This is the type of shit that makes me want to unleash the ghosts of liberty to run wild through the halls of Congress and suck up what's left of these wooden leaders' souls.
Peter Jackson is perhaps the most talented director alive, as good as Spielberg in his prime (War of the Worlds is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen, by the way). But a director with his own film production studio is like John Gault--unstoppable with the world in his hands to embrace or destroy. I'm hoping Jackson goes solo with his own company.
Now we finally have the press that Jefferson dreamed of, the Hamiltonian government is going to do everything they can to take it away from us...or will they? I think the First Amendment still has a chance in Congress.
We are very close to a breaking point here and all it will take is one act of Congress to completely level the insurance industry as it is now into something fair and balanced (oops, sorry O'Reilly, please don't sue me for using the Fox trademark) to individuals, small businesses and private risk pools.
I love Anne Coulter...even when I don't agree with her. This time, however, I do. I don't believe in state funded art. I think it's usually shit. In fact, I thought the whole Amiri Baraka thing was a ridiculous blow up that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been a state-sponsored artist.
Does anyone else see the potential use for terrorists in these easily accessible satellite images? Or is it just me. If were planning a massive attack on a city, having access to satellite images of the city would be pretty nifty from my cave in Turkmenistan or wherever I was holed up with my project board and dry erase markers.
I couldn't imagine two more useless and historically obsolete organizations merging to produce no valuable outcome of true spiritual worth than these relics of a lesser age and lesser minds.
You obese people out there should post this dude's picture up on your fridge and think about the commitment he made to his health. He'll still have to be buried in a Trans-Atlantic car crate but you've gotta give him credit when it's due.
Here's a novel concept in business...meeting the standards you have agreed to. How many companies are out there screwing us right now because they have gone against this golden rule, killing their golden goose to get eggs that haven't yet been made.
I never cared much for Close Encounters anyway--I was only two when it was released (same year as Star Wars) and it didn't even come close to being as interesting to a two year old as Star Wars was.
Bill Hicks often said that if we were to legalize marijuana and tax it that we would have no problem paying off the deficit. He also said:
"Isn't it funny that the drugs that are legal, alcohol and tobacco, are the drugs that do absolutely nothing for you; but the drugs that grow naturally upon this planet, the drugs that basically make you wake up and realize how your being fucked every day of your life, those drugs are illegal. Isn't that funny?"
I haven't been to the doctor in over two years and I'd be willing to bet that I feel great, enjoy a consistent sex life and meet the physical challenges of growing older with relative ease.
This system is so broken that the shards on the ground actually look like writing on the wall.
You could also try smoking; the cool people of the world already know this. It's the lame asses that have to hook themselves up to electrodes to find release.
Lift light weights three days a week. Do light cardio two days and rest a day. Eat right (like according to The Abs Diet) six days a week and have a cheat day and we could lower the 14% of the GDP we're wasting on healthcare in this country (compared to the 3% we're currently spending on the war and civil defense) down to something acceptable where we can have government money to fund scientific endeavors into colonizing interplanetary space.
Stop funding your early death and make appropriate living choices every moment you are lucky enough to be aware that you even have a choice to be made.
Check out this jackass at Best Buy fucking around with the camera and not realizing that it was recording him. Luckily someone caught it and put it on the Internet for us all to laugh at.
The health insurance industry will remain largely unaffected except for senior-specific plans that replace Medicare as primary insurance payor. These plans are already more expensive and more expansive than Medicare, which is why the politicians didn't think twice before banning this.
What this does mean is that there will be fewer poor old folks humping the mattress with a hard-on at night. But never fear because the stubborn old rich douches around us will be moaning in their sleep loud enough to wake us all up.
Damn! If you truly want to build a library that you can leave to your heirs then you need to check out Easton Press. I racked up a cool $27,000 wishlist here. I'm getting the Tolkien series with Atlas of Middle Earth for my 30th birthday (Not only am I getting smarter with age but I'm sexier now than I ever have been, teeth snarl, yeah baby!)
I'd like to give a big shout out to the homie Antimedia for passing this treasure along. It isn't very often that contemporary writers move me--but this one got to me. This will be my 4th of July meditation on Individual Freedom in the year 2005.
I am very proud to announce that this very talented young man is creating a kick ass book cover for my book about average people taking back the media Flipping the Temple which is slated to come out at the end of Summer (it was originally supposed to come out in June but I wanted to add a bunch of stuff to it).
