small, so limited, so, in fact, meaningless. "The question [to Giffords] was classic Jared: confrontational, nonsensical and obsessed with how words create reality." -Two friends of Loughner and AP.

People have meaning, and are beautiful even though they are also somewhat evil in their actions and thoughts, God looks after even Cain (Genesis 4:15), and soon Loughner will get to find out just how much meaning words can have when the judge passes sentence against him. He will get to see how meaningful government can really be, and maybe some fine day the meaning of that beautiful little girl he shot dead will haunt him in his sleep when he can no longer control his dreams and his "second reality" is filled with images of his tragic and evil past, and he finds all around him that he lives entirely in what he has already done.

We've Gone Too Far

2010-12-14T23:56:00.006-05:00

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

"In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Does it sound like a dream? It shouldn't. It's the first 10 amendments of your constitution, the Bill of Rights from the American Constitution, the Federal Constitution, the limits and powers of your supposedly constitutional federal government. When read like this, it's pretty clear what it says, but we never read it like this. We read the amendments by themselves, and thus we don't get it. We don't. We zero on one little piece, and pretend that the rest doesn't exist.

I realized this when I was looking at the Ninth Amendment (the ninth paragraph above) just now. It seemed so vague, so out there, so pecuiliar and unclear, but it talked about an "enumeration," which may not technically be a pronoun, but might as well be. It occurred to me that, while they may have been passed as 10 amendments, it is ONE bill of rights.

And then something else occurred to me. This amendment, this ninth amendment, is a direct response to exactly what the current "health care reform" is trying to do. There are people out there who want you to think that the founding fathers were playing a game of Simon Says, that because they didn't specifically say that you have right not to buy something, that the powers of "regulating commerce" could extend to every walk of your life, that the constitution is naught but a game of trick questions like those on an IQ exam. But the Founding Fathers, here's what they said:

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

That is what you call a rebuttal, a rebuke.

When we cross the line of deciding that we may decide what people buy, not to support something else that they own as in the case of environmental requirements against power plant owners or even accident insurance for car owners, but simply because they, the government, have "the power to regulate commerce," which to them means all your money, property and labor, not any freedom of yours, not any individuality of yours, just the all important interstate commerce. No life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for you, just the Commerce Clause. What will come next? What will come next? Will they order us to spend money at the mall during deflation? Will they order you to buy stocks and bonds when the market tanks to avoid "panic?" Will they force people to buy calculators to make checkout lines run faster? Will they force consumption at failing shops and restaurants? Will they make us burn our money and delete our bank accounts to counter inflation?

And when will it end? What happens when they decide that a baby cannot be born because a genetic defect would hurt the economy through the cost of caring for them?

We've gone too far. We need a new amendment. We need to strike down the commerce clause. Obviously the courts cannot be trusted to understand the intricacies of our own bill of rights, their sacred duty, so we must give them something plainer, something easier, something that they'll get, something that doesn't require the intelligence they appear to lack. Here's an idea:

"In the realm of commerce, the Federal Government may regulate only transportation and only those actively transporting goods or state agencies and for-profit businesses that deal directly with them and in no manner indirect."

This has gone too far. We are about to cross the line to unlimited government power, in the name of money, money, sad worthless money, not life, not happiness, not freedom or even decency, but money.

Our Current Murder Laws

2010-12-11T15:23:00.005-05:00

Farmland of Bentley, North Dakota. Image by Andrew Filer, license cc 2.0 generic

One of the most critical of all laws is trespassing. Without it, property means nothing, hard work means nothing, and no one has any security at all, not even in their own home. It also protects something deeper and more sacred, a kind of respect that only can come from such borders and barriers.

One of the most sacred human rituals is the funeral. Yet, there are people out there who would let silly politics get in the way of the most important events in anyones life, one of the few things that truly demonstrate how valuable an individual human being is. There are people out there who see it as a moment to talk, to intrude, to threaten, to intimidate, and to steal from families and loved ones their chance to say goodbye.

It has long been accepted that when you trespass on somebodies land, you have the right to kill them, so when you trespass on somebodies very life and soul, shouldn't you have the same right? It may not be your land permaneantly, but as you're laying the body to rest, its your land, and your time, your last time together, the time to say goodbye, and why should you allow such foul and awful beings to contaminate that hollowed ground? Should they not clean away their foul footsteps with their very blood?

Obviously, no one should harm these people now. They are now entitled to the same sacred protection they denied others, and even if the law is not changed, it has a value to itself, so do not let our nation become lawless for that is even worse then this, but if Westboro protesters showed up to my funeral, I would hope my family would have the right to tell them to leave at the point of a gun, and if they don't, kill them as the common crooks that they are.

It is a travesty of justice that our current legal system does not allow such. This must change, and if you feel angry, if you feel upset, I ask you to, along side me, campaign for good laws, better laws in any way you can. Honor the dead by making sure that future dead are honored, and then their name shall be hollowed alongside those you have protected from such defilement:

"Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness!
You have relieved me in my distress;
Have mercy on me, and hear my prayer.

² How long, O you sons of men,
Will you turn my glory to shame?
How long will you love worthlessness
And seek falsehood? Selah
³ But know that the LORD has set apart for Himself him who is godly;
The LORD will hear when I call to Him.

⁴ Be angry, and do not sin.
Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah
⁵ Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,
And put your trust in the LORD." (Psalm 4, NKJV)

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12: 21)

Do not be a hypocrite. God calls us not only to be right, but to be at peace, and to be peaceful to his creation, especially at the level of America and all of its citizens. Therefore, do nothing worthless, and do nothing against the law which has a value in and of itself, but seek to work with the law to make it better. We have a democracy, use it!

11 Amazing Finds

2010-12-03T20:56:00.009-05:00

Here is a short list of eleven of the most fascinating and inspiring scientific finds of the last few months:

1 [see update below for serious flaw] - Bacteria use Arsenic as Part of Basic Chemical Makeup - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11886943

2 - US Air Force Constructs Supercomputer from 1760 PlayStation 3's - http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

3 - Recent Mathematical Research Exonerates Free Market of Social Inequity Claims - http://www.physorg.com/news198239413.html

4 - New Record for Miniaturization of Fuel Cells - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101123174334.htm

5 - Well Positioned Planet could well be Second Earth - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/100930-new-planet-discovered-first-habitable-earthike-water-gliese-581g-science-goldilocks/

6 - Heat and Cold Resistant Rubber made from Carbon Nanotubes - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6009/1332.short

7 - Mathematician Discovers Statistical Model to Predict Anemia Risk - http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-mathematical-life-red-blood-cells.html

8 - Temperature and Pressure Optimization Achievement for Generating Electricity from Flammable Ice - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406091232.htm

9 - Mathematics Resolves Important Question of Scotlands Ancient Heritage - http://www.physorg.com/news195367761.html

10 - NYU Discovers Way to Shape Solid Materials with Corn - http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=118084&org=NSF&from=news

11 - Konarka Mass Produces Conductive Plastic Solar Panel - http://www.konarka.com/media/pdf/konarka_technical_sheet_KT800.pdf

Update 12/4/2010 - This list will have to be expanded to 12. A Swiss company has developed rechargable batteries with three times the capacity of lithium ion and no toxic components - http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23812/page2/

Update 12/7/2010 - This list will have to be reduced back to 11:

"When the NASA scientists took the DNA out of the bacteria, for example, they ought to have taken extra steps to wash away any other kinds of molecules. Without these precautions, arsenic could have simply glommed to the DNA, like gum on a shoe. "It is pretty trivial to do a much better job," said Rohwer.

In fact, says Harvard microbiologist Alex Bradley, the NASA scientists unknowingly demonstrated the flaws in their own experiment. They immersed the DNA in water as they analyzed it, he points out. Arsenic compounds fall apart quickly in water, so if it really was in the microbe's genes, it should have broken into fragments, Bradley wrote Sunday in a guest post on the blog We, Beasties. But the DNA remained in large chunks—presumably because it was made of durable phosphate. Bradley got his Ph.D. under MIT professor Roger Summons, a professor at MIT who co-authored the 2007 weird-life report. Summons backs his former student's critique." (Slate)

I may do a blog post in the near future about poorly conducted science and the results it can "create."

