Oh Noes! The Scary Claritan-D!

I'm annoyed. I mean, really, really annoyed. Mainly at the idiots that we call state Representatives and Senators. I'll include Governor Barbour in there just for good measure.

Why am I so annoyed? What has gotten my proverbial panties in a bunch you may ask?

Well, it's like this, both the Mississippi Senate and the Mississippi House has passed a bill designed to restrict psuedoephedrine sells to require a prescription. Which means that now to continue with my daily dosage of Clariton D I will need to spend additional money to go to the doctor's office and get a prescription.

This is insane for a number of reasons, among them, and just right off the top of my head:

1. Medicare Costs & Doctor Rationing
   
2. Lessens Quality of Life
3. Unintended Economic Consequencees

None of those things make me happy, and let's look at the reasons why...

Medicare costs & Doctor Rationing. Remember, this bill will require thousands of people to go visit the doctor. Everyone who takes Claritan-D on a daily basis will need to do so. Then anyone who is allergic to phenylephrine will need to visit the doctor whenever they get sick or get a stuffy nose due to the changing season. Medicare costs associated with all these additional doctor visits will skyrocket. The Medicare/Medicaid program here in Mississippi is already taxed to the breaking point. This bill will add thousands of visits to the system per year, and we already don't have the money in our tax coffers to pay for all of the entitlement services that the State provides.

Then there is also the fact that a doctor can only see so many patients in a given day. When a doctor gets innudated with demands to see him just so people can get another year's worth of Claritan-D, that means that that same doctor has less time to see people who are truly sick.

Quality of Life. The thing is that I need this particular drug for my quality of life. If I don't have it, I'm quickly reduced to a phlegm filled monstrosity that is constantly hacking, snuffling and ultimately I have to go to the doctor for a Z-Pack because the crud in my chest and nose has turned into pneumonia. After the Z-Pack does its thing, I'm okay for two weeks, and then we repeat the process. This is how I lived for the first 18 months that I lived in Mississippi. I had more Z-Packs and shots in the posterior to combat pneumonia infections in those 18 months, than in the entire 30 year span prior to moving.

That stopped once I got myself on a daily Claritan-D regiment.

This is what the government is basically saying that they want me to go back to. It's either that or take hours out of my day to wait around at the doctors office to get them to give me a prescription.

Which leads to the third point I made up there about...

Unintended Economic Consequences. This whole thing is an effort to combat a "meth problem," and truthfully, there are areas in this state that has one. In fact in Jackson in 2009, there were more arrests concerning meth, than any other drug.

The thing is that, this is not going to change one thing, and the reason for that is the Law of Scarcity. This law is based upon two propositions:

1. Man has unlimited or insatiable wants, and
2. Resources that are used to produce goods and services are limited.

I'm not going into some huge lecture on Supply and Demand, as frankly, economics is not my specialty. I took enough courses on it in college to be able to deal with it, and know the fundamentals, but I don't particularly like it. But the basics is that the more scarce a product is, the more and higher the cost to sell. Since the production costs will not necessarily change, that means that there will be a higher profit margin for those still willing to create this particular drug.

Anyways, I want you to think about scarcity.

Think about it and especially in relation to Prohibition (or The Noble Experiment). When the government tried to limit the creation and sale of alcohol, what happened? It went underground, and was still made and sold, but the selling involved bullets, a violent black market, racketeering, corrupted law officials, and of course, high profits. The Mafia made huge profits on liquor until Prohibition was ended, and cheap, legal access to it, stripped them of their profits in that particular venue.

During Prohibition, liquor was SCARCE, therefore it could be sold at a high price despite being cheap to make, therefore it was worthwhile for those willing to break laws to produce it, to produce it.

Which sounds amazingly like the illegal drug trade here in the States today.

But I digress, by making the a single ingredient in the production of meth even more scarce, you're creating an environment, where the creation of meth becomes even more economically viable for those willing to break the law to create it.

Also, consider that pseudoephedrine is technically not a REQUIRED ingredient to meth. It's used because it's a cheap alternative, with a chemical similarity to the "actual ingredient." Additionally, the ingredients that can be used, are wide and varied. It's the reason so many people have taken to make it, the formula can use a host of different items, so long as they are chemically similar, and compatible to the end result.

So, are all these other ingredients being tracked and required a doctor's notice to purchase? Why just the one that is most useful to our health? Iodine and salt are also ingredients, why aren't those schedule 1 narcotics? Should we need a note from a licensed painter in order to purchase paint thinner (again, a meth ingredient) or acetone?

We must always remember something, every time the government acts to create new restrictions on us:

Limits on our freedoms, only works on those unwilling to break the law in the first place.

It is the same fundamental reason that "gun control" and airport "security measures" will never work. They are based on the delusion concept that additional laws will keep someone from breaking the law.

And life just does not work that way.

Would you call 911 if the police steal your car?

There's a growing problem in this country. In fact, in the Metro Detroit area, this problem has blossomed at a rate of more than 50%, and generated a price tag of at least $30.63 MILLION dollars as of 2007 (that 50% growth rate is from 2003, by the way).

What could this problem be?

Forfeitures.

For those who are not aware, a forfeiture is when the police take private property away from citizens, and either charge them money to have the property returned, or sell said property at auction. Of course, this property doesn't have to be "property" as it could just be sums of cash that they have seized.

Also notice that I never said that the property in question was utilized in a crime, nor that the people who have had their property take was ever charged with a crime. Convictions are out of the question in this process.

Why you ask? Why would the police--those individuals supposedly there to stop the forced taking of private property, be actively performing this activity?

Money of course.

Here's a quote from one Sgt. Dave Schriener, who runs Canton Township, Michigan's "forfeiture unit:"

Police departments right now are looking for ways to generate revenue, and forfeiture is a way to offset the costs of doing business.You'll find that departments are doing more forfeitures than they used to because they've got to -- they're running out of money and they've got to find it somewhere.

For the record, the Canton Township has a population of around 90,000 and their "forfeiture unit" raised $343,699 in 2008.

It's not surprising that more and more police forces are actively using forfeiture as a way to generate income. After all, the more money they bring in, the less that the legislature will hand them. Therefore, they need to seize just that much more the next year. It's an endless, destructive cycle which has lead to such things as forfeitures for gambling, minor drug possession, and even loitering near illegal activity.

Yes, you read that right, just being close by illegal activity is enough to get your private property taken away, and you not being able to get it back until you pay a fine--and again, there was no crime being committed by the person who owns the property.

This is just another of the many, many abuses by the occupying military police forces that is found in every corner of our nation.

And the blantant theft of private property in order to further fund the insanity involved in police military operations on our soil is just a further insanity that needs to be cleared up.

Consider this, I don't normally like the thing that comes out of the more liberal justices mouths. In fact, I cringed at some of the historical opinion/rulings from Justice Sotomayor during her confirmation hearings. But, I'm about to quote her.

Last month, the Supreme Court heard a case on six people from Chicago who sought PROMPT hearings on the seizure of their cars and money (notice that we're not even talking about getting this stuff back, but just getting the chance to say "hey, there was no crime, and that's mine" to a judge). During this, a federal attorney told the court that the government needs time to determine who owns a car and to investigate that person's connection to the criminal activity.

To this statement, Justice Sotomayor said: "I'm sorry. You take the car and then you investigate?"


If even a Leftist can see the logical fallacy in a process or statement then you've got to realize the utter lunacy which it entails.

What Obama Has Done....

The Lefties are so up-in-arms over the (by-now) comments about Obama's lack of actions, that it's almost funny. Of course, Obama has done some things, it would be nearly impossible to be in the Presidency for 9 months and win a Nobel Peace Prize otherwise. Oh wait....

Anyways, what brings this about is an Esquire article which, in a fit of writer pique went about detailing all the wonderful things that the Chosen One has done to us. Well, such an article makes me want to respond, and point out the problems in Obama's "successes." That said, I'm not even going to address the obvious Liberal tilt in said article, but rather just look at the said list.

So, without further ado...

• Bank Bailout -- A $350 BILLION dollar drain on our economy, when the system is designed to punish failing institutions with bankruptcies.
• Closing of Guantanamo -- which still has not happened...
• Reversing overseas funding to family planning organizations -- Obama is giving away money to other countries when our budget is already out of control with his $350,000,000,000 handout to banks
• Green Light to California car-emissions standards -- which are insanely prohibitive, and have not been proven effective about the "green house" gases. And why exactly does a state need federal approval to set emissions standards? They can pass it and kill their economy if they wish, and the Feds have no say in the matter.
  
• The Stimulus Bill -- In which another nearly $800,000,000,000 dollars was taken out of productive use and handed out via fiat/whims
• America's Withdrawal from Iraq -- in which we've replaced our armed forces with scores of private contractors (and our Armed Forces are actually still there). That's not a withdrawal, plus we're still in Afghanistan and maintain a military presence in scores of other countries.
• Allow federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research -- again, handing out money for something that has no proven use or need. There has never been a successful embryonic stem cell research--now adult stem cell has proven useful, but they'd rather kill human fetuses to harvest stem cells
• Forced GM & Chrysler into bankruptcy -- and then forced their stakeholders to accept marginal returns on their investments, while giving the union (which is part and parcel of the reason the companies in question went under in the first place) a commanding interest far above and beyond its claimed stake. What that means is that people who invested in GM & Chrysler were told to bend over and take it, while the Union which gave money to Obama's campaign was given a pretty big carrot
  
• Reset the "tone" of our relations with the entire Arab world -- and of course, this "reset" of the tone has stopped Arabs from tossing suicide bombers at people...oh, wait, no it hasn't. But hey, we did promise to curtail free speech in our country to appease their insane rantings
• Cash for Clunkers leading to Ford's announced $1,000,000,000 profit -- and as soon as the socialist buyout of cars ended, the "gains" in car sales dried up, and we're back where we started. Except now a lot of folks have huge car loans which they probably won't be able to afford.
• Sonia Sotomayor -- the Justice who is on the record as being biased against white males.
• The "Obama" tax cut -- is not really a tax cut. Most of the folks getting the "tax credit" are those individuals who currently do not pay taxes already. In actuality, it is a wealth redistribution scheme as money is taken from tax payers and given (yet again) to those who do not pay. The list of reasons against this success actually existing continue here.
  

And that was the "Liberal" successes... the article also goes on and brings up what they call "Conservative" successes...

• Appointments to Sec. of Defense and the CIA and others -- well whoop-de-doo! He has knowledgeable people from outside his "party" running aspects of his administration.
• Drone attacks against Al Qaeda -- the same attacks that are randomly killing or maiming innocent Afghans?
• "Tweaking" Military tribunals for Guantanamo prisoners -- and? They are still prisoners, they're still there. They still aren't U.S. citizens, and as such still aren't subject to the rights of United States citizens...
  
• "Warrantless-Wiretaping" -- Big surprise that a Big-Government/Chicago-style-politics President would want the ability to secretly, and without Judicial oversight, listen in on people's conversations.
• Sending 17,000 soldiers to Afghanistan in February, 2009 -- but sitting on the request for additional troops in August for over a month, despite the person he placed in charge stating that the troops are needed for continued support of ongoing operations. And what happened to getting out of unilateral wars?

Of course this leads me to ask the question: THESE are "Conservative" successes?

Where's the fiscal responsibility?

Where's the lessening of government strictures and structures?

Where's the return of Constitutional rule?

Where's the concept of Rule by States?

Where's the concept of a personal freedom and responsibility?

All I see are big-government/big-brother expanses of government (the "Liberal" successes) and the continuance of a "war" which was not declared according to Constitutional guidelines.

Sure, Obama has done some things. Unfortunately, none of them are good for us as a people or a country. Worse, he plans to further drag our country into debt with another unnecessary and un-Constitutional program.

There has been no successes here, and there has especially not been what I would call a Conservative success.

Can Twitter Lead to Jail Time?

Imagine it, the date, September 24, 2009. The place, Philadelphia during the G20 Summit. You're sitting in a hotel room, with a off-the-shelf, police-band radio scanner, and a computer. What you're doing is as police actions come over the radio, you're transcribing them to Twitter.

The before you know it, you're under arrest, and the F.B.I. is at your house, taking your books, computers, and rifling through your dirty underwear. After all, larceny in the name of protecting the government is the primary job of the F.B.I.

This is exactly what happened to Elliot Madison (aged 41). He was sitting in a hotel room, transcribing police messages to Twitter when the self-same police arrived and took him to jail. While there they charged him with the following crimes:

• Hindering apprehension or prosecution
• Criminal use of a communication facility
• Possession of instruments of crime

Let's consider these things, and remember I'm not a lawyer. What I am is an intelligent, logical human, who expects things--especially laws--to be human readable without having a lawyer immediately on hand to explain every detail.

The Hindering Apprehension or Prosecution law is fairly straightforward. It details the fact that anyone actively helping people escape prosecution (hiding criminals, etc) is guilty of it. Specifically, this clause:

warns the other of impending discovery or apprehension, except that this paragraph does not apply to a warning given in connection with an effort to bring another into compliance with law; or

What's interesting in regards to this case, is that the Prosecution would have a hard time proving a) the intent of Mr. Madison in this regard and b) the people he was actively providing this information to was actively engaging in a crime. He was sending Twitter messages to people protesting the government--I find it highly odd that the Pennsylvania State Police automatically assume that people protesting governments are engaging in criminal behavior. After all, that has to be the assumption if Mr. Madison is providing t his information to warn them of impending discovery or apprehension in regards to criminal behavior.

The second law there, only comes into bearing if the first one is relevant--or again, if the Pennsylvania State Police believe that dissent with governing bodies is the same as criminal behavior. This law only has bearing if someone commits, causes or facilitates other criminal activity with the use of the "Communication Facility," which is defined by law as:

As used in this section, the term "communication facility" means a public or private instrumentality used or useful in the transmission of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part, including, but not limited to, telephone, wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic or photo-optical systems or the mail. (Dec. 21, 1998, P.L.1240, No.157, eff. 60 days)

Now, what interests me is the fact that by this definition--and the Pennsylvania State Police's assumptions of inherent criminal activity on the part of protesters--the dispatch officers and officers at the scene are facilitating the same "criminal" behavior as Mr. Madison by sending the same information he did over the radio (after all, he was just transcribing radio communications onto Twitter).

And that last law is probably the most inherently unstable of the charges brought against Mr. Madison. The "authoritahs" are using the following clause to bring the charge (as the rest of the clauses refer to weapons and/or body armor):

Anything used for criminal purposes and possessed by the actor under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for lawful uses it may have.

The problem with that is that Mr. Madison was using the tools he had at his disposal in inherently legal--and (what seems to this non-lawyer as) an appropriately lawful--manners. He was listening to a police-band radio scanner, and transmitting the information he heard on it over Twitter.

Let us not forget that the Police, as "public servants," their communication is part of the Public Domain. That chatter can legally be listened to by anyone (though transmitting on the relevant bands is legally a no-no and morally really murky).

No, the way this reads is the following concepts are in play:

• (Yet another) Government Agency does not want people actively paying attention to what they are doing and/or saying about the people that they are supposedly serving
• The (Pennsylvania State) police inherently feel that protesting the government and/or any form of governing body is an inherently criminal act

Both concepts scare the tar outta me.

It saddens me that the government is scared of the populace. Actually, that tells me that the government is not effectively doing its job of serving the true needs of the constituency which they are there to serve.

Worse, is the thought that this police force (and the FBI for searching Mr. Madison home for "criminal materials") believe that dissent to the government is bad.

Of course, it's not that unexpected. Time and again, the government--and by that I mean everything from the smallest of podunk towns sheriff's all the way to the Supreme Court--are less interested in serving the true nature of our country as defined by the Constitution as they are by gathering more and more power unto themselves.

No, I firmly believe that what Mr. Madison was doing was morally and legally right. He--as a taxpayer and citizen of this country--is morally obligated to keep tabs upon the criminal governmental agencies out to fleece serve him. Additionally, he is within his right to post that information he has gathered onto any bulletin board service he so desires.