Great stuff Chris. I look forward to working with you for many years.
I used to LOVE the old Apple IIe game Empire of the Overmind. It was all text-based and very imaginative. I never was able to beat the game, but let's see how you do. Back by popular demand, Empire of the Overmind can be played online by installing a simple Active X control available at the link above.
Digression of ideas is the best part of blogging and why it is one step below the level of posting a professional article. Journalists who aren't excellent bloggers that have a forum and audience to post their "real" thoughts to (meaning writing that isn't sanitized by corporate influence--which I must note has its use and purpose) are just asking to be labeled obsolete in their profession.
Bloggers are Creepin' On 'A Comeup--believe it, beetches.
The Groundrules of Electronic Debate and Why Corporate Music Sucks by Joshua Minton
by Uncle Josh
I recently took part in an interesting political exchange on Shane Nickerson's blog. The link is here. I responded to Dave's "passionately" worded blog post and eventually I had to deal with his aggressive start by laying the ground rules of electronic intellectual exchange.
I have spent over a year facilitating a daily operations meeting with the senior leadership team of a major corporation and I can now read people's faces, their tones, their gestures and body language as well as their electronic communication as well--I can sniff out the attitude in the most mundane of electronic exchanges and this naturally gives me a leg up when posting and responding to blog chains like the one Shane began with his moderate yet controversial political remarks that only the most bold of authors and artists are willing to make with their audience.
During the recent US Presidential election, I scathingly attacked artists like Bruce Springsteen, Michael Stipe and Dave Matthews for interjecting their politics to their audiences. The reason I did this is because as an artist, you will automatically be dividing your audience into thirds--those who agree with you, those who don't agree with you and those who could care less. You might keep 2/3 of your audience but how many did you lose and for what? The people who agreed with you already are just further justified in their beliefs, the people who don't care are unaffected and the ones that left will no longer be supporting you by coming to your shows and buying your CDs.
This all happens because in the music industry, the wrong thing has been being sold for a long time--the music. The music is the bait to be given away to develop a following that will support the artists in their art. Fans pay for the experience of joining the artist in a moment of artistic production and get to know and appreciate that artist when their work is at first given away and then partitioned out to an elite audience that has been built through time and trust.
In case you were wondering, I am a true Libertarian meaning I would never join any organization that would have me as a member. I have studied democracy under the tutelage of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington (the intellectuals) as well as the later "critical juncture" Presidents that led the United States further and further into world empirical ruler (here, I am speaking about Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and, of course, George W. Bush). But I have come to believe that it was Richard Nixon who had the deepest understanding of the American populace with his conception of the Great Silent Majority.
The world has become a bunch of loudmouths squawking at the same time. My audience will come to consider the brand of Joshua Minton as a bullhorn in the fog of ignorant ranting and screaming that global debate has become.
Believe me, we want people with some type of guided moral values interjecting their beliefs and values into the process of constructing laws; this is how we compose the most just laws, when everyone has a say in the process. This is how we get ridiculous oral sex laws that no one could possibly enforce with a straight face.
But we do not want religious belief being interjected into the judicial judgments of the law because that is how witchtrials begin and people get murdered in the town square for believing different things and living different ways that harm no one else's life or property and this is far worse than the tryanny of man--this is the tyranny of man being carried along the torrents of the river of evil.
The rule of thumb should be: bring your religious beliefs to the table when composing the law but bring your spiritual beliefs to the bench when judging individual action in context of the law.
Look, can't you Christians just look this stuff up in your Bibles at home? You'd think you'd have the fucking things memorized by now. Isn't it telling that the most supposedly spiritually endowed among us need constant public reminder of their faith? You see, I carry mine with me everywhere I go and when it comes to decisions of the heart, your faith does nothing for me but mine can do everything for you--and that is the difference between true faith and that with a price tag on it.
I have never used the word Unilateral in any of my writings or any of my speeches and interviews.
My worldview holds that one must first develop a firm grasp of history from the viewpoints of both the oppressed and the oppressor. One must then develop a basic understanding of economics, politics interpersonal communication, and especially the Scientific Method (Observation, Hypothesis, Controlled Experimentation, Theory). Philosophy, Cosmology, and Art (using the aesthetics of James Joyce from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) that breaks through both time and space to put us in touch with something in the moment that is beyond naming or describing comes from a combination of the spiritual experience with the knowledge development and application process just described.