Julian Assange Must Follow the Example of Christ

2010-12-02T23:44:00.006-05:00

US Supreme Court Building. By Duncan Lock, license cc asa 3.0 unported

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea." -Matthew 18: 6, the word of our Lord

One of the reasons folks have a hard time understanding espionage laws is they see law as about morality, they see law as about preventing immoral behavior and punishing the wicked. But that is not what government is for, nor has it ever been for that. The purpose of law is to resolve disputes, to settle differences in a manner that is open, transparent, fair, and respectful to the rights of everyone involved.

The fact is that the government has a real difference with Julian Assange. They had secrets, Julian released them, they had protocols, Julian broke them, and now they're friends can't trust them, they can't look at each other, spies and envoys are fleeing, and the worlds mightiest powers and superpower know not how to handle their own states. Right or wrong, this is where things stand.

Now, there are countries that don't utilize Espionage laws much. Israel and Russia both immediately come to mind. Both, instead of finding and prosecuting spies in a court of law, send out secret assasins, with ice picks, guns, poisons, and all manners of traps, destroy the peace, and when they find their victim, leave no trace of him, and give him not a second, not a minute to answer for his sake. If they make a mistake, too bad, the wrong person is dead. They don't tell his or her family either, and all the citizens are left questioning what happened to their fellow man. Without a doubt, if Americas ability to try spies in a court of law is interfered with, they will have to, for the sake of preserving their government, resort to much the same.

Julian, we all know what you stand for, or at least say you do, transparency, but what you fail to see is that this law is also created for transparency, and in fact, the most important kind of transparency, the ability of individual citizens to see what they are charged with, and society to see what happens to them, along with the ability of all to make their decisions in a conscious, responsible manner. You have angered a lot of powerful people, and if you continue to be successful, you will anger only more. If you do not turn yourself in now, you will be bodybagged, and no one will ever hear from you again, but if you do turn yourself in, whether you are imprisoned or killed, you will be so before the common man and all eyes to see, and all minds to know how arguments are settled in a civil society.

Civil Disobedience is a fine and honorable thing, but it involves taking the consequences of your actions, in part so that fights don't get out of hand. Lets face it Julian, if you die the wrong way, something else dies with you, but if you die the right way, transparency only grows, and you can speak for your own defense in court, and stand by your actions, and speak, for all the nation and world to hear, about your values and what you find right. And you will go to jail, and possibly even be put to death, but if you stay out there on your own running, people who are very good at this stuff will get to you, and they will kill you, in a way that destroys everything that you stand for.

There were four Roman soldiers who confessed a faith that their commander could not stand. He had them put in to a freezing lake, and said that if any of them gave up their faith, they would be given a warm bath, but if they didn't, they would be left there to freeze to death. Three of them stayed there, holding hands as brothers, to die the whole night through, but one just couldn't stand it anymore, and came out, and renounced his faith. And yet, all four of them died that night. Tell me Julian, which one will you be? Will you join your brethren of all the other convicts at jail, and spread the light of wisdom and righteousness to the people you are called to, or will you die shamefully at the hands of a foreign spy, possibly even painfully, as a former KGB agent died not long ago.

Two thousand years ago, a visionary far greater then yourself, or anyone now alive, was crucified above a hill in Calvary. He didn't fight the police when they came to get him, and he didn't complain about his fate either, nor did he lie in court to get off easy. He accepted what he had came to do, took his cup of sorrows in Gethsemane, and went up that hill cross in hand for all things to come to pass. Julian, if you really do care about transparency to the extent that you claim, you must do likewise. The worse thing that could happen here is for America, already weakened, to be hamstrung by those who think they know better, and with them, all the world to where espionage laws can no longer truly exist. They are an important part of transparency. Law isn't about what's right or wrong - it's about a peaceful, serene society that is transparent and honorable, and when you accept this, you can have your fate handed to you fittingly, and become the hero you were born to be.

Update 12/6/2010 - It seems, according to AOL News, Assange has done a wicked and cowardly thing. Holding over 1.4 gigabytes of what Assange considers worthy secrets, Assange, rather then turn himself in as he should, is withholding them, and thus his objective, from the public as a bargaining chip to secure his freedom. If this is how it appears, Julian has much to be ashamed of.

Taxes & Manufacturing

2010-11-28T14:50:00.008-05:00

Launching Liberty Ship SS George Washington Carver. E.F. Joseph of US War Information, Public Domain

Due to the exams I have been studying for, I have not been posting here much. However, as I was studying for my Engineering Economy exam today (all the wonderful accounting rules that Industrial Engineers have to know), I stumbled upon something that was simply beyond the pale in what it means for manufacturers.

Very well known is the role labor costs play in driving manufacturers out of the United States. Less well known is the role government policy and bureaucratic red tape that in no way, shape or form benefits our quality of life overall effects manufacturing, and drives still more manufacturers away from our country. Previously, we have discussed the effect of railbanking regulation, excessive accounting standards and nuclear energy moratoriums (see number 4), but today, I want to talk about the way that our tax system favors an America of pizza delivery boys.

Land, with time, generally increases in value, but the property used in manufacturing and transportation deteoriates. We've all experienced this when we sell a car. When your property deteoriates, but you still sell it for more then the government expected, you are taxed at the rate of corporate or personal income (depending upon how your company files.) But when your property increases in value beyond what you purchased it for, as happens with land, you are taxed at a lower rate, called Capital Gains. Literally, when manufacturers do a good job maintaining their factories, they get taxed more then a pizza shop does when they maintain their land. The only exception is when a manufacturer is finally shutting down, then the land is worth more (manufacturing jobs attract people) and they finally get a capital gains tax.

So we see that the government favors manufacturers only when they've finally decided to close shop. In life, they get taxed more then others for their property, period.

This is not the only example. Property taxes allow manufacturers to die when the community they cultivated becomes too good, as their two or three acres of communally important land becomes too expensive for the amount of revenue they generate a year, and the potential of land fluctuations to drive manufacturers out of business massively increases the risk of them and other businesses that rely on borrowed money. Just like the homeowners in Detroit, their loans breathe down their neck, and the potential of things they have no control over to drive them out of town makes it breathe harder.

Think about that, millions of dollars of borrowed money in jeopardy because you might do too well for the community you are in. Beyond the economics, contemplate the morality of that.

Policies like this hurt upstart and cutting edge manufacturers the most, as they must take the biggest, highest interest, and longest-term borrowed capital in order to even begin to produce, as they have no starting capital to begin with. Their entrepreneurs also face the worst consequences should they fail, as no one may well trust them again since they have no good yet on their record to balance it. In developed countries like America, it will be manufacturers like these that create the fastest and most reliable growth, as they need the support services, development capital, and personal connections that a developed, industrialized country like America has to offer.

Further, the establishment too depends on serving the mavericks in order to have reason to remain here, as otherwise, their costs may well be cheaper in Asia, but they too benefit from industrial buccaneering for the innovation, quality workforce, markets, and new activity it creates. It may not show up every year, but it does show up from time to time, and business people have always been gambling men. Friends, let us compete in what we are good at, and take home our first-world wages while we're at it.