In the end, it is as too often the case these days: the Police attempting to force their will upon the populace via duress.

Can I Have The Health Care Bill Please?

I work a lot with documents. It's a really big part of that whole software engineering process. Things like specifications, data dictionaries, white papers, requirements, process improvement plans and the random other plan.

Some of these documents can be huge. I've seen a Systems Engineering Management Plan which took nearly 1,500 pages in MS Word before.

The thing is, that these documents, they're the key to what I'm building at any given moment. They describe functionality, interfaces, and other requirements for the software system. Without those documents....well I'm just floundering in the wind, building my "best guess" as to what the customer/client/boss wants.

In the past, I've discovered that my best guess in such situations are not always ideal. Actually, in such situations I've often built the wrong software; sure it does a task, but it's not the task that the customer wanted taken care of.

I could not imagine even attempting to do my job if the only thing I was given was the table of contents (ToC) and the Executive Summary.

No let me correct that and say that my job would be easier--and the client would get a better, more accurate for their needs, piece of software--without me getting any of these needed and necessary documents, as opposed to me getting just the ToC and the Executive Summary of these documents.

Why then... or maybe that should be HOW CAN... does our Congress think it can pass a bill when the only thing they are debating is effectively the ToC and the Executive Summary?

But that is effectively what is currently happening. The Chairman's Mark of the "America's Healthy Futures Act of 2009," henceforth called ObamaCare, is currently all that exists of the ObamaCare bill.

Basically, it's around 250 pages of descriptions on what our esteemed felons Congressmen believe should go in this law. Additionally, a Chairman's Mark, even if voted upon as good and valid, is not binding during the actual construction of the legislative language.

Think about that... Health Care is currently about 1/6^th of our GDP, and Congress wants us to think that they're looking out for us, when they're arguing about the content of a bill that has not been written, and is currently not scheduled to be written until the arguments are over.

This promises to be a massive disaster on the scale of (if not larger than) the TARP and any other big-government/nanny state legislation that's passed in the past 100 years.

What's worse is that they're playing dating games in order for the GAO to give it a better rating fiscally. The primary aspects of the bill won't start until JULY, 2013 (despite the fact that they're planning on raising taxes/funds beginning April, 2011) and the GAO ranks things based on a ten year plan. This evil thing doesn't even begin (except for stealing money from the citizenry) until a third of the way through the GAO's current reporting period.

No, this Chairman's Mark needs to go away, and if our esteemed leaders want to create a massive new socialist program, then they need to do so in the sunlight, and allow the populace to read the bill so we can tell them exactly where they can shove it.

And I'd like that chance before they pass a bill which would damage my ability to care for the health and welfare of my family.

Government Mandates & You

I was perusing through THOMAS earlier and discovered an interesting proposed bill. Apparently, Congress, in its infinite wisdom has decided that not nearly enough people own cars. In fact, there are some thousands upon thousands of able-bodied adults who do not own a car. So, of course, they have decided that it was time to legislate such a situation.

It's an interesting bill, and has these as the primary focuses:

1. The creation of a regulatory marketplace. All new cars sold will be required by law to be sold through this marketplace. Inclusion in the market place means a bunch of hefty fees are added to the car manufacturers, as well as price caps and bottoms, and an array of "standard" features which are less the what is currently standard on most new cars
2. Any additional features--regardless of their pre-"marketplace" standardization--can only be added as an additional cost to the car
3. Cars that do not meet the price caps/bottoms or feature standards will not be allowed to be sold in the United States or its territories
   
4. Every able-bodied/able-minded adult must own a car
5. Depending on income, the government may buy the car for you
6. If the adult is an illegal alien, they will not be able to get the free car
7. People are not allowed to check to see if an adult is an illegal alien
   
8. The population can keep their current car, only if they
   
   1. Do not change the color of the car
   2. Do not change the car's battery
   3. Do not change the car's tires
      
   4. Do not perform any exterior or interior body work
   Performing any of these tasks requires you to purchase a new car
9. Each new car has a tax associated with it
10. There is a yearly fee, based on income and cost of the car, to own the car
11. Adults who do not own a car, must pay an annual fine
    
12. Failure to pay the fees/taxes/fines will lead to jail time
    

So, what do you think?

Does this sound like a fair law? Is it reasonable?

After all, those poor folks who don't have a car right this moment, why the government will buy them one! Imagine all the helpfulness that that could provide. Solid, reliable transportation for the masses.

Of course, all those folks who live in places like NYC--where it's unreasonable for them to own a vehicle--why they have to pay extra to offset the cost, or they could go to jail for failure to pay their taxes.

Can you imagine this? Can you imagine what this would do to our nation and economy?


If you've read this, and thought it perfectly reasonable. Replace the car with a bike. Or a house. Or a candy bar. If it still sounds reasonable, well, you're a hopeless socialist. Go on home.

For the rest of us, why does this sound unreasonable while doing the exact thing with Health Care sound reasonable?

Frankly, it doesn't. The description of the law, is more or less how that last Health Care bill was written. There were hefty fines and/or jail time if you did not buy the government health insurance. There was a single line detailing that no illegal aliens would receive benefits, while at the same time the law stated that no one would be able to check on the legal residence state of the individual in question. And of course, there was the fact that people would be able to keep their insurance--provided that they never needed it to change.

This is the change that Obama is trying to bring us. Pretty bitter medicine, eh?

Why I Disagree With Today's Speech

I'm highly Conservative. Anyone that takes two seconds to peruse this site will quickly come to realize that. I wear my political affiliation on my sleeve for the world to see, and happily defend my positions against anyone who wishes to discuss things logically.

I of course, reserve the right to mock anyone who devolves into "It Feels Good, So That's Why" emotionalism.

So of course, when I read about the Department of Education's letter to every school in the nation, and how they provided curriculum materials to work in conjunction with Obama's speech today, I was concerned.

And then I actually read the contents of the letter and that concern quickly became anger and disgust.

Now, the Lefties would happily want everyone out there to believe that anyone who opposes Obama's speech today is a redneck, racist hick without a lick of common sense or brains. Just take a look at the political cartoons related to it.

The thing is, that it's not the speech that I have an issue with.

Frankly, that's a good object lesson in learning out to critically parse out BS from a politicians mouth. As an aside, what I usually hear when listening to a politician's (especially those with a centrist or leftist tilt) speech is thus:

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. I'm Awesome. BLAH, BLAH. Vote for me, I'll give you stuff!

No. What disturbs me was the curriculum that went alongside of it. The curriculum that was sent to every principal in the country from the Department of Education (remember this fact, it will become more important in a moment).

For the K-6 students (this is elementary kids folks) the concepts were things like writing down how they could help the president. Or answering questions on why the president is good, or why what he's saying is right, or why we should listen to him (and other elected officials).

Now, I firmly believe we should listen to elected officials, after all, that's how we know they're lying to us, but I'm less interested in listening to elected officials in the unquestioning obedience point of view.

But not only is the concepts espoused in their rather insane letter annoying, but if you want to get technical it's kind of against the law (not that that has any bearing on what the Obama Administration does, as one can read about here).

Specifically, it's 20 U.S.C. § 3403, and the important aspect of that statute involved comes into play with these sections:

(3) parents have the primary responsibility for the education
of their children, and States, localities, and private
institutions have the primary responsibility for supporting that
parental role;

(4) in our Federal system, the primary public responsibility
for education is reserved respectively to the States and the
local school systems and other instrumentalities of the States;

The thing is that that FEDERAL statute (the one which created the department in question) denies the Department of Education (which Constitutionally shouldn't exist, as it's not specifically enumerated in the Constitution that Congress can create a Department of Education) any authority, right or responsibility to provide any curriculum or anything that can be "passed down" to the state.

Think about this. These are the folks who we've elected to be our leaders, and all we've gotten is broken lies, insane socialist theories and broken laws.

Of course, it is a Leftist in office so one should not be THAT surprised.

Oh wait, I can't say that can I, after all, any criticism or implications that the Chosen One isn't doing his job of protecting the Constitution might be considered racism...

Obama Wants You To Report On Your Neighbors!

I've just read a disturbing blog entry on the White House's blog. It's an article on their proposed government take-over of the Health Care Industry, and anyone who has read any of my previous articles here, knows my take on government programs.

I think it's evil, and a massive waste of taxpayer money, and 100% un-Constitutional.

But, that's not at issue here. What's at issue here, is this content:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Yes, that is our government, asking you to turn in those people who dissent with their socialist programs.

Yes, that is our government--telling you that it's okay to believe in Big Government, despite the fact that time and again, it has been shown that Big Government is hopelessly against the individual.

This terrifies me.

After all, it's a VERY short trip from a request for individuals to snitch on dissent to requiring people to report dissent, to it being blatantly illegal.

Isn't this the type of stuff that those liberal Hypocrites just spent the past 8 years decrying about the Bush Administration? And now they want a free pass on performing the same actions?

It's like that--quite funny--image of Obama as the Joker. When the Liberal press drew Bush as the Joker, it was high political satire. But now that it's the Chosen One's image, it's racist and evviiillll.

I'm sorry you silly Liberals, but you can't have it both ways.

What do you mean "Read The Bill?"

I'm utterly, and truly amazed.

Flabbergasted.

Astounded even.

I'm utterly and hopeless amused and ashamed by something I just read. What you may ask? Why the simple fact that the House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer (D-MD) recently told a reporter:

If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes

Worse, he viewed the entire concept as one big joke.

While LAUGHING about the whole thing, this was his response:

I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill

He's up there, the MAJORITY LEADER for the House of Representatives, and basically telling the nation, "well, hell, I don't read the bill, just that brief overview from when they started the legislative process. I don't really care about what's in it, so long as the right keywords are in the summary."

And this is one of the guys who's a supposed leader of the House.

I can see me, telling my boss, "well, you know, I didn't bother reading the actual requirements, or what the user wanted when I was building that software. I just kind of went with what I thought the document should say."

That'd be a quick trip to the unemployment line for yours truly.

Why on earth wouldn't a Representative or Senator WANT to read the Bill? Isn't it supposed to be their entire purpose in Washington in order to represent the PEOPLE in our Federal Government.

Our government is out of control. Our Representatives and Senators are passing who knows what (not even they know all of the laws which they pass) and We The People are suffering for it.

There's no one alive who knew the what the entirety of the over 1,500 page bill behind the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 was. It had not been released in its final form to the populace via THOMAS before it was voted on and passed through the House. What we did know was that it equaled to trillions in new taxes within the next 5 years all to supposedly make a less than .02 percent decrease in ambient temperatures possible over the next 50 years.

Think on that, trillions in new taxes that everyone gets to pay, all over some junk science that may or may not have an effectively undetectable difference on the global temperature. Yeah, that's good government there....

The same applies to the over 1,000 page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009--worse, because of the stupidity found within that law, additional laws had to be created to make changes to it. Which wouldn't have been needed if they had provided the populace time to review the document, and if they, our elected representatives, had taken the time to review the document.

But of course that's working under the impression that our Representatives and Senators actually care about our nation.

Because frankly, from where I'm sitting, all they are concerned about is keeping their power in Washington.


The Read The Bill pledge is a good START for our nation to get itself back on track. But we need more changes.

I believe that we need the following changes to how Congress/our Federal Government operates:

1. Make Senators appointed from State Legislatures again. The entire Constitutional purpose of the Senate was to give the STATES a voice in the Federal government; it was not supposed to be another representative branch of the populace.
2. Make each bill be required to show which portion of the Constitution allows Congress to enact it
3. Have each law read into the public record prior to a vote, with the following conditions:
1. Each Representative/Senator must be there for the entire reading
2. The entire reading must be performed at one time
3. Any Representative/Senator who leaves during the reading is not allowed to vote on the law
4. All laws twilight based upon the majority that voted for said law
   
1. With a simple majority (50%+1 vote or greater) the law would twilight in 2 years
2. With a moderate majority (65% or greater) the law would twilight in 3 years
3. With a super majority(75% or greater) the law would twilight in 5 years
4. Laws could be written to twilight earlier, but not later
   

A Sad, Sad Day

Well, Thursday evening was, at the “Cap-And-Trade” bill was passed in the House.  What is saddest is that there were 8 so-called Conservatives (at least they get a little “R” next to their name) who voted FOR this bill.

Those Republican Representatives are:

• Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330
• Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165
• Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385
• Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361
• LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572
• McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611
• Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761
• Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765

Now, one may wonder why it is that I despise this particularly bill. After all, the Democrats promise us that it’s ever-so-important in regards to the environment.

What the Dims don’t want you to know, is that this bill will be responsible for raising that cost of energy by thousands of dollars.  And that price tag is even before you factor in the jobs that will be lost, and the 1.6 Trillion dollar price tag attached.

In effect this is a massive tax on every person in this country.

But of course the Liberals don’t want THAT to be the sound bite. They tell everyone that the Businesses pick up the bill. That the “Cap and Trade” in question here are just fines and fees levied against businesses.

But that belays the most obvious thing that any business owner will tell you:

 Businesses do not pay taxes.

It’s simple. They don’t. They never have, and they never will. Anything that comes their way that is labeled as a tax or a fee or a fine, is merely passed onto the consumer. It’s part of the price that you pay for any good or service.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or ignorant. Or both.

But it gets better, those folks who know these things—and I’m including the greenies here –state that this bill will influence the environment by less than 1/10th of a degree in 50 years.

Yes, our “fair” leaders have seen fit to saddle us with massive debt, a program which encourages the wasteful spending of states such as California, and passes that burden onto more fiscally conservative states (such as Indiana) and one which seems to be designed to drive businesses overseas.

They will be driven to counties which produce more “greenhouse” gases than we do, and by driving our businesses to them, they will see no real reason to stop producing the gasses which get an environmentalist’s panties into such a bunch.

In fact, this is what the Heritage Foundation has defined as the end result of this bill if it manages to pass the Senate:

• Compared to no cap and trade, real GDP losses increase an additional $2 trillion, from $7.4 trillion under the original draft to $9.6 trillion under the new draft;
• Compared to no cap and trade, average unemployment increases an additional 261,000 jobs, from 844,000 lost jobs under the original draft to 1,105,000 lost jobs under the new draft; and
• Peak-year unemployment losses rise by 500,000 jobs, from 2 million under the original draft to 2.5 million under the new draft.

By 2035 the bill will:

• Reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $9.4 trillion;
• Destroy 1,145,000 jobs on average, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 2,479,000 jobs;
• Raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation;
• Raise inflation-adjusted gasoline prices by 58 percent;
• Raise residential natural gas prices by 55 percent;
• Raise an average family's annual energy bill by $1,241; and
• Result in an increase of $28,728 in additional federal debt per person, again after adjusting for inflation

Why anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me, but I guess that’s why I’m a Conservative.

"We the people are coming."

Republishing this letter from The Smallest Minority, just because it rocks.

I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?

Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.

Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.

Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.

Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.

Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.

Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ‑‑ what do you have against shareholders making a profit?

Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.

Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band‑Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ‑‑ please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.

Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.

From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.

We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when hewill rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

Barbour: It's Tax & Spend Time

Ah, the idiocy of politicians. A few months ago, I was proud of Governor Barbour for standing up against the idiocy of the "Bailout" where the Federal Government sends itself further into debt with nations that are actively hostile to our way of life.

Yet, here he is, just a few scant months later pushing to ensure that I think he's fairly worthless as a politician.

Mississippi, like most states, is facing a shortfall in its general fund. People are spending less which means all those taxes on sales, and Corporate fees, and the various other things where the government takes money away from those who actually produce wealth, are down. It's estimated that the state is ~$300 million down from expectations, and there's only a month left in the fiscal year.

That's a lot of money to have not been collected. So of course, the politicians are in something of a frenzy. After all, they need that money to further their own little power schemes, and to hand out money to their constituents. Oh, excuse, we're supposed to call them, "the worthy poor" or some tripe like that.