By using this methodology for developing a true public education that is outside the cultural divisions and seeds of Cain that our current system imparts upon unsuspecting children and weak-minded teenagers; we can ultimately establish a firm intellectual foundation that will finally raise the mentality of both national and global debate far above the pathetic political and meager religious realms they have been stuck on for the past two hundred plus years while we have been trying not to kill ourselves off completely in the wake of the Industrial and Nuclear Revolutions.
But here at the Dawn of the Bio-Nano-Information Revolution that will carry humanity to other worlds and will open up new economies of commerce in the development of Interplanetary Space and its Heavenly Bodies, we have an opportunity for global reflection on the history of our species, both its amazing accomplishments as well as its terrible failures that carry a price tag that number billions of human lives lost through outright murder and ignorance.
The Enlightened Theory of Education that I am proposing holds that it is possible to engage in a collective debate of individual viewpoints that is sourced in the spiritual realm of human exisitence but which can also reach down into the religious, the political, the pedagogical, and the mere sensory moment experienced by the pathetic soul groveling before sheer fact as Nietzsche might say.
These states of mind just described (spiritual, political/religious, sex and reactionary living) are all described clearly as the four lower states of spiritual existence in the Eastern Metaphysical system of Kundalini Yoga and are just as valid today as they were four thousand years ago.
The Enlightened Theory of Public Education must be sourced at the fourth chakra, or that of the rebirth of the spirit in the individual which is a noble event in all major religions--the transformation of the human animal concerned only with health, wealth, progeny and victory into the human being, a shining star of spiritual energy embo
died in corporeal form and moving through time and space on what appears to be mere circumnstance but which at closer examination becomes amazing and mysterious all over again.
Enlightened Public Education must begin with the spirit.
But the obstacle here is that culturally we are fed up with sound bytes and quick fire Bible verses about the spirit that no longer obfuscate the fact that we are socially behaving as viscious animals every moment of our lives. The Enlightened Theory of Public Education says No More manipulations and violations of the lives and property of our fellow citizens. Instead, the Enlightened Theory of Public Education seeks to produce individuals capable of understanding what the needs of their local and global communities are so that products and services can be developed and marketed to improve the living standards of the entire world.
As a culture, we have endured nearly fifty years of New Age charlatans and recycled worshippers of graven images (letters in a book) who have consistently milked us for money and, in some cases, have taken advantage of ignorant misplaced faith and youth to commit the most mortal of sins--destroying the purity of youth.
[There is a special circle in the 8th level of The Inferno of the mind waiting for these absolute abusers of life and liberty when their egos descend the path of death and face its life trials (if you believe in that sort of thing). ]
Especially in light of the recent aggressive moves coming out of China to restrict the words "freedom" and "democracy" as well as all MSN blogs, not to mention the aggression against Taiwan.
I held off a couple of days to report this, but it looks like its pretty much true. This is a shame but it's also the time to buckle down and try again. How many planes do you think the Wright brothers crashed before one took off.
I would have hoped that the FBI would have already had something like this set up. J Edgar Hoover would have had it already and would have known about every subversive (including me) in the nation. He would have been trying to flip as many and play as many against each other as he possibly could have, using the hegemonic process to confuse the extreme on both ends to ensure that the middle squeaked by.
But times have changed...Americans have gotten much smarter.
"People say, well my daddy died for that flag in Korea. Hmm, that's funny--my flag was made in Korea...
Besides, your daddy didn't die for the flag. You see, a flag is a piece of cloth. He died for what the flag represents--freedom; which also happens to be the freedom to burn the fucking flag."
This administration is all talk when it comes to space exploration and research. But that's okay because W is a war president--the next CIC must be a visionary not a reactionary (both types of person can become great).
If the American citizenry are too brain dead to even care about this, then the government deserves to fall into the chaos it is bringing upon itself. Let it be known that there are enlightened individuals ready to pick up the pieces and start all over from the core ideals when this shell of what was once a great and noble government finally breaks off the body and blows away like a shed locust shell.
The Ghosts of Liberty are riding through the spirit of the American citizen, whether they are aware of it or not. We are each being stirred by great forces and the war for the future of humanity is taking place right now inside the hearts and minds of every human being in the world right now--even if they are unaware of the war's progression.
