I don't normally blog chain jokes I receive on e-mail, but I found this one pretty funny.
A new monk arrives at the monastery to help the other monks in copying the old laws of the church by hand. He notices that all the monks are copying from copies, not the original manuscript.
The new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never, ever be picked up.
The head monk says: "We've been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point my son."
The head monk goes into the caves under the monastery where
the original manuscript is held in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years.
Nobody sees the old abbot for hours.
The new monk goes downstairs to find him banging his head against the wall. His forehead is bloodied and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.
The monk asks the old abbot: "What's wrong father?"
With a choking voice, the abbot replies: "The word is celebrate."
President Bush Signs Law to Create Medical Errors Database
by Joshua Minton
According to Tony Fong,
"President Bush signed into law an act that will create a national database on medical errors, designate individual reports as confidential and shield participating providers from liability. Patient-safety organizations will collect voluntary reports from providers, analyze the data and recommend steps to avoid future mistakes. Providers said the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act eliminates barriers to reporting errors and ultimately will lead to better patient care. The law allows providers to focus on "solving problems rather than worrying about lawsuits," Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, said in a news release. The bill passed the House Wednesday and the Senate last week."
I can't express to you how important this is in leading the quality revolution in healthcare. Consider that up until now, hospitals who reported any error whatsoever opened themselves up to an army of douche bag lawyers.
Well, one thing is that you will be able to look at proteins in much greater detail than has ever been seen before. More knowledge about proteins means far more breakthroughs in medicine and science.
...I wonder if we can attract or repel comets and asteroids with high metallic contents with one of these?
What the "H" are You Doing? Why Arent' You Blogging?
by Joshua Minton
Sorry gang. Getting this blog transitioned to its new home and settled has been a diaper-full of work. Thank goodness for Chris here at PowerBlogs who finally had to take the pen of blogginess away from me and get my other posts imported over. This company and this blogging platform are kick ass--end of discussion!
I have been working on going back through all my past blogs and categorizing them according to the categories on the left-hand sidebar of my blog. This is important to me that people visiting my blog for one reason is allowed to peruse other categories of interest. I think this will go a long way towards further strengthening and building up my brand online.
I know there is a problem with the archive pages and a big gap between the first title and the rest of the posts. Chris is working on a script that will fix this, so please be patient.
Why Even Bother? The Lunacy of Posturing in Politics
by Joshua Minton
Check this out. The US, China, Japan, India and South Korea have signed a treaty that pretty much undermines Kyto to reduce air pollution, but this "treaty" is completely unenforceable.
I was just talking about this subject with Fantastic Bastard and we both agreed on the importance of world-wide standards when it comes to air pollution (FB works with the EPA). But we're essentially talking about a global effort and global law that must be enforced by a global body. But there is no global government to enforce such global regulations and don't even mention the two letters that you're thinking about because that organization is worse than the mafia.
So what are we going to do as the Third World is coming into its industrial revolution, using the shitty shit that we are selling them, the materials and tools that are forty years old.
Things are bad and they're getting worse. The US needs to lead the world by enforcing itself stringently and then holding other countries to those standards. But this will never happen so long as corporations hold the reign of our government.
Before you sign me off as a liberal here, let me remind you that Teddy Roosevelt was the first conservationist and that taking care of your environment is not pussy or weak; it's just smart living.
Even the Changes are Changing When It Comes to Stealing Online
by Joshua Minton
In this article, Michael Rogers cites his reader response on the matter of digital theft online to be 90 percent against the industry.
Hmm, maybe that's because the industry sees the consumer as pigs in the slaughterhouse. They have no love for we the ones digitizing plastic swipes beyond dollars and pounds and to them, this all makes perfect cents (get the Roger Waters reference?).
THE INDUSTRY is THE MAN and THE MAN is the barrier to getting at the artist.
If the artist can effectively remove THE MAN from standing in the way between them and their customers then this would go a long way toward shifting this attitude and balancing the market.
I got a visit from Fantastic Bastard this week and he is on a mission. See, he is a collector of all things related to spirits and their social ingestion. He procured this new drinking game called What the F*ck? which is based on a group of people answering A/B questions like:
If you were a prisoner on a pirate ship and had the choice, would you:
A. Become the ship's sex slave
B. Escape and swim 7 miles to the nearest island
The book came with two books but FB is positive this will not do. So, he is compiling questions for a third book.
If you would be so inclined, and should the naughty inspiration strike you, please send your question with an A/B answer and a drink designation (between 1 and 4 based on how hard it would be to guess another person's answer) to boyswearpants@joshuaminton.com and I will make sure he gets them.
Feel free to be as vulgar as you like--it is a drinking game after all and the questions should be aimed at embarassing people in front of both loved ones and strangers.
Thanks in advance for helping out with this project. We'll even publish a free copy to this blog once we get it completed.
According to this study, immigrants account for 7.9% of total healthcare spending in the US. The report claims this is not "significant."
I call bullshit on this. Healthcare spending accounts for over 14% of the Gross Domestic Product of the US. This may not seem like much but compare it to the 3% being spent on civil defense and the war on terror and this should begin putting things into perspective.
We are still talking millions of dollars being spent on illegal aliens who aren't paying into the system. I am not discounting the important role that illegal immigration plays in our economy (who do you think builds our houses and picks our fruits and vegetables?) but it remains a drain on our resources nonetheless and must be dealt with as surely as our border defenses.
This woman got fired for blogging about her job and wants to warn you not to do it or suffer a similar fate.
I don't talk about co-workers in my blog. I don't talk about my bosses or any of the typical shenanigans that go in any corporate environment (although there is plenty to talk about).
But I do talk about the industries I know something about and sometimes I curse while doing it.
Because we should be getting pissed off about the things that are wrong and praising the things that are right. The people on the front line of any organization are the ones that "own" the process--they know where the gaps are and they know how to fix them. And the company that gets down off its high horse, recognizes this enormous opportunity for positive change, puts the tools in place and then unleashes the creative energy of their frontline is going to set themselves up for continued success forever and ever.
And all this can be done without naming names or even naming the company...and the only cost is technology, a bit of training and enduring a couple of curse words.
I talk about what works in the industries I know and what's not working (and try to make suggestions on how to fix them). I consider myself a powerful tool of leverage in the free market, a consumer and producer that likes to talk about the things he buys and sells.
This woman was fired for "not being professional," but I say she was being ahead of her time. The companies that continue to ridiculously maintain control over the communications both inside and outside their firewalls are going to end up just like the Emperor in Star Wars, falling down a long chasm to a fiery death.
If you are one of these controlling corporate arseholes, please see The Cluetrain Manifesto for further education.
Star Wars Episode III Set for a November 1st DVD Launch
by Joshua Minton
I just don't understand how people can wait to purchase these movies in sets. I know people who didn't purchase the original trilogy on DVDs because they wanted to wait for the entire set, including all six movies, to come out at once.
It was the same with The Lord of the Rings. It's just kooky talk all the way around.
By the way, those of you who think you have truly "watched" the Lord of the Rings trilogy because you saw them in the theatres have no idea what you are missing by not having purchased the Extended Editions. There is like an extra two hours of footage put into the the movies with musical score and everything (unlike that piece of shit Extended Edition of Ray that was like watching TV with a bad cable antennae with all the pauses and breaks.
Recently, here in Ohio, Senator Clinton had this to say,
"[Republicans] turned our bridge to the 21st century into a tunnel back to the 19th century. The clear mission of a unified Democratic Party is to back us out of that Republican tunnel, fill it in, go back across the bridge, and get America back in the business of building dreams again."
This woman reminds me of another cracker southerner who tried to ascend the throne of power by lies, deceit and morally questionable practices. They called him the King Fish.
Well, she's the King Bitch. I'm sure that's a title that all her lesbian friends in college would have revered...
Sorry I haven't been posting too much but I've been cracking ass to get this blog transitioned over to the new site and to finish up Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
I always approach reading a Harry Potter book in a two-pronged way. I buy the hard back book as well as the audio CDs. This way, I can take advantage of time in the car to keep reading.
I'm saying it right now, that the Jim Dale performances on the audio CDs are the truly best way to experience reading the Harry Potter books. This guy is the best reader out there hands down (and I was a huge fan of Frank Muller before his motorcycle accident robbed us of a great voice actor).
If you've never read a Harry Potter book, if you think it's just kids stuff, then you need to drop your ego and run out and get these CDs from the library.
YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY.
More to come when I get the last 200 pages read...
I have made the switch to a paid blogging platform. I did all the research and had decided on Typepad and Moveable Type for my new home. And then I took a long hard look at Antimedia's site and found his blogging platform to be far superior to any other.
So, I contacted PowerBlogs and haven't looked back. There are so many more features that I love about this service (the ability to categorize my posts and their feeds, the closer scrutinization of comments, the blogroll is easy as pie to administrate, and much more).
But as to why I made the switch and why I don't trust free blogging platforms--well, I admit that these platforms like Blogger have served their purpose; they have created the market but I find their inevitable Phase II moves to be more insidious to serious writers.
See, nothing is free. A lot of work and R&D went into developing these monster platforms and tools. One day they are going to ask their people to begin paying or they will start selling advertising on your blogs. Anyone who has taken a cursory glance at Blogshares can tell that the link value and overall market value of blogs are being analyzed every day. Now, Blogshares advertises itself as a "Fantasy Stock Market" for blogs but you have to admit that if I were a company looking to advertise on the Internet, it would be pretty frigging convenient to find popular blogs whose subjects matched my company's product or service and then pay a reasonable market rate based on the eyeball value of the blog.
Well, I'm not going to let anyone else make money off my writing but me unless it's by my choice. Plus, if I'm going to pay for a blogging service, I want to know I'm getting the best value.
Therefore, welcome to my new home. In the coming days, I will be importing all my old blog entries (hopefully with comments and links) to this site and posting my last entry there with directions here.
Dave Greten's post today rehashes the same old Charlie Rangel line that the NY Times and Left-Wing haters of any military action whatsoever have been dishing out since the invasion of Iraq back in '03.
Why aren't we on the homefront sacrificing more, doing more besides putting the magnetic bumper stickers on our cars?
Well, I actually receive news about troop morale from troops still in the field. My stepbrother just got back from Iraq and his unit was hit only a week after his return. Good people he knew died and he made it out. My father served during Reagan-era peace time, building the infrastructure that allowed us to reign victorious in Desert Storm and the only thing these gentlemen feel is regret that they could not have done more. Notice I didn't say that other American citizens could have done more, but that they couldn't have done more. This is the primary difference between the true soldier and the citizen who protests under the (to use a cliche) blanket of freedom that the soldier provides. It's about personal initiative and responsibility rather than finger pointing and pessimism.
This is a volunteer army and this is also not World War II, despite what Bill Maher and the Dave Gretens of the world would like us to believe. All the rubber we save won't amount to a lick of spit--our army needs Intel computer chips! This is a volunteer army of highly trained and specialized soldiers, many of whom would wipe the floor with most of the liberal intelligentsia in terms of both tactical and technical prowess. This is not a war of attrition and throwing more bodies at the front lines will do nothing to gain us victory.
A draft will not help this country because, quite frankly, most people that haven't already signed up for the military are not fit to serve in the military in terms of attitude, skill sets or talents.
So, please, those of you on the left, stop trying to drive a wedge between the soldier and the citizen and the soldier and their government--it won't happen. The American citizen, like the American soldier, is far wiser than the liberal intelligentsia of this country would like to believe.
If you guys really want to make a statement, follow the lead of Norman Morrison--I guarantee you that setting yourself on fire with a big sign that says "Stop the Killing" will at least earn you a blog entry on Boys Wear Pants Dot Com and a two second mention on the nightly news.
Other than that, who cares about your civilian outrage that cries for peace when we are being attacked daily from both inside and outside of our borders? Wise up before you lose the game for everyone, or was that your intentions from the start?
PS: For further schooling on this matter, see Antimedia's post today.
Hawaii is attempting to pass price-control legislation that would put a cap on gas prices.