Open Clip Art Library. Public Domain

Guest Post - "Dr. James McPartland is a Dick (and more)"

2010-11-27T13:01:00.005-05:00

I received an email from a friend whose a member of an Autistic Issues student group called SWANSA that made some very valid points about not only autism, but "civilized" society in general, that I felt my readers would very much benefit from taking a gander at. The friends name is Walt Guthrie (he never told me whether or not he was related to Woody and Arlo):

I caught the James McPartland talk at Emory November 8.
Off the bat, three things you need to know about him.
One: he's the Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center.
Two: He's the Associate Director of Developmental Electrophysiology Lab
Three: he's a dick.
He's actually more than that. But we'll get to that.
First, the dick:

In the course of his "research," McPartland makes use of a computer program called "Cyberball," which is a sort of "video game". Now, I have put quote marks around the words "video game" because it is the most primitive-looking thing you can possibly imagine. We are not talking "Gears of War" here. From the brief demonstration, given during the talk, it appeared to be something that might have come out in 1975 just prior to the introduction of "Pong." But what do I know? For all I know it might have just popped out of the MIT Media lab last month. In any case, I cannot emphasize enough how boring this game is.
It is a simulated game of catch between three players. Each player can choose to throw the ball to the person on his left or the person on his right. That's it. That's the game. It doesn't appear that you can miss or that the other person can fail to catch the ball. There is no skill and no chance whatsoever involved. For all intents and purposes, assuming the demonstration of this game was representative of actual "play," the "game" is the equivalent of nothing more than three people with one person calling out the name of one of the two others, and then that person being able to do the same and so on and so on.
Of course no human being would ever willingly choose to waste their time playing such a "game," but McPartland has apparently made countless kids waste irretrievable hours of their childhood at no discernible benefit for themselves "playing" this simulation that simulates nothing.
But this is not what makes McPartland a dick.
This is:
What is the purpose of Cyberball? Well, it turns out it does have a one. According to McPartland, Cyberball is designed to make a player feel excluded and outcast. You see, the other two "players" of Cyberball don't exist. They are just part of the program and what they do is ignore the player and just toss the ball back and forth to each other. Now, McPartland claims that the children he works with are, by the nature of their autism, already shunned and socially mistreated by their peers. So what does he do with them? He experiments on them by making them play games designed to increase their sense of isolation and social ostracism. And these are experiments solely for his benefit since McPartland made no claim during the course of his talk that these sessions would provide any benefit whatsoever for the children playing them.
McPartland tricks ostracized children into performing activities designed solely to further their own sense of ostracism.
Where I come from this sort of person is also technically known as a douchebag.
Oh, and did I mention that he was excited about the prospect of a computer program that might test for empathy.
Let the irony of THAT sink in.

The bulk of his talk is old territory that I've addressed before. More laser-pointer-on-the-head sort of nonsense. This time we learn that autistics take 200 milliseconds or so to process faces. Regular folk take, on average, 180. Noting that that might not seem like a big deal, McPartland admitted as much and then went on to claim that it actually was, without offering the slightest bit of evidence except to note that those 20 milliseconds add up over time (Yeah, he's right Those two percents of a second add up. Work those face recognitions, kids. You only have 86,400,000 milliseconds in a day to work with!) During it all he performed the verbal sleight-of-hand of telling us that some of this was hard science, some was unpublished and some was just speculation. It was almost like a psychic doing a "cold reading" to the room, leaving himself plenty of wiggle room should anyone call him him on any of his claims (The main one being that autistics maybe just aren't properly motivated to have the desire to be social. Or something. As someone who understands the spectrum from living it, listening to McPartland's meandering theory of autism was like listening to my great aunt and her circle describe what goes on in Grand Theft Auto). There was more talk about perceiving upright faces vs inverted faces. If you believe this is relevant to anything on Earth then God love. I won't be dragged into another discussion on it.

Afterwards, in the reception following McPartland's talk, I asked him directly whether or not autism was empirically or definitionally a "disorder." He responded that it was definitional and that ALL people on the autistic spectrum are, by definition, "disordered." Then, having admitted this, he jumped to the it's-only-a-word defense. If I found the word "offensive" (a word I never employed in the course of the discussion) then that was on me. Because who could find any objection to being labeled "disordered?"
I told him what the word "disordered" actually means.
It means "nigger."
It means "faggot." It means "kike."
It performs the same societal function and is derived in PRECISELY the same manner. It is a derogatory classification whose purpose is to dehumanize one arbitrarily grouped and categorized set of humanity. And like the white racist, who feels that he can designate, by his own criteria, any one that he chooses to include into or exclude from the inferior class of "nigger," James McPartland and his intellectually low-functioning behaviorist brood think they are entitled to arbitrarily classify an entire subset of humanity as definitionally "disordered" and then have full power to say who is and who is not in that set. Neither James McPartland nor the typical hardcore white racist feel any need to empirically justify their respective words. Why should he? Just as the word "nigger" empowered and elevated the white power structure, the word 'disorder' gives the behaviorists their power, income, and justification for their very existence.
James Mcpartland is a grinning clown, the moral equivalent of a racist, who experiments on vulnerable socially outcast children to make them feel worse about themselves, all so he can grind out a steady stream of lazy speculation disguised as science.
Fuck him.

Food for Thought

2010-11-17T12:56:00.002-05:00

How has your state done at creating a good environment for business? This manufacturing oriented business magazine has ranked all 50 states and the district of columbia based on their business environments. Check it out.

Constructing an EMP-proof power grid

2010-10-27T10:26:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure anyone notices this, but a lot of my posts have hyperlinks to necessary sources imbedded. If you see something in odd print, try clicking on it.

Many sources, from NASA to USA Today, are warning of the rising dangers from a coming Solar Maximum and a possible EMP storm that could knock out transmission lines from coast to coast. Our current electric grid is based on traditional ohm-resistance power lines (essentially anything made of metal that doesn't have to be frozen) that, when exposed to too high of a current, burn out. Not only does this make them susceptible to solar flares, but it also causes massive losses of electricity through transmission, and requires elaborate mechanical tinkery to prevent more down-to-earth dangers (such as lightning bolts) from threatening the grid too often, and causes blackouts that cost billions of dollars to repair.

I believe I know of a way to, for possibly less than the costs already attributable to these other phenomena, harden our existing power grid against Electromagnetic Pulse. Superconductors have the disadvantage that they must be kept cold, the world record for superconductivity is 5 degrees Fahrenheit, but if used in the place of existing power lines for long transmission systems (ie. LA to Las Vegas) would both eliminate the danger of EMP to transmission lines (along with lightning bolts and any other overload danger), move the limit of capacity to infinity, and eliminate losses from transmission. There would be power losses attempting to keep these lines cold, but refrigeration to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (a temperature you might encounter on a winters day in NYC) is something we have done for a long, long time, and is a very ready and understood technology that could be adapted in many ways by the engineering staff. My suspicion is that overall there would be a net gain in power transmission. The refrigerator would have to be built in a way so that it too is thunderproof, but that can probably be done.

In addition to hardening transmission lines, we will need to also "harden" (or something similar) crucial computer systems. Here the best thing to do might be to keep a single central mainframe underground, and use well grounded telegraph lines to communicate with systems at a facility (such as a nuclear power plant) that needs this kind of utility, much like the lines used to carry messages in the Old West. This might cost a bit more, so you might not want to do it that often.

With the exception of the superconductor, the rest of this is very down-to-earth, relatively inexpensive and well-understood technologies. The superconductor has a specific chemical formula ((Tl₄Ba)Ba₂Mg₂Cu₇O₁₃₊), and is a pure material, so finding a process to make it efficiently should be practical.

Post revival - Railbanking

2010-10-15T10:44:00.002-04:00

Due to some new research and recent urgency, I have decided to bring back to life (or at least the front page) a blogpost from about 8 months ago with an update:

http://hailingfromgeorgia.blogspot.com/2010/02/railbanking.html

We will get back to original content very soon, probably this weekend.

The Lemmeys Lay an Egg in the Chagos

2010-10-08T18:35:00.013-04:00

Chagos Islanders helping the Seabees, Diego Garcia, 1971

Okay, imagine this, you have a home, a large home on 14 square miles, shared between you and 1100 other people. You are told, mysteriously, by the British government that you will be evicted to build a military base. If you have an extremely long ancestry on the island, you're entitled to some compensation, and only a little bit, several years too late to help you out in any significant manner, but if it's only you or your mother or your grandfather, you're entitled to none. Worse, brutal measure including depravation of supplies, threats of bombing, and the destruction of domesticated animals are used to achieve these ends.

But here's the strange part: the military base isn't even in your chain of islands, but on a larger island 30 miles away.