Many expert oncologists agree that we will have a cure for cancer with in ten years, provided that we have the proper funding and the proper national attitude towards scientific research. This attitude has no room for religious obstacles beyond that of protecting living human beings from losing their lives.
One of my best friends is a Senior Project Manager for a huge land development firm here in Ohio and I know what a pain in the ass it is for him to secure the sale and zoning changes for these enormous development deals. My buddy JD is right in claiming that only a few individuals get rich off these deals but the other end of that spectrum is that the land usually does go to a much better end.
But how safe are our investments in land and property if they can be seized by a governing body for whatever ends they deem justified to meet public welfare (this is pure socialism, by the way).
So, I'm torn, but I think I'm going to have to side with my Libertarian values that say this whole thing is a bunch of bullshit. If I have to make money off the degredation or exploitation of others, then the money isn't worth it to me.
...This is one of the things I hope to rectify when I start my non-profit corporation for disseminating millions of dollars to Ohio Libraries. I believe true public education lies beyond the doors to the public library. Everything truly important to me has been learned through independent research and study through various libraries in my life (even if that is my own immense library).
It is only by having open and free access to quality statistical data that we as consumers can ensure that our scarce resources are being allocated to their most efficient uses.
Every hospital should have to report error rates and non-identity-specific procedure and illness information just like airlines are required by law to submit safety data to the federal government.
Without access to this information, we are not in true control of our healthcare dollars or our health. Stop letting the insurance industry control your healthcare--start by taking control of becoming healthy and you will go a long way toward solving our healthcare crisis.
So, Italy is still a matriarchal society. I'll bet my olive-skinned brothers will take an eye out quicker than the average American cheeseburger eating pussy jock meat head.
The age of microbiological mechanics are going to bring wonders unlike the world has ever seen. This stuff is fascinating--that the future lies in the infinitely small rather than the infinitely large.
This is the future mankind was meant for...not being wasted in the desert sands to play some sick end game that St. John ate some bad mushrooms and recorded a bad trip about.
I happen to agree with Tom and I respect him for standing up for something he obviously feels strongly about (and happens to be correct, mostly). It's one thing to be outraged and not allow these things into their own bodies or the bodies of their children but to restrict others from using these medicines is not only immoral but it used to be illegal before our government become a corporate whore for the greedy pigs at the trough of consented power.
I love this website. There are some great video links and they have classy pornography (meaning just naked models and no explicit sex). You know you're getting older when you start choosing sanitized pornography. One more step toward the glorious grave, my friends. Another day, another inch in time...
We have the freedom to be ignorant. We don't have the freedom to infringe upon another's freedom of speech so long as they are not infringing upon someone else's life or property.
With all of the recent data theft in the financial sector, it is important to make sure that we don't go crazy trying to protect ourselves from risk. Risk management does have a value but there is a point at which the value of protecting oneself or one's customers overshadows the product or service that you are offering.
For example, I recently called Citistreet, the company that manages the 401K plans for the corporation at which I currently work. I was sent a PIN number about six months ago via snail mail but misplaced the paper. One of the security questions they ask is what your start date with the company was. Well, I worked for a subsidiary of the company that was eventually taken back into the motherfold--so I really have two hire dates and I couldn't get it straight with the woman from Citistreet.
So, they had to assign me a new PIN number...through snail mail!!! I have to wait 5-7 business days to get into my account.
I told the woman on the phone this was clearly unacceptable and that asking their customers to wait even 10 minutes to get into their account.
So, I'm cashing out my funds and moving to another vendor.
The woman on the phone apologized and kept falling back on "that's our process."
I finally said, "Your process just isn't good enough. Fix it or the market will."
True success knows no age restrictions or boundaries. Good business is good business and if you don't have a quality product or service, but instead spend your time placating to pathetic congressmen and senators to manipulate the law into a favorable business environment for your company and screw everyone else--then you are delving in the black magic side of business and will meet an untimely retribution either in this life or the next.
This is just about one step too close to actually becoming a woman. It's bad enough that we've allowed women to demasculate us in our places of business and sometimes in our own homes--but I draw the line at pharmaceutical suppression of my testicular activity.
We are almost hitting the breaking point and all it is going to take is one act of Congress to level the entire Healthcare industry so that we can rebuild it into something that works.