Again, as Dr. Sowell points out, price controls lead only to shortages. One need only examine the dismal situation in New York City rent-controlled living to see the effects--shitty places to live that no owner bothers to keep up on because they aren't getting market value on the worth of their property.
Gasoline price controls were tried in the 70s by that face full of teeth ex-President, Jimmy Carter, who knew even less about economics than he did in dealing with Arab terrorists.
What was the result? Endless gas lines, rationing that required all kinds of beauracracy to administer and no free market allocation of scarce resources to their most efficient uses.
Thank God these socialists passing themselves off as citizens are being further marginalized every single day both off and online.
My First Article in The Pauper was Published Today
by Uncle Josh
I was asked to begin contributing to the online ezine ARTreprenuer for the website The Pauper, which is a community of starving artists. I have some great ideas for articles that I feel will truly help those up and coming artists who are looking to make a living with their art.
I watched this move twice--once for a general impression and twice to take notes.
My general impression is that this documentary is an invaluable piece of American History about an invaluable living resource about the Vietnam War--it's history and why it played out the way it did. McNamara was known by the elite in the press and universities as a real son-of-a-bitch during his tenure as Secretary of Defense (the same way that Rumsfeld is portrayed now in the press) but he came across in the movie as an authentic and emotional human being who happened to be an outright genius in matters of interpersonal relationships. economics, politics and war.
You simply must watch this movie. But until you get around to it, here are my notes:
Lesson 1: Empathize with Your Enemy
He paints Curtis LeMay as a lunatic who wanted to annihilate Cuba completely
Quote from Kruschev at the final crisis of the Cuban Missile Crisis: "We and you ought not pull on the ends of a rope which you have tied the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot. And what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it is rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction; for such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence."
Lesson 2: Rationality will Not Save Us
"The end result of the cold war is this: 'The infallibility of human nature and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.'"
Castro recommended to Kruschev that they used nuclear weapons against the US even though that would have meant the total destruction of Cuba.
Lesson 3: There's Something Beyond One's Self
Lesson 4: Maximize Efficiency
50 square miles of Tokyo (a wooden city) was burned and killed 100,000 civilians in 1 night
Lesson 5: Proportionality Should be a Guideline in War
67 cities were 50-90% destroyed by firebomb before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan and this was all done by the command decision of Curtis LeMay
Lemay once said that if the US had lost the war, they would have been prosecuted as war criminals. "What makes it immoral if you lose and not if you win?"
Lesson 6: Get the Data
Lesson 7: Belief and Seeing are Often Both Wrong
President Kennedy picked out the spot he was buried in Arlington a few weeks before he was assassinated
The Vietnamese Communists believed that the US were coming in to replace the French as a colonial power to subjugate the into slavery
The Communists government ended up with exactly the same things the US was offering them before the violence commenced (Independence and Unification)
The Communists had been fighting the Chinese for thousands of years and claimed (in 1995) they were never pawns of the Chinese as the US suspected (and went to war over)
Lesson 8: Be Prepared to Reexamine Your Reasoning
He believes that we should never apply economic, political or military power unilaterally and that if we would have followed this reasoning in Vietnam, we never would have been there fighting (none of our allies supported us)
"If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better reexamine our reasoning."
Lesson 9: In Order to Do Good, You May Have to Engage in Evil
"How much evil must we do in order to do good?"
"At times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it."
"War is Cruelty"--General Sherman prior to burning Atlanta to the ground
Lesson 10: Never Say Never
War is the President's responsibility
If Kennedy had lived, he doesn't think that we would have had 500,000 men in Vietnam
Lesson 11: You Can't Change Human Nature
"The Fog of War means that war is so complex that it is beyond the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment and frame of mind are not adequate and we kill people."
"It isn't because we aren't rational; we are rational. But reason has limits."
TS Elliot quote, "We shall not cease from exploring and at the end of our exploration we will return to where we started and know the place for the first time." This is how McNamara feels today.
Epilogue
[About not speaking out against the war after her was fired by LBJ] "I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. So I'd rather be damned if I didn't."
Reality is the thoughts we think, both individually and collectively. If we don't change our thoughts, and therefore our actions which spring from our thoughts, we must engage in Risk Management to circumvent the ultimate disaster from happening as a result of the most disastrous actions and thoughts.
By the way, here is a map of which states are going to face the most nuclear fallout and damage from a full-scale nuclear attack within our borders. (Hat tip to Fark.com)
This is a feature I will be adding that I got from a post that AntiMedia made about a week and a half ago.
So, here are this week's people who do not deserve to live and they both regrettably come from Cincinnati, Oh...
An 18-month old girl died yesterday after being raped and brutally beaten by the boyfriend of her mother. Story Link
American flags, lining the lawn of the mother- and father-in-law of fallen U.S. Army Pfc. Timothy Hines Jr., were heaped in a pile early Saturday and burned under a car parked in front of the home. Story Link
These are the situations when it would be nice and just to have Paul Kersey trolling the streets, finding these scourges of society and removing them forever.
UPDATE: Two jackass kids have been arrested for this. See the story here.
Earlier this week, I posted an entry about the British police shooting that guy in the station and assumed he was a terrorist--he wasn't. I don't want to be flippant with human life because it is precious; but as an Arab, you absolutely cannot run from the police during a time when fellow Arabs have bombed the city in which you run. It makes no more sense to do this than it does to be a black man running from the police in the dark alleys and streets of downtown Cincinnati and then make a move to grab your wallet without verbally telegraphing what you are doing to the pursuing officer.
This is the type of thing that riots are made out of.
I am deeply sorry for this life of innocent life; however, I would still like it to stand as an example of what will happen to anyone that comes into our countries with anything but the best intentions of pursuing their own happiness provided that that pursuit does not infringe upon the lives or property of other citizens.
Clearly, we still have some ways to go here...
UPDATE: Leading UK Muslims still support the police's shoot to kill policy despite the fact that it led to the death of an innocent man. "The civil liberties of those whose lives are threatened have to take priority over the rights of someone assessed in good faith by highly trained police officers to be a suicide bomber." Story Link
UPDATED UPDATE: The Brazillian guy (is this better my anonymous poster from the Great State that spawned John Adams?) that was shot, likely ran because his Visa was expired (Story Link). Once again, the guy simply shouldn't have run. So, let's just call it an extreme use of deportation powers...
...that I love the show The Little House on the Prairie and that I own all eight seasons that are currently out on DVD right now? And that I consider the time that my wife, my son and I sit down to watch as amongst the most rewarding and serene family moments we have in the chaos that is our life right now?
...that I let my dog lick my toes after I get out of the shower. She's always there waiting to do it, so I figure, why not? Who else in the world is willing to lick my toes besides my awesome boxer dog?
...that I think my cat looks like the Luck Dragon from The NeverEnding Story and that sometimes I move his mouth and say, "Atrayu!!!"
I will be reading this more in depth and commentating on anything "not right" or "extraordinary." But we should each be reading this--after all, isn't this the whole reason we are over there in the first place?
Microsoft is officially changing the name of its next generation Operating Platform from Longhorn to Windows Vista.
Personally, I think this is all a bunch of crap to sell needless software. I think they should let XP go open source like Linux and give up the ghost--why staff legions of customer service reps to service a product that the free market could make far better anyway.
Now, I'm no computer programming expert, but I thought that the move away from a DOS-based system with XP was the ultimate in a Microsoft OS. Why not just make that one better rather than forcing their customers to get used to yet another platform?
But that's just me. I won't be upgrading until I absolutely have to and by then I'll probably have wised up and switched to Apple.
This guy built a storm chasing tank to drive into tornadoes and film them and study them from the inside.
It may sound silly but I plan on retiring my 4Runner one day to turn it into a storm chasing vehicle as well. I want it completely decked out with all the HAM Radio and internet/satellite access one can acquire in a mobile unit.
Granted, it's low on the priority list of lifetime goals but a goal it remains nonetheless.
My regular readers know that I respect AntiMedia's site above all others in the Blogosphere because it is was it is. I believe that he has the clearest vision for what his blog is and goes about administrating it in the most efficient and effective matter.
But consider when he says this about Blogrolling and linking:
"My blogroll is in alphabetical order. The order implies nothing about what I personally think of the sites...
"The fact that I link to a site does not mean that I agree with everything written there. Nor do I expect anyone to agree with everything I write. (If you do, there's probably something wrong with you.) Part of the greatness of the blogosphere is the exposure that you get to a wide range of ideas, expertise and opinions. If you're not taking advantage of that, you're missing a great deal. If you feel threatened by reading things you disagree with or that make you uncomfortable, then you probably need to take some confidence pills..."
And the best statement of all...
"I write for me, I blogroll for me, I read other blogs for me. I'm not in this for fame or fortune (nor do I care about those things), and I'm certainly not in it to make anyone feel good...The truth is, if I didn't write, I would explode."
London Police have just evacuated the the subways again. I have a feeling this one might turn out to be a hoax but at any length, if the Islamists are trying to instill fear that they could attack at any time, anywhere; I believe they are accomplishing just the opposite.
They are coming across as flailing wildly at a last minute hope of hitting something with a hail mary.
They are coming off as looking like a bunch of desperate amateurs and I do believe that the general Muslim population is beginning to turn on them because their Holy Cause is costing a lot of innocent Muslim lives--I'm sure that wasn't in the Jihad pamphlet...
I am subscribed to a Yahoo groups listproc for my 1993 graduating class from high school in Cincinnati.
I received an e-mail this morning from a girl's name that I didn't recognize but her message got my attention immediately. One of the teachers from my high school (that I never had in class and didn't recognize at all) has just died from Ovarian cancer.
Her husband put up a memorial on the web with a short journal entry about how he felt about his wife, her life and death. There are also about six photos to put a picture with the grief.
The emotions I felt were real for this woman's passing and I didn't have to get dressed up, take a trip to Cincinnati and mingle with a bunch of people I didn't know in order to say a short prayer for her husband (because only fools pray for the dead--it's the living who need our blessings in order to deal with their enormous loss) and celebrate her life as a teacher who undoubtedly touched many lives of people that I know and care about directly. I did my mourning online and it meant more to me than if I would have made the physical trip.
So, here's to celebrating the life of a teacher you never knew existed but whose existence made this world a better place.
Thank you Mary Rhein for leaving your mark in the character of the students you taught during your too brief tenure in this life.
There's no dirty pictures there but there are some sexy ones and these have all the more impact because she's got some great ideas and is a great writer (representin' the East Coast, baby!).
And here's Sunshine Coyote, perhaps one the kindest people I've come across on the Internet in my five years of posting (I hard coded a blog for two years before I ever even found out about Blogger).
I love the fact that women of the Western World are now being given an opportunity to share their minds and images of their bodies to a white-male dominated world and are actually getting far more respect for it than if they tried to do this in a corporate environment.
Jessika, Sunshine, and all the other women of the blogosphere--I love you! I don't want to have affairs with you, I don't want talk dirty to you, but I do want to hear from you and no guy will ever refuse a panty shot--I don't care how happily married he is.
Hell, my wife is even goading me into having an online conversation about my parenting skills (I still haven't responded yet) in the hopes that other wives can begin engaging their husbands likewise at home--it truly is a new world we are building here.
So, rock on, Goddesses of Cyberspace. You are loved and appreciated!
...these are the first words that my Brother-in-Law spoke as we got out of the theatre last Saturday night (date night for the pairs of us who have young kids--this usually means cocktails, a movie that makes you almost pass out and drunken sweaty married sex where you pass out afterwards and are awoken to the rays of Sunday sunshine).
But Tony wrote a review of the film that got me thinking about the movie all over again. In some circles, edifying something Tony Pierce blogs about is like carrying a cup of water from the drinking fountain to the swimming pool and saying, "Look everybody, WATER!," but I thought it was worth revisiting the movie since my blog moves in some of the other sectors of the blogosphere that might not have been introduced to his writing yet.
At any length, Tony proved to me with this post that he is indeed a serious writer and well worth listening to culturally (sorry Tone, I'm a hard headed muthafugga--if this week has proved nothing else, it's that).
I totally agree with Tony about the movie not being quite right. I have a feeling that the studio really needed a kid's movie to market this summer and thought, why let's take Burton's movie and slice it up, tone it down and make it more family-oriented.