So, after taking in 300 million dollars less than expected, you'd think that someone in Jackson would realize that now would be a good time to cut spending. After all, if I bring home $300 less than I expected I would certainly do so. After all, contrary to the Government's belief, one really can't continuously spend money which one does not have.

But alas, that's where one gets into the issue of politicians and their idiocy.

My guess is that they don't really understand where that money comes from. They don't understand that for every penny they bring in, that's taking a penny away from one of their constituents. Those thousands of dollars that I spend on sales taxes, state income taxes, property taxes, sin taxes, and my share of fees levied against the companies I frequent could have been spent on my family.

That's money that they're taking from me under duress, all because they feel the need to push their social agenda and hand out money. In 2008, this is how the state split up the money they took in from its people (the General Fund):

• Social Welfare - 2%
• Agriculture & Economic Development - 2%
• Corrections - 5%
• Debt Service - 6%
• Hospitals & Hospital Schools - 5%
• Medicaid - 8%
• Other - 9%
• Colleges & University - 17%
• K-12 Education - 45%

It's easy. Take a category, and cut. Look at K-12 Education, nearly half of the funds taken in go towards that. On average, 20% of their budget goes to indirect costs--which are those things not directly related to teaching our kids. How much of that is needed? Would it not be better to do things like cut back on the cleaning staff, and instead make the kids clean up the school? Would it not be better to strip away the administrative overhead, and give more power directly to the school's principles? I think so.

It's easy to find things to cut--it's just sad that so many people come to expect the government to hand things to them, or to take care of things that a generation ago, our parents/grandparents would have done.

It's even sadder that the politicians are so determined to keep their jobs and their power, that they'd willing drive us all further into debt, rather than do the right thing and work towards shrinking our government.

Obama: Ignore The Man Behind The Curtain....

Sometimes, I really do have to wonder what the Democrats/Lefties are smoking up there in their little world-outside of Reality.

The White House has published a new report that claims that to "fix" the economy requires a revamping of our health care system. Their justification? The fact that Health Care, which currently accounts for ~18% of our GDP is estimated to grow to be around 30-34% of our GDP in THIRTY years. Yes, thirty, 3-0.

What, the report is not telling you is that the taxes to pay for the another expansion of Government abilities and capabilities, would crush our economy with 5.

Let's look at the two biggest tax items which are in the works to "pay" for health care by Government Mandate. The first is the "beverage" tax. What this is, is a tax on any drink you drink. Everything from sweet tea, to coke to beer to wine falls under the purview of this tax, dedicated to drive a majority of the food/dining industry out of business.

After all, if you want less of something, add a tax to it.

The next tax is the VAT, or the Value Added Tax. This works similar to a National Sales Tax, except it is on EVERY transaction (while sales taxes are typically applied only to transactions where no resale is involved). And while this does have potential, they're talking about adding it to the top of our already complex Income Tax system. This will ensure that our already weakened retail industry falters further.

After all, if you want less of something, add a tax to it.

And that's just the issues involved on the TAX side of things that health care reform will cause. Then there's also the simple fact that health care as we know it will cease to exist. After all, once Bureaucrats get in charge of making health decisions for you what you want, or think you need, will be irrelevant.

We'll see more cases, like the recent one where someone is being forced to undergo chemotherapy at a Judge's orders, despite the fact that he does not want to.

In every area of our lives that bureaucrats exist, we see petty tyrants doing things to harm the very people who they are supposed to be helping.

• In California, the "Land Use" bureaucrats tried to force a couple who were holding a Bible study with a few friends (~15) in their home to get an major use permit
• Some Veterans are turned away from VA hospitals because clerks are unable to fill out the DD214 forms correctly
• The Dutch have a plan to force "Unfit Mothers" to take contraception, and if you get pregnant while on the contraceptives, they will take your child\

Here in the U.S., Liberals love looking at our neighbors to the East and seeing all these grand, and wonderful plans they have in action. They see the social systems in place in France, Britain, Germany and Sweden, and they salivate and say "This is good."

But they never stop and actually LOOK at these things. They don't pay attention to the fact that Britain, France and Germany are all limiting access to health care. They're rationing doctors and medicines and diagnostic treatments.

In 1996, Michael D. Tanner wrote an article entitled "A Hard Lesson About Socialized Medicine" for the CATO Institute. In it he explains how Medicare fails. How the properties of a very elementary rule forces programs like this to fail.

That rule: If something is perceived as free, people will consume more of it than they would if they had to pay for it.

This is a simple truism. I have free cell phone minutes to my wife, therefore I call her routinely just to chat and hear her voice. Before "family plans" and free mobile-to-mobile minutes, I would only call to provide relevant information--things I needed for her to know.

These problems, the access issues, the poor service, the general... crappiness of medicare, are proof that the government should not be involved in health care for the people. The fact that they can't even get Veteran health care right--and there's a lot less of them, than on either Medicare or private insurance--is proof that they should not be doing this.

But above and beyond that, this is something outside of the bounds of what our Founding Fathers expected us to do with this country. They would be appalled at the thought that we have invested so much power into the hands of so few.

Need proof, then we but have to look to the words of one of our Founding Fathers, James Madison, who in the Federalist No. 45 wrote:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

and during a speech at the Virginia constitutional convention in December of 1829 said:

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

Our Government was not designed to hold this power, and it should not, for it puts too much power over ourselves, our bodies and our health, into the hands of just a few bureaucrats.

Bureaucrats whose sole purpose will be the gaining of more power and prestige for themselves.

A scary thought, where the health of my family is concerned.

Now for some blatant emotionalism!

I despise emotionalism. I hate it in church. I hate it at work. And above all things, I hate it in my politicians. To me, there is nothing more cowardly, and despicable than a politician who takes someones tragedy, and then tries to create an unconstitutional law in order to score political favor-points off of it.

What am I talking about? Why the recent Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act which was introduced into the House by Ms. LINDA T. SANCHEZ of California, Ms. KAPTUR, Mr. YARMUTH, Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD, Mrs. CAPPS, Mr. BISHOP of New York, Mr. BRALEY of Iowa, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. HARE, Mr. HIGGINS, Mr. CLAY, Mr. SARBANES, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Mr. COURTNEY, and Mr. KIRK.

Well, there's a nice list of those despicable, cowardly politicians I was talking about.

Of course, now you're probably wondering just what it is about this law which has earned it, and its writer, such harsh and severe descriptions? Well, frankly, what this law is trying to do is make me a felon. The thing is that the way I wrote this blog post alone, is enough to get me sentenced to no less than 2 years in a federal penitentiary according to this law. Here's the meat and potatoes of this law:

`(a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

`(b) As used in this section--

`(1) the term `communication' means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; and

`(2) the term `electronic means' means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.'.

What this translates into is that anyone who tries to coerce someone through aggressive words (which the entire point of this blog is to coerce folks to my line of reasoning, and I'm not above using aggressive and severe words to do so) can be charged and sentenced under this proposed law.

My only guess is that list of despicable, cowardly politicians above just did not get that whole First Amendment thing.

I also have to question if they truly understood their Oath of Office where they swore to protect and uphold the Constitution. Of course being politicians, I guess they figured that they were above such petty things as the Law of the Land.

I'm sorry that Megan Meier lacked the moral fortitude, and the thick skin generated by traditional play yard play, that she felt the need to kill herself for what someone wrote on the internet. Yet that is no excuse for what these despicable, and cowardly politicians are trying to do in her name.

Continuing the Fine Tradition of Home Grown Terrorism

Since my government has decided, once again, that I am an extremist, and/or a "radicalized" home-grown terrorist, I figured I should do everything in my power to ensure that I maintain that particular label.

The primary aspect of that is to ensure that I talk about what I view as the demonization of Constitutionalists, and the Constitution in general. I also must talk about how taxes and government are bad for you--because let's face it they are.

Here's the list of articles that have caught my fancy over the past few hours or so, and are things which I think everyone should get around to reading.

• Pro Libertate: Revenge of the "Waco Gene"
• Michelle Malkin: You Might Be a "Radicalized Right-Wing Extremist" If...
• Walter E. Williams: Democracy and Majority Rule
• Robert A. Wicks: Anarchy and Chaos
• The Raw Story: Cybersecurity Act would give President power to "shut down" internet

I'm heartened to notice in those articles that I'm not alone in fearing and decrying the government annexation of more and more of our rights. From what we are allowed to do with our property to what we're allowed to do with ourselves.

Let us remember and remind ourselves of just what and how we are supposed to be as a country.

Above all, let us remember that those heroes of our nation, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Locke, would all be considered violent, radicalized, home-grown terrorists in this statist nation which we now found ourselves within.

This is not a nation that Jefferson or Locke would be proud of. This is not the nation that Washington fought and bled for.

And I will say that as often, and as loudly as needed. After all, we still have the First Amendment.

At least for a little while longer.

The Taxman Cometh

And apparently he's bringing friends.

In an, at least to me, un-amazing move, numerous state, county and even city governments are dreaming up hundreds of ways in which to tax you their constituent.

Here in Mississippi there is talk of both a new cigarette tax, and a new healthcare tax, all in an effort to keep from having to raise the taxes on automobiles.

And Mississippi is not alone in these things. States and municipalities across the nation are taxing everything from tobacco products to strip clubs. And this is even before the trillions in new taxes which Obama's budget promises to crush us with.

The new law of the land seems to be "if it exists, then it can be taxed."

Every tax that's being proposed, has the sole effect of hurting a business, investor or the population in general (don't believe me? check that budget again, there's a cap-and-trade tax which will raise electric rates).

Yet our elected officials seem oblivious to the simple fact that rather than raising taxes, why don't we cut out the pointless, duplicated and un-needed government programs.

Do we need a Federal Department of Education, when traditionally, education is a LOCAL matter, and we elect superintendents on a per-county basis? No!

Do we need huge swatches of income taken from people, under duress and threat of imprisonment, and have that money be given to other people in wealth redistribution schemes? No!

Do we need a special police force dedicated to alcohol, tobacco and firearms? No!

Do we need state police forces, when each county has a sheriff's office, and most towns a police department? No!

Our governments are big, lumbering bureaucracies in this day and age. This is a bad thing. It is an evil thing, and as such needs to go away.

Now, I'm not encouraging anarchy, but I am encouraging a small, streamlined government presence, with a focus on personal liberty.

After all, that's what the Constitution promises us.

Here, There Be Slavery

Ah, the sweet joys of Freedom. America is a bountiful land, where laws which force our children into mandatory "service" programs, removing their ability to speak out against potential legislation and their ability to practice their religion would never pass.

...

Oh wait, that was BEFORE the Obama Administration. Apparently, I've been dreaming about the standards which our Founding Fathers placed into our Constitution. After all, H.R. 1388: Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act managed to get passed.

Now, despite the wonderful wording, this act has NOTHING to do with volunteers. Volunteers still have their rights, and volunteers are not forced to perform a service in order to gather the needed high-school credits to graduate or to get financial aid for college.

This is what Rahm Emanuel describes as the Obama Administration's "vision" for this plan:

We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.

"Universal civilian service" is not volunteerism, it's a draft. Yet because this is not for the military, and worse, it's enforced across the board, the Liberal Left is not up in arms over it. Because it's for organizations approved by the Left they're quiet and inattentive.

But if the scope and vile of the act itself is not enough to turn one's stomach, then one can just look forward to the amendments. Here's my personal favorite:

SEC. 1304. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

Section 125 (42 U.S.C. 12575) is amended to read as follows:

SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.

(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:

(1) Attempting to influence legislation.

(2) Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes.
…

(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.

Yes, you read that correctly. An individual who "volunteers" for this mandatory, universal service (i.e. this enforced slavery at the hands of the State) must give up their rights to freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

And people wonder why I get so irked when they claim that the Bill of Rights "gives" us our rights instead of the more accurate description that the Bill of Rights enumerates certain of our God-given rights as a reminder to the State.

This is a firm step that the government believes that it can legislate itself out of the Bill of Rights.

Sadly, both of the Senators for Mississippi (Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker) voted YES for this act. Even worse, 3 out of 4 Mississippi Representatives voted Yes for this bill (Travis Childers, Bennie Thompson, and Gene Taylor). That means out of all of Mississippi representation to Congress, only Gregg Harper stood up for personal rights, and against this monstrosity of a draft into indentured servitude of our children.

The purpose of this bill is to create a body of individuals who place their full faith in the Government and do not question their orders. Additionally, it is to be structured as a paramilitary system, for "civil defense" that is as "well-funded as the real military."

Compare this concept with how the Encyclipedia Britanica describes the values of a Fascist dictatorship:

Fascists favoured military values such as courage, unquestioning obedience to authority, discipline, and physical strength. They also adapted the outward trappings of military organizations, such as paramilitary uniforms and Roman salutes.

This is what our nation is becoming. This is the horror that our Congressmen have voted to force onto us. This is the change that Obama promised.

And people wonder why I voted for Ron Paul.



To see how your state fared, look here for the House, and here for the Senate.

I Wish Today's News Was All Just an April Fool's Day Joke...

I like GM cars. And in fact a majority of the vehicles that I have owned over the years are GM vehicles. So, it saddens me to see them in such dire straights, but such is life in a free-market economy like ours.

At least it was until the Government got into the business of handing out billions of dollars in an effort to shore up bad business decisions.

And much to my dismay, my beloved GM was one of the companies who went begging. Of course they are paying for it now. There are reports that the White House is planning on "reorganizing" the GM board of directors in an effort to make GM continue dancing to the tune it sets.

Not that surprising of a move after the shenanigans that the Treasury Secretary pulled while trying to get the power to seize random businesses and place them into the public domain.

But IT GETS BETTER!

After all the hoopla and the insane tax plans to tax bonuses at nearly 90%, it comes to light that members of Congress handed out 9.1 Million dollars in bonuses.

I wonder if those bonuses are going to be taxed at 90%, after all, that's TAXPAYER MONEY that those dirty Congressional aides cum thieves are receiving. How dare they take that taxpayer money?

Of course, not all the news out there is bad. Walter Williams has a great article up, describing the fallacy of Liberal policy, and points clearly to what is wrong with our society today.

Fundamentally, he proposes two questions which should be answered with a "yes" or a "no" and then defines why he answers the way he does, and also why Liberals (especially Liberal professors and politicians) would try to expound, and explain away their "maybe" answer. Those questions are:

Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him?

Good questions. I have to say "no" to both. Now, if only more folks saw it that way, maybe my tax money wouldn't be used for Corporate and Personal bailouts.

Taking Your Business, By Duress

I'm aghast. Utterly, and truly, mind-numbed beyond belief. I have now read something which utterly scares me.

Odd how that seems to happen with more and more frequency these days, eh?

So, what has gotten my proverbial panties in a bunch (does "this time" need to be added?)?

Well, it's Treasury Secretary Geithner, who happens to be Obama's lapdog employee in matters relating to finances and the economy. What's happened is that on Tuesday he went before Congress and "requested" the ability to seize non-bank financial firms (as an aside, the non-political FDIC can seize banks). This power he would then exercise via consultation with the Fed and the President.

So basically, what this guy wants is the ability to nationalize any organization that strikes his fancy.

And how exactly is this not socialism?

Amusingly, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has apparently jumped on the Ron Paul bandwagon and started questioning him on just what part of the Constitution allowed for this, and other actions that have been taken since March of 2008, to occur.

Of course, he was only able to point at Congress since no one in the White House is quite certain just what the Constitution says. After all, they had quite a bit of fun rewriting/interpreting the second and fourth amendments (as an aside, as of today (3/25) that bad wording is still up at WhiteHouse.gov site).

This is why our nation is failing. This is why we need major reforms of our laws. This is why we need to go back to our roots and shrink this over-bloated monstrosity which we call a Federal Government.

When the government begins to take the stance that it is all right for it to randomly, and unilateraly take private possessions then you know something is amiss. You know that our freedoms and our liberty are once again curtailed and will suffer.