I, as a Social Libertarian, Have Been Involved in a Dialogue with Conservatives and Liberals That I Think Has Yielded a Truth About the Blogosphere
by Uncle Josh
This comes from Shane Nickerson's Nickerblog and started from a respectful anti-war/anti-Bush post he made this weekend. Both sides are giving as well as getting and I think we're getting somewhere in dialogues. In some ways, I feel like it's a big peace accord with religious conservatives, social libertarians, and hopeless liberals are coming together to find some common ground.
Here is most of my latest post in the conversation thread...
[This dialogue] has uncovered something tremendously important to me, something that should just be pure common sense--citizens taking the reign of their government back from the politicians. But one must become a politician to do that an in order to have that kind of courage, one cannot demonize all politicians or the political process as a waste of time and energy--it's not!!!
I posted a blog (http://boyswearpants.com)/ a couple months ago about how with a letter I wrote to my congressman about a privacy epiphany involving blogs that I
was guilty of and corrected--I received a signed letter back from my representative within three weeks and the letter showed that the guy actually listened to what I had to say and addressed it.
This was an eye-opening experience for me when I realized that I could actually effect the thoughts and emotions of powerful people in the world to effect the outcome of global events.
To me, the individual that is well-read, well-spoken and well-meaning is the King of a world where power over systems and people, the collection of material possessions, the mechanistic urge to procreate are all background noise that get drowned by white light.
Freedom can only exist in the mind of the individual and the only freedom that matters is the freedom of the moment--the choice you make right now determines your reality in the next moment--this is common sense.
It is my hope that the blogosphere will produce an organic social network that will inflame individual passions to benevolent social ends. I hope the blogosphere becomes the arena by which government communicates with the people and politicians become the people once again.
This ideology is the hill that our shining city of America is built on and no words, ideas or even personae can reach the top of our lighthouse on a hill--only free individuals can ascend to the white light at the top of the tower.
If you've read Stephen King's The Dark Tower series then you know that what Roland found at the top of the tower, after 10,000 plus pages of the craziest adventure story ever written--he found only himself in the beginning.
The only problem was that this was expressly forbidden by Congress. Someone's head should roll here but I'm interested to see what the results were and if the system works or not.
I'll admit that I used to be jealous of my compadres who were minorities in my BFA Creative Writing program. (there may have been like three and Tran is the only one I keep up with). The rest of us were just crusty white kids with no rhythm. (I do have rhythm when I'm playing guitar but have no chance in hell of winning any dance contest).
So, I used to be a little jealous of the amount of anger material these minority writers had access to. I mean, Tran was Vietnamese, the child of (I believe) first generation Americans. So, Tran had the Vietnam war to use as a world-event that affected his life without his choice.
There is a lot of inspiration in one's cultural identity but if that inspiration doesn't allow the artist to create works that break past the illusory bonds of time and space to that oneness that unites us all then the art won't last and won't have quite the impact the artist hopes it will. In fact, here is a definition of good art you can copy paste into your brilliant quotes file. This one comes from yours' truly, Uncle Josh:
"Art (with a capital A) is all about using the contemporary forms of time and space (people, objects and their relationships) to blow apart the phenomenal differences that keep us each locked into what appears to be an inescapable prison (our own egos which are composed of our experience and emotional and intellectual reactions to the present moment, from which we project the future)."
But it is in this projection of the future where humanity's greatest certain unalienable right exists--the right of the choice about how to act this moment. It is freedom of choice about how to act in the moment (in other words, creating their reality in the moment through sheer will) that allowed people overcome atrocities like The Holocaust where every bit of security involved in associating through one's cultural identity was removed completely and the individual was reduced to a scrounging animal. This is the point where survival of the fittest and preservation of self becomes king and the social morays simply drop away like burning paper mache.
I have studied The Holocaust passionately now for sixteen years. I completed course upon course in college and have read book upon book about those twenty years in Germany that saw Hitler's rise to power and a decimation of a culture almost as old as humanity's recorded existence.
I have long asked why when thinking about the Holocaust. This is a very hard question because you are essentially asking for a sum value of millions of peoples' lives in terms of a historical lesson (and what historical lesson could be worth the lives of over 150 million who died in a World War which was the direct result of one man and his dream team of terror?).
But here is my why from The Holocaust--individual freedom emerged intact despite the fact that untold masses of individuals were murdered and had their most sacred identities taken away--their cultural or group identification.