Big mistake.
You can tell the movie wanted to go darker, to hit that same place where the first one did when Gene Wilder, after giving the kids their everlasting gobstopper and seeing them fighting over it, exclaimed, "Everyone has had one and one is enough for everyone." This one statement is a clarion call for individual freedom and to seize the day of living a life of integrity because that's ultimately all that matters. Fantastic Bastard and I still exchange this statement like some in Church quote the Golden Rule.
So, before I get to rambly here--let me just say that I don't think the movie was a total waste of time and money like I initially did but I would have rather had seen Wedding Crashers. And I don't think Tim Burton's an asshole but I do think it's pathetic that once again an artist has been made to toe a corporate line that sucks the spirit out of their creation.
Oh yeah, nothing like a little old world justice to set the world wobbling back on its axis in the perfect tilted position to catch the rays of the sun and keep the equinoxes and solstices in balance.
Britain may be filled with a bunch of mustache socialists walking around with brandy and cigars, but they are also still the land of Richard the Lion Heart and Winston Fugging Churchill and today they are back at the top of my list of countries I would consider filing for double citizenship in.
Wars are nasty business, not boardroom meetings about corporate takeovers and "subtle" messages so as not to upset the shareholders. Up until now, that is how the war was sold and it's about time that we see a little blood on the screen that didn't come from a dirty backpack bomb in the dusty lands where nothing grows but hatred and jealously over what didn't happen thirteen hundred years ago (talk about holding a grudge!).
Let it be known that we have entered a new phase in the War on Terror, one that could get louder, bloodier and a lot less "seevalized, m'alord." We are approaching the eye of the storm where the sounds and motions of normal life may appear as if drawn off course on some magnetic vector that doesn't conform to physics in the every day reality of La-La land some in this country still delude themselves into believing we live in.
Oh yeah, and we're going to win and we're going to see a new Age of Middle Eastern Individual Freedom unlike the world has ever known. I predict that we will see the cure for cancer as well as the invention of a compact cold fusion device that will change the economics of the world forever come out of the genius of the Middle Eastern mind--and that history will have the Bush and Blair doctrines and the steeled resolve of patriotic American and British citizens to thank for it.
...and accuse the Bush Administration of orchestrating the London bombings in order to secure the renewal of the Patriot Act. Michael Moore? Cynthia McKinney? Charlie Rangel?
Who Would Have Thought Watching Lesbians for the Drama and Not Just the Sex Could Be So Fun
by Uncle Josh
So, I've been catching up on all those cable shows that have come out on DVD since I gave up cable last September in order to purchase this laptop I am writing on right now (priorities).
I finally got around to watching the first season of The L Word from Showtime with the hot chick from Flashdance who has miraculously gotten even hotter in the 20 years since that movie.
I have to say that the show was pretty decent and not just from the lesbian sex and boobies, boobies, boobies (the only movie that ever overloaded me on boobies was Breast Men with Chris Cooper and David Schwimmer about the invention of the breast implant--mother of god I saw tits for days after that in my sleep and they weren't all pleasant dreams).
Let me say that I found the characters three-dimensional and the conflict engaging. Some of the story arcs were a bit wooden but it was just the first season. Of course, it was no Six Feet Under and it definitely was not The Sopranos but any show that includes a Leonard Cohen song already scores high points in my book.
That being said, I thought that the lesbian rape/rough sex scene in the final episode was a bit uncomfortable to watch but not as uncomfortable as the fight/separation scene between Carmella and Tony at the end of season 4 of The Sopranos, Madon, that was ruthless!
OK, not all Arabs look alike but what happens when you happen to have the same name as one of the terrorist bombers and a world-wide terrorist alert goes out with your picture wrongly inserted?
Story Link
I have read this thing five times and I have laughed out loud each time. Every history buff I have shared this with has loved it as well. I'm willing to bet that if you know your Hitlers from your Tojos, you will thoroughly enjoy this piece.
"San Francisco - A man died of internal injuries from sex with a stallion at a ranch used by a bestiality ring, police in the northwestern United States state of Washington said on Monday.
The man suffered fatal trauma while being sodomised by a stallion at a stud farm that catered to men who wanted sex with animals, Enumclaw Police Commander Eric Sortland told AFP."
...is that it totally negates all the HTML and CSS artistry that people spend hours and hours on. For example, as I always do, I follow the breadcrumbs to peoples' sites that post comments here and I came across Ed Adkins's blog. It looks pretty friggin' sweet! Some blogs look like shit and some blogs are like walking into a living room with a blazing fire going and plush leather furniture--that's what Ed's blog looks like to me.
The only bad thing is that I probably won't ever see it again unless he calls attention to it in his RSS feeds, which I subscribed to and will keep a subscription (this is because he referenced a Mike D line from the Beastie Boys album "Paul's Boutique"--that was enough for me to know he was cool).
There is a division in blog-land between those interested in content and those interested mostly in appearances--I'm a content guy so RSS works best for me--unfortunately I also appreciate all the hard work that goes into making these sites look so good and regret that I don't have time personally drop in every day. So, sorry about not checking on your stuff in person Ed, but I look forward to seeing what comes out of your blog.
Another site I thought looked pretty cool was Ben Allbright's blog (even though he trashed my writing--I ain't a hater and have no problem sending people to his site--I think the online people are smart enough to make up their own mind on what's good or not).
This is well worth checking out just to keep things in perspective.
Hat tip to Michelle, the smoking little conservative hottie that is making quite a stir in a field of arrogant white male bloggers and a Hat Tip to JD for turning me on to her.
Remember This Guy? That's Because US News Wasn't Allowed to Show Him to Us. Let this image be burned into your mind. If it doesn't steele your resolve then nothing will.
Bad Harry Potter Synchronicity and the Second Wave of London Bombings
by Uncle Josh
Does anyone else find it eerie that The Half-Blood Prince essentially opens with London in a state of panic just like we are seeing unfolding on the news?
It makes you wonder if we have our own He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named around--wait, we do and he is living off dialysis in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan.
Also, it is absolutely pathetic how MSM goes to such great lengths to appear politically correct even when reporting about a terrorist attack taking place in front of our eyes. Consider this from Fox News Dot Com today:
"One person reported hurt; larger bombs may have failed; police say not 'major incident'; reports that suspect surrounded in hospital; another man with beard seen fleeing one station."
Why don't they just come out and say, "An Arabic Fascist Islamist cocksucker who believes that murdering innocent people (especially his own people) is somehow justified in God's eyes, is running down the street about to get fourteen semi-automatic rifles shoved up his ass in full public display of everyone?"
They should haul this prick out to the tower of London, get a fishing knife, disembowel him, cut off his head and put it on a spike on the tower like they used to in the old days. My friends, that would be a clear message about how much more of this terrorist activity the civilized world is willing to stand for.
"Who Told You to Put a Balm On? Did I Tell You To Put a Balm On?"
by Uncle Josh
(Here is an attempt to get more down-to-earth on this blog)
I am shutting the laptop all day tomorrow (except for my actual work that I get paid for). I write via wireless LAN so I'm all over the house but my favorite spot is at the kitchen table where the room is naturally lit, etc.
Well, I have this habit of reading blogs and articles with my left-hand positioned on my left knee. I woke up in the middle of the night with this irritating feeling on my left palm and when I came downstairs to do some midnight RSS filtering, I realized that I had been putting my palm on my knee so much for the last few days that I had actually done a little damage to my skin.
So, I'm letting that be a wake-up call. I have put on some Williams-Sonoma hand balm which I keep right next to the sink for after dishes application and I'm going to be cracking open the next Harry Potter book which my wife is now done with and drifting into obscurity for the weekend as I approach my final work week before I get laid off from my corporate job and have to start seriously looking for replacement income.
As an aside, my wife finished the Harry Potter book bawling like an infant. She better not have killed off Dumbledore--take Ron but not Dumbledore--and don't any of you bastage Muggles post any spoilers to this post either or I'll track you down and turn you into a three-toed tree sloth.
I had no idea about this, but Reverend Sensing noted this about Doohan on his blog:
"A Canadian, he was an artillery officer during World War II (which accounts for the fact that he was such a class act). He landed on Normandy’s Juno Beach on June 6, 1944 and that night was machine gunned, taking four bullets in the leg, one in the chest and one that took off a finger."
I learned from Scotty to always build in extra time in your project deadline assessments to your bosses, that way you always come out "a meerackle wurker."
RIP my man--you helped me see the stars with wonder.
When a Man is Wrong and the Benefits and Drawbacks of Pissing Off Tony Pierce
by Uncle Josh
The hardest apology I ever had to make was the first one I made to my son when he was 13-months old. I was engaged in writing, lost in the zone and he was tugging at my pant leg and whining about something. This went on for about five minutes or so until I finally exploded and yelled at him, “Will you give you me a God Damned minute here?”
I watched it in his eyes. I saw some kind of a death in those baby blues and I could almost feel myself tumble a couple levels inside his little head and heart. My God, what had I done? By the time I was man enough to ask myself this question, he had already hit the tears and it became a big production.
I endured a couple minutes of this wailing and my wife’s scowling (there’s no justifying that to a mother), until finally I put my ego aside, closed the laptop, went over to him, picked him up, hugged him and made sure he was looking into my eyes.
I said, “Buddy, Daddy was wrong to yell and he is very sorry.” He was playing with his matchbox cars two minutes later and everything was alright again.
I became a true man that day. But sometimes I slide back, like we all do.
I’ve been a real prick the last two days and I’m not going to give any more excuses or justifications because that’s what got me in trouble in the first place. I attacked Tony, Wil and Shane without provocation and while the intention behind my attacks might have had a justified point, the whole thing eventually became like the frigging pink spots in The Cat in the Hat until it was all pink snow everywhere.
Well, here comes little Cat Z with his VOOM!
Tony, Wil and Shane—I’m sincerely sorry for calling you guys out. You didn’t deserve that and I hope you’ll accept my apology as sincere, as a man who has put aside his ego and all the bullshit to get down to the puckered up asshole of the matter.
I was a dick. I was wrong. I’m sorry. It’s over.
With that said, I am turning back on the comments from my initial blog post (here) and I have toned down the rhetoric and personal attacks in my manifesto. Hopefully clearing the air here will allow anyone still interested to get past the emotions and address the issue I was trying to bring up (through about three million unnecessary words) about what civic responsibility bloggers that get significant market share of blog traffic have to their audiences in terms of effecting social change.
So, hopefully this squashes all the beef out there and we can all make nice again.
On the plus side, pissing off Tony Pierce led to a 1,100% increase in traffic to Boys Wear Pants Dot Com; but this not something I would recommend for all the kiddies with newbie blogs and egos that bruise easily to go about doing. This whole frigging mess has been like trying to reach down to pull a turd out through your throat.
And I forgive the person who attacked my wife’s intelligence and character, although let it be known that you should never ever fuck with a man’s family online—that shit could make a man in the wrong frame of mind get into some straight up G shit.
And another thing, blog comments should be scrutinized with the most flexible grammatical yardstick. People are bound to misspell shit and get tenses and all that crap wrong when they’re writing in the heat of an emotional moment.
Again, I hope this squashes all this shit and I hope you all keep coming back here. If you want, sign up for my newsletter where I really let loose to a private opt-in audience about shit I can't make public less it come back to bite me on the boo-boo one day (like this did).
Tony, Shane and Wil have the West Coast flava but I’ll be keeping it real in the Heart of it All.
And I was serious about the school of Art thing--it's going to happen. Shit, I might even have these three dudes come out and teach a class someday.
Together we can all change this world for the better by focusing on our relationships and attitudes to those around us. If you asked me a week ago if I would be apologizing to the entire blogosphere for my behavior, I would have told you to stop eating retard-sandwiches. But life is both funny and fucked up sometimes.
Don’t underestimate or cheapen the power of this amazing tool of freedom we have been given to enjoy and speak to each other with. And don't forget that there are human beings on the other end of these virtual connections--treat them with respect when you can (I'm talking to myself here).
That new world is right there and all we have to do is choose to touch it and make it real.