And thus you have the Chagossians. They've been forced out of a home that wasn't even needed for anything, and at one point, the British did not believe they were entitled to any compensation. They described them as "Tarzans" and "Man Fridays," and dumped them on the nearby island of Mauritus without so much as food and water to fend for themselves in the Port Louis slums. At most, an eviction of Diego Garcia might have been in order, probably to the other islands, and certainly not by these means.

This leads me to wonder, just what are they doing with those islands? There are allegations of black sites by the US Intelligence community on those islands. There are also large areas of solid farmland and excellent mineral resources and fishing completely off limits to any economic development. And then there are the poor souls forced to live in urban slums because some idiot in London, or DC (the story varies), decided this was honestly a good idea.

Mauritus is now seeking control of the islands. While the US millitary has a legitimate claim to the neccessity of Diego Garcia, I see no reason at all that they should so much as whine at some reasonable level of economic development on a bunch of islands that aren't even reasonably near them. If they had been willing to make the people there American or British citizens on the Chagos Islands, and only rearrange the lives of those directly affected by the military base, maybe my feelings would be different, but after 39 years of reckless unethical behavior towards an entire society, methinks that neither London nor DC nor Port Louis, Mauritus, who sold their people out for 3 million pounds, can be trusted at all with the greatest Lemon of Lemmeyland. This is totally irresponsible, and no official associated with these acts should be allowed to keep their job, and no bureau associated with the duties regarding the British Indian Ocean Territory should avoid thorough scourging and discipline.

Those people have a home they have been deprived of. Now, the UK wants to declare a giant nature preserve to keep them out of their home forever. This is not the first time that eco-nazism has hurt the people of the Chagos - another proposed site for the current base at Diego Garcia was an uninhabited atoll rejected because it was the site of a rare breed of turtle. Please, please, please let them come back, and there is no reason at this point why someone else should not control those islands, especially when the British have abused them so thoroughly:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." -The Declaration of Independence

Government comes from the people, and thus the British Government has lost it's right to the British Indian Ocean Territory, pure and simple. Who will it go to instead? I don't know. Not Mauritus, not the UK, and not America, that much has to be certain.

Vox Populi - A Socratic Rant

2010-10-08T11:04:00.005-04:00

Open Clip Art Library, public domain.

In latin, "Voice of the People." Although seldom seen on any reasonable scale, the idea of the Vox Populi is an exploitable dream that has been dreamt by many and used to control large numbers of "ordinary guys" throughout time. Liberals claim it on welfare and taxing the rich, and (in the past more then now) opposing the norms of society, while conservatives claim it on social issues and representing the values of the working class, or the society which is made of most people. Perhaps most pecuiliar is when freedom or "hope" becomes intermingled with "being taken care of."

I was talking to a friend yesterday who told me I needed to take my mind out of its snare, to free myself of this idea of my life being cheap. I responded to him that you can't get much more free (cutting the nonsense) than being willing to die. Perhaps it is wasteful, freedom often is, but it most certainly is free. But that seems to be a common theme, the idea that people who don't agree with us are trapped in their own minds, and aren't really free, and therefore do not represent a voice of the people. I suspect I'm not alone in seeing how this can be exploited by bullies and malcontents against the people.

And then there's always the issue of education, but here we find a contradiction, for if people need be educated to be a voice, then you no longer have a voice of the people, but a voice of the educated. Worst, in some ways you have a voice of the educators, as their minds may well have been broken and molded to fit an academic "goal" or "proper behavior." When it comes to truly ensnaring a mind, there are few better people then educators, but even with this noted, we must be careful to not fall in to the trap of thinking we know that someone has been trapped. We don't, and if you trap yourself by thinking that you know where someone has gotten an idea without a logically-correct mathematical proof (pretty much the only methodology for properly recording the origin of ideas that man has ever created, and most people don't know how to write one) you will take away from yourself the power of whatever knowledge they may have that they are willing to give. Once you have taken away power beyond your own humble means, you will in turn be easily caged by the clever, the manipulative, and the "experts."

Experts should always be listened to, for in many cases they did earn their degrees through true excellence, but no one is right all the time, and least of all the people who decide who the experts are. The experts too are also sometimes wrong, and they're also sometimes greedy or evil. Further, in many cases even when the experts are right, if we are unwilling to question what they say, we will be unable to truly learn, on any deeper level, anything from them, but will instead only memorize shallow facts that we in turn, deprived of our roots, misinterpret and abuse, not only ruining ourselves, but tarnishing their good name with our stupidity.

Further, an expert in economics is not necessarily an expert in politics, and an expert in politics is not necessarily an expert in science. Indeed, even an expert in science may not necessarily be an expert in engineering. These peoples expertise may well be one dimensional, which makes it both useful and limited.

There are also people who claim greatness to themselves for selfish ends. Perhaps the lowest of this ilk (or close to it) are the older folks who cry "listen to your elders" while speaking of things of which they have no experience, or even talent. These people manipulate and contrive, hurt and disparage, and drive wedges between entire groups of people. They harm families, and provoke disrespect against others who did not earn it like they did. One must be very wary of people like this, though there are certainly true elders as well. Remember that no matter how many years one has had to experience life, a truly idiotic man will learn nothing from them, and there are many true idiots in this world.

Herman Hesse believed that at the end of childhood, one leaves the world of "light and warmth" for the world of "darkness." Today, we, the American People, are confronting the darkness of a government that does not care for us, a president that wishes to manipulate us, a congress that wishes to waste our money and plunge us in to debt, and vested interests, often moneyed interests, that try to buy elections. We are seeing that even "reputable scientists" are not necessarily of any well-earned repute. We see that histories can be distorted, books can be misrepresented, and the shepherds can fleece their flock, or make them in to lamb chops. We are seeing, indeed that no one can speak the Vox Populi but the Populi, the people.

At the same time as this has happened, small nonprofit organizations like the Mozilla Foundation, who makes firefox, the Open Clip Art Library, who provided the illustration for this post, small bloggers like myself and those more successful then myself, and public advocacy organizations that publicize the records of the organizations within our nation, are taking over many of the traditional offices of the elites. A growing number of people are going not to supermarkets and big chain stores, but ma and pa shops and neighborhood farmers markets, to buy the staples of life. Ordinary citizens like you and I are demanding electric cars and new kinds of energy to replace our polluting grid. An unprecedented level of discussion and thought is happening throughout our society.

Finally, with the growth of the Tea Party, we are seeing for the first time in a long time grass roots organizers finally listened to and political apparati organized from the smallest local level. We are seeing the people finally speak. The people are not used to speaking, so at first they will have much to learn, but I feel, now that it is possible, that it is the peoples birth right to decide their own destiny. The time has come for, as Arthur C. Clarke would put it, childhoods end. We have a great adolesecent - he will become a great adult, or he will disintegrate in to nothing. My suspicion is this will turn out well, and I know where we were headed before was oblivion, but even if I'm wrong, it is their birth right, let them have it, and let no man interfere with their share of the inheritance, for it is theirs, and what they do with it they shall live with, or die with.

Article Critique

2010-10-02T14:42:00.007-04:00

Open Clip Art Library. Public Domain.

I am not posting this post to the top of my blog list, as it is not, in my mind, 100% original, even though I have violated no laws and plagarized no one in writing it. Rather, it is a critique, and not wanting to be subservient to anyone, I will not post it, under any condition, to the top of my list.

Update 10/12/2010: CNN writes an inferior version of the same article I am critiquing.

I am normally a huge fan of the Guardian. They are quite possibly the greatest left-wing newspaper in the world, with high quality artistic prose, good summaries of important stories, and honest, intelligent editorials from a rational leftists perspective. However, this particular editorial I cannot endorse.

It executes, among other things, a major "No True Scotsmen" fallacy (LOL, it's from Britain) in deciding that opposing people who made irresponsible decisions with their money IS opposing the working and middle class, when these are the very people that the Tea Party seeks to save from growing government inteference, high taxes, a lack of choice and freedom, and worst of all, the stifling of their very spirit as Americans, the spirit that the working-class and the middle-class love more then anyone, their storge, in their darkest hour, keeps them alive, and like a little girl wanting to throw a wildcat in a cage to "take care of it," people like Obama would deprive them of the thing these people love most. The Tea Party, like the working class, opposes the bailouts to bankers and high-flying corporate aristocrats that steal the futures of working class children.