Additionally, wasn't one of Obama's "promises" to do away with the whole lobby construct? How exactly would this help that? What this does is forces non-bank financial corporations to PUSH money at those they beleive will be in power in order to buy good will so that their business won't be seized by government fiat.

Don't believe me? Then how about this, we know that Chris Dodd is the Senator responsible for ensuring that those $160 Million in bonuses (out of the $107,000 Million in federal "bailout" funds) at AIG were allowed legally. Guess who got the most campaign contributions from AIG?

Here's a hint, it wasn't Ron Paul. Heck, it wasn't even Barney Frank this time.

This is the environment which the Obama administration is creating. Strong-arm tactics designed to force companies to do the will of the administration -- or risk your entire company being TAKEN from you.

Finally, once the government has this power in the hands of the Treasury Secretary what is stopping them from putting it into the hands of the Energy Secretary or the Commerce Secretary? It's a very small step from the government grabbing "non-bank financial companies" to the government grabbing "companies."

We've seen it in Public Domain seizures. Traditionally, properties were only grabbed in Public Domain for roads or schools or other government needs. Today, thanks to the Courts, Public Domain is utilized to seize property so that it can be given to private investors.

Now, imagine this scenario. Say, someone owns and runs a small non-bank financial firm. Now, imagine that AIG has been trying to purchase this firm, but offering a pittance as opposed to a true valuation of the company's worth. Since we know that AIG can buy Senator Dodd in the matter of bonuses, it's not a small step to seem them buying a Secrertary and having this small firm seized, and then given over to AIG, much the same way that Public Domain works today.

Now imagine that being the case for any business anywhere.

With this power, the government will utterly own every aspect of our lives. Everything we have or do, will be at the whims of the government. We will be slaves to this massive monstrosity which is Federal Socialism. Consider the following:

• We rent our land from the government (since we're forced under duress to pay property taxes or be evicted from said land) despite any type of ownership claims
• The government can claim said land, and give it to any organization as they see fit via Public Domain
• The government can seize your finances or non-land property on the suspicision of drug activity thanks to the "War on Drugs" (unless you happen to be a current or former Congressman)
  
• The government seizes your income (and the more you make, the more they take) to redistribute it as the government sees fit
  
• If this new power is given to the Administration, the government can seize any business, and all businesses will run at the whim of the government rather than market forces
  

This is the "Land of the Free" which our forefathers shed their blood and tears for. This is the land which our forefathers threw tea into Boston harbor for.

If only it still was.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. - Thomas Jefferson

Oh Noes! It's a Bonus!

The American Tax-paying public, and the bottom-feeders that force said public to fund their exorbitant lifestyle, are in a bit of a furor. Mainly, AIG, one of those recipients of the bad-idea called kickbacksa bailout, is paying its top executives, and other important employees millions of dollars in bonuses.

These are bonuses that AIG has had in place for months; long before that last $30 million.

My surprise is that anyone is surprised at this?

These bonuses are paid to those employees who figure out ways to bring money into the company. And someone had the brilliant idea that the government would float them. Regardless of whether or not they SHOULD be floated.

Because let's be serious, they shouldn't have been.

They should have been forced to go through the bankruptcy system, and have their top management stripped and their organization and debt reorganized.

Instead, top management is more entrenched than ever, and they now have proof that the government will cover any bad, or risky, behavior they take on behalf of the company.

When will those... morons? idiots? No, those aren't the right words; the comparison is insulting to morons and idiots. Ah, when will those politicians realize that the best government is the one which governs least.

Let businesses that need to fail, fail. It's the entire point of the bankruptcy court system.

And above that, remove government influences from market places as much as possible. The less there, the better.

Need another example (besides the perfectly justified AIG bonuses of taxpayer money)?

Then, let's look at the small-car industry. These are those "fuel-efficient" ugly atrocities which no one really wants to own. At least not while gas is reasonably priced. Yet government is forcing the auto manufacturers to create these cars, and what's happening is that they're sitting on car lots and just not selling.

So what is the "recommendation" by the car dealers and manufacturers? Raise taxes on gas pushing the price to a minimum of $4 per gallon. Despite the fact that such a price hike would finish destroying the economy, doesn't anyone see the idiocy of forcing taxes to move products?

Why not build cars that people want to drive and sell those? Oh yes, I forget, the government imposes regulations on the manufacturers.

See the vicious cycle?

Too bad there's not more Ron Paul's up there in Washington to break it...

Barbour Managed to Find Himself a Voter

Now, all he has to do is continue (or better yet, define better) his fiscal-conservative principles and he'll be able to keep me as a voter.

But, onto the point, what has Governor Barbour managed to do which has impressed me? I mean, I am somewhat out spoken when a politico irks me, but it's rare for me to wax-eloquent about the virtues of one.

Mainly because it's so rare for a politico to have virtues, but I digress.

What Gov. Barbour has done, is this quote:

If we were to take the unemployment insurance reform package that they have, it would cause us to raise taxes on employment when the money runs out, and the money will run out in a couple of years, and then we'll have to raise the unemployment insurance tax, which is literally a tax on employment. I mean, we want more jobs. You don't get more jobs by putting an extra tax on creating jobs.

I must admit I was flabbergasted when I heard that on the television last night. Here is a politician, telling it out it really is out there.

Sure, Louisiana's and Florida's governors are also harping on some of the pork and inanity found within the Congressional Relief Action Program, as Mike Huckabee has named the spending stimulus bill.

Of course, such statements have the usual detractors and what not. A quick perusal of the Politico website reveals such gems as this:

It is incredibly self-serving for ANY governor to put party ideology ahead of pragmatism by refusing to accept federal stimulus funds that would help many thousands of unemployed and economically distressed people make ends meet until the economy begins its rebound.

Frankly, I'm still amazed at people who really do believe that it's the government's responsibility to take my money (under duress mind you) and give it to other people. Oh wait, that's not the politically correct way of describing "government aid" and "welfare checks" is it?

All that said, there is a dark tinge to this discussion, and that is that Barbour really is perfectly fine accepting this money. He has no compunctions against it, doesn't really feel a moral obligation to not accept it--outside of the riders, and requirements attached to it.

Now, if Barbour has come out and said, "Hey, this pork-laden travesty of a legislation should not be seen."

I'd be all sorts of happy. Well, happier.

But instead he's saying, "I like this money, a lot, but because there's those pesky little rules attached, I don't think I'll be taking it."

The important thing is that he's out there fighting against it though. Additionally, he's smart enough to realize that you don't create jobs by leveraging more taxes on job creation.

So, hey, it's one of those glass-half-empty kind of things I guess.

Expanding Thought Crimes Since '09

It has been 6 days since The One was elected and already politics is an utter, and rather unsurprising mess. Three, interrelated things, jump out at me to begin with though.

The first is the highly racist inauguration prayer by Rev. Joseph Lowery, in which it was claimed that my views just are not "right" merely because I am white. Of course, our esteemed proponent for tolerance, virtue, change and hope (i.e. the President) responded to this, at least what I viewed as a, direct attack against my race with merely a smile.

This from the man who no longer wishes to divide us!

Still hopeful?

But, as in most things government, it just gets BETTER!

The second thing that has been brought to light is that one Robert Reich, the 22^nd Secretary of Labor and an Obama adviser, has gone before Congress stating that "professionals and white, male construction workers" are not the focus of the upcoming "stimulus" package which Obama is putting together.

Additionally, he states that those companies that do use funds from the stimulus package must hire those people either unwilling or unable to effectively work, therefore they are considered long-term unemployed, minorities or women.

Forget the concept of hiring the best person for a job, no, it's more important that someone of the "right" skin tone has the position; and as evidenced by the Reverend Lowery's prayer we all know that "white" isn't right.

It seems to never fail, the more the government gives, the happier people are to take. Why Liberals believe this is good for people, the government or the economy is beyond me. Our nation was founded on the back of those willing to work, and to work hard; that drive, that sense of doing has gone--and government funded stimulus packages are not going to recover it. It has to come from outside the public realm. It has to come from the private, as people generate new ways to devise and move income. It cannot come from the government stealing my money to give to others; additionally, I should not be forced to subsidize others for the same reasons.


Finally, while viewing the new, and "improved" WhiteHouse.gov (I still so want to go to WhiteHouse.com), I find this lovely tidbit of tantalizing stupidity:

President Obama and Vice President Biden will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice's Criminal Section.

What this means is that your INTENT in doing, pretty much anything, will garner you much, much worse punishments than what you actually do or did.

This criminalizing of intent scares me to no ends. We've already established that the government doesn't want any type of speech out there that could make one scared of government precepts (read this rant).

Thoughtcrimes, facecrimes, hatecrimes. These are all just tools used by our Government in an effort to force us to do its will, as opposed to the government doing the will of the people as it is supposed to.

Surprise! The Government Wants to Destroy More Businesses

Last year (late 2007-early 2008) there were a number of product recalls on toys made in China due to the presence of lead. Now, I'm not going to go into the health issues regarding items with lead and pthalates because let's face it, those are well documented.

No, what has me flipping out is the government's response which is of course via a consumer protection act.

What this thing does, is demand that every item (clothes, toys, etc) that is marketed to children 12 years old and younger must be tested for lead and pthalates. Additionally, this is such a widely inclusive law that it applies to thrift stores, donations to thrift stores, new sales, consignment shops and even yard sales.

So consider just what is going to happen here, because truthfully, this things are already happening:

• Thrift Stores will no longer sell children's items, or at least won't for many months--a long enough time that they can, and will, go bankrupt
• eBay, and other auction sites, will stop accepting auctions on children's items as the cost of verifying the legality of an item's sale status would be prohibitive
• Individuals could be fined and/or arrested for holding a yard sale
• Hand-made, and other small, mostly family-owned, children article manufacturers will go out of business
• Charitable organizations will be forced to only accept new toys, as the law covers donations and giveaways

And that's just the things that pop into my head right away. Of those, I'm impacted greatly by at least two, as my church is the Salvation Army and they utilize a thrift store and do a lot of donation work, and there are a number of family friends of my parents who are in the business of creating hand-made objects, some of them aimed at children.

And all this because Clinton-era rules which relaxed trade restrictions with Communist China. Because, one thing we learned is that all the lead-tainted items came from China.

So, how do I think this law needs to be fixed? It's actually simple, and needs to involve these following parts:

• Remove testing requirements on items that cannot actually be tainted with lead
• Make it be based on manufacturing date after 2/10 rather than a sales date of 2/10
• Make items wholly made in America exempt from the testing requirements
• Make the testing rules more stringent on items coming from known sources of contaminants. I.e. stricter testing for Chinese manufactured items as opposed to say Mexican manufactured items, until the Mexican ones start showing up with lead in their more random tests

Of course this implies that the Congress would be interested in not running a number of small businesses out of business, or that they see value in thrift stores and consignment shops. Of course, we all know that Congress, especially a Democratically controlled Congress, has no true concern over small business or anyone that is not on welfare.

But hey, I'd love to be proved wrong.

Knife Ban--but at police discretion

One and a half inch. That's not a lot of length. In fact it's somewhat pathetically small.

I can admit, the pocket knife that I carry on a daily basis has a 1.5 inch blade. But that's a personal choice, and it wasn't that long ago that I carried a 4 inch blade on a belt holster every day.

Why am I bringing this up? It's because Worcester, Pennsylvania wants to infringe upon its citizens rights and attempt to strip them of the wonderful tool which is a knife. In fact the city council will be having a hearing on it tonight (11/6/08).

BUT it gets better!

It gets better because the imbeciles who want to be Big Brother to the citizens of Worcester actually told us their thoughts on the matter. Let's take a gander at what Council District 3 Councilor Paul P Clancy, Jr. had to say on this:

We have a zero tolerance for these weapons in our schools and now we need to extend it out into the community. This is an ordinance the council needs to pass. It will make it a safer community for all.

Yes, the same lunacy which is Zero Tolerance is shifting out of our schools and into the general populace.

Here's a not so secret, secret: I don't believe in Zero Tolerance policies. If I had my way, I would remove funding from every school district that imposed them until such time as they were rescinded.

But that's me, I believe that we should raise our kids to be mature, capable adults, so what do I know.

Digression aside, I hate Zero Tolerance policies, but let's take a look at this from a fundamental point of view. They want to make it illegal for anyone to have a blade over 1.5 inches in their possession. There's no clauses, no riders, it's just that simple.

My first concern would be for fishermen. My tackle box has a knife with a seven inch blade used for cleaning fish, and another with a smaller blade used for cutting line and other misc. tasks. If this law passed, I could no longer carry my tackle box.

Oh, but the morons writing this law thought of that. After all, District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. has assured the city councilors that said law would be targeted primarily at the after-hours bars and nightclubs where all these knifings have been occurring.

So, why wouldn't they write that into the law?

Why not put a simple rider, stating that you can't have a knife over x inches on your possession while at a nightclub or bar? Oh, that's right, because these things are all happening AFTER the bars and nightclubs close at folk's personal properties.

So, not only can you not have a knife while fishing, but you can't have it at your house, because someone might stab one of your guests with it. So much for cooking.

Unfortunately, that's not the stupidest part of D.A. Early's statement. Early claims that the police would be able to "target" the law. Which is insane, as that means that someone could easily prove that the law wasn't being fairly enforced and either a) have it thrown out or b) sue the city government for racial discrimination and/or profiling (it'd be simple to prove that a cop didn't charge a white man for the law, but did a black man)--and the city would be lucky if it didn't end up being both.

All in all, kind of scary if you ask me, and if I were a citizen of Worcester, I would be up in arms over this latest example of zero tolerance nonsense and Orwellian government.

A Lesson On Human Nature

More fun from my coworkers!

I was talking to a friend of mine's little girl the other day. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she replied,"I want to be President!" Both of her parents are liberal Democrats and were standing there. So then I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give houses to all the homeless people."

"Wow - what a worthy goal." I told her, "You don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50 Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where this homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward a new house."

Since she is only 6, she thought that over for a few seconds. While her Mom glared at me, she looked me straight in the eye and asked,"Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

And I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Her folks still aren't talking to me.

Though humorous, I could easily see this story taking place. After all, when socialist concepts are explained succinctly enough that a six-year old can understand them, they are often revealed for the utter stupidity and tripe which are at their heart. Liberalism and Socialism are only acceptable when they're crouched in fancy terms, big words, which always equate to someone getting someone else's money.

But you can't call that robbery--after all, it's "Legal."

Newsgroups and N.Y. Attorney General

Before I begin this let me state unequivocally that I have no interest in child pornography, I don't search for it, I don't peruse it and I do not advocate it.

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, I have to say that what New York's Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo , is doing is evil. Fox News has an article on Cuomo and his decision against Comcast news in that:

New York's attorney general notified Comcast Corp. on Monday that the state will take legal action if the company — the nation's second-largest Internet service provider — doesn't agree to eliminate access to child pornography.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants major Internet access providers to agree on steps to remove certain newsgroups that contain child pornography and purge their servers of Web sites that contain child porn.

I'm a bit flabbergasted at the sheer idiocy of the New York Attorney General's office. How exactly does he plan on Comcast (or any other ISP) on eliminating access to child pornography.

After all, the only sure-fired way is to eliminate internet access except to very specific websites. Which as we all know, Comcast wants, and encourages, but as a Net Neutrality advocate I can't agree with.

What this does is merely creates a precedent where Comcast and others are able to filter access to the internet based on the possibility that child pornography exists on that particular service.

Don't like BitTorrent? Hey, there's Child Porn, so we've gotta block it.

Don't like AIM? Hey! There's Child Porn, so we've gotta block it.

Don't like GOPHER? Guess what's out there? Child Porn! Gotta block it.

Don't like all those pesky Blogs on LiveJournal or WordPress? Hey look! Child Porn! Time to block it.

Amazon.com is hurting your business? Hey look! It sells Lolita! That's Child Porn masquerading as classic literature! And *gasp* even worse, they sell Pretty Baby! That's a movie! It lacks even that pesky classic literature tag! Ban them from the 'NET!