Imagine how this will affect the industries that are light-sensitive (like lawn companies, construction, etc.). Consider that those industries will be using more gasoline and other scarce resources during those extra working hours and what a demandthat will put on other sectors of the economy, further driving up oil prices and the like so that John Consumer has to pay even more for gas.
If Congress keeps this up, we'll be paying European prices for gasoline and other raw resources in no time.
The teen answered "nope" faster than Disney could ask questions.
"Let him ask the question before you answer," Owens told the witness.
"It's 'nope,' " the witness said.
"Are you going to answer no to all my questions?" Disney asked.
"I don't know. Keep asking."
"You're getting real close to contempt now," Owens warned.
"Well you all are getting real close to pissin' me off," the witness replied.
That was enough. Owens ordered the boy to serve 30 days in juvenile detention.
The army is about to bust out the Active Denial System weapon for riot control in Iraq. This weapon fires "a 95-gigahertz microwave beam at rioters to cause heating and intolerable pain in less than five seconds."
We are about to turn insurgents into french bread pizzas when they start mobbing. If you think this stuff won't be used by the National Guard or even SWAT to quell mass domestic disturbances, you are out of your mind.
I lived in Cincinnati when the riots took place in 2002 and I guarantee you that they would have hauled this out to shut down the looters if they could have.
I hope no one I know is ever on the receiving end of one of these attacks. One thing's for sure, they'll bit a bit more crispy if they make it out.
Astronomers are intently studying a dusty disk around a star that is most likely the result of a collision between heavenly bodies similar in size to the Earth and the Moon.
The crazy thing is that what they are studying now is really 1,000 years old--so, in essence, all long-field space research is a study of the past. Consider that light travels at a finite speed and that we are essentially studying the synchronous motion of light waves while at the same time we are moving in relative motion around our own star.
One asks the question if it is at all possible that the "billions and billions" galaxies that we believe fill up the universe are actually just a smaller number of galaxies that have "light smears" and that what we are really observing is the same galaxies in two different locations at two different points in space and time. If this is possible, it would go a long way toward explaining the lack of abundant "dark matter" needed to hit the critical mass that allows the universe to remain at a steady state where the strong, nuclear, magnetic and gravity forces are all in perfect balance.
This is really a surprise to me, the fact that Unocal did not walk away from the signed deal with Chevron to sell for a whopping $17.5 billion.
See, most of Unocal's oil wells are in China anyway and a purchase of this magnitude would have desperately eased China's oil concerns (see thispost yesterday for more on this).
The thing is, it wasn't just a $1.5 billion pot sweetener being offered by CNOOC, it was the fact that a Communistic government that has been arming themselves for war with the US and which has been ratcheting up the militaristic metaphors in their international statements is vying to control a significant oil-producing company.
Oil is not only the life blood of every economy; it is the major function of war. Wars start with words but they are built on oil and who controls that oil is a significant factor in any war room preparation.
I think this is the right decision for right now, but that once world tensions get ratcheted down, it might make sense to see that China at least gets some say in the oil produced in their land. But that all depends on how they start acting towards Taiwan and how well they reign in their crazy generals from threatening us with nuclear annihilation.
Hat tip to Michelle, who broke the news first in my RSS aggregator--good job, girl!
"Go Ahead and Draw--I'll Make Ya' Famous!" Thoughts on Positioning in the Aftermath of the Ideology of Blogging Wars
by Uncle Josh
During my freshman year at writing school, a fellow writer, a lesbian named Tracy something (sorry, one too many bong hits before class carried her last name away from me forever) told me that I was like a One Man Crusade.
I woke up in the middle of the night with a single word blinking in my brain like a beacon of inspiration--POSITION! Is that what this whole little mind war was about yesterday?
Where do I want to position this blog to effect the most positive change in individuals? See, individuals is the key word here because I'm not interested in addressing social groups--that is the way of the half-wit liberal and has been tried for over a hundred years (you know the old saying, "Communism has only killed 100 million, let's give it another chance.")
It is the individual, and not the pathetic and herded social group, which is the measure of true freedom--the kind where you start getting into the "Endowed by the Creator" stuff and liberals start sweating like an Italian hooker that took a wrong turn and ended up inside Vatican City.
The whole point of yesterday's drama was to ask these BloGods of cyberspace, who command platforms that connect to thousands and thousands of people daily, "Okay, now that you have had the greatest democratic tool of communication ever conceived dropped into your laps; what are you going to do with it?"
The answer I seemed to get from Shane was that he was here to entertain himself primarily and what I got from his audience is that this was A-Okay with them, that's what they sign up for every day when they check in on his site, and that they didn't need any pipsqueak with a big vocabulary and an uncheckable ego coming in to ask them any four part questions that might bust their comfort zones wide open like hymens in a horse jumping contest.
Now, if that's what people want to read about online then how can I dare fault Shane and Wil and Tony for giving them what they want--the free market speaks and responds to itself like this in a myriad of ways each day. But I'm left asking myself is that what type of audience I want? Is that the positioning (for you marketing geeks out there) that I want to set myself up in?
Boys Wear Pants is one of the self-proclaimed Three Horseman of the New Media. This triumverate of a juggernaut in the Information War includes AntiMedia, a guy who absolutely wipes the floor with Mainstream Media each and every day and makes no apologies for it--just like me; and the triple-terror is rounded out by a writer you've never heard about but who will someday be famous, an aging Vietnam War Vet named JD who has staked his claim, and his blog, at the Mouth of the Brazos ["Clap clap clap--deep in the heart of Texas"]. JD will eat your soul for lunch and ask for second helpings--and he also makes no apologies. Trust me gang, the battles don't even need to be fought--we've already won the war by attitude alone.
No one else has mojo like the Horsemen but we are also individuals with our own respective audiences. By allowing our networks to interact organically, we are unstoppable. But that brings me back to the positioning of my Blog.
One blog cannot rely on links alone to be ultimately successful. I don't see this Information War as a contest for blog links alone in that light; after all--Hitler had a lot of sunshine patriots and summer soldiers hitching their hyperlinks to his wagon when his star was on the rise also.
I know that I don't want my audience behaving towards my guests like the fans at the Isle of Wight festival or the Hell's Angels at Altamont. No one needs to have their character degraded or the honor and intelligence of their loved ones insulted because their ideas are different and challenge the weltanschauung of others. They're just ideas, not backpack bombs--even though ideas can be far more damaging to the entrenched powers that be than any frontal assault or sideways sucker punch of driving massive vehicles into massive structures to effect massive physical damage in a compacted moment of time.
Ideas don't work like that and Information Wars are more like an extended session with the Happy Painter where the enemy dies smiling, thinking that they've won the battle. (Inconstheivable!)
I have often told close friends, when we argue points of social change (because that's what I got high and did in college--what did you do? Watch Dumb and Dumber again?), that a mass movement of social groups is not effective in bringing about positive social change. In fact, if you do the historical math, you'll find that every mass movement (including the growth of Christianity as an empire) resulted in the misery and death of thousands and millions of people.
No, no, no. True revolution (think Philadelphia 1776) is distinguished from petty rebellion (think Los Angeles 1992) in that where a rebellion is just people venting emotions by tearing shit up and pillaging; a revolution occurs only with a complete paradigm shift in the individual. When this same shift occurs in multiple individuals at the same time, you have what historian Paul Johnson refers to as a "Great Awakening". It's happened in America before at least three times (once, coincidentally, at the germination of the Revolutionary War) and it's happening again right now and blogs are going to play a major part in it.
This time, like last time, the revolution will not be televised--it will be online. The key generals of this Information War will not be the bloggers interested only in getting their feelings and mundane thoughts out there for rootless thousands to ho and hum over--that stuff is okay but the ratio here should be 5:1 (five posts of substance for every one session of literary masturbation). The generals are the self-actualized people who are grabbing life by the balls and pulling the world around them into a better place.
Let it be known that bloggers are here to stay and they carry far more weight and impact than nightly news reporters, talk show radio hosts, cable analysis shows, and newspaper opinion columnists dare to give us credit for. In fact, our punch is Ivan Drago and our stamina is Rocky Balboa--Main Stream Media have no chance against us and they know it. We're more diverse. We're more interesting. And you can't take out a swarm of mosquitos in attack mode--just ask Trent Lott, Jayson Blair and Dan Rather.
The game just got serious but the song remains the same.
So Get Ready for Greatness
I am going to close this manifesto by declaring the age of Hollywood and New York control of American art and information to be officially dead!
The Midwest has held this country together as a culture for over two hundred years and Ohio has been the heart of it all ever since the first big brutus sumbitch from the Ohio Company crossed the Ohio river and the Delaware Indians dubbed him Buckeye.
Ohio is already the number one source for quality Independent Music in the nation (check out my buddy's band Miranda Sound for proof) and I will establish a University of Art here named The Joseph Campbell School of Proper Art which will instruct by invitation only and will be the premier artistic university and studio in the world.
I will build a film school and studio to rival George Lucas's Letterman Digital Arts Center and I will combine it with a music school and studio and a writing school that is founded upon the peer group workshop. I and the world experts I will hire are going to teach artists how to become masters of their own fate and lords of their own artistic visions. I am going to crack open the nut of the Midwest and connect the genius artistry we have here with the rest of the world. I am sick and tired of watching talented people get shut out of the Right and Left coast systems of information and entertainment publishing simply because of where they live.
I am talking about effecting a brand new human renaissance right here in our time.
I did not say that I'd like to do these things. I will do these things and that self-actualized statement is exactly what sets my position as distinct from every other person on the Internet and in the world. I don't need any more marketing sessions. I don't need to call Seth Godin--the IdeaVirus is right here in front of you.
Consider this a manifesto and a mission statement; and hold on to the check because it will be cashed one day very soon.
This One Man Crusade just stormed the castle and stole the Queen.
Perhaps this is because socialist governments (and I'm including our own in this light) are concerned only with political choices instead of economic choices.
Thomas Sowell defines the difference in his masterpiece Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One as:
"Political thinking tends to conceive of policies, institutions, or programs in terms of their hoped-for results--'drug prevention' programs, 'profit-making' enterprises, 'public-interest' law firms, 'gun control' laws, and so forth. But for purposes of economic analysis, what matters is not what goals are being sought but what incentives and constraints are being created in pursuit of those goals."
"The point is not simply that various policies may fail to achieve their purposes. The more fundamental point is that we need to know the actual characteristics of the processes set in motion--and the incentives and contraints inherent in such characteristics--rather than judging these processes by their goals.
"Many of the 'unintended consequences' of policies and programs would have been foreseeable from the outset if these processes had been analyzed in terms of the incentives and contraints they created, instead of in terms of the desirablity of the goals they proclaimed.
"Once we start thinking in terms of the chain of events set in motion by particular policies--and following these events beyond stage one--the world begins to look very different."
He's basically talking about the difference between critical thinking and going along with the herd because it's comfortable and sounds good.
Master Sowell has spoken. You may kneel and kiss his ring.
See, you've got to respect self-actualized people like this--people who see something wrong and just fix it. This guy got pissed off at hiking gas prices and converted his car to run on diesel and used cooking oil.
These are the types of activists that you have to respect. They don't march. They don't bitch. They don't lobby congress as a soul-sucking special interest group. They see a problem and fix it. And piss on anyone who doesn't like it--they are not variables in the solution anyway.
I love it and I am proud that these families are fellow Ohio citizens. I told you we had more bounce here than all y'all combined.
A prime example of citizens arming themselves with the knowledge and know-how to take the reigns of self-government firmly in hand and effect positive change for themselves. Every court room should have a desktop set up with a projector and screen that can be used for presenting evidence to the jury.
Perhaps this will lessen the death grip that lawyers have on our lives.
"THE concept of 'failure' should be removed from the British education system and be replaced with 'deferred success,' according to a motion being considered by a teaching union."
Here is proof that the sausage factory from Pink Floyd The Wall is still alive and well and kicking in Britain.
A sixteen-year old kid secretly records a fight with his mother who ruthlessly assaults him verbally. This is not for the feint of heart and the mother should be put on trial for child abuse--no questions asked. Lock her ass up and get her out of my society, like two second ago.