There is enormous associative power in group identification--that is why we are constantly being told to choose, in the moment, which social group we define ourselves as--black, white, gay, christian, conservative, liberal, rich, poor, etc. There is a certain amount of creative inspiration to be derived from one's social group, but if you examine this inspiration closely you will see that the majority of art that comes from this source is usually so infused with the anger that comes from the tallying of group suffering that it has no breakthrough into the transcendent mystery which lies beyond time, space and our petty egos (which only last as long as we draw breath; the spirit is eternal and therefore incorruptible or haven't you got that memo yet?).
So, while minorities may have a lot of inspiration to draw from that produces some great Saturday Night Live and Dave Chappelle skits, most of these are without any true breakthrough; they are improper art, using the artistic aesthetics put forth by James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
In-group anger can only take an artist as far as they are willing to ultimately let it go completely. Only by willingly letting go of our social identify and, ultimately, our individual identities in the moment, can we touch the true source of inspiration which lies inside each of us like a platinum encased diamond nugget at the centers of our being.
In fact, this is the exact message that I wrote about in my short story Pyrite.
I spent a lot of my late teens and early twenties being angry for other groups of people because my group identity (middle class white kid in a sea of other middle class white kids) was the system of oppression and the source of much of their anger. But I'm through being angry and I'm through defining myself with abstract concepts; I'll leave that to the hacks and has-beens. I'm going to do my best to teach this concept of artistic aesthetics to other talented artists so that they too may find that thorny and weeded path inside themselves that will take them to the platinum crusted diamond that waits for them within.
Thanks to antimedia for following up on this tidbit so I didn't have to. Anytime government intereferes needlessly in the market, it's a bad thing. They should be interfering just enough to prevent outright theft of property and leave the rest the hell alone. Our country is one of the worst offenders in the world of this basic law of economics; scarce resources must be allocated to their most efficient use and momentary use is determined by all individuals acting at the same time. When government steps in to insert the threat of force into the process of exchanging goods and services value for value, these blockages become a cancer that threatens the entire organism.
I voted for Bush both times and would NOT vote for him a third time. Anything more than two terms and power will take control of his mind like Sauron's ring.
...Middle Management is the disease of corporate spirit known as "foxhole field leaders" (people who have been promoted through the ranks because of time instead of talent and who have winnowed out a hollow existence for themselves amidst the chaos and bombing that is business today.
I will be ordering this from the library because I've been suspecting that terrorists are planning the mother of all rematches. All this suicide bombing is a diversion. Our true enemy has yet to reveal himself...
This ruling will open the doors for looters. You have to have a period of time to exclusively market products that you spent millions of dollars developing. Now, some scrub company can come along, take a product that has just hit the market, copy its formula and make their pills pink instead of blue and call it "different."
OK, that title is a bit misleading because the guy was actually arrested for protesting airport security procedures but at least I'm honest enough to admit my radical diversions from the truth to sell a title.
When the second largest health insurer in the nation starts giving away pill-splitters and encouraging the practice, you know that someone is getting out the red tape and nerd glasses.
You've got to hand it to any man that gets an itch in his craw to say things as he sees them. For too long in America have we looked to our elected officials as "leaders." Ever since FDR, the media has been building up and breaking down our President like he becomes some kind of Dancing Shiva who calls us to Enlightenment with one hand and to our certain death with the other.
But here's the deal for those of you that have never read The Declaration of Independence or the Constitution--the People are the leaders and it is from this body of leaders that elected representation gets chosen to take the People's concerns about government to the government.
America was founded upon steel resolve and, sometimes, outright murder. The enemies of America have morphed skin colors and belief systems but it has always been essentially the same enemy--collected power being wielded against the freedom of the individual. Yes, sometimes we have slipped from this definition when justifying attacking other nations but such is the nature of dumb human beings making decisions in the dark points of history which aren't as clear in the context of the moment as they are with the benefits of time, research and exposition.
But the problem is that we common citizens are no longer steely resolved individuals acting in their own best interest in light of how they affect their family, friends and community.
American citizens today have been raised in a Matrix-like incubation tank of dependency and submission where they have been threatened for so long by laws that are supposed to curb "collective" behaviors that are being acted out on an individual level and therefore must be dealt with on an individual level (this means seeing worth in every human being and is something our government has had, ahem, a hard time always doing).