The Tea Party also opposes the partisan industrial complex that was best summarized by Anarchists 6 years ago who chanted, on the eve of the 2004 election, "Bush, Kerry, are the same, the only difference is the name." The PIC has been a curse to the entire continent of North America for many years now, and, among other things, endorsed the spending, corruption and ruinous habits that have both deprived our working class of their jobs and threatened their say in the workings of our democracy, while ruining the careers of politicians, like the Late Washington Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn, who sought to correct the course of our nation from this horrific treason against democracy.

Many readers of this editorial will excuse the errors by saying, "well, they are a far-right doctrine, just like Fascism," and my response to them will be, "no, actually." Here again we have a fallacy of definition. "Right-wing" has been redefined tremendously since the 1940's, is a term whose meaning changes nearly every year. To correctly assess similarities between the Tea Party and the doctrine of Fascism we would have to use the definition of Right-wing that fit Fascism, a definition that includes a state-endorsed aristocracy and elite, collectivization and tyrannical nationalism, the very things that the Tea Party opposes with a passion.

And again the editorials errs by saying, accusingly, "But polling shows that when it comes to poverty, the elderly and education, if anything people want to do more rather than less." For once in a long time, a Gaurdian article has referenced a Washington Post article that is its superior. While it is true that many Tea Party members would be very pleased if certain measures were taken on behalf of the poor, the elderly, and our education system, it is also true that the Tea Party, as a noncentralized grassroots organization very much of the Anarchist spirit, can change course very quickly, and once those who threaten the ability of government to handle its responsiblities well have been politically destroyed, from Republican Mike Castle in Delaware to Democrat Harry Reid in Nevada, the Tea Party can change course quickly, and wield the same power that put Christine O'Donnell on Delawares ballot to assure that our poor are taken care of reasonably well. Like the Great Hordes of Genghis Khan, maneuvers, formations and armor mean nothing to the Tea Party readying for battle on its grassroots steppe and out of its hundreds of buckskin tents.

The ability to make compromises will prove crucial at such a point in deciding whether the Tea Party can survive such a maneuver, though the public opinion and grassroots apparatus alone assure that an attempt will be made, but here I resort to a great French mathematician named Pascal. The worse thing that could happen is that, after destroying these particular Democrats, the Tea Party splits up, and new Democrats (but new ones) ascend to the congressional leadership. If such happens, we have made a powerful statement of the ability of the American people to hold their politicians accountable, and our new liberals will be more rational and responsible, perhaps more like the Guardian when they haven't gone crazy, when they ascend to congressional leadership. The best thing that could happen, on the other hand, is the people destroying the political party as we know it for good, and replacing it with true civic involvement at all levels of legislation. Perhaps even if they do split, they will proceed to conquer the two American parties and subject them to their barbarian rule.

Thus, either way, a Tea Party member wins his wager. Even the conservatives among them will appreciate a more fair and reasonable liberal hand should that happen, and all will appreciate the people rising to leadership if that should happen. Either one of these would be an acceptable goal of and by itself, and they are the set of possibilities. Thus, my congressional democrats - check... mate.

For a Friend

2010-09-29T00:00:00.010-04:00

Aerial view of Mercer Island, public domain by Derrick Coetzee

I would like to thank a blogger I know from Pretoria for bringing to mind the events of many years ago. This is a story I believe everyone needs to hear.

To protect my friends privacy, I will call him Seth. He was someone I wish I had gotten to know better, and earlier, and someone whose story would enlighten all of us today about the most important side of morality: love.

Seth is gay. And no, this story does not end with him being killed by armed KKK brutes, nor does it end with him taking his own life, he is far more resilient then that. It ends with something more common, and for most of us, more true. Yet without the story, the ending means nothing anyways.

Seth was bright, intelligent, healthy, and in no way or manner effeminate. There is nothing about Seth that would seem less of a man, that would make him any less male than I or any man that you know. He was civilized, and never rude, and always spoke softly and carefully, every word that came out of his mouth, something he learned from his own life, and yet he still had a sense of humor. He is one of those rare people who can keep himself totally disciplined and still be open to everyone and everything around him at the same time. He was strong-willed and frank, saying exactly what he means and doing exactly what he intends. He had a strong work ethic and a sense of responsibility for himself that too many people are missing today. Seth was a talented actor and singer.

He had grown up on an island of 13 square miles with 19,000 people (since then the population has grown to 22,000), two miles from Seattle. You could ride a horse along a short section of the main drag of town. There were many beautiful cliffsides and views from out across the lake, and he lived on a one-lane road that wound up the hill with no guard rails and a 300 foot cliff on one side, from which you could see the tops of the trees. He was the only son of his wealthy father, a careless, neglectful single father who would rather spend his time with 15 egotistical mistresses who all thought they were the only one then take care of his only child.

Seth was called many names at school, and ridiculed, even though he was hardly a homosexual stereotype, and even in the place, the Drama Department, that one would least think such abuse would occur. The actors in the Drama Department were a very dog-eat-dog bunch, never caring for their own, always set on themselves, and when abuse occurred, they would not stand against it, lest they anger someone. The only person who seemed to care at all was the teacher, and since most people knew this, they simply waited until she was away, then recommenced their behavior.

I don't remember entirely what happened, but somehow one day I told Seth a joke I really shouldn't have, something very offensive towards gays. Realizing what I had done, I quickly apologized for it. What happened next I don't believe I will ever forget. He looked me straight in the eye and said "do you honestly think that would offend me? I've heard so much worse then that." He paused, sighed and then concluded: "What you would think if you heard what I've heard."

I spoke to Seth many more times, and before the school year was over, he told me he was consulting his boyfriend about moving to Houston, Texas. We were out among the fallen chestnuts, speaking after school, him alone waiting for over an hour to be picked up before I found him after Track practice. He seemed very at peace, but also very anxious to get off of our island. He was only a junior, had not graduated from high school yet, but when I met a friend of Seth's next year, and asked him why I had not seen Seth, he told me he had moved to Maryland - while his father was still here on the island. I doubt very much that he completed high school there.

Regardless of what you think about homosexuality morally, no one, in their right mind, will say that my friend Seth, my kind, civilized, open, disciplined, honorable, thoughtful, and honest Seth, was treated justly.

Alki: Coyote and Raven Talk

2010-09-28T10:53:00.009-04:00

Totem Poles at Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC, by Peter Graham. Use permitted under CC 2.0G License

Coyote: Yes we did!

Raven: What did you do?

Coyote: We've done it!

Raven: What have you done?

Coyote: Change is at hand!

Raven: Change to what?

Coyote: We fought the rich!

Raven: You fought for what?

Coyote: We stood up to the special interests!

Raven: Which ones?

Coyote: A new bright era has dawned!

Raven: A bright era for whom?

Coyote: The future looks bright.

Raven: Bright for what?

Pioneer Square, 1907. Public domain, author unknown.

I would recommend Mourning Doves "Coyote Stories" for a traditional Plateau Indian characterization of the character of Coyote. I've read the book myself and loved it. I don't know of a single excellent source like this for Raven, being something I was more raised with, but this site seems to have some reasonable content. Professor Nichols site from Pittsburgh State University also seems to have some solid coyote background.

Al-ki is a traditional Salish statement of skepticism.

Hold Your Nose and Vote for the Stabenow Bill

2010-09-23T16:26:00.006-04:00

Cartoon by Peter Welleman. Public Domain.

Though in general I am adamantly opposed to any senator who supports the Fairness Doctrine, or any other attempt by the government to control the media, or believes in the Green Jobs Myth (I will reserve a response to that for another time,) this time, she does seem to have a bill that would fill a dangerous void in existing unemployment policy.

The Americans Want to Work Act has been introduced in congress and is being passed around the Committe on Finance right now. You can track its progress here. The full text of the bill, in its' present form, can be found at THOMAS.