Now, tell me that the Internet doesn't have power beyond mental frivolity. The Internet might have just saved this kid's life.
"Despite innumerable complaints about the U.S. Postal Service over the years, it continues to maintain a monopoly so strict that it is illegal for anyone else to put things in a citizen's mailbox, even though that mailbox was bought and paid for by the citizen, rather than by the government. Postal authorities clearly understand what a competitive threat it would be to them if the public had a choice of private companies like United Parcel Service and Federal Express have long ago overtaken the Postal Service in the number of packages delivered. Indeed, federal government agencies themselves often prefer to rely on private package-delivery companies."
Any of you who have read the cryptic novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, know that in that novel a secret society that delivers the mail is taking over the communications lines from the established ones that the government mandates (why do you think Pynchon was investigated by the FBI and remains silent about his work to this day?).
Well, what do you think the Blogosphere and the Internet in general is? The power that be are barely holding onto to a semblance of information control. The time stamp on their monopoly for hegemonic truth is running out and the center is no longer holding and that's when the dying calls, as Danzig might say.
Racism in Healthcare, My Arse! There Was a Time When This Was Common Sense.
by Uncle Josh
"...Allowing communities to take control of their own health care helped in many cases, and also seemed to encourage healthy behavior above and beyond getting check-ups and taking the right medicine."
What should we do if (or when, if you're among the intelligent among us) al Quaida attacks us inside our own borders with nuclear arms?
Reverend Sensing says,
"Al Qaeda’s primary war is against other Muslims, and the sooner the Muslim ummah awaken to that fact, the safer they will be, and we also. The agreement of the American people that we do not seek to make war against Islam per se might survive one WMD attack (I wouldn’t even give it even odds) but it certainly will not survive two. Arab leaders must recognize this fact for the sake of their own people and indeed, their religion itself...the Muslim world is faced with defining what Islam really is. If al Qaeda is not in fact the keeper of the true faith, then the rest of the Muslims must unite to destroy al Qaeda just to ensure the survival of Islam itself. They need to understand that the present crisis is not primarily that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not toe their line."
This is exactly what conservatives have been saying for four years now--that ultimately it is up to the Muslim citizens of the Middle East to root out and drive out this type of retard-sandwich eating religion which demands the lives of others to somehow compensate for lack of a working mythology that doesn't need to be explained to the head in terms of perpetual religious war against non-believers.
I just hope the Middle East wakes up before it's too late.
This legislation will go a long way toward seeing that individuals with spotty medical histories receive an underwritten pool of financial resources to aid them with medical care that otherwise would not be covered by most insurance plans.
Every state should be taking measures right now to establish such a risk pool and this is something that a little bit of everyone's state taxes would go to fund.
To this Libertarian, this sounds like a much more humane way of giving the poor and sick medical treatment that letting walk in and screw hospitals by receiving care they have no intention of paying for.
"July 19, 1867
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of legislation protecting voting rights of African-Americans."
You've just got to hate those racist Republicans who freed the slaves by emancipation, voted in Civil Rights legislation in 1954 and made Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holidy. I hate that type of blatant hatred and bigotry--I wish we had someone like Lyndon Johnson who was a lover of all people of color back in the whitehouse.
Sometimes I think one of the biggest shames in American history is that John Kennedy didn't run against Richard Nixon for the Republican ticket in 1960.
"Within the next month, Bank of America, MBNA and Citigroup will raise minimum monthly payments on their cards from 2 percent of the balance to up to 4 percent, not including interest. Other card issuers are expected to make similar changes by the end of the year."
My advice if this is you is to find some 0% interest cards to shift the ballast of your debt and find any way to pay off the principle as quick as you can.
This website is called "We Are Not Afraid" and it has spurned a minor revolution in the online dialogue related to the London terrorist bombings. It's basically a clean EFF YOU to those pathetic weak-willed and weaker-minded appeasers who put up this website.
It is a very glorious thing that the Left in this country is being marginalized and made more and more obsolete with each passing day. Could you shudder to imagine a world where these powder-spine apologists actually directed public policy?
My old man always said that people who live in the North East are out of their frigging minds (Stephen King lives in Maine, enough said) because very few things of economic value are produced up there. When trucks go up to deliver things, they often come back empty, costing the trucking company and therefore inflating the cost of shipping.
Plus, the housing market is terrible. I can't wait to visit Boston and New York one day but I damn sure wouldn't want to live there.
Besides, we got more bounce in Ohio than all y'all combined.
Let me tell you about the first time I went to the bank to get a loan. I was nineteen and I was looking to borrow five thousand bucks to invest in a pyramid scheme called Equinox (which has since been dismantled by the Federal government). I had on a shirt and tie, the whole deal. I was driving down the road in my POS 1981 black Mustang when this douche starts tailgating me on this country road and making like he was going to pass.
Now, those of you that know me know that I have Short-Man's Complex and at eighteen I was so full of piss and vinegar that you couldn't tell me shit. So, I swerve when the guy tries to pass me. He tries again. I swerve again.
We finally make it up to a major cross-section in Cincinnati and he pulls his car in front of mine diagonally across the lane like a cop in a movie. I said, "Hell no!"
I was out of the car and ready to go, all 115 lbs in a bundled rage.
This guy was fat--like 250 and 5' 8". He began walking up and, even though I had never been in a formal fight before, some kind of lion came out of me. I kicked him right in the crotch with a boot stomp that knocked the wind out of him in a "Ahoooooohaaah."
He started slapping at me like some little bitch and I was all over his ass. We must have looked so ridiculous, this short and skinny white kid with a shaved head beating the crap out of this fat ass middle-aged man on the side of the road.
Finally, my rage had subsided and I was standing over the guy with my fists still balled up. I took a deep breath, seeing that the fight had left him also. I reached out a hand and helped the guy up, trying to find some kind of apology that would put things into perspective in a way that he could explain what happened to his face to his kids.
I even helped him look for his glasses but they were lost in the weeds of Southern Ohio.
I never made it to my loan appointment because I had the guy's blood all over my shirt. I look back on this event with a mixture of shame and self-righteousness that always settles into some hegemonic haze of comfort.
So, fast forward ten years. Yesterday, I went to the bank to sign the final papers to open my company's corporate checking account. I had a 1:00 appointment with the lady. She wasn't there when I got there. The tellers had no idea where she was and were adamant that it was completely out of character for her to miss business appointments like that.
So, I waited for 30 minutes. I read all the webpages downloaded to my IPAQ and even finished the Time magazine about the London Bombing with pictures I hadn't seen yet (doesn't Time have the best frigging pictures in the world?).
Finally, I got up very calmly and went back up to the teller. I asked her if she could give the lady a message, that I couldn't wait any longer than a half hour and that I would appreciate a phone call by the end of the day to reschedule the meeting. I didn't scream. I didn't show any emotion other than mild disappointment. I could see in the tellers' eyes that they fully expected me to explode into an emotional outburst and to have caused a huge scene.
But what would that have gotten me? Back on the side of the road fumbling for an excuse for bad behavior with someone else's blood on my shirt?
No, doing that put me in a position of leverage where the person on the other end of the phone had to apologize to me regardless of whether it was her fault or not, if she wanted to keep my business.
It ended up being a scheduling mishap with her assistant.
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt now and let the little stuff go--life is too stinking short to tie yourself up in knots about things that don't really matter.
There are too many things that do matter which need the full spotlight of our time and attention.
I used to labor under the illusion that the Oil Cartel in the Middle East controlled the oil supply and partitioned it out at higher prices when they wanted to make more money or cut off resources, etc. (like a true communist government would if any ever existed beyond the egos of the dictators that helmed them).
But my friend Paul, who is a financial and economic wizard, explained it very clear to me.
China is a country of roughly 1 billion people that have been riding around on motor bikes for fifty years. Since the economic revolution of the 80s, China has been essentially a capitalistic country regulated by government decree (let's call it fascism without private ownership).
Well, the huge drive in China is for cars and GM, Chrysler, and Ford have got huge boners and they see a sweet hole to stick them in. So, they are sticking them in and the demand for oil consumption in China is skyrocketing, putting a greater demand on the oil supply and production than there has ever been before.
When demand is greater than supply, demand drives the prices so consumers must make choices. Does the construction truck need gasoline more than Mr. Johnson who was going to drive with his family up the coast to wine country for the weekend? If so, then Mr. Johnson flies instead or takes a bus and the construction guy pays the extra $0.12 a gallon.
Bringing the changing Chinese social demands into the picture will begin putting a lot more of the economic state of the world into focus, especially considering the government's deliberation on blocking a Chinese company from purchasing a large oil-producing company that owns the majority of oil wells in China.
I'm seriously considering investing some long-term money (10-years) with Phillips in response to reading this article. Any of you that have used the sweet LED flashlights know how powerful they are but did you know how inexpensive they are to make?
Well, this Dutch city replaced all of their streetlights with these more powerful LED lamps which do not have to be changed for 12 years being lit an average of 11-12 hours per day. Add this to the fact that they can be "programmed" to give out specific illuminations relative to specific weather conditions or times of day.
Back in college, when my minor was Cultural Cosmology including a shitload of Astronomy courses, I took a class where I got to use BGSU's two-meter telescope which was operated by CCD and computer chips. Well, light pollution was a big deal--making it very difficult to observe the night sky of Northern Ohio (which at its best meant no clouds and 20-mph winds--extremely cold!).
These types of LED lights will go a long way towards restoring our view of the heavens. I do not want my children to grow up in a world where the Milky Way, Backbone of Night as Carl Sagan called it, is only visible in the Northern Territories.
Trust me, this LED public lighting system is the wave of the future and I intend on adding this to my long-term investment portfolio.
Seriously, what the hell is the point for this, so blind people or people who can't read don't overdose on pills they shouldn't be taking without assistance? A lot of money was pissed away on foolishness in my opinion.
My corporate job is being eliminated and the COBRA insurance would be over $900 a month!
There is about to be a revolution in the health care industry that is going to have long-lasting social effects. These effects can be either good or bad, the choice is ours as citizens in who we put into office.
Anyone who uses Tivo is familiar with the annoying messages that pop up when hitting the Tivo button. This doesn't surprise me but I think it's still unfortunate that Tivo is doing this. Someday, the mass media advertising whores are going to realize that Interruption Marketing is the way of the dinosaur and that Permission marketing is the present and future of marketing.
Boys Wear Pants does not condone the illegal production of alcoholic beverages which, if mismanaged, could lead to blindness, paralysis, or death. However, I would be happy to sample some of your product once it's finished.
It is important to note that moonshining is a central tradition to America and that there would be no Nascar without it (how do you think those hillbillies learned to drive so damned well?).
Does it not seem incredulous that a state that allows concealed weapons would allow a city to ban assault weapons that have never been proven to do any more harm than semi-automatic weapons?
Look, it has been proven time and again that weapons bans only bar law-abiding citizens from being able to defend themselves according to their Second Amendment right.
I have read in a few places about how exploration under the Earth's seas is actually closer to searching for extra-terrestrial life than looking for it in radio waves in space.
This is fantastic. I just happened to come across this blog by chance. It's a blog for a Bus-Line in Washington CD. It's the driver or a unit representative talking to his customers about actual service issues.
It's even better that this blog is publicly searchable. Take a moment and imagine how corrective the markets would be if every company published a blog like this.
I did notice that the commenting feature was NOT turned on. That might be a wise decision but they should still have an e-mail address for people to contact them.
As an aside to a statement mentioned in my above Blog Post from this past weekend, I would like to edify the statement that the liberal intelligentsia established in their ivy league citadels have been trying to take over the collective concept of government since the 1950s when they were heavily relied upon to build the national infrastructure to resist a complete revolution of Communistic ideals.
The problem was, most of these professors were socialists at least, if not outright communists at heart. They saw a world that could be compartmentalized, categorized and run with a pyramid command structure much like a university is--and things are always orderly at a university, right?
Bullshit, there are political trickery to equal the halls of Congress going on in every institution of higher learning.