The worst thing that ever happened to this country is that it became able to be addressed under the term "American Culture." It used to be that individuals made the culture around them, shaping the world like John Gault, despite the actions of the parasites and thieves who feed off the hard work of others.
But now it is some abstract notion of culture that creates individuals who aren't individual at all, but rather they are automotons doing the locomotion in a perspective line dance that seems to go on forever but has a very definite, abrupt and surprising ending.
It's been a long time since we've had true leaders in Washington and if I could stand before Congress and ask any question and be guaranteed of the answer, it would be this:
WHO THE FUCK HAS BEEN RUNNING OUR GOVERNMENT FOR THE PAST 100 YEARS WHILE YOU HAVE CONSPIRED TO MILK THE AMERICAN CITIZEN FOR THE HARD EARNED PRODUCT OF THEIR LABOR?
What legacies do you think Congress today is leaving for their ancestors, a bunch of wooden "gotcha laws" that has driven the fear of law so deep into the populace that very few are capable of understanding the benefits of taking calculated risks anymore? If that is their idea of legacy, then I wish George Washington would have just surrendered instead of crossing the Delaware river to regroup and beat the enemy outright. It's a damn outrageous shame to have fallen so far in the eyes of our forefathers. Let us make a pact to change the direction of this sorrowful series of political decisions on the part of the leaders of all nations in the last 100 years.
Don't forget that we are here to learn, evolve and get the fuck off this planet.
When the lawmakers become the enemy of the people, the only way to defeat them is as a unified field of individuals--a Great Awakening as Paul Johnson might say.
This system is seriously fucked up and has to be completely discarded and started from the beginning. Read Newt Gingrich's book Saving Lives and Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare and all will become clear.
I got a pretty strong-worded e-mail from Stephen King's lawyers last year when I approached his agent about writing a television pilot script for The Dark Tower series. I thought at the time that the response was a bit overbearing because I had truly written the script out of love for the book and respect for the author. But with nuts like this woman, I can't blame Steve for the legal wall he has constructed to protect his shit.
Here's to you, Steve. The last Dark Tower book blew my mind away and I'd love to work with you on anything.
"The world is growing gray fast. The elderly population is expanding at a rate of 2% a year; by 2050 there will be more people over the age of 60 than under 15. Nowhere is the trend more pronounced than in developed countries, where increasing life expectancy and decreasing fertility rates will elevate the median age from 39 to 46 in the next several decades. And with more and more people settling in cities--and growing old there-- municipalities around the planet are facing unprecedented challenges in providing accessible transportation, affordable health care and appropriate housing for their older citizens."
Sorry, but this is just bad economics and I for one and happy to be watching the entertainment industry imploding upon itself--they've been holding back the true artistic expression of America for far too long. MARS, bitches...!
This is right about the appropriate intelligence level for politicians--average. What else but a limited mental capacity would inspire someone to lie, cheat, cavort and steal from others for the rest of their lives, but be smart enough about to do it protected by bullshit legal loopholes?
Seriously, how much do you have to hate yourself to bleach your anus and have that action add to your self-esteem or your belief that other people will like or respect you because your asshole is white? I have to give props to whatever genius plastic surgeon came up with this treatment and began selling it to the starlets and thumb dicks out there who can never seem to become good enough for the moment they live in.
My asshole may be a few shades darkers than by butt cheeks but I know it's clean and that it's normal. That should be good enough for everyone.
US Inches Towards Fascism but Does Something Right with Universal IT Standards in the Healthcare Industry
by Uncle Josh
I received the following article via e-mail announcement from Modern Health Care. This is a good thing. The recent string of data thefts from financial sectors such as Health Insurance Administration and Banking have put millions of citizens around the world at risk of identity and property theft (property being the item we exchange our labor for, or currency as we commonly refer to it). Identity and property are two of the three things the Declaration of Independence states to be unequivocal and inherent rights to every living human being (Life being life and Liberty being the ownership of the product of our own efforts--the pursuit of happiness being the combination of both) .
In my opinion, regulating operating standards when it comes to the personal identity and propert of its citizens is the very reason for a strong federal government. The state should be concerned with how its citizens are behaving--the federal government makes sure that the states are doing their job with respect to the liberty and property of all of its citizens. This is a debate as old as the Civil War and what I just said is still the Stone's Honest Truth as far as the Constitution is concerned.