So what exactly does this bill do? It extends unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks. In addition, it allows for a "fourth-tier" benefit to kick in when bureaucratic delays relating to the application of this bill are reached. Considering the length of our current recession, this is an absolutely necessary act. One can debate for hours the practicality of unemployment insurance to begin with, but it is not sensible to go changing the world on families already hurting from a bust economy. Such debate is better reserved for the summer of economic growth, when private charity and families can take care of their own during the changeover period, rather then this horrid blizzard, where we would be ripping the coat off of their backs to face the bitter gales.

It also does something much less desirable. It extends the rather poorly thought out temporary subsidy for hiring. This will encourage businesses to act irrationally and hire workers they don't need, creating production that will likely go away when the subsidy does, assuming if it is ever created at all, and wasting tremendous resources that could be instead invested in the economy of our nations future. Even worst, it increases the size of the subsidizing for workers thus hired retained, increasing the effectiveness of this economic laser guided bomb. So why should the senate vote for this bill?

Because right now, the families of those 99ers are on the economic edge of oblivion. Private charity has dried up, the budget (and with it government jobs) are drying up, unemployment is at the point where they may not have relatives or a community that can support them, competition for jobs is fierce, and the government is, for better or worse, the last place they have to turn. It costs relatively little money, and it keeps these people going for 20 more weeks. Like it or not, we signed up to cover them. Sound economic policy, in this one rare case, will just have to wait, as we have to consider the culture of our country and how actual human beings will interact with the system, in this case, by not saving money as a result of the unemployment insurance that our democratically elected (by you and me) government created.

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matthew 18: 6, New King James Version)

Further, it's a very well-written bill. It covers the technicalities and exceptions even ones (example: Railroad Retirement Taxes) that most people have never heard of. It's clearly written by someone who understands bureaucracy. And yet, it's relatively short. I read it in under 30 minutes. And it doesn't create a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. Good job Stabenow. It's the exact kind of bill we should encourage, on principle, to keep the elected leaders accountable to people like you and me. In conclusion, good tidings, but of the slightly smelly variety.

Barbara Boxers Top Ten Countdown

2010-09-23T16:25:00.008-04:00

There are certain kinds of people in this world who just bring something special in to your life. People who dance, people who sing, people who love you and people who say they love you to sexually exploit you and drink your blood as you realize you've been betrayed and are now food for an undead fantasy creature, and then there's Senator Barbara Boxer. Without her, who would make the Senate exciting? Who would make it interesting? Who would make us laugh and cry at the same time? Let us celebrate the 10 greatest moments of Barbara Boxers California Dream.

10. Argumentus Ad Hominim Maximus after (mostly) serious questioning by a very angry Midwesterner:

9. Ask the President what her job is:

8. Keep the bleat of the news:

7. WRITE A NOVEL! (No, this is not satire.)

6. Be the fashion police and whine at the same time:

5. Make a cheesy, melodramatic speech in front of a polar bear picture:

4. Compare Abortion to Male Reproductive Health:

3.Watch Senator Boxer talk down to an American Military Officer:

2.Then refuse to apologize for it! (I apologize for the added captions - I couldn't find a pure unadultered version of this particular video.)

1.And just when you thought absolutely nothing could beat what you saw, have we got a surprise for you!

The official photo of my favorite senator. Public Domain.

Update 11/4/2010: For those of you who haven't heard, our favorite senator from the land of fruits and nuts will be around to entertain us a little while longer. Maybe she'll write another novel this time.

Public Domain from the Open Clipart Library

Meteors, Superviruses, Nuclear War and World Governments

2010-09-11T08:57:00.010-04:00

Comet Halley. Public domain by NASA.

There are some biologists who think a meteor killed the dinosaurs, one that left the Gulf of Mexico as crater. Beyond the immediate impact, such a meteor would leave vast clouds of dust that could block out the sun for months, much as a much smaller explosion created a cloud that blocked out the sun for a couple weeks in Washington State when Mount Saint Helens erupted. There is also the minor potential for the formation of dangerous liquids, solids and gases that could cause everything from minor respiratory problems to infertility in large sections of the earths soil to poison humanity, and viruses or bacteria if such a meteor were to come from an extraterrestrial body that had life. In addition, an exceptionally large meteor could invert the crust, melting away at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit all present traces of life on this earth, or reverse the poles, making Earth temporarily susceptible to super powered radiation from the sun, possibly destroying all of humanity in an instant.

This is hardly the only lethal hazard humanity could encounter. A supervirus, such as an airborne form of HIV, could kill of vast numbers of our species in a short time, and similar airborne viruses where no existing human gene could provide a reasonable defense could easily wipe humanity off the face of the earth.

Nuclear War is every bit as present today as it was in 1961 as a major threat to life on this planet. In addition to the obvious hazard of a purposeful nuclear war, an accidental launch, especially from less developed nuclear nations such as India, or a nuclear theft, especially from Pakistan or Russia, could trigger a series of events leading to a mass death throughout this earth, and potentially (though I will not take the time to verify or deny this claim) Nuclear Winter.

A large World Government could attempt mind control or even just more traditional totalitarianism or absolutism, leading to a century of war, mass killing, and insurgency throughout this planet, or a thousand years of horrifying submission, kleptocracy, and degradation, and likely genocide. The two are highly connected, as Indochina (Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos) and Africa have been clear examples of both.

What do we do about these supreme dangers? If any of these dangers is to be handled effectively, humanely and justly, planning must occur in advance, preferably with clear rush buy instructions to build what is necessary to handle them overnight or sooner, even at high cost. Methods must be developed to deal with these problems as they come up, and any tool required needs to be buildable in a short amount of time, as it is financially unreasonable and politically untenable to keep such things stockpiled for when they are needed. Sooner or later, one of these, or possibly all of these, will happen.

Theoretically, there are telescopes that could tell us to a high degree of certainty whether or not a meteors trajectory would take it to Earth. They could also (of course) tell us the meteors size, and possibly allow us to deduce what it is composed of. With a relatively small number (around a dozen, 2 each 8-hour-shift) of men in a single office, we could analyze the sky. If the meteors are detected far enough away, we could easily have several decades of warning time to develop a plan to neutralize the hazard.

Research labs and embargo plans could help fight the danger of a supervirus. First, by cutting contact, we could isolate the community where the virus is occurring, while using airlifts to ship in vital supplies. Second, through not only good medications, but good theoretical processes to develop a medication quickly for any ailment based upon the chemical composition of the cell, we could develop medicines, possibly even cures quickly. Third, developing a larger base of antibiotics makes the likelihood of a bacteria resistant to all drugs less, but the private sector is unlikely to develop something with such a low revenue margin, as antibiotics are very cheap. Public sector, university funding could be utilized to develop such instead, avoiding the hazards of a reactionary market for this particular need.

As for Nuclear War, an ABM (Antiballistic Missile) system could deal with minor launches and be used as a first resort, leaving MAD, the destruction of humanity with nuclear weapons, as a last. Such a system could be developed using Supersonic SAMs, Lasers, or some combination of both, but would need to destroy the ICBM's at a sufficient safe distance, even if normally able to disarm the missile.

So how do we handle the world government? You've probably heard this many times, but the best guarantee for a democratic (or otherwise regulated) government is a free society, and the best way to enable such a free society is through the private ownership of firearms allowing a final safegaurd before totalitarianism becomes entrenched. Not only does this make the ultimate control of a central power less likely, but enables the population to fight quickly, shortening the time that a civil war against such an authority must last. Allowing citizens to defend themselves with firearms not only helps lower crime, but also keeps the population ready and militant for such an event.

All these measures (including the right of gun ownership) require planning and forethought. Some of them require government (or private organization) intervention for domestic security, and one of these requires government to stay out.

A thought for the day

2010-09-09T14:15:00.006-04:00

Wounded american soldiers at Santa Mesa, Phillipines. Public domain, work of US Government, 1899.