But if you need historical proof of this Invasion of the Egg-Heads, look no further than the promotion of Robert McNamara, a former Ford CEO and Harvard Man who sketched out the statistical effectiveness of bombing patterns during World War II in order to promote the effective use of scarce resources to achieve the most impact--i.e. get Japan to surrender the fastest by killing the least number of Allies (this usually meant killing the most enemy civilians as a weird and quirky side effect of the formula).
From McNamara, you can follow the dots to the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Kennedy, Malcolm X, King, John Lennon, etc. I'm not saying all these events are directly connected but I can guarantee you they aren't totally separated. There is a sickness in the collective mind of man that allows these events to occur and that sickness is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he asked God to forgive them because they know not what they do.
So, during the past five years, a conservative government has allowed these ideological hacks in our government to be exposed for what they are--rabid socialists who believe that only by instilling a group identity on the individual and thereby herding that identity through social and legal manipulation can mankind's scarce resources be allocated to their most efficient uses.
This is clearly wrong and must be exposed as the mental cancer it is, something killing the organism and which must be eradicated by clear communication consisting of compassion, skill, and logic.
Luckily, these happen to be attributes that most self-actualized people possess.
I've been reading Tony Pierce's blog for about two months now, since Shane Nickerson recommended him to his readers.
But I have to say that I haven't seen much in the way of substance. Sure, the guy is a good writer but I've known plenty of good writers that have dick to say.
I went to writing school with writers that put Bus Blog writing to shame and a lot of those writers are doing dick with their talent; either because they saw no light at the end of the penis shaft called publishing or because they lost all their drive in the crash to get the BFA or because they had no vision in the first place, just raw talent and a flaming desire to piss off their parents with a next to worthless degree in corporate eyes.
But, the worst thing you can do as a writer is grab the mike, the pen, or the keyboard and waste your nation's time.
I hate to say it, but a lot of Bus Blog and Wil Wheaton and even Nickerblog's stuff is mental masturbation that comes from egos too large that haven't been checked and curbed by talented and skilled writers in a peer group.
These guys are talented but they jerk off a lot on the screen too; and that's okay, just don't expect me to stand around and watch it drizzle down. I wouldn't do this any more than I would have asked to read my fellow BGBFA compadres private writing journals. Who gives a shit? Get to the meat already. No one cares about what movie you watched last weekend and how much you enjoyed it. Does the movie have something to do with what's going on in our lives? Then stick it in the clouds and come back to earth, already.
We need to know what you think about important shit, not the mechanics and operations of the poker match you played last weekend.
I respect all authors in the blogging community and fully support the right to free exchange of information and emotion; but the First Amendment guarantees us a right to speak freely, not an audience to listen to what we have to say.
And what I'm saying is that the Blogosphere is an information market where the currency is time and attention, which is the most valuable commodity in human existence. Like any market, there are unspoken standards, invisible hands with fingers snapping. If your product (your blog) isn't dancing in tune with the snaps, you're gonna find yourself without a chair when the music stops and your audience has moved on to the next song.
So, fellow bloggers, don't be surprised when you get out of place if someone like me steps in to slam you back into the locker that all writing geeks crawl out of when the jocks and lipstick cock whores aren't looking and can't shove us back in.
[Update: I just liked the sound of "lipstick cock whore" but this would never make it past my editing team which is why it's on a blog and not one of my articles.]
Sho' Nuff!
UPDATE #1:
Shane Nickerson posted a blog entry in response to this post here.
UPDATED #2:
Look, this whole thing came about because I had an adverse reaction to Tony's column where he basically threw down the gauntlet and called himself king shit and said everyone needs to bow down to his blog if they were ever going to be considered anything in the blogosphere. Well, I had only been reading his stuff for a couple months so I didn't see the sack that went with the hype.
Then I began thinking about what Wil and Shane had been posting about for the last few weeks as well and I thought, "How are they maintaining these many thousands of people daily who keep coming back for this fluff?" So, I posted this blog to confront my audience with the issue. It got picked up and became the topic of much bigger conversations and much larger audiences than I am used to entertaining here in my home. But this is a good thing because the question is out on the table.
What the fug are you people doing with your time that you consider it well spent to tune in to spaced out entries and rambling blog posts that go on like the Dead singing Turn on Your Lovelight at an Acid Test?
See, what frustrates me so much is that there is only so much attention to go around and if that attention is getting used up with the mundanities and trivialities of the lives of actors and voyeurs who put their diaries out on the web, then that means even less attention will be paid to the important things--you know, civil defense, the war on terror, economic, healthcare, and education reform--that sort of thing. I'm talking about the things that have dramatic impacts on every person's life on this planet.
I believe it is each citizen's duty to arm themselves with information that does not come from a a centralized or corporate source and I see blogs as a way to circumvent that very dangerous situation.
However, if you're just here to have fun or engage in mindless mental voyeurisms then step out of the way before I step over ya' (to quote Andrew Dice Clay).
Consider it a Cluetrain Manifesto to bloggers to keep it real or take it the fuck home because the game just got serious.
UPDATE #3: Malatron from A Blog Soupbrings some levity to the whole situation--which I am completely done with--Jesus, my marriage isn't even this hard! And I'm giving props to Tony for schoolin' me on turning blog posts into photo journals that add weight to content--good lookin' out, holmes]
UPDATE #5: See, this is serious and exactly what I'm talking about as far as substance in blog posts.
UPDATE #6: I've Been a Dick About all This and Here is My Apology to Tony, Shane and Wil
"I have to wonder whether this theological shift in contemporary Islam [the concept that a jihadist marytyr can bring 70 of his closest friends with him into paradise] makes its adherents more amenable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whose voluntary offering of life makes him able to intercede not for a mere 70 souls, but for all souls of all time."
I came across this Blog by chance and it knocked me out. Start at the bottom. If you don't feel a pinwheel of emotions by the time you get to the top, you might want to check your spirit-level because you could be mentally, emotionally and spiritually dying inside.
I just finished 1776by David McCullough and it knocked my socks off! I hadn't read much of McCullough's stuff before, being a big fan of Stephen Ambrose and an even bigger fan of Paul Johnson and his magnificent masterpiece A History of the American People(this book should be required reading for every 17-year old and immigrant to this country).
I have been studying American History, seriously, for about six years now. I've read a lot of books on the subject. But I have never come to "own" the New York campaigns of Washington like I do now. I have gained an enlightenment on the hardships and military choices made on both sides that I did not have prior and would never have had should I not have read this excellent book by McCullough.
I never would have known about Henry Knox's outrageous trek through the Maine wilderness in the depth of Winter to retrieve and return cannons and other vital supplies back to Washington in Boston.
I never would have known about Washington's outright luck and cunning mixing together time and time again (along with very strange weather events that are very hard to dismiss as mere chance) to deliver the Continental Army into ultimate victory.
And I never would have gained an appreciation for the hardships our army endured to even make it out of 1776 alive. Some of our forefathers marched 40 miles without shoes, with bloody rags wrapped around their feet just to invade a force of 1,500 Hessian barbarians in the middle of a crazy New Jersey Blizzard.
And to think that we have politicians today who soil the honorable memory of the sacrifices these men made with mealy-mouth pedantic speeches about Social Security and which liar exposed whichever other liar for lying. I could literally sit down and cry out of frustration sometimes...
Get back to basics, my fellow citizens. You can begin by reading this book.
I am so thrilled to see these great books written by historians with a proper command of their subject matter and the ability to deliver it in down-to-earth terms that read like fiction novels but carry far more punch.
General Washington was an extraordinary human being at any length of measure and weight of historical circumstance.
My God, if that he were Commander-in-Chief right now.
My regular readers know that I am no Christian but that I do find solace in good Christian teachings just like I do good teachings of all types of religious thought.
The message of this sermon resonates with my own core values and is therefore something I feel no measure of hypocrisy for sharing with my readers.
Enjoy. If you are interested, the Pastor's regular blog can be read here.
But I would like to add that the whole concept of Final Judgement and all that end-of-the-world river of blood bullshit is purely metaphorical of individual human choice to me. I do not believe that some physical being is going to descend on a cloud of marshmallow fluff and separate the wheat from the chaff. In fact, I see the notion as a childish and immature hidey hole to prevent people from dealing with their own life choices which will do far more for their salvation than blind faith.
Oh yeah, this punishment seems commensurate with the crime. The Ghosts of Liberty are stirring and if these politicians and judges keep this shit up they are going to one day bear the brunt of the ghosts' rage.
Look for the douche bags on Madison Avenue to jump on board here. They've had a rash on their asses about this ever since Tivo brokeout in 2000.
In related news, Uncle Josh has enjoyed four years of television 99% commercial free thanks to this wonderful device he received from his wife as a wedding present (she thought I was crazy at the time but has since changed her tune).
Look, I want to live in a world where people feel good about themselves but c'mon...Ms. Wheelchair pageant? Look, I have seen people with handicaps of all types achieve extraordinary things in their lives. But so have many people. We human beings are an extraordinary biological specimen worthy of intergalactic study; but can we not finally move out of this phase where we somehow believe that telling people to feel good about themselves will somehow prevent them from feeling bad. There are deeper issues at work here that must be explored culturally and gone beyond.
One of my buddies is a PhD candidate going for his doctorate in Sociology at a major national institution. He is also a raging-hard on conservative. Those of you that don't understand the operational atmosphere of the majority of universities of higher education in this country should know that these are the citadels of the liberal intelligenstia who have been attempting to overrun the government since the 1950s when they were relied upon intensely by both military and political facets of our government (for more on this click here).
But we can't complain too much about this because we got the Internet out of it. Right?
We got a world that is not dominated by totalitarian Communistic regimes despite the urge of human attitudes to make it so.
We have a world where hundreds of millions of human beings are beginning to see the sliver of light of individual freedom when they were once just timbers in a pyre.
We got what we got from the merger of intelligentsia and government but there is going to come a breaking point where the rhetoric and illogic of "group theory" as applied to sociology does not accept the biology and theology of global events occuring right now.
Anyway, so my buddy is going for his doctorate in one of the most hostile environments that I can think for him to live out his core values and beliefs.
Because that's the trick, isn't it? To live with integrity doing what you are naturally infused with passion to do, providing that it does not infringe upon the life or property of one other citizen; that's what we're talking about when we talk about freedom, right?
The freedom to pursue our own happiness?
The freedom to control the product of our own labor (i.e. own land and own the full value of our work, meaning the government does not tax you before you even receive your due compensation for the work done)?
The freedom to speak our minds and our hearts without being persecuted, dejected, destroyed or outright murdered because these thoughts and emotions might upset another person's comfort zone?
See, when we live in a world where individuals are empowered to make command leadership decisions regarding their control of the scarce resources of this world and how they get allocated based on the best social intention, then you have a world that works, without gaps and flaws. You have something ever-changing and organic.
Conservative groups in Boston are trying to block or impede petitions to the legislate for consideration as law.
Conservatives who are true to themselves and not just money and power hungry punk ass bitches without regards to integrity, already have a monopoly on common sense. Their ideas are better than those on the left. Their intentions are usually more noble and appreciative of individual freedom as opposed to the group identity the left seems hell bent to dictate as the paradigm for social behavior.
But when you must sink to this type of political trickery in order to have your ideas win the day in the arena of public opinion, you have lost before you've even called the charge to arms.
It's peace through strength and enlightenment through compassionate exchange of ideas that is the truest and safest path to moral victory for everyone.
That seems about right. In my younger days, I wouldn't have minded seeing Tyson taking on a Chasey Lane. But nowadays I'm satisfied with the smiles I get from hot single chicks, knowing that none of them could compete with my wife in terms of brains and beauty.
In a report on Joseph Farah's indespensible G2 Intelligence bulletin (WARNING: Paid subscription of $100 per year or $10 per month), the British pound was short sold right up until July 7th.
The global network of Islamic Fundamentalists (who believe their religious metaphors are historical facts and are willing to murder others because they don't delude themselves likewise; and this goes for you pain the ass fundamentalist christians also) has to be hurting for pocket change.
So, why not use controlled terror as a financial weapon as well?