If this type of activity continues, and the ISPs become controllers of what their end users see or don't see, then the concepts which the internet were built upon are in fundamental danger. The thought that all traffic is the same, that every packet that passes through an ISP's hands should be as anonymous and as important as any other packet is in danger.

The Internet was hailed as a great tool of democracy and free speech.

These types of rules endanger that concept. They in effect struggle to turn this tool of free speech into something twisted and dangerous. These rules try to actively stifle free speech.

These rules try to actively control what you see and do.

Frankly, that's not a power that I want in Comcast's or any other ISPs hands.

And it's definitely not a power that I want in the government's hands.

Like Collars?

I gave my older brother a dog collar and leash as a gag-gift on his wedding day. More accurately, I gave it to his new bride, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, it was an amusing gift, solely for the context.

I know a girl or two who wears collars or chokers on a common basis. There's even that girl that got denied access to the bus in England a year or so ago, because she was being lead around by a leash attached to her collar.

Sure, it's odd, but hey, some people just are.

Now, think of those two scenarios: a gag-gift giving to a pair of newlyweds and girls just doing it for shock value/fashion statements. I can see people wearing them.

Now imagine the government demanding that you wear a collar, which contains your personal information, and has the ability to give you a strong enough electrical zap to incapacitate your for several minutes.

Would that make you happy to be wearing a collar?

Well, that's exactly what the Department of Homeland Security wants to do to you if you decide to ride on an airplane. The Washington Times has an article up, describing a letter to a company which produces wristbands which can be used for tracking, data storage, and immobilization requesting a proposal so that the DHS can use the devices for security and interrogations. Said letter was written by one Paul S. Ruwaldt of the Science and Technology Directorate, office of Research and Development, of the Department of Homeland Security.

Frankly, I'm flabbergasted that an American citizen would willingly wish to impose such a device upon another one. Especially under the weight of law and without due process.

This is a gross violation of the intentions of our Bill of Rights. I never signed up for this, and I sure did not vote this Mr. Ruwaldt into an office. So not only is he trying to shackle us all with what amounts to electric dog collars, but he's not even an elected official whom we can recall for such vile behavior.

He's a beuarucrat.

So, basically, we, those law-abiding citizens he wishes to electrify into submission, are paying his salary through our taxes.

Great work Mr. Ruwaldt.

Frankly, I'm left reminded of the Pain Bands from that old Star Trek episode "Spock's Brain." You know the one where the pretty women stole Spock's brain, and were raiding the cavemen who lived on the surface for slaves. Then they controlled the slaves via these belts which both sent electric shocks through the slaves, incapacitating them for several minutes as well as containing information about which slave it was.

You know, I understand that we owe a whole lot of our technologies to Star Trek, but I don't think that Gene Rodennberry ever expected that particular one to actually make the jump from fantasy to reality.

So, again, I must say, "Great Work, Mr. Ruwaldt."

I'm left wondering when I'll get my pain band. After all, it's a very small step from forcing every person who gets onto a plan to have one to just forcing everyone to have one. And of course the Department of Homeland Security and Congress and other members of the ruling Police Elite won't need them.

They are Big Brother after all, and they care for your safety.

Foreclosing Foreclosures

There must be something wrong with me.

I just don't understand something that is apparently a vital aspect of my country.

It boggles my mind; confounds and confuses me.

I don't know why my country men would be willing to do this, yet more and more it seems like I'm in a minority of those people who don't.

What am I talking about? What has me so confused?

Why people take handouts from the government.

What's worse, is why do our elected representatives continue to provide handouts to the people? Though, ultimately I know the reason for that: they want to buy themselves a vote.

What brought this on today was an AP story that I found on MSNBC talking about the Senate's upcoming vote on an anti-foreclosure plan.

Disgusting if you ask me.

No one forced these people to take these exotic mortgages, and as such they should now suffer the consequences of their bad decisions.

I'm not getting bailed out of my mortgage--nor do I want to.

Especially not by the government. I don't want my tax dollars spent bailing people out of their own bad decisions. That's not the purpose of the Federal government. Heck, it's not even the purpose of state or local governments.

That's the purpose of charitable organizations.

Which, despite the Democrat's intentions, is NOT the point of the Federal Government.

At least not the federal government whose Constitution I had studied.

First Guns, Now...

I've long been a proponent of loosening our overly restrictive gun laws. Yes, that's right, I want more guns sold to more folks who obey those various laws already in place. I want to be able to carry my weapon anywhere with me, and not have to worry about silly little power-hungry bureaucrats trying to tell me that I cannot carry my gun.

The reasons for this are many, and diverse, not the least of which is the simple fact that I believe it's my right to be able to defend myself from anyone who wishes harm to me or mine.

Anyways, Britian went through the whole hassle of taking all of the guns away from their law-abiding citizens--and conversely, they managed to get a decent number away from the non-law-abiding citizens as well.

So, what did those criminals begin to do? Why use knives of course. After all, a knife is the next best thing to a gun; plus it's quieter! According to an AP report, 15 teenagers have been murdered in London this year, with 11 of those being stabbed to death.

Now, like any responsible, intellect group of people, Britain looked at this situation, and thought, "Hey, we can't stop criminals ourselves, let's make sure that our people can defend themselves."

And then I woke up.

No, what those intelligent, responsible pansys and appeasers in the British government decided was to try to convince the law-abiding citizens to not even carry their knives anymore.

Here's the relevant sentence of the AP report:

Britain's government has begun a campaign of graphic Internet advertisements aimed at warning young people about the dangers of carrying a knife.

Brilliant eh? The dangers of carrying a knife.

Let's be honest here, I carry a knife every day of my life. In the past year, I've not carried it on two distinct days--and both of those days were when I was visiting an airport to get on an airplane. If you reached into my left, front pocket right this second, you'd find it--at which time I'd have to hit you for sticking your hand into my pocket.

Digression aside, I've been doing this for years. In fact, long before it was a pocket knife, it was a six-inch, folding knife I carried on my belt. Quite useful for when I was out in the woods. The relevant thing though is that I carried it nearly every day.

And you know what? I've not once hurt myself or someone else with any of my knifes. I've used my pocket knife to cut things (including straws for my kids) and all sorts of other legitimate uses. Amazing how someone can carry a knife, or a gun, and not hurt someone with the thing.

My point is that a weapon is an inanimate object. No gun or knife ever killed anyone. Not one. It's a literal impossibility that one could do it (at least yet, I'm sure one day we'll have smart, autonomous weapons that will kill their creators). They can be the CAUSE of death; but so can keys, screwdrivers, automobiles, tree limbs, bricks, hands, rolls of quarters or even a rusty spoon.

What is Britain going to take away from its citizenry after all the knives are gone? Forks? Screwdrivers?

It's insane to think that just because a weapon is removed from the people, that the people won't figure out a way to kill one another. Like it or not, it's in our nature to be aggressive beings.

I don't see that changing, no matter how many weapons the government takes from our hands.

To Knock, or Not To Knock....

Back in 1995, case number 514 U.S. 927 appeared before that highest of high benches; those keepers of the writ of law; the new High Priests of our land: The Supreme Court. Commonly known as Wilson v. Arkansas, this case gave the land the joys of the No Knock warrant.

For those of you who are unaware of this particular travesty, the No Knock warrant is the type of search warrant which allows police to enter your home without identifying themselves. Basically, it's the Gestapo, bursting down your door, usually between 1 and 4 in the morning, with their guns pulled, in the hopes that you won't destroy your drug evidence--because evidence can always be destroyed in the 30 seconds it takes a cop to announce himself.

Unsurprisingly, this type of search warrant has led to the unnecessary deaths of police and citizens alike. People like the father of 3, Police Officer Ron Jones. Officer Jones was playing stormtrooper, when he burst through the door of one Corey Maye. Maye had a young daughter in his house, and being the responsible father, when he was woken by someone breaking and entering, he made a decision and protected his family. After killing Officer Jones, he realized that it was the police breaking into his home, so he surrendered; only to now be serving a life sentence without parole solely for the perfectly reasonable action of protecting his family.

Of course, things don't always end up this nicely for those being served warrants. Kathryn Johnston, a 92 year old woman, was surprised by one of these things, and she ended up dead. Despite the fact that anonymous tips--which are almost universally the cause of no-knock warrants--informed the police that Mrs. Johnston held a large cache of drugs in her home, no drugs were ever found. All that happened was Mrs. Johnston was killed. Oh wait, that's not all that happened; in an effort to exculpate themselves from the blame of the death of Mrs. Johnston the officers on the scene planted three bags of marijuana.

How's that for police work.

Amazingly for Mrs. Johnston family, Mrs. Johnston is apparently getting some justice in this world. Fox News is reporting this morning that the officer in question gets to spend the next 5 years in prison.

How did we become this? At what point did our homes stop being sacrosanct and start being subject to searches and invasion all at the random voice of a drug informant?

If someone breaks into my home without announcing who they are, I am going to do everything in my power to stop them, and leave them dead. My family is that important to me--and quite frankly, other humans just aren't.

Of course the easiest way to stop all of these senseless killings, of both the gestapo and those being ground under their heel, is to simply outlaw no-knock searches. Make everything be a knock-and-announce search, and at that point, the folks inside the house know it's a cop coming through their windows waving guns at their family.

Wilson v. Arkansas gave us three guidelines for a no-knock search:

• "Circumstances present a threat of physical violence"
• There is "reason to believe that evidence would likely be destroyed if advance notice were given"
• Knocking and announcing would be "futile" Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 394 (1997)

Let's be perfectly honest here--the first, the threat of physical violence, is always there. This is America, I have guns. Other folks have guns. It's a part of our national identity and culture. We have a strong history of self-defense, and I for one refuse to rely on the gestapo for that defense; especially where my family is concerned. Additionally, if there weren't guns, then there would be knives, swords, baseball bats, screwdrivers, forks, chainsaws, rakes, shovels, and all sorts of other implements with which I can carry out all sorts of body harming, if not outright deadly, violence.

The other two, those are just silly. Even with no-knock, evidence can be destroyed, and if it's "futile" to knock and announce, it's also not hurting anything to do so.

Of course, those "reasons" are really just random justification for the act. After all, the law of the land as defined in Hudson v. Michigan is that violations of the knock-and-announce rules (i.e. not knocking on a knock and announce warrant) is not a valid reason to exclude evidence.

Kind of scary, no?

Food Fight!

The simple joys of life are fairly well and truly dead. Especially for children. Our schools have become war-zones, where if a child has the audacity to protect themselves, they are suspended if not outright expelled.

Additionally, such childhood rights of passages as the simple food-fight are now arrest-able offenses. An unattributed story on the WLBT Channel 3 website states:

A food fight leads one Jackson public school to recommend several students be arrested and suspended.

According to JPS, a food fight started around noon Wednesday at Peeples Middle School on Treehaven drive. Eleven students participated and the fight lasted under thirty seconds.

Fourteen students were recommended for arrest and all were recommended for suspension. There are only two full days left of school this year.

Let's put this into perspective here: a bunch of middle school students (as in pre-pubescent to just barely pubescent kids) had a food fight. Eleven participated, while fourteen were suspended and recommended to be put up for arrest.

To start off with, how exactly did more people get punished than participated? That's the first utter and total stupid thing that I'd like to know.

But even going beyond that, since when did childhood pranks warrant an arrest? I can understand the participating students being suspended. They broke the rules, and as such should be punished. Personally, I think a half-dozen or so Saturday detentions would work better, but what can one do about that. At the same time, I have to firmly believe that the officials in this scenario are taking things way too far.

These kids do NOT deserve to be arrested. Who didn't participate in at least one food fight growing up?

What is wrong with my generation, and the generation before me that we feel the need to suck the life and joy, and the sheer utter childhood-ness from our children's childhood?

What is wrong with school officials that zero-tolerance policies are more important than common sense.

Oh, right, busy-body Leftists.

I mean, a set of policies have GOT to be bad when even Lawyers are saying that these things are counter-productive. Consider this quote from this article:

"Schools are confusing equal treatment with equitable treatment. . . . Kids in middle school and high school care most about fairness. When they see two students whose 'offenses' are vastly different being treated exactly the same, that sense of fairness is obliterated and replaced with fear and alienation."

An attorney said that, in an American Bar Association article. The article goes on to state how Zero Tolerance policies even contravene the ABA's non-discrimination rules. So not only are Leftist oppressing our children through these policies, but they're actively fostering an environment of fear and alienation as well as subtly discriminating against minorities, especially those of the African-American persuasion.

How's that for Zero Tolerance. Then of course is the fact that the teachers and administrators are rarely, if ever, subject to the same Zero Tolerance style of punishments.

What is left? How can we fight these zero-tolerance nightmares?

It's simple, we just have to vote in common-sense back to our governments. We can start with Ron Paul

The Air Force wants your machine

In something of a frightening follow up to my last post, I stumbled across a HIGHLY interesting article on WIRED today. One entitled "Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All Computers.'"

Maybe because I just read Little Brother yesterday, but I'm horrified at the concept of this.

Basically, what they are wanting to do is build a BOTNET, which sits behind the scenes on your PC, until it is called forth to wreck havoc on the online world. For a more detailed description, I direct your attention to the Wikipedia.

While I can see allowing my CPU to be used for distributed processing by such organizations as SETI@Home, I cannot see myself allowing the United States government the same type of access to my machine.

First and foremost, once they do have access, what is to stop them from installing keyloggers, rootkits or other forms of malicious software?

Why do I worry over such things? Am I trying to hide something?

No. But THAT DOES NOT MATTER.

The machine belongs to me. It is mine, to do with as I please. My belongings can be neither searched nor seized without proper authority by a Judge. That's a Constitutional mandate; despite the fact that the so-called Patriot Act allows for sneak-n-peek searches.

The only bright point, if it can be called that, in this whole fiasco is that their goal is unattainable. The Air Force is wanting to spend $11 Million in an two-year study to determine the information necessary to accomplish this. Which is a joke, since within two years of the study being finished, all the findings and information collected will be essentially useless.

Now one can understand why at best, it's a very dim bright point.

I still find it hard to believe that the government of Jefferson, Washington and Franklin has stooped so low.

Fear in a book

It's not often that a book can scare me. It's not. Consider, I was reading Stephen King in the fourth grade.

I found his books mildly amusing.

Horror movies were a staple growing up. It's just not in me to be scared of the things most folks are. Oh, sure, I can be shocked or startled by sudden onslaught of sound and light, but scared? That's hard for me. I don't get that rush of adrenaline, that understated fear that I've felt in the past when I have been scared.

For the record, the last time I had felt that was when my first son was being born and the doctors discovered that he had had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck three times.

Tonight, I finished a SF novel that scared me. It left me feeling paranoid and suffering under that intense fight-or-flight syndrome one gets when confronted by things that scare you.

Which book might that be?

Cory Doctorow's Little Brother.

This is a novel that combines technology with common, daily events, and then shove them out until you reach their ultimate conclusion. The fact that Big Brother is watching you. Using everything from wifi sniffing to Bayesian statistics, Mr. Doctorow spins a story about the DHS and its crackdown on the civil rights, all in the name of security, in the setting of San Fransisco.

What is sad, is that I can so see this happening.

Maybe it's because that I knew all the technology he discussed, and the small bits he created I could see how they are logical extensions of existing tech. Maybe it's because a large part of my job is sorting through datasets, and creating algorithms to help people do tasks. In fact one project I worked in the past on required that I track where every login came from, passing authentication information back and forth transparently to the user.

I must be afraid because I can see it happening today.

The closest I've ever come to this feeling before was after reading the novel Dark Rivers of the Heart (0-553-58289-5). That particular novel teaches much the same story, with a focus on how our Congress has taken a liking to writing laws which they are exempt from. For example the drug search and seizure laws, and of course the various perks they give themselves such as free tax filings (for more, see this fun Time article).