I don't normally do this, but a friend of mine at "Did I miss something," Lot2Learn, has posted a thought that I think would benefit all of us today. Please, if you can, take a moment to hear his personal story, a true American story and a true human story about those who need our help all around us just in time for the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks:

http://wwwdidimisssomething.blogspot.com/2010/09/throw-politics-out-window.html

Update 9/11 - Pay special attention to what Lot2Learn is saying about this September 11th. I may have posted this 2 days early, but I stand by the fact that it is even more relevant on September 11th then it was on September 9th.

God bless, and more then grieving, be proud of this beautiful nation.

American Flag as seen from Lunar Module, Apollo 11, public domain by NASA

Jerks, Trolls, and Bullies

2010-09-08T18:09:00.006-04:00

After my recent tirade regarding the WTC Mosque, I felt obligated to point out a few more Jerks, Trolls, and Bullies to come to our attention in recent days:

Terry Jones - This Floridian Pentecostal preacherly jackass seeks to create a bonfire of 200 Qu'rans this Saturday. He's also written a book entitled "Islam is the Devil," and has succesfully run his church right in to the ground with no more then 50 very unfortunate, but perhaps slightly maladaptive to reality, sheep in his flock. General Petreaus has pointed out that this act will put our men and mission in harms way in Iraq. In the past, he has been expelled from a church in Cologne, Germany, where his former parishoners still recount his "spiritual abuse." There has also been "suspicions of financial irregularities in the church surrounding Jones." "Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." (Romans 13: 10, NIV) We hope Mr. Jones will spend less time burning other peoples books and more time reading his own.

UPDATE 9/9/2010 - According to Al Jazeera, Jones has called off the burning of Qu'rans.

British Petroleum - Assigns blame to everyone, including easy targets Halliburton and Deepwater Horizon, besides themselves. On the rare case that they do take any of the blame, they assign it to the lowest level workers possible, and fail to make any mention of well design and other cited factors by federal authorities. As the article I'm linking to makes clear, they are doing exactly what they did five years ago after the Texas City refinery explosion, seeking primarily to ease panicky shareholders and defend their case in court.

Kay Phaneufs Husband - In Salem, NH, a woman dependent on an electrically-powered respirator died because her husband did not attend to the medical protection and electric bill needs of the home. The power company went above and beyond regulation, sending multiple notices over the period of HALF A YEAR and being in constant communication. I know from personal experience how difficult medical problems can be, so the Jerk/Bully award definitely goes to her husband on this one.

Multnomah County - About a week ago, county health inspectors from this Portland Metro County shut down a 7-year-olds lemonade stand because she failed to acquire a $120 temporary restaurant license. The 7-year-olds mother however, probably not wanting her daughter to get disappointed, periodically reminds her that the health inspector was "just doing her job."

SPD Officer Ian Birk - Yet another example of why some people should not be police officers. A partially deaf Native American man named John T. Williams was crossing the road peacefully with a piece of wood and a legal knife. Not one witness has testified otherwise. This officer bizarrely tries to pull him over, yelling at him to drop the knife. At 9 to 10 feet away, or more then enough distance to handle the situation responsibly, he shoots several shots from his gun, killing the man instantly. "Grey added that no one from SPD contacted the Chief Seattle Club or members of Williams's tribe until two days after the shooting." If Birk himself was worthy of the badge at all, one would think he would do it himself.

Mayor McGinn - Also hailing from Seattle, Washington, this young political bully intends to break a deal with a vital city institution to deny them any real ability to relocate after the city demolishes their current structure to expand 520 Freeway. The 47 million they previously negotiated would allow the Museum of History and Industry, one of the best in Seattle, to find its new place in a good neighborhood that probably needs it, but with up to 7 million of its dollars taken away, it will likely have to relocate to a less utilized, less strategic neighborhood where it will barely see the light of day. Thankfully, it appears that Seattles' city council is a bit more sensible in this regard, and does not sound ready to jump off the Philistine bridge with Biking Mike.

Eugene Robinson - Argues in the following editorial that anyone who does not agree with him is a spoiled brat having a temper tantrum. Argues that he can discard all journalistic traditions of not attacking the common voter because it's "the obvious" and that the American People, in rejecting exorbitant quantities of government spending and taxing the rich, are seeking a "quick fix."He also is convinced that everybody else should be forcibly mandated by law to join him in his personal crusade to save the planet and gain "modern infrastructure" like the kind that Obama has supposedly been building with the stimulus and none of us have yet noticed exists or is under construction.

As you can see, one need not follow the teachings of Muhammad to be a jerk, troll, or bully. And now for something completely different.

Photobucket.

Dear NYC,

2010-09-08T15:30:00.007-04:00

Bandah Acehs Grand Mosque, Indonesia, by Wikimedia user Plugwash, public domain.

I've heard that some giant troll is attempting to build a 15-story mosque two blocks from the World Trade Center. It is true that the 1st Amendment protects the right of Muslims to worship. It is also true that the 5th Amendment specifies that "private property taken for public use" must include just compensation, and that court cases like "Kelo v. New London" have held that there really aren't too many limiations on a municipalities right to take your land for, whatever is held to be, "public use."

Now consider the potential of a 21st Century Railroad Station to replace Penn in a strategic, easily reachable portion of lower Mannhattan. The Subway Service is great, and there's tons of pedestrian traffic! It could be a major economic boon to the area, and since the land is currently being used for a wholly non-economic activity, it is totally in the public interest to take said property instead of something that actually creates jobs and commerce! It could also be outfitted with advanced rail platforms that can support Acela, and other high speed trains. It's even more just then taking the land for private development.

See, it's sort of like when someones car has broken down by the side of the road and you refuse to give them your carjack. Sure, it is your right to not give them a carjack - you do own the carjack - but frankly, if you don't, and you don't have a good reason not to give them the carjack, you're probably a big jerk. Rights are not ethics or morals, they are simply what society is not allowed to do to you. This is to protect all individuals from the exact kind of bullying that this mosque constitutes, albeit from people with far more power to harm you then these Imams.

We must consider this great economic opportunity and the huge potential it has created for the people of New York. I sincerely hope that you consider giving that Islamic bully the slap in the face he deserves for using his constitutional rights in such a horrible way, while getting a wonderful little train station out of it and giving those folks the money to build themselves a mosque somewhere else. So let us wait until they are done building the mosque, and then condemn it to build a new train station, giving them "just compensation" of course.

Your southernly cousin,

Jeremy Janson

The Gospel of Joseph Stalin, Episode 4: The 'Tudes

2010-09-02T00:24:00.008-04:00

Secretary General and Loving Father Stalin, who only sends those who really need it to Siberia to be worked to death. Photo taken by CCCP, public domain for all good comrades. Here

Blessed are the poor, for they shall receive random roads in places they never go to,
Blessed are the meek, for they have not noticed what DC is doing in the past few months,
Blessed are the lowly in heart, for repeating "yes we can" makes them instantly happy,
Blessed are the bankers, for they shall inherit the earth,
Blessed are the malleable, for they shall change easily,
Blessed are the merciful, for I shall mention them briefly in a speech,
Blessed are the elderly, for they shall inherit huge amounts of government spending and by the time we're ready to pay, they'll be dead,
Blessed are those who agree with me, for I will listen to your praise.

But woe to you manufacturers, for ye shall be enslaved by congress,
Woe to you rich, for ye shall be taxed,
Woe to you proud, because I'm the only one allowed to be egotistical,
Woe to you consumers, for health has been declared a voluntary activity like driving,
Woe to you strong, for ye shall struggle,
Woe to you merciless, because by the time this is done, you'll have killed somebody,
Woe to you young, for ye shall hunger,
Woe to you who do not agree with me, for ye shall burn in anger.

A brief, relatively undefended argument

2010-08-30T11:05:00.004-04:00

I don't have a world of time today, but just wanted to briefly, as a skeptical economic conservative, pose a question to my readers, along with a couple arguments (informal, without full defense of sources, statistics et cetera) to go with it: what is the effect of unemployment insurance on the economy.

The first argument is actually not mine, but comes from the Wall Street Journal. In The Folly of Subsidizing Unemployment, Richard Barro presents and defends logically the case that "subsidizing" unemployment for longer leads to insufficient job search and job acceptance. He also argues that such an action, even in a recession, continues Obamas onward march towards a socialist welfare state.