Look, these guys are not cowards and they're not stupid. They are members of a sector of society that has been around for a very long time and was once very wise until Christianity came with its promise of benevolence and its delivery of blood in search of spoil for Caesar.
They also have heart, enough to blow themselves up just to kill people they've never met or spoken to.
But they don't have righteousness on their side and neither do the allies. Righteousness can only exist in the individual's relationships with those around them and that extends into the social realities we create from moment to moment.
In the words from the chorus of a great song Heaven by the group Lamb on the Six Feet Under Soundtrack:
This could be
heaven right
here on earth
It makes sense to me that the global network of terrorism, with its end goal of breaking the back of Western world control, needed one last rush of financial support before attempting their final push which I believe (and is supported by the information coming in) will take place in several densely-populated cities in the United States.
My recommendation for solution is for the citizenry to arm themselves with effective weapons and effective information and prepare to defend their homeland from invasion by ideological outsiders for the first time in almost two-hundred years.
Look, podcasting is a pain in the ass! They are harder to make than blogs and they are far more inefficient to listen to than to read a blog. In fact, I don't even listen to anyone else's podcasts. I only use my podcasts to publish my amateur acoustic guitar songs that I like to torture my friends with.
But before the technology is even allowed to expand into the hobby arena, it is being cajoled and fondled by the high-heeled scarlettry known collectively as the "Tech Industry."
They are going to try to stab to death one more venue of communications in the same way they have been since the invention of the radio, with big-budget, mass-audience, homogeneity that simply does not work in terms of marketing to the 2005 American Citizen.
Podcasts are a distraction. Blogs are the truth and light right now and will be until we can download public thoughts from other people's brains in holographic dimensions at the speed of light (this and many other wonders await us in the new world).
Why don't these marketing dinosaur whores go back to television and fight it out amongst themselves while bloggers build individual empires of information dissemination that are completely under the control of one person or one corporation (which can be as little as two people).
To engage the future, we must stop looking at the past as life raft and more as a reference point for strategic planning.
I always follow the breadcrumbs to people's blogs who post comments here at Boys Wear Pants Dot Com and I was pleased to come across a side blog by a gentleman who goes by the appropriate handle of The Lone Ranger.
This particular side blog is a laundry list of historical "crimes" that Republicans have engaged in to "block" the Democratic agenda.
Liberals will likely not be very pleased with the ending of this story because it ends where they find themselves today--in total and complete turmoil, rooting around for their core values like a truffle hunt.
This is great stuff, Lone Ranger. You win my Great American award for today.
Incidentally, here is the masked man's full-time blog.
Oh yeah, and his post on the reasons why Conservative Supreme Court Justices would never had approved a federal ban on marijuana is brilliant and rings totally true.
Wil Wheaton has just released an audio recording of his book "Just a Geek." It's available in CD format as well as MP3. But he's charging the same price for both formats. As everyone knows, a CD is more expensive to produce and market than an MP3 and therefore there should be a price discrepancy. But beyond that, audio recordings are not the commodity for authors to stake their claims on--in fact, books aren't even the commodity authors should be staking their claims on just like music isn't the commodity for musicians to be selling.
Vision is what sells, not formats. Music, books and audio recordings are the art and information being bartered but vision is what will keep people coming back time and again to purchase. I enjoy Wil's blog (at least when he doesn't bore the shit out of me with his pedantic descriptions of poker games he's played) but I wouldn't pay $35 for an audio version of my favorite Stephen King novel, more or less for a tome from a childhood actor from one of my favorite TV shows (Star Trek TNG).
Wil, my advice is to firmly fix the vision you're selling and then give away the books and CDs. You will be flooded with money from alternate venues that you wouldn't even expect.
This guy is pathetic. If he's lucky, he'll just lose his job. If he keeps this crap up, he's going to ride the rail. Riding the rail is an old American Revolution-era custom where scoundrels, liars and thieves were forced to straddle a wooden fence pole which four men hoisted above their heads; two more men each took one of the guy's legs and "held him straight" while the pole was paraded through town and out of town. Holding him straight meant running leaning down so the guys balls were shredded wheat with every bump in the road.
Fucking politicians! And they wonder why Americans have no faith in their political process anymore.
That's funny, most of the soldiers that fought and died in the Revolutionary War were drunk most of the time also. Isn't it funny that the freedom they fought for is also the freedom to burn the flag and that the government they helped establish is now cutting that freedom short by kow-towing to idiotic symbolism. Wipe your ass with the flag and I guarantee you that the freedom it represents will still be alive and well in the hearts of every person honest and courageous enough to admit this to themselves.
Even Wil Wheaton, ultra-liberal, agrees that this is a bad move for Hitlary to make.
Look, it is foolish and stupid for politicians to continue to feign interest or "concern" over matters that are clearly within the parental realm of control. It is my choice (or non-choice) as a parent as to what my child eats, watches, reads, or listens to. If I make no choice and my child follows the whims of the sheep-rotted masses with brains being hollowed out like pumpkins in our disgrace of a public indoctrination system, then becomes a monster that enters schools or places of employment with firearms to destroy the lives of his or her fellow men--then that is the result of choices that I made.
How can I ever expect my child to embrace the complex social organism of global society in an age of technological terror if I am not willing to stand up and make informed and proper choices on their behalf?
It's time we all grew up and throw them out on their asses, the Hillary Clintons, Bill Frists along with all the other corporate ass-kissers defiling the congressional hall that once held the voices of Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Webster.
Let's get some real people in there for once in about 150 years (the political process went to shit after Lincoln was murdered and that criminal Andrew Johnson took the wheel of the ship of state).
I believe that within fifteen years, we will be voting a blogger into office on the basis of his or her core values and how well they have been able to uphold them in the face of adversity.
Blogs are the future of the present moment. You better ax' somebody!
As silly as this sounds, this tenet is exactly what America was founded on and exactly why old Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry will ultimately come out on top of the Federalist debate (which is still raging today). Going beyond the three inalienable rights given in the Declaration of Independence, it is also the god-given right for people to assemble into communities and live as they see fit (provided that they do not infringe upon the lives or properties of other citizens).
There should be gay state also, wait--I forgot about California and Rhode Island. Never mind.
DEA Agents in Ohio have spotted $411 million worth of marijuana in the past decade. Pot growers protect their crops with razor blades, bear traps, grenades and guns to keep cops and rival growers out.
We are talking about the biggest cash crop in the history of mankind here. According to the book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser, a bushel of corn is worth about $1.75 whereas a bushel of marijuana sells for about $75,000 (somewhere around these stats--I'm recalling this from memory).
If you want to talk about funding civil defense and proper healthcare and education in this country, talk to me after these political blowhards in Washington stop acting like overlords and realize that they are our paid employees and they'd better start acting like it.
After all, it's not too late to bring out the tar and feathers which has always worked well in dealing with tyrants around these here parts.
That being said, according to an Associated Press Ipsos Poll on public attitudes, Bush's approval rating is down to 42%, which proves to me that Americans weren't voting for the man as much as they were the agenda (away from rabid liberalism); I know that's what I was voting for.
On the plus side, Osama Bin Laden's approval rating is at an all time low of 35%. That's bound to happen when you murder your own people in the name of their protection and actually think they're stupid enough to sit and take it.
This guy's head will be on spike in another year or two and hs kidneys, still attached to their mobile dialysis unit, will be waving behind his bullet and spit- ridden body as his lolling corpse is paraded through the streets of Sudan, Baghdad and New York City. It will be a glorious day to put entrails on display for all the world to see.
Seriously, how are you supposed to even begin to communicate with animals like this? You can't. You either cage them or take them to the river and drown them. Communication with people like this only comes after the blood dries.
You know the old saying about not having to tell someone with two black eyes because they've already been told twice...
Our government has called these responses "irresponsible" (link) and the Chinese government will probably give a halfway apology by saying these remarks were not sanctioned by the government and that the general was flying off the cuff. But what this is indicative of is a nation state that is in deep inner turmoil.
You have to give your props to China--they are an outstanding world civilization. I took three years of Mandarin Chinese in college and was taught by a wonderful woman who actually participated, much to her shame today, in Mao's Cultural Revolution and the destruction of the past that it brought to the minds and structures of Chinese society.
But in the 80s, Deng Xiao Ping ushered in an age of quasi-capitalism where the government began to be run much more like a corporation with a military wing than a died-in-the-wool Leninist regime.
All this pain and death because Woodrow Wilson didn't have the foresight to take care of China with his 14-Points and the world just followed suit with the Treaty of Versaille.
The truth is that the United States owes China a very big apology for leaving them standing around with their dicks in the wind while we pissed all their backs and told them it was raining.
Hey, Mr. Crazy Chinese General with your nuclear weapons out and waving around, if it means anything--I'm sorry we fucked you back then. But it's been almost a hundred years since then and we're not the same country. We people are willing to learn from our mistakes and make a better world (without exploiting the human beings in the Third or Second Worlds without equal compensation) for everyone.
Of course, keep in my mind, that my opinion isn't worth a shit to most people...take the apology for what it is, coming from a dumb ass white boy that thinks he knows some shit.
You want to slam terrorists and their radical Islamist supporters, go ahead, they deserve it. You want to lay into radical Imams, great. You want to complain that 'moderate' Muslims don't speak out against terror as often or as loudly as they should? Wonderful.
But, don't treat more than a billion people, many of whom are our allies in the war on terror and friendly to this country, as if they're little Osama Bin Laden wannabes because it's bigoted, it's unfair, and it's wrong."
The three diseases are Chagas disease, African sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis.
This is where we should be focusing our resources in the area of scientific healthcare research, not in producing drugs that we ingest on long-term bases (thereby filling the coffers of commercial drug companies) that only treat the symptoms.
Treating the symptoms instead of the disease is a sure sign that we are operating under a lunacy that allows some to exploit the health of others for personal gain. [Cue Bush '41 Dana Carvey voice] "That kind of subtle economic agression against the common healthcare consumer simply will not stand. It will not stand."
This is whacked. Sorry Matt, you were always my favorite on Friends. I hope your forehead isn't all burnt up and shit. I can't wait to see the third sequel to that piece of shit your did with Bruce Willis and the hot chick who got totally naked and made the whole movie worth watching--kind of like the show Friends.
There are insidious market forces at work behind this. Many people are going to have their lives ruined but many people are going to have their lives changed for the better as well.
So, this ridiculous waste of tax payers' money, this dunsky bill that was sold to the American people as some kind of impressive act of Congressional latitude and cooperation, is going to further complicate an already insanely overcomplicated system of administration and cost ten times what we were sold to believe.
All this to promote a system of healthcare that continues to begin at the point or far after someone becomes ill or dis-eased. Surely we know enough now about the spiritual and biological connections that we can finally admit to ourselves that the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel and the relationships we build around us contribute as much to our health as our diet and physical activity.
Being healthy is not just a physical state of being, it is also emotional, mental and spiritual. Healthcare in this country must begin to focus on bringing all these forces into balance so as to prevent the body from being dis-eased and decaying.
I believe using this tool will help streamline the insurance pricing process and lead to greater value in premium cost. This is a great example of using data and technology to service the consumer better.
I have had web-based phone service for about four months now. I have not noticed a signficant difference in quality but there are some technical issues that must be overcome before it becomes mainstream.
Get ready for a price war of enormous proportions as cable providers move into the telephone realm and companies that once held monopolies find themselves on the outside on an industry that moved on without them.
I will say it plain and clear--the first country that takes private property ownership into space will set the course of human evolution for thousands of years.
We should get there together but the US must take the lead and be serious about it (not just giving it lip service).
The man is encouraging violence against his own people. Imagine General Washington attacking the citizens of Boston or New York to break down British resolve.
I love Neil Boortz. I think he's ten times better than Rush. Plus, he's a Libertarian which means he's got more common sense than Rush and he's been doing talk radio more than twice as long as Rush.
This link will take you to a glossary of terms that Boortz uses on his radio show. They're hilarious. He's hilarious. Listen to him if he's on in your area. If not, sign up for his newsletter and keep up on his wit and wisdom. He is truly the talk master.
Here's a site where you can stream Boortz live from Dayton Ohio. He's on from 9:00 AM 'till 12:00 PM Mondays through Fridays.