Regardless, read the book. Become scared with me.

And remember these two quotes:

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 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.

That was from the Declaration of Independence. This one is from Ben Franklin:

He who would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will lose both and deserve neither.

Emotional Profiling

Seattle PI has an interesting article on the TSA entitled: Airport Profilers: They're Watching Your Expressions. Frankly this is yet another TSA program that just flat out scares me. It is giving a huge amount of power to individuals with no true way to verify their opinions. It's subjective and emotionalism, and scary to me.

Consider this quote:

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions -- a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.

Basically, if you have a serious hate on concerning authority figures, guess what, if you fly, you make get a strip search.

Yet, if that wasn't scary enough, the fact that it's spreading should scare you. Additionally, one must question why such a program is spreading. After all, here's some statistics from it:

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

One percent. Out of the 70,000 people inconvenienced by this emotionalism, less than 1% have been arrested. Additionally, those arrests were due to drug possession, weapons violations and outstanding warrants, which would have most likely been caught via normal operational security. So not only are the numbers on record a 1% success rate, but that is inflated by not removing those from the numbers who would most likely have been caught anyways.

In, parting, I'd like to leave you a passage from a classic work of literature.

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

-- 1984 by George Orwell

The Housing Balloon

The Senate OK'd a bill that would 'help' thousands of home-owners who made the brilliant decision to use Adjustable-Rate and other exotic mortgages. Why do they need this so-called help? Because these exotic mortgages have a bomb built into them. They start their life out as low-interest loans, and after a few years of getting payments applied to them, their interest rate explodes, leading to higher payments. Additionally, the House has already passed a version of the bill, which means that now both sides of Congress will need to hash out the differences and re-vote before sending it onto the President.

Let me be up front with everyone: I do not like this bill.

I firmly believe it is both unconstitutional and goes against the fundamental concepts of the free-market upon which our society is built.

How can I say this? Is this some evil grinch in me that wants to see people lose their homes? Of course not. I feel bad for them. A little at least.

Yet, these people willingly chose to enter into those loans. They KNEW that the interest rate was going to blow up on them, yet they went into the loan anyways. On the other side of things, the various financial organizations which made those loans also knew that once those rates increased, then the borrowers would be unable to make the loan payments.

How exactly am I supposed to feel bad about people who make informed decisions, even if those informed decisions are not in their long-term best behavior?

Why exactly should our government be trying to help out either people or business who made decisions on their own, about their own finances, and are now effectively in that proverbial lake?

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer opined this about this particular bill:

be a source of salvation for those families who were tricked into unaffordable loans

Do what? How exactly were these people tricked? I don't know what type of loan they signed, but my mortgage has the interest rate, including the fact that it does not change, clearly written on the contract I signed. There is no way that these families were tricked into purchasing such a loan--to imply that is at best to be trying to hoodwink the public into accepting another government handout to cover people's own stupidity. And if they WERE tricked into an ARM, by the mortgage lender not disclosing the fact that it was an ARM, then there are already statutes on the books to deal with fraudulent lending practices.

No. This is merely a bailout of people too stupid for their own good, companies too greedy for their own good, and the Federal Reserver which is responsible for it all, by forcing us to go to a wishes-backed currency rather than the gold standard.

America Needs a Farm Bill

America needs a farm bill, our constituents need a farm bill.

--Norm Coleman Senator Minnesota (R)

... That's odd. I didn't realize that our country needed the government to subsidize various and sundry industries.

What's odder, is that I still can't find the place in the U.S. Constitution which allows Congress to use my tax dollars to subsidize industries.

What this is, is just another attempt for pork. For Congress to vote their pet ideologies, people and other odds an ends money. One of the many reasons we have such high taxes (unless you're one of the 'poor' making less than $30K annually) and a massive national debt.

It is just another symptom of the 'vote us money' form of government, where the unwashed masses who live at the government's whims (i.e. those on welfare and government employees) are used and abused by the powered elite, tossed tidbits of the state treasury in an effort to keep them ground and voting for the powerful.

How much longer can this idiocy last?

Sometimes, I wonder if even a President such as Ron Paul could stem the tidal flow of destruction which has been building in our Federal government since it forced the States to give up their rights back in 1866.

There is something to always remember:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

-- Alexander Tyler

Selfishness. Complacency. Apathy. Dependency. I see all those things in our society today. So when comes the bondage?

According to the House, I'm a terrorist now.

H.R. 1955 - PREVENTION OF VIOLENT RADICALIZATION AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS

With the passage of this particular bill from the House (by a 404 to 6 vote) that has now been referred to the Senate (Senate Bill 1959), I have been ever closer brought into line with being an evvvilll terrorist. Why do I say that? It's quite simple, the above bill has these definitions in it:

(2) Violent radicalization.— The term ‘violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

(3) Homegrown terrorism.— The term ‘homegrown terrorism’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

(4) Ideologically based violence.—The term ‘ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.

Pay close attention, and how they separate the use of force and violence. In other words, they are NOT the same thing according to this particular law. So, what does force mean if it isn't talking about something physical? Well, that's why we have dictionary.com, which provides us with a whole bunch of definitions. Yet it was these which attracted my attention first:

6. persuasive power; power to convince: They felt the force of his arguments.
7. mental or moral strength: force of character.
13. any influence or agency analogous to physical force: social forces.
16. value; significance; meaning.
22. to put or impose (something or someone) forcibly on or upon a person: to force one's opinions on others.

Scary eh?

Still don't understand? Consider, the use of force is using something to convince someone of something. It is persuading someone of something, by its very definition. So, every time you win an argument, and persuade someone to your point of view, you've imposed your values upon said person by force.

Now, go re-read this law's definition for Ideologically based violence. I'll wait.

You with me again? Good.

Notice that part about the use, planned use or threatened use of force or violence? That just defined that any time someone writes for or against laws, politics, politicians, religions, or society in general, they are now, by House definition, a "homegrown terrorist."

Mike Adams has an article up on Newstarget that goes on to describe other ways which this law destroys things such as grassroots movements, and tells how you should get in touch with your Senator to express your disdain for this particular law.

Of particular interest in his article is this quote:

In terms of the upcoming election for U.S. President, there is only one candidate that actually believes in freedom: Ron Paul. He needs your support to win: www.RonPaul2008.com

All the other candidates are nothing more than tyrants of different political affiliations. Ron Paul is the only candidate that truly understands the fundamentals of freedom. That's why he's the only real choice for our next President. Can you imagine what Hillary Clinton would do with the police state powers that Bush has now created? That's the danger of all laws that centralize power in Washington: It's not necessarily what today's President will do with them, but what some future President will do with them.

All I have to say to that is "Hear! Hear!"

Do You Remember?

Tomorrow is the anniversary of September 11th. A day of infamy on a par with the attack against Pearl Harbor.

Throughout Myspace and other blogs, we have a plenty of folks espousing us to remember the Firemen and Police Officers and others who lost their lives on that day, just a few short years ago.

While I have no reservations in remembering those that lost their lives in that attack on our sovereignty, I fear that we, as a nation, have forgotten a more important lesson. Mainly, just what our government is supposed to be. Just what it was that our forefathers fought, bleed and died for.

Thomas Jefferson said this:

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.

That was his definition of good government. Doesn't sound like ours now does it?

What's more, I've been reading a blog lately entitled Pro Liberate, and his latest article is a discourse on Power versus Authority. The author of that blog quite often discusses abuses of police power from across the nation.

Sadly, in this post-9/11 world of ours, he has way to many examples.

On these days when we should be thinking about those who have lost their lives via those "peace-loving" Muslims, instead we are given instances of police brutality and an officer of the law informing someone he pulled over rather randomly that he would perjure himself in order to arrest the car driver.

This is our world today. We live in a country that has forgotten its fundamentals. A country that ignores the backbone upon which our very lives and ideals were built. Woodrow Wilson said this about liberty:

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

Yet today, resistance is a quick fire way to end up arrested. At best.

At worst, you'll be raided by a paramilitary force, complete with automatic weapons, tear gas, and hoping for a chance to zap you with 50,000 volts of electricity. All for the non-violent offense of dissent. Complete with the possibility that your loved ones could end up shot, even if they are unresisting and naked. But, hey, it's the police, their word is without blemish in a court of law, and worth more than the word of the citizen.

How's that for innocent until proven guilty?

So, while it is a good and just thing to remember those that died in the September Eleventh attacks against our nation. We should also try to think of a way that we can restore our freedoms. We need to think of a way that we can live without the fear of a SWAT attack against our homes because we happen to be dissenters with certain laws.

So, while we should remember our dead, we should also try and remember how to be free.

We respect what you're saying - so shut up!

I've often mocked the so-called religion of peace in here. Too often, these peaceniks want to kill and maim for the grievous sin of not being just like them.

Case in point, a recent attack against Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen. On August 9, 2007, she was attacked during the launch of her latest book. What it amounted to, was a group of Muslim men got together and decided to pelt her with bouquets, flower pots, shoes, chairs and pretty much anything else that wasn't tied down. Luckily for her, she wasn't family to these men, because then they would be 'honor-bound' to have actually killed her.

Of more interest is that three of her attackers where Members of Legislative Assembly of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, which is a Muslim political party over in India. One of these three is quoted as saying, "We are not bothered about our MLA status. We are Muslims first. And its our responsibility to test those who have said anything against Islam in which ever way possible."

Yeah, that's reasonable behavior for you. We don't like what she says, so forget the fact that we're supposed to be leaders in our country, let's go lynch this girl!

Sadly, that alone wouldn't have gotten me ranting. After all, Muslim treatment of women as chattel is well documented. Muslim violence against non-Muslims is well documented. No, what got me ranting this morning, was this statement by Delhi Minorities Commission chairperson Kamal Farooqui:

The government should immediately cancel her visa and make her go out of the country, she should realise that this is not Bangladesh or Pakistan, but India where the sentiments of all communities are respected.

Does Kamal Farooqui even realize the utter stupidity, and non-logic of that statement? In two sentences, he totally contradicts himself. First he says that she needs to get out of India because of what she writes, and in the very next breath he says that the reason for this is because, hey, this is India, we respect the sentiments of all communities here.

Apparently, all communities doesn't include Taslima Nasreen.

Need Help? Ask Big Brother!

Anyone that has talked to me about government welfare programs know my opinion about them. They're evil, and should be banned. Immediately. They have no place in our society, nor should they be allowed under the Constitution of our increasingly socialist country.

Or to put it into internet lingo: welfare = teh 3vil!!1!

Now, that that's firmly out of the way, imagine my surprise when I was coming back from lunch, and heard an advertisement on the radio. It talked about how when you need money, you know what the sound of help is - followed by the sounds of someone swiping a credit card through one of those scanners. They then go on about how welfare now has these handy-dandy debit-cards as opposed to the old fashioned stamps, and that you should call their 1-800 number because, hey, you to might qualify to live off of my taxes.

So, we have this evilness of welfare, and not only are they stealing my tax dollars to give to other people, but they're also using those tax dollars to advertise the program, so that they can justify giving more money away to people who did not earn it.

When did our government become this huge entity that felt it was okay to play Robin Hood? And then to waste money by advertising the programs?

What's your name? 4Real!

Okay. First off, the article of the day: NZ parents may lose battle to keep baby '4real'

So, the basics are, there's this couple in New Zealand who wants to name their munchkin 4Real when it gets here. Why? Because they had some odd epiphany that they were pregnant, and it was, according to them, some type of "for real" moment.

Stupidity of that statement aside, the problem comes in that the New Zealand has some type of government agency which polices what parents name their children.

Let me start off with saying that I think it's incredibly stupid that someone would want to name their kid 4real. I also wouldn't name my child Apple, Pilot Inspektor or any of the other insane things parents tend to think up these days.

If the kid in question wishes to take an internet handle of 4real when he's older, that's fine. That's the internet. To stick this innocent child with what is effectively an internet handle as his name, for his entire life, well, that's just sick.

Of course, the concept of a government agency telling you what to name your child is even sicker, in my opinion at least.

What right does the government have to tell these parents that they must name their children something specific.

To me, it is just more socialist, big-government evil, which seems to infect the entire world these days. If these parents want to call their children anything, it should be allowed them. They're (supposedly) adults. It's not like they're hurting anyone (future name-calling from the kid's peers aside). Why on earth, would the government have any interest in stepping in and saying something here.

Which is why I love the fact that we have the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to protect us here in the States from such abuses of power in the hands of the Federal government.

That said, Federal Judges, don't necessarily see it that way.

The Real Bus Problem: ECAT survival

ECAT, the Escambia County Area Transit system, is the name used for the buses here where I live. The past year or so, there has been a number of articles in the Pensacola News Journal decrying the fact that ECAT is not making enough money to support its activities.

Basically, they're trying to make those of us who work, own cars, and pay taxes feel bad about the dire straights that public transportation is in, so that we won't complain as loudly when the city/county government tries to up our taxes to give them more money.

Today, there's an editorial in the PNJ saying that due to the upcoming homestead exemption increase, local government is going to be looking for programs to cut (hooray!) and that ECAT is an obvious one.

I say, what's the problem.

Consider, when was the last time that ECAT raised its rates? When was the last time someone could get from one point to the other, in less than two hours? There are a number of other things to do with ECAT before we provide tax money to them. Actually, we should never provide them tax money.

Frankly, it's a hassle no matter how you look at it, one which should be solved by market forces. Raise those rates, and pull my tax money away from ECAT. I don't need to subsidize what should be a business.

Of course, local liberals will complain, and say that with the way all costs are raising, that it's not fair to the low-income folks for ECAT to raise its rates as well.

My response there is: heck, you libs are the ones who voted for this cost of living increase, by voting in a higher minimum wage. So, you really have no one to blame but yourselves for that.

One day, I really hope that everyone will wake up and realize that the government should not be supporting them. That it's not the government's responsibility to take care of your family and provide the basic necessities of life for you. Welfare, and the war on poverty, has done nothing but created a generation of imbeciles who believe they are owed something by the government, that they somehow deserve a portion of my hard-earned money. That somehow it is all right for Uncle Sam to steal it from me to give to them.

What rubbish.

Searching for SWAT

It's three in the morning. You are soundly asleep in your bed, lost to the world and happily dreaming. Tucked in beside you is your significant other, and just down the hall are your 2.5 kids.

Then a flash grenade comes sailing through your window as at the same time your door breaks down, while several armored men, toting assault rifles come pouring through the now broken entry way.

If you're lucky, they don't shoot you.

If you're lucky, the flash grenade doesn't land on a bed, or other flammable object, burning down your house.

If you're lucky, you're not kicked or beaten enough to send you to the hospital.

Sound like a bad dream or maybe the plot to a movie? Could it be a scene from the latest episode of Law & Order? What it is is a short description of what happens during a SWAT raid.

Where once, the SWAT team was used for special circumstances, such things as hostage situations or serving warrants against known felons with a history of extreme violence, more and more they are being used to serve every warrant. The police are breaking into homes to serve search warrants at the early morning, and too often not finding anything, or worse –killing those they do find.

Over the past few weeks, I've come across more and more stories dealing with SWAT teams being used against non-violent criminals, or worse going into the wrong houses to serve the search warrants.

Occasionally these things don't meet with problems.

But what we're seeing more and more of are innocent people - you know those folks that the police are supposed to be serving and protecting – being hit, shot and having their homes destroyed. In fact, just a few days ago, the SWAT team raided the home of Salvador Celaya, a 73 year old suffering from Alzheimer's. He is one of the lucky ones in that he, his 69 year old wife, nor his daughter or her child were shot or injured in some other way during the course of the raid. But he does suffer as the flash grenade they tossed into his bedroom window burned down his house, causing $150,000 in damages (Source).

