The EPA versus Arlo Guthrie

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.

Guest Post - Jamie B Musing

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.

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

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."

California Nightmares

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 Story of Kenmore

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.

Collectivism Doesn't Exist - The Thomas Friedman Story

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.

Free Letter from K.L. Jamison

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.

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

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

We've Gone Too Far

"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

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!

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

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.

Vox Populi - A Socratic Rant

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.

For a Friend

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.