My response is a "yes, but." I'm certainly an economic conservative, but I'm also a realist, and I know that the acceptance of ANY degree of welfare distorts the perspectives and behavior of the entire population. While I do believe an argument against unemployment insurance to any degree (and it would have to be a "remove all" to evoke the necessary change in behavior) would have made sense in 1911, the year is 2010, we're in a recession, and the large bank accounts, investments, community and family support, and austere spending behavior that accompany a libertarian society are not in place and will not be in place for quite some time to come. Such changes would be better implemented in good times economically, so that private charity and the community can handle the burden of the transition well, caring for their poor (in a reasonable, authoritative manner of course) at a time when they can. So what is my argument?

My argument is that you don't want an excessive amount of job acceptance, or job search. I'll explain my case with an example: you have a pHD level Mathematician who has been trained for years in the development of algorithms and their implementation in computers, both at the hardware and software level, and the instruction of students. He loses his job at the university, due to a cut in funding, a common effect of recessions and political disagreements about the allocation of research funds. Facing a deadline on his unemployment benefits, he takes a job as a waiter at a fancy restaurant, earning about 40 grand a year, using his academic manners and knowledge as the requisite refinement.

In result, America has lost a mathematician, something we always have too little of, along with all the research and its improvements to industry that would've come through the completion of his life, and the availability of a well-paid, family-wage job for a less educated member of society, most likely leading to that members children being raised in poverty and a toxic environment where they themselves are unable to grow to full economic potential. While Barro is most likely correct in decreasing the rate of unemployment, it is the damage to the economy inflicted by the unemployment, and not its actual amount, that must be considered. Unemployment might be only 7%, but the damage to the human capital of society, both in terms of lost educated labor and advancement potential of the poorer classes, and the resulting devaluation of assets, efficiency and industrial production, could equal more then that under normal conditions.

Exactly how much more? I don't know, but it is a question that would need to be answered before the nation proceeds with such logic. We must act in foresight.

Furthermore, in a severe recession where current indicators (including government debt) seem to be indicating only a further downward spiral, the situation outlined above with the pHD level mathematician is actually very realisitic under any number of weeks less than what Obama has extended unemployment to. Still, it needs to be understood, and possibly bankrolled against with government bonds to hold congress to contract, that this is a wholly temporary condition and, in good times, unemployment benefits will be completely nixed to begin a positive transformation in behavior at a time when it can happen.

Unemployment benefits cannot be seen as a long-term solution, as Barro also states correctly that the tax burden of increasing unemployment payout WILL magnify a recession, leading to more ending up unemployed. We need to go back to savings and community, but we can't do it now any more then a man being dragged under by water moccasins can fight them off his back. We will have to wait, and pray, and curse FDR's name, but action, it will and must wait.

What the world needs now is Love... On television!

2010-08-06T17:23:00.009-04:00

Saitama TV tower, image by ebiebi2, permission: public domain.

I was thinking today about the value of PBS, CBC, BBC and other public television channels in bolstering innovation on television and bringing in programs of greater artistic value, including the great British comedies that BBC is known for, the laboratory of creative, quality journalism that CBC has become, and the great lifestyle and documentary programs that have been so influential throughout the world that PBS has created. There is exactly one downside to these stations: they are paid for with taxpayer money, meaning that people had no choice about whether to support them, making them the product of an illicit activity, state theft. What if such a station could be established by a large, worldwide body of people voluntarily?

Throughout time one of the greatest achievements of the church has been in preserving, inspiring and encouraging mans great intellectual and artistic endeavors. Whether it was preserving science, writing and philosophy during the Dark Ages in the monasteries of Europe, commissioning the great works of Michelangelo in the early Renascence, producing the Gutenburg Bible in the 1500's and thus bringing literacy to Europe, or bringing purpose and resolve to young Charles Darwins life in the 1800's, Christianity has always been at the forefront of the human quest for knowledge, understanding and enrichment both intellectually and spiritually. And they have also backed the ideas and spiritual development thus earned with conviction and the desire to make the evils found right, as in the case of a young, talented, baptist preacher from Montgomery, Alabama named Martin Luther King Junior. And in the bible, we see a very profound call from God himself to inspire and teach humanity:

"You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" (Jonah 4: 10-11, NIV) The reason God sent Jonah, in the final examination, was not to control and brainwash and extract Hail Mary's, but to educate.

A really effective worldwide public television, as supposed to this regional sort, may reach the masses and teach them, educationally, poetically and spiritually, to not only embrace God and all his wonders, but think, and let their minds be ruled by truth and love. While we all understand the need to provide for mans material needs, and the church has fought valiantly for such, a man who is enriched mentally and spiritually can also provide for his own material needs, an educated man finds purpose, work ethic and direction, and maybe churches across the world should consider this as a portion of their mission, refilling the lamps of all of Gods virgins. Best of all, when the churches provide for it, preferably as a separate fund donated to by individuals outside of normal collections to prevent competition with other missions (we all know people put basically the same amount in the collection plate regardless of what their church is doing - 'Prayerbot reporting for duty!'), it is a voluntary donation, not one extracted, like PBS, CBC and BBC, from people without their consent.

Now it is true that a very minor Evangelical christian public television station does exist, called TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network), in the United States. However, it is totally governed by Evangelical Christians, and as a result has just a little too much "praise the lord and pass the collection plate" about it. In addition, on the rare occasions that it does do more artistic, film type programs, they tend to be sterile and preachy, another aspect of Evangelical Christians. Likewise, there would be problems if only Catholics, or only Lutherans contributed to this network as well, but when all threads weave together to form a sturdy rope, a truly balanced TV station can be formed. While evangelism should not be forgotten by this station, it should be balanced with art, with science, with news and with theological debate, and even some cutting edge comedy and tragedy of a unique, artistically valuable form, to provide a much more balanced intellectual and spiritual growth, for while the Bible is powerful and valuable, it is only one book, and there is far more to God and to all His creation then a single text could ever cover.

It also gives Christianity a great new tool for evangelism, as such an organization could boost the signal from towers on friendly land, so that it would penetrate any nation, no matter how much that nation engages in censorship, and spread the word of God and the truth to all of mankind, outside of arrogant governments insistence on controlling speech! Not only could the word of God be spread, but politically disliked news commentary, science, arts, and anything else that a government might choose to suppress or censor, would be broadcasted from sea to shining sea, and there would be no way to stop us short of the violence that shows these governments to be what they are. Now all we need is a really cheap television transmitter!

For regardless of what religious text, if any, you accept, God, whoever and whatever He is, regardless of what you say, created a world of freedom, where birds have their own claws and humans have their own families and land, and the forces of physics are consistent and exploitable 99.9% of the time, and governments that oppress their people eventually fall by the devices of their own cruelty, from the Roman Empires slave economy destroying itself, to the cruelty of the human sacrificing Aztecs bringing the wrath of all the neighboring peoples to destroy their great city. Included is even Ancient Isreals barbarism, human sacrifice and oppression weakening it to make it prey for neighboring states and the Medieval Catholic churches simony and oppression losing it its lands in Central Italy, and finally the oppression of Adam and his clothes and so called "knowledge of good and evil" bringing death and tragedy in to the world. "The wages of sin are death," (Romans 6: 23a, NIV) and it would seem thus that oppression is a sin punished by the grapes of wrath sown in to Gods people and the power entrusted in the mob. Thankfully for us sinners, "but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6: 23b, NIV)

Yes, free and peaceful (and peace is a kind of freedom) states are wealthy, prosperous, and strong, and the states that brought freedom and peace to some degree received much of the earth and much happiness and peace as reward in their time, from the United States of America in the 20th century to the early Roman Republic with its beginnings of federal democracy, from Persia with its first constitutional controls to the protestants with their freedom of knowledge, speech and assembly and the industrial revolution that accompanied them. From the Vikings with their respect for women and proper ways of resolving disputes to the Chinese with their consistent philosophy and relative freedom of speech. Freedom is never perfect, but even the good in the imperfect is not forgotten by God, so let freedom ring!