Just another report in the growing list of problems that widespread use of SWAT teams has caused. Take this small sampling from Florida for the years 2004, 2005 & 2006:

SWAT Team Raids Student Film Crew.
March 20, 2006—FL

A SWAT team in Fernandina Beach, Florida storms a post office building after a bar patron reports a hostage situation. The SWAT team draws its guns and points them at the door of the building. Inside, a high school class is filming a movie. They had sought and gained permission from the local postmaster to shoot the film. The students are ordered to the ground at gunpoint by the raiding officers before they realize their mistake.

Source:
"SWAT Team Called to High School Film Shoot," North Country Gazette, March 26, 2006.

Anthony Diotaiuto.
August 5, 2005—FL

23-year-old Anthony Diotaiuto is shot ten times by police in Sunrise, Florida on a paramilitary drug raid of his home. Diotaiuto was suspected of dealing small amounts of marijuana. Police found about two ounces in his home.

Police say Diotaiuto confronted them with a gun, though his body was found in a closet in his bedroom. Police said the fact that Diotaiuto had a licensed firearm gave them cause to believe he might be dangerous, and necessitated the use of a SWAT team. Diotaiuto had one prior conviction for marijuana possession as a minor, but otherwise had no criminal record, and no history of violent behavior.

Police also say they knocked and announced themselves before entering, though neighbors say they never heard an announcement.

Diotaiuto's family is now suing for the release of police records relating to the raid.

Sources:
Janette Neuwahl, "Relatives, friends criticize death of man in Sunrise police raid," Miami Herald, August 10, 2005.
Brian Haas, "Relatives of Slain Man Hire Lawyer," Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, August 11, 2005, p. B1.
Michael Mayo, "An Ounce of Pot, 10 Bullets, and One Failed Drug War," Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, August 16, 2005, p. B1.

Michael Meluzzi.

July 8, 2005—FL

In July 2005, a Sarasota, Florida SWAT team conducts a drug raid on a home where several children are playing in the front yard.

The SWAT team descends from a van, deploys flashbang grenades, then swarms the home. 44-year-old Michael Meluzzi, who had a criminal record, begins to flee as he sees the armed agents exit the van. Police chase Meluzzi down and fire a Taser gun at him, partially hitting him.

According to Officer Alan Devaney, Meluzzi then reached into his waistband, leading Devaney to believe he was armed. Devaney opened fire, killing Meluzzi.

Police would find no weapon on or near Meluzzi's body.

Sources:
"Suspect is stunned, then fatally shot, " Associated Press, July 11, 2005.
Latisha R. Gray, "Fatal drug raid raises questions; Residents ask why a SWAT team came in with children present," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, July 31, 2005, p. BS1.

Jarrell Walker.
April 12, 2005—FL

After deploying a flashbang grenade and entering the home of 19-year-old Jarrell Walker, police shoot Walker twice in the back, killing him. Walker is lying prone on the ground when he is shot.

The officer who shot Walker was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a ballistics shield. The officer has been involved in four shootings in his seven-year career, says he thought Walker was reaching for a gun. Walker was unarmed, though police did find a gun on the other side of the room. They also found a substantial amount of drugs in Walker's home.

Walker was shot dead in front of his three-year-old son, also home at the time of the raid.

The shooting was only the latest of several questionable use-of-force incidents involving area police. On the same day the FBI announced it would investigate the Walker shooting, Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats said he would review his department's deadly force policy. Remarkably, Coats' changes to that policy, announced in October 2005, broadened the number of situations in which his deputies could use deadly force.

Source:
Steven Thompson, "Pinellas Sheriff Revises Deadly Force Policy," Tampa Tribune, October 19, 2005.
Graham Brink, "Deputy Mayor Responds to Critic," St. Petersburg Times, May 26, 2005.
Alex Leary, "'Exciteable' Tag Haunts Deputy,'" St. Petersburg Times, May 6, 2005.

When are we going to wake up and realize that there's a problem with the wide spread use of SWAT teams and tactics. As our police become more militarized and we, the normal citizen, becomes more prone to the abuses which the use of paramilitary tactics lead to, some of the essential and fundamental concepts that our country was founded upon are falling under the iron jack boot of our own government.

If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern."
—Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006.

Especially when it's a search warrant being executed based upon information from a confidential informant concerning drug purchases.

I think it is high time that the citizens stand up and demand a return to sanity on the part of SWAT tactics. Remember, when the SWAT team goes in, they firmly believe that it is a life-or-death situation. Humans hopped up on that much adrenaline and then armed to the teeth begs for abuses and escalation of situations which lead to the death of those without the kelvar armor.

Cows

A cowboy was herding his cows in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...Now give me back my dog."

Maximizing the Minimum Wage

Well Congress is at it again. They are once more deciding that Market Forces are not enough to run things in our capitalistic society. Yes, it is yet again time for a discussion on raising the Minimum Wage.

Oh joy.

Of course the Liberal side of the blog-o-sphere is ecstatic over this. Or at least they were until House Republicans attached a few riders to the bill, such as lowering the Estate tax, and a Federal Pension bill. Personally I don’t think that even a reduction of the Estate tax is not worth a hike in minimum wage to me. So while the leftie blogs are happy at the potential for a decrease in the price of skilled labor, they are unhappy that the families of the skilled laborers who have died don’t have to give away a huge portion of their life’s savings to the federal government.

The reasons I despise the minimum wage are quite simple. They drive my own salary down. Capitalistic of me I know, but I am a Capitalist through and through. The only reason I get up and go to work everyday is because of that nice paycheck I get. And I have told my bosses this in no uncertain terms. They know without a doubt that I am there for the money, and that is fine with both them and me.

But when we get these increases, I view it as an attack by the Federal government against my livelihood. Don’t believe me?

Then let’s look at some skilled labor versus a burger flipper at McDonald’s. And we’ll not even use college-educated skilled labor for this. An electrician makes somewhere on the order of twenty dollars an hour (this is an average, some jobs get more, some less), and we compare that to the simplified cost of a burger flipper of six dollars an hour. That is somewhere on the order of 333% more for the skilled labor. And that makes perfect sense to me. After all the electrician has spent years as an apprentice before becoming a full fledged electrician, and it will probably be a few more years before they get the higher paying jobs. Now, if we increase the pay which unskilled labor gets to 8 dollars an hour, that drops the percentage difference between skilled and unskilled to a mere 250% more.

While that does not appear to be an extreme drop, it really marks a huge decrease in the purchasing power, as well as the worth of the skilled laborer. Because there are factors besides just that differential between the skilled and the unskilled which affects the purchasing power of an individual.

Minimum Wage Increases are like Tax Hikes, the only thing they do is decrease the GNP. After all, while a large company might consider hiring two or three people at five dollars an hour, they’d come up with a technological solution, which means the need to only hire one at eight an hour. We saw this in the farming industry, and it’s slowly appearing in the retail industry as well (don't believe me? Go to Wal-Mart or Winn-Dixie and look for the 'self-checkout' lanes).

Of course, this is one of the few Liberal Ideas which I would support if they would do it my way. A minimum wage increase, effective immediately, to raise the minimum wage to five hundred dollars an hour for everyone. Oh okay, waitresses can get a mere two hundred fifty still.

If we’re going to slash the differential between the skilled laborers and the unskilled then let’s really kill that, and make it a true level playing field while we’re at it.

And yes, I think that’s a stupidly silly idea. I realize that it would decimate our economy, drive inflation out of control, and make the dollar worth a little bit less than the peso. But I find the entire concept of minimum wage a stupidly silly idea. We’re a free market society, and as such should allow market forces to guide such things as wages and prices.

Roadmap to Break the Law

70,000 maps, in comic book form, of the United States border marking roads and water tanks are going to allow illegal immigrants to sneak into this country easier and safer. Of course our good friend Mexico is the government giving these things out to Mexico's citizen.

And Mexico says there's no invasion of the U.S. by Mexico.

This on top of the Mexican military being inside the U.S. protecting gun runners, and by inside, I do not mean some random section of the Arizona border, but rather the Texan border where the countries are separated by the Rio Grande. Yes, the Rio Grande, which even during the dry season has a 200 foot river bed.

And Mexico says there is no invasion of the U.S. by Mexico.

These excursions by the Mexican military have almost become routine for the U.S. Border Patrol. Even to the point that Edward Nelson, former Chairman of the Border Patrol stated in 2003 that "we are in a state of war, and we are fighting enemies who have brought the battle to our shores. If ever there was a time for the United States to put troops on the border, it is now." That was in March of that year.

And Mexico says there is no invasion of the U.S. by Mexico.

A catholic priest wrote an editorial in a Georgian newspaper claiming the wonders of illegal immigration, and how businesses need to be able to hire illegals to support the wonderful social services that those businesses provide.

And Mexico says there is no invasion of the U.S. by Mexico.

Sooner or later our government is going to have to accept that the sieve we call a southern border needs to be closed. Sooner or later, we're going to have to stop the Mexicans from walking into our country and attacking our government agents. We as a people need to stop believing that protecting our borders is a racial thing. The Lefties out there want you to believe that folks such as the Minuteman Project are racists for attempting to protect our borders, but they're not. People such as the Minutemen are not singling out people because of their race; they're stopping individuals from coming into our country. Just because those people all come from Mexico, and happen to be Hispanic, has no bearing, the fact they're coming across our borders illegally does.

The truth of the matter is that regardless of what Mexico says, their military and citizens are pouring into our country. If that is not an invasion, I'm not certain I know what that word means any more.

The Eminent Domain of Justice Souter

Justice David Souter was one of the brilliant legal minds who ruled in favor of the City of New London, New Hampshire in Kelo v. New London. For those of you wondering, Kelo was the Supreme Court case which granted cities like New London even greater abilities to use eminent domain to take property away from private individuals and give it to some other private individual. Brilliant legal ruling that was.

Well, there is a California man by the name of Logan Darrow Clements who has decided that the small township of Weare in New Hampshire should evict Justice Souter from his home, and give the land to Clement's group, allowing Clement's activist group to build a hotel on that land. After all, that is what Souter's decision did to some private citizens.

I for one, found it deliciously funny.

Of course individuals such as state representative Neal Kurk do not quite have my point of view on such things. In fact, Representative Kurk has declared that Mr. Clements is doing this out of revenge.

What utter drivel.

For this to be an act of revenge, then Mr. Clements would have had to been a party involved in the losing side of Kelo. No, I think it is more of a matter of the fact that Mr. Clements merely wants Justice Souter to feel the evil that Souter helped unleashed. Why should judges who make idiotic rulings such as this one, be exempt from the evil of said ruling? This is not revenge. This is making these idiot judges realize what evil they have inflicted upon the populace by granting the government the power to steal private lands to give to others.

I mean, come on. The government already steals my money to give away to people to lazy to work, now they can steal my land, and give it to people too cheap to pay me what it would take to get me to sell.

10,000 Wal-Mart Employees Can't Be Wrong

Maryland is trying to enact a brand new law. One that states that those companies with 10,000 employees (or more) in their state, must pay a certain amount of their payroll into health care.

Of course, only Wal-Mart has that many employees in state, but hey, the Democrats say that this legislation is not aimed at them. Surprisingly enough, I believe them. I think that the Leftists just put that 10,000 number in there, to make their first victim of this un-capitalistic practice Wal-Mart so that the effect would be more palatable to people. After all, it's Wal-Mart with billions in sales, and millions employed. What could making them pay a little extra to employee health care matter?

This is where the Lefties want things to stand. They want the people happy that they are legally forcing companies to give employees a certain amount of healthcare, because once that is legally acceptable, they can then start lowering that number. After all, if it's ok at 10,000 employees, then it's ok for 9,500, then 9,000 and before you know it for 10. One must remember that for this type of law there is no difference between 10 and 10,000. It is a random number, set high to make it acceptable, because it can only affect one company. That that one company is Wal-Mart is just a bonus in the Lefties eyes. In the same way that the minimum wage is set low to make it acceptable to the most people (I'm still waiting for the $2,000 per hour minimum wage, I could get behind that).

Of course the esteemed lawmakers in Maryland have failed to realize the simple realities of business. They are trying to pass a law that states that the business spends 8% of payroll on healthcare. Now, Wal-Mart has a few options for doing this:

• Pay for it out of profits
• Close stores until they are under the magic number
• Pay their employees less

Gee, I wonder which I would do if I were in Wal-Mart's shoes. There is no way I would pay for it out of profits. That is hurtful to my shareholders. Even if I tried to pay my employee's less, there are artificial limits on how low I can pay them, which a higher minimum wage in conjunction with this health care tax would cause me convulsions. So that leaves the close stores until I'm under the magic number.

Yup, to keep from paying this particular tax, I will close stores, stopping jobs, and depriving thousands of consumers a cheap place to shop. After all, I would be in this for the money.

Who knows, Wal-Mart could do something different, after all, I'm not in charge over there. They could even attempt to question the constitutionality of this law. Unfortunately, capitalism, though a corner stone of our society, has no protection in the Constitution.

Sadly the labor unions are pushing this law in other places. If your state has the misfortune to be one of them, I would get in contact with your legislature. This health tax is not a good thing.

Barney Frank, Fighting for Gay Marriages

Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) believes that an "angry, divisive" fight is coming to Massachusetts. What is this fight? Why a proposed Massachusetts constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages that amendment proponents are attempting to get on the 2008 ballot.

The Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) has gathered 124,000 certified signatures (double the number required). MFI's president has gone on the record as saying "All they want is an opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage."

What is Mr. Frank's response? Why he's quoted in an AP interview as saying "Basically, they're the disturbers of the civic peace, we now have social peace in Massachusetts. They're the ones who want to stir it up…This is a non-issue in Massachusetts."

Wow, Mr. Frank sure is in-touch with his constituents. If he was, then he would see that the 124,000 certified signatures do mean that this is an issue in Massachusetts. What Mr. Frank means when he says that this is a non-issue, is what any liberal means by that statement: we have the rules in place, now anyone who does not agree with them needs to shut up and sit down.

Whenever pressed, normal, run-of-the-mill Americans have resoundingly supported bans on gay marriages. That is the reason that those pushing the homosexual agenda turned to the courts. They know they cannot win if this is put up for a vote which normal Americans must vote on. Now that they have this moronic ruling in place, they are trying their best to ensure that it stays there. If that means ignoring huge segments of the voting populace's desires, then so be it.

What gets me is that while MFI was gathering these signatures, there was no angry, divisive fighting. MFI gathered signatures quietly, and turned them in without that much hoopla. Oh, but once they were turned in, then the divisive fighting started. KnowThyNeighbor, a pro-gay marriage website has published the full listing of 124,000 people on the list, because they are certain that there's fraud afoot. I personally have no doubt that there may be some folks on the list that should not be, as the company that was chosen to do the actual signature gathering has had trouble in the past with fraudulent signatures.

Regardless, If those people who wish to redefine the fundamental concepts of marriage and civilization really believe that the people of Massachusetts see this amendment as a non-issue, and they believe that the citizens of Massachusetts truly support the slow destruction of marriage, then they would have no problems allowing this amendment to go to the ballots. The problem there lies in the fact that those who believe so, know that the citizens of Massachusetts would vote for the amendment which supports the definition of marriage.

They do not want this to go to the ballot, because they want to ensure that a cornerstone of our society is changed, and not for the better. Of course, if we keep poking holes into the foundation of our society like this, pretty soon, our foundation will not be able to support our society.

The New Deadbeat Dad

Let me tell you a story about a man named Gary. He is a loving father, a U.S. Navy Seal, and an all around good citizen. Gary got deployed to Afghanistan. While there he wrote lullabies for his son. A son that he is no longer allowed to see.

Apparently, his wife visited family in Israel, and decided to stay, and requested a divorce from abroad. Gary has been fighting in the California courts (which may explain SOME of the problem) to gain some form of access to his son. He's not asking for full custody, but we're talking visitation. Oh yeah, let us not forget that Gary must pay $2,100 a month in support.

Gary is the new deadbeat dad. He lost his wife and child while on deployment, and was given the deadbeat moniker while nowhere near where he could defend himself. No longer are deadbeats the wife beaters, the uncaring scum that have been portrayed through the years. While they still do exist, today's deadbeat dads tend to be stable upright citizens, which the "family" court system has punished just because they are the father.