The federal government should be no more concerned with what its people are doing than to the extent that those actions infringe upon the lives or property of other citizens without due compensation (those pesky state laws).
The destruction of liberty that occurred today in the Supreme Court case demonstrates how terribly close that this country has shifted towards Fascism, a system where industry, knowledge gathering, and creative thought are all refracted and focused onto strengthening the state and culture of the state. It's remarkable to note that the judges who ruled in favor of this were mostly Clinton appointees (somebody check my facts on this please) who was supposed to be a Presidency of open-mindedness. Bullshit!
This is an egregious violation of individual Liberty that is taking place before our eyes, when a government that is supposed to be endowed with the collective use of force only to secure the safety of its individuals citizens' lives and property allows its citizens to be corralled and sliced apart by these thieves of liberty in black robes who have become less the black-clad protectors of the American spirit and more the murderous head hacker that keeps the blood of the spirit spilling and the head baskets full.
The United States isn't supposed to have boundaries and borders that need defending. It's supposed to have open shores where individuals from all walks of life can enter, share their gifts and talents with us and allow us to reward them in currency and amenities to spend it on so long as they exchange goods and services safely and fairly so that no one's life or property are infringed upon. If we need defense from anything, it's an overbearing federal government that is hell bent on securing the lebensraum of the mind.
Anyway, here is a copy/paste of the article with a link to the author's e-mail if you'd like to contact him...
"HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced plans for development of a national health information network and creation of a federal advisory commission on standards for healthcare
information technology. Leavitt said HHS on Tuesday would issue requests for
proposals for :
• Architecture and design of a Web-based national health information
network.
• Assessment of potential privacy and security problems in a national network
and development of solutions.
• A prototype process for harmonizing standards so that different
manufacturers' software programs, particularly electronic health records
systems, can exchange data.
• Criteria to evaluate features and functionality of electronic health
records, including interconnectivity.
Speaking this morning at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems
Society meeting in New York, Leavitt said he would name up to 17 members to the
commission, known as the American Health Information Community, and serve as its
chairman. The commission's primary task will be facilitating development of
interconnectivity standards for healthcare IT, Leavitt said. Its other charges
include preparing a short list of projects meant to quickly demonstrate the
benefits of IT in healthcare and making recommendations on architecture and
design of the national network, privacy and security, and product certification.
The commission, set to expire in five years, also must select a private-sector
organization as its successor.
Leavitt said the commission and demonstration
projects would begin in "a matter of months" and emphasized the urgency of the
issue, saying, "Speed is life here." In a news release, HHS said the commission
would require a minimal budget and be funded out of the agency's IT
budget."
According to Accuweather, the Real Feel in Columbus, OH today is 106 degrees F. I don't even go outside on days like this and to think that they're playing the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield in this crap today.
Anyway, I was looking out the window today, watching the heat steam from the wood deck, dreading grilling out there later on, when I was struck with a compassionate thought that quickly turned Costanza.
I actually said this sentence out loud and the pause represents the second it took to get the punchline.
"I feel sorry for all the homeless people that have to walk around in this crap...but they ain't coming into my house either."
It's only a matter of time before pot become legal to purchase and smoke--it's outrageous that the government thinks it can regulate what we place into our bodies so long as doing so does not directly endanger the lives or property of others.
You've got to read Cracking the Millionaire Code. Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen have truly achieved something very special with this book. They've taken the physical printing of the page and turned it into an art with great quotes framing every two pages and mind-bending puzzles related to the concepts being discussed (you have to actually look back through the book to solve the puzzles or "pick the Millionaire lock."
Listen to this from page 25:
Today, 1.3 billion people earn less than a dollar to live on. Half of the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day. Compared with them, you're already so wealthy. It is only in comparing your house or car or job to the rich elite in your own city or country that you might feel poor. But to the rest of the world, you are the elite rich. Many of the world's poor would sacrifice a kidney to trade places with you--as financially strapped as you might think you are. In truth, because of your health or your citzenship or your education or your opportunities, you've already received a vast fortune from Higher Power. You're already living the "blessed" lifestyle. You've already won the lottery.
Be so grateful for what you have already received that you voluntarily agree to "pay it forward" for the rest of your life...without expecting a penny back. It is from this place of overflowing gratitude that your enlightened million-dollar successes begin.
When your giving truly becomes a privilege and not an investment, then Higher Power discerns that you can handle money and will bless you with even more.