What is saddest is that Gary is not alone. There are thousands of Reservists out there who are facing government sanctions, huge back payment debts, and even possible jail times because their active duty military pay is nowhere near the amount they made in their civilian jobs. Of course the Family Support Act of 1988 allows non-custodial parents to request a child support modification for decreases in income; but most state agencies do not honor the requests. One of the main reasons they do not is that the agencies are reimbursed by the federal government for every dollar they collect. That is a lot of incentive for them to keep the child support payments high.

This is all due to the idiocy of zero-tolerance laws. Rather than having intelligent guidelines, the government places hard and fast rules which must be applied regardless of circumstance. A good example of that would be Mr. Bobby Sherrill. Mr. Sherrill worked for Lockeed in Kuwait prior to the first Gulf War, and was captured and held hostage in Iraq for about five months during that conflict. When he was released, and finally made it back to the states, Mr. Sherrill was arrested by our government. What did he do wrong? Well, while he was being held hostage, he did not pay his child support.

While I think Child Support laws are a good thing, especially with the advent of the no-fault divorce, they need to be fair to non-custodial parents, especially fathers. Without this fairness, all you have is prosecution of fathers, which is of course what the feminists want.

Imminent Domain

Imagine, you have just bought your dream home. It’s a cute little cottage or a seven bedroom monstrosity. That doesn’t matter one little bit, it’s YOUR dream. Ok, you have your dream home in your dream home’s perfect location.

Isn’t it a nice dream? Home ownership is the clarion call of the American populace. It’s a extension of our British roots when those fun loving Brits forced the Magna Carta to be signed. The concept of private ownership is firmly planted within our collective consciousness. In fact the concept is so important; two separate amendments deal with the seizure of property. The Fourth Amendment details that search and seizures must have probable cause and must be clearly defined (i.e. you can’t have a seizure warrant for a television an then seize the couch). The Fifth Amendment says that a citizen and can not “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Why do I bring all this up? It’s simple; the American government has forgotten exactly what public use means.

There is a town called New London, Connecticut. This town handed its power of eminent domain over to a group called New London Development Corporation (NLDC), which is a private organization, which then began the process of condemning homes and attempting to force residents from their property.

Now, if this had been for a road, I would not have said a thing. If this had been for a school or a library or some similar structure, I would have been happy. Any building or structure which would have been publicly owned and if the land owners were given a fair compensation I would have been happy. Unfortunately this use of eminent domain is for a condominium and an office complex.

Yes you read that right. This city is basically forcing these residents to move, so that they can then give the land to property developers. As well in a ruse to force the property’s value lower the NLDC had some of the properties condemned, regardless of the fact that the land owner in question purchased the home in 1997 (all this fun started in 2000) and had been restoring the home for three years.

And it is not just this one little town in Connecticut. After all, Connecticut is filled with liberals in power so you expect utter stupidity to appear in its halls of power. Other such cases include:

• Norwood, Ohio, is using this power of "eminent domain" to evict people from their homes and businesses so a Cincinnati developer worth $500 million can have the property for an office-retail complex.
• Bremerton, Wash., removed a woman in her 80s from her home of 55 years supposedly to expand a sewer plant, then sold the land to an auto dealership.
• Mesa, Arizona, attempted to force Randy Bailey to give up the brake shop that he purchased from his father. The reason was to raze the building and then give the land to a privately owned hardware store. Mesa also decided to pay the hardware store’s permit fees, insurance, fees and most impact fees out of the tax coffers.

What is sad is the Institute for Justice has a whole host of similar complaints. The concept of eminent domain needs to be redirected from this concept of using taken lands for the public good, and put it back into the concept of using the purchased lands for public use.

Until we get eminent domain back to its constitutional standards, let’s just hope you don’t live somewhere where a developer with political clout wants to build.

Why Liberals Hate God

In the aftermath of the 2004 elections, we have heard a lot about the ‘moral’ voters and the religious right. Throughout the entire thing, we get constant bombardment about how evil these two groups are. Think of it this way, those eleven states that denied same-sex marriages (and I still get irked at that particular oxymoron), the battles against the amendments were based upon protecting the ‘rights’ of homosexuals.

What does that have to do with liberals hating God?

Think of this, where do our rights come from?

Could they come from the individual? Does each individual person determine his own set of rights? No, that concept is utter drivel. Rapists have no intrinsic right to rape. Murders have no intrinsic right to murder. See my point? If rights are generated by the individual then anything anyone does is within their rights. That leads to anarchy and oh so many deprivations up to and including rape and murder (of course NAMBLA would probably love the ability to have a right to pedophilia).

So, they don’t come from the individual could they possibly come from the Government? This is the Liberal’s solution. They want everyone to think that rights are endowed upon the electorate by the government. The problem with this is that it is merely an extension of rights are from the individual. The government, especially ours, is merely an extension of some group of individuals. In a royalty that group is a certain family, in a dictatorship that group is whoever led the revolt, and in our society that group is the majority. Of course the major problem with this concept is that if the government gives us our rights, then the government is allowed to remove our rights

So, since rights do not come from the individual nor do they come from the government where do our rights come from?

For that, why don’t we see what our Founding Fathers had to say about the rights they determined that we have (this is from the Declaration of Independence):

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.

To far away in time, and let us not forget that Mr. Jefferson did not believe in a personal creator. He was a theistic humanist. He believed in God, he just did not believe that God concerned Himself with our welfare. So, let us look at something a little closer, how about President’s Kennedy 1961 inaugural address?

… the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

Think about what Mr. Kennedy is saying there. Our rights come, neither from man nor from the state, but they are given to us by God. Of course if our rights are from God, that means they are based upon God’s ideals of right and wrong; immutable and unchangeable. God ordained rights would convey with them responsibilities and certain actions that are right and certain actions that are wrong.

This is why Liberal’s hate God. They want our rights to be given us by the state, for if they are then our rights can be modified on the liberal’s whims. Change the definition of marriage today, change the laws concerning pedophilia tomorrow, all in the name of granting more and more diverse minorities all of their proclaimed rights.

Liberals love the concept of the right without responsibility (though how you can have one without the other confounds me). As such, they have increasing taught this inane and pointless concept of “Separation of Church and State” (a concept that has gained hold in the past 40 years). Through the use of Liberal judges, the ACLU, the MSM and a subtle manipulation of the teaching profession, the concept of God has slowly been dismissed from the public realm.

On everything from teaching that Thanksgiving is a civic holiday to the recent lawsuit by a history teacher because he was denied the use of the Declaration of Independence to teach American History.

We must strive to restore God to the public realm. Replace Him in our history books; teach once again that our Rights come from on high, not from man or man’s governments and restore the concept of religion and government that is actually framed in our Constitution.

Who knows, if we do this,maybe just maybe, we will not have to face any more nonsense about oxymoronic statements such as homosexual marriages.

9th Circuit Appeals Court At It Again...

That wonderfully liberal 9th Circuit Appeals Court has yet again pulled off a brilliant activity. Known for the infamous ruling which declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, they have now said that the average citizen cannot bear arms, and it is actually unconstitutional for them to do so (Reuters News Story).

Now, I can see that incredibly liberal section of the country, having 3 judges who just happened to sit on that particular court to say this. Yet once the ruling was handed down, the appellants tried to get it brought before the entire Appeals Circuit Court. Out of the 28 judges on the appeals court, only 5 of them think that this ruling is as stupid as it truly is.

Now let's look at the amendment in question:

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.

Hmm... it seems that the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. To me that actually means that there should be NO laws regulating guns and gun control, for any laws that the federal government places upon arms, is infringing my right to bear them. From concealed weapon to waiting periods. These all are infringing upon my right to bear arms. How can I say this? Well let's look at exactly what infringe means:

To hinder; to destroy; as, to infringe efficacy;

So with this definition, the second amendment reads "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 hindered."Makes a world of difference doesn't it. Remember this appellate court if and when someone breaks into your home. Remember this appellate court if and when someone hurts your loved ones, while all you can do is stand by, because you don't have the means to protect yourself and your loved ones. Remember that this appellate court, the liberal left and the ACLU (because they still have yet to defend the second amendment) all think that the common man is to stupid and careless to have guns. I personally think they're afraid we might get tired of their liberal agendas and finally overthrow this bloated government, and reinstitute our Constitution.

What's more important...

Tell me which is more important police and fire coverage or another lecture on diversity?

Much to my amazement I know which the government of Lansing, Michigan chose. In a fell swoop of laying off 21 police and fire fighters, their proposed budget include $140,000 in diversity programs (Lansing State Journal)

What type of liberal thinking would decide this? What stupidity? Are they thinking that just because they pay $150,000 to a PR firm to send out press releases, or $20,000 on a Harvard law professor, that crime and fires will amazingly handle themselves? That just because they spend a huge amount of money (espeically considering other towns of similiar size spend less or even nothing on programs such as these) that noone will feel the need to commit a crime?

This is an obscene liberal program, and I have to say that I am personally glad that I don't live in Lansing to feel the pain of less police or less firefighters.

The Great American TV Turn Off

he state of Florida wants you to turn off your TV. Well actually, it's a program, running this week, sponsored and endorsed by the Department of Health called "TV-Turnoff Week." In it, we are supposed to not watch TV this week, rather we're to go exercise or read a book, or stare at the wall, whatever, as long as we're not watching TV.

Why is this worthy of a rant you ask? Simple. Government, especially ours, has no reason to be doing this. What this amounts to, is a simple attack on a private enterprise. It's our government trying to destabilize a business. That's not very capitalistic if you ask me. But wait! There's more. not only is this action socialistic in an economic sense, it's the government once again saying "We know what's good for you." This is evil, plain and simple. The government does NOT know what's best for me, only I can make that decision. Just like the government does not know what's best for my son, for my wife, or my family in general. That is a decision that I make, and likewise I have to deal with the consequences.

You ask, what can it hurt? It's simple, we start with a week without TV, then it's a week without carbohydrates, next it's a week without a book. Before you know it, the government has everyone doing exactly the same thing. What they want you to do. As long as what I do, does no harm to anyone else, the government has no business dictating to me, what I should or should not do. If I want to eat myself into a stupor, and being grossly overweight, then who cares? Does it hurt anyone but me? Nope (though it could be argued it hurts my wife and child, but that is an extension of hurting me). The point is, we need less government in our society, and programs such as this do not acheive this goal. Always be wary of when the government says to do something. Ask yourself is this worthwhile? Is this something the government should be asking/telling me to do? WHY is the government telling me to do this. I think I watched more tv this week (just upgraded cable so I get Cartoon Network ), than I have in the past year, and I'm proud I spoiled this department's evil plan.

Nation of Islam in Today's school...

Sunday, Pensacola High School will be a satellite feed location for Nation of Islam's leader Louis Farrakhan speech denouncing (and as a by-product encouraging and blessing Iraq) war with Iraq. Now the Nation of Islam's teaching are incredibly decisive. They are white-bashing in the utmost sense. One speech found on their site says that basically every time blacks reach a level, whites raise it. In my opinion we have just lowered the levels. Over the past thirty years, the general education level of high-school graduates has dropped. More and more students are getting out of grammar school (products of social advancement) without having the simple ability to read. How is this raising the bar? What is truly sickening is that the same people who support Nation of Islam are those who support Slave Reparations.

I guess it's just a stupid idea for stupid people.

Anyways onto the subject at hand. Our superintendant of schools initially declined their desire to use it (Our schools cannot be used for financial gains for any group). Our esteemed School Board decided that the superintendent was using his powers stupidily an overruled his decision. Why they did this? Because it MIGHT impune on someone's free speach. Now remember the School district would not be stopping the speech just it's broadcast to a group (that will charge admittance) on tax-payer owned property. How exactly is that denial of free speech? The speech is still being broadcast, just that now the group which is charging money for admittance, will have to pay for the venue that they are charging for. Maybe I just don't see the problem, perhaps that raised bar is blocking my view.

No Smoking. It's the Law

Which is stronger in you? Your desire to not have people smoke, or your desire for personal freedom? There's a law on this November's ballot about baning smoking from all businesses. This scares me. This scares me very badly.

I don't like smoking. I think it's a nasty habit. That said, I think if someone wants to partake of this habit, it's their right as an American citizen. If they want their business to cater to smokers. It's their right as an American citizen.

Yet this law denies that right. It is saying that the Government knows what is better for you, and your business than you do.

Not only that, but how many steps is it from No Smoking in businesses to No Smoking in Apartment Complexes? Then how many steps is it from Apartments, to everyone's homes. What I wonder is, after they banish cigarettes from everyone and everywhere, what are they going to hit next? Sodas? Candy? Milk? Video Games? Once we ban 1 item from our life. The next one to go is just that much easier. Ben Franklin said "Those who give up a little freedom for a little security, deserve neither freedom nor security." The freedom that we are deciding on is the freedom of being able to choose to do as we want with our business, homes, and self, as opposed to a little security from the potential threat of cigarettes.

So, do we deserve freedom? Or do we throw away our security.

The Judge Who Didn't Know The Law

Why would a State's Supreme Court flat out ignore a clear and concise law? Why would a State Supreme Court throw away the entire concept of Representative government?

Why to help a democrat of course.

Our good friends in New Jersey, not satisfied with existing laws, decide that the law does not apply to democrats. I wonder does that apply to those pesky theft, assault, and rape laws to, or is it just the laws concerning elections?

Oh well, at least Florida isn't the laughing-stock of elections this week.

"We're not begging white people,'' said Farrakhan

It's time for a rant AGAINST Slave Reparations

Here's an excerpt from the above linked story:

Hundreds of blacks rallied in front of the Capitol on Saturday to demand slavery reparations, saying that compensation is long overdue for the ills of that institution.

"It seems that America owes black people a lot for what we have endured,'' Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told the crowd. "We cannot settle for some little jive token. We need millions of acres of land that black people can build.''

"We're not begging white people,'' said Farrakhan, one of several speakers at a rally organizers billed as "Millions for Reparations.'' "We are just demanding what is justly ours.''

Why would my tax dollars be "justly" theirs? Were not the African-Americans offered land a number of years ago (yeah it was in Africa, but it was still land)?

But the ultimate question is this. Why should we, the people of today pay for the mistakes of the past?

Of course then you might say "Well they're taking about the government paying the reparations."

The obvious stupidity of that statement aside, the government is OF THE PEOPLE. The government is not a separate entity, it is a manifestation of the will of the majority of people. Besides, who do you think pays for the government? Is this money just created out of thin air? NO! The government gets all funds out of the pockets of its constituents. Whether those be businesses, farms, people, whatever, that's where the government gets both it's power and it's finances.

You know, I think I have come up with a way that I would agree to reparations. Anyone that wants them, can receive them, BUT, the money received for reparations would be taxable at 110% with that tax money set aside for military spending.

Could it be a 1% Tolerance Policy?

Escambia County School District (FL) possesses a Zero-Tolerance Policy for students concerning both weapons and drugs, to the extent that both fingernail clippers and aspirin warrant suspension, if not expulsion. Yet this same school district has been ordered by an EEA arbitrator and a judge that a school teacher that was found to have a massive (50X a positive test result) dosage of cocaine in his body has to be rehired.

What type of message is this for students? Drugs are ok, if you're an adult?

If Mr. Sites is supposed to be a role model for students, should he not be held to the same rules and regulations that students are? Why should he have his job, working with children, when he has proven himself to be a criminal (drug usage is still a crime you know). But ultimately I blame the EEA, yes the teacher's union which originally threw fits about Sites being fired. Now tell me, whose interest is this in? The students? Mr. Sites? The union (can't collect union dues if the guy's fired)? I applaud Superintendent Paul for not going along with this. In my opinion, as a tax payer, voter, and soon-to-be parent in Escambia County, Mr. Sites has NO business having anything to do with children.

End of story.