I'd be willing to bet that there are more people alive who have read all five Harry Potter books that are out so far than have read the entire Bible from cover to cover.
A Meditation on the Importance of the US Civil War in 2005
by Uncle Josh
The vision of a strong central government that regulated safety and economic effectiveness (i.e. weeding out bad business practices), was the principle source of argument for the Federalists (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, etc.) against their enemies who, embodied in the personae of Thomas Jefferson, believed that each state was a separate social entity and that a Federation was simply necessary in times of war and national crisis. This debate was so important that, ultimately, we fought a brutal and ruthless war on our own lands to decide its outcome. Bloody decisions don’t sit well for hundreds of years and we are still rocking from the historical aftershock of our Civil War here in America. Every American war is significantly important for everyone in the world to study and learn from; but it is the Civil War and its social and political effects even 140 years later that the world has the most to learn from.
Islam worshippers need to examine it in relation to the Fascist-Islamic terrorists who murder their own people in the name of the supposedly same god.
Christian fundamentalists need to examine the source of their political and economic decisions in relation to their faith and belief in the historical truths of their religious metaphors instead of their spiritual connotations which is the whole point anyway.
We need to examine it as individuals and how we relate every day to the people around us. Imagine that your mind is a fog lamp that shines out into society; imagine that every feeling and emotion (positive and negative) that you have about the people you interact with is shining out into the quantum field of possibility, as is every feeling and emotion they have as well. What if everyone out there was thinking about you with the same negativity we sometimes look at others with? Doesn’t it make sense that this much focused negativity creates a reality that is “charged” with a certain energy that makes true social connection that much harder? Now imagine the opposite where this negative emotional reflex in social action is no longer prevalent. What could possibly happen when we start acting like civil human beings to each other like they do in the best movies and TV shows?
Look, there are two types of people out there—the scarcity mentality people and the abundance mentality people. Scarcity mentality people see the world as a piece of pie that can only be carved up so many ways. Abundance mentality people see the world as an inexhaustible source of inspiration where anything is possible. The difference between how many of which type of person is in charge is going to mean the difference between if humanity makes it another 100 years or not.
We are still faced with the same problems that Carl Sagan spoke about in his death bed tome and we can still fall back on his masterful statement, “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.”
The entire medical establishment is about to collapse on top of itself. The amazing pharmaceutical advances that have been made in the past twenty years have come at a cost. These companies have invested billions of dollars in Research and Development and their patents give them a limited window to make back that investment plus new capital to reinvest in the next big drug. The mass-media marketing machines are running overtime at these companies.
These companies hire government scientists (people who are supposed to be in charge of regulating the industry for safety and economic fairness) as consultants who sign off on these multi-million dollar drug products. These products are then marketed to doctors first and to consumers second (side effects may include flaming diarrhea from the mouth). These reps come into doctors offices with lunch and free samples and ingratiate themselves as much as possible to these doctors without breaking the law (or sometimes breaking the law) in the hopes that these doctors will prescribe their drugs to their clients.
These companies also negotiate with insurance companies to provide bulk discounts for their drugs which are then included on the insurance company's "formulary" list. Patients who don't adhere to the formulary list of their health insurer are subject to enormous financial penalties that have enormous impacts on a family's financial situation. The smart health insurance insurance companies keep the pharmaceutical rebates and reinvest the money into improving their operations. Some other companies keep the rebate checks and sign larger bonuses for their top executives--these are the companies that are being bought out by the smarter ones.
But the important thing, which nobody is looking at seriously in Washington or the board rooms of corporate executives, is where the patient is in this whole process. See, the patient is not the customer of insurance companies--rather it is the companies these individuals work who have been the primary customers of insurance companies ever since a World War II-era law was passed to shield corporations from taxes and fines leveraged on individuals and small businesses.
Patients just want to be healthy. Companies just want it cheap. Doctors just want to get paid on time and get as rich as possible without getting sued. Insurance companies just want to insure as many healthy people as they can and keep the sick ones as healthy as possible before the bills run too high and cancel out the value of ensuring larger groups of people and achieving economies of scale in administrative profits.
But the reality of medicine in the United States today is that you have an assault force of brutal capitalism coming from the commercial sector of medicine (pharamaceuticals, medical technology, etc.) and it is scraping up against a highly regulated and ridiculously beauracratic infrastructure; the result is an ear-splitting cacouphany that is costing everyone more and more money every day while the quality of care either stays the same or descends into a rat race parade of malpractice suits.
What we end up once politicians get down from their pie-in-the-sky stump speeches and actually have to do something so they get re-elected is federal legislation like the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA). You wouldn't believe how much the HIPAA legislation has cost the medical industry and isn't worth close to the value in terms of security for the average person as the cost to adminstrate around these draconian measures.
No one is happy in this present system of medicine except the pigs at the trough whose grunts and suckles are deafening them and their heads are so deep in the trough that they don't even know where the industry is headed and they are gorging themselves on the spoils of an immoral set up that puts peoples' lives at unneccesary risk because of common human ignorance and blatant greed. These pigs are on all sides of the healthcare color wheel and they are about one congressional act away from being sent to the slaughterhouse. The silence of their grunts is going to be deafening as well.
The Health Industry is headed one of two places: socialized medicine or individual medicine. The business paradigm is changing by the minute in the healthcare industry and the biggest choice that insurance companies in America have to make today is whether or not they are ready to go from marketing to a few hundred thousand companies to marketing to 300 million individuals.
The patient is supposed to be the most important person in healthcare--remember that whole Hippocratic Oath thing about not doing harm? But what happens in some doctors' offices is akin to a for-profit medical experiment where patients call on the phone, list their symptoms (many times acquired from WebMD) and the doctor prescribes them pills over the phone; pills that, strange enough, they are being wooed and sometimes outright bribed to prescribe.
I have a friend who recently called her doctor because of some major medical issues she was having and, not having seen her personally in over a year, the doctor prescribed her an 18-day cycle of pills that didn't even help the condition. My friend has seen another, more competent physician, and might be getting diagnosed with a serious medical condition (one that can't be treated over the phone).
But this is what medicine comes down to when it's half-profit, half-bullshit.
Expenditures on health equals roughly 14.6% of the US Gross Domestic Product (compare this to about 3% for The War on Terror and Civil Defense). We have designed a system where, because of an outdated World War II law that shielded corporations from taxes and penalities applied to individuals and small business or social groups for money spent on health insurance, the patient has no leverage whatsoever to affect the quality of the health products and services they are purchasing. This is clearly wrong and immoral.
But Newt Gingrich has a better plan for an America beyond the Bush Administration.
A Courtesy Lesson for A Pain in the Ass Belligerent Old Woman Who Yelled at My Old Man During a High School JV Game
by Uncle Josh
This came from a comment I made on JD's post that you can read here.
My old man used to be a high school JV basketball referee and there was this one game where an old woman was being real belligerent, yelling out what an "asshole douche bag" my old man was and what piss-poor calls he was making.
Now, you've gotta love the old man. He blows his whistle and stops the game. He goes fourteen rows up into the stands with the basketball in his hand; people are moving aside as he walks by like a movie theatre; he's palming the basketball away from their faces so as not to be rude; he sits down next to the old bag. Everyone in the auditorium is watching them, the players, the coaches, the fans on both sides. He sits down and starts bouncing the ball on the empty bleacher seat in front of him. He leans over and whispers at her so only the people right around them can hear and he says, "Lady, I don't know what the f&^* you think your $2 ticket buys you, but I can assure you that you've used up what it's worth."
Then, he gets up, moves past the people again, heads back down the bleachers and blows the whistle just as his foot hits the black line.
You've gotta love Ted Nugent. If he was running for governer of Ohio, I'd definitely vote for him. I've heard him interviewed several times and my core values are very close to his.
Look for more on healthcare coming in the following couple weeks as I get laid off from my job with a major national health insurer and can speak a little more freely about the industry without it affecting my job.
Needless to say that the system is completely fucked and is going to have to be leveled by Congress immediately. We are talking about a sector of the economy that represents 14.6% of the GDP (compare this to 3% spent on defense and the war on terror) and this system is literally bleeding at the seams from all angles. Fixing this system is priority 2 in my mind right behind civil defense.
Eventually these egg-heads are going to give up the ghost and realize that science and human understanding can only go so far and that faith born of silence fills in the gaps between knowledge and between life and death.
Live 8 was just a testing ground. We are about to see a massive shift in concerts. In five years, we will be streaming these things live onto HDTVs with 5.1 surround sound in our own homes that will be ten times better than watching these dopes play live.
The text book publishers are going to shit but eff 'em. This is the wave of the future and they either need to get in line, step out of the way or be stepped over.
By using RSS, I can surf 1,000 articles in the time it takes most of you scrubs to peruse one web page that is updated daily. I would definitely recommend looking into Rok's book. For a free thirty page report on using RSS, see my homepage sidebar.
Get ready for the end game to start. Hopefully there will be enough us ready to carry on the cause of liberty. Let it be known that the foundation of America does not lie in the city of Washington DC or even in the sacred documents that founded this country. The foundation of America lies in the hearts and minds of every citizen that realizes that they are born free from the tyranny of governments and gods, that it is their civic duty to protect these freedoms from being infringed upon.
Now is the time to stake your claim and prepare your individual battleground. Now is the time for greatness in the presence of tragic murder. Now is America's most desperate hour and I predict that now is the time that we will finally fulfill our forefather's mission statement and secure a world where every human being is secure in pursuit of a happiness that does not infringe upon the lives or liberties of others.
I am a libertarian, which means I wouldn't join any party that would have me; it also means that I'm further to the right than most conservatives and farther to the left than the lost anarchists who believe the world should run on Adlerian will alone. If you have any appreciation of American History (which every citizen should), I'm somewhere between Alexander Hamilton and Patrick Henry (but far closer to Patrick Henry).
States are rushing to enact laws that will shield private property owners from this ridiculous federal ruling a couple weeks ago. But let me be clear that I do not consider churches to be private property unless they are owned by a corporation of individuals.
Here are two tax tweaks I would give to the law immediately should I ever be in the position to whisper in the ears of the powerful--
1. Stop the ridiculous war against marijuana. This is the biggest cash crop in the history of mankind. Legalize it. Standardize it. Tax it. Use the money for public defense (bomb shelters, electronics, and a government-funded network of community militias who wield HAM radios and firearms), and to fund public libraries and school vouchers as public education instead of the mind-washing sausage factory of mediocrity that Teddy Kennedy and W unleashed upon this land in 2002.
2. Begin taxing all religious insitutions immediately. Religion is a business. True spiritual connection with the divine takes place in the moment and allows no middle men or ridiculous set of words printed in book to come between its existence or its idealization by the spiritually blind.
Make no mistake about it, this War on Terror is the endgame of a very old war between religious fanatics who actually believe that their religious metaphors are historical facts pointing to a concrete god up in the stars and that this god demands land and hearts and minds and rivers of blood in order to feed its ever-loving focus on humanity's behavior and their immortal souls (another concept of those selling something).
I am not an atheist. I believe in a spiritual connection that lies in the moment and that goes far beyond stories of loss and redemption, however powerful they may be (I loved Mel Gibson's Passion as I love the story of Christ and the story of Anakin Skywalker's fall and redemption).
But now is the time for the spiritually evolved among us to stand up and help our 14th Century brethren to get to the next level of thought and action.
I fully suspect that they will have a full dossier on what happened within the week. The conspiracy sector of my brain is continually flashing back to the scene in JFK when Donald Sutherland tells Kevin Costner about cover stories in black ops and how they are usually ready to go immediately following the event.
But then the sensible part of my brain takes over and realizes that as fucked up as our media machine is, it is good at uncovering what is going on and getting it out to a mass audience.
Mack is the CEO of Morgan Stanley and he turned down a guaranteed $25 million per year salary guarantee, instead choosing to tie his reimbursement to the investment bank's performance. This is the mark of an extraordinary human being with full faith in his own talents and the talents of those around him. I love it.
If they do this so early in the game, the Quagmire Claimers will be vindicated and this will be a terrible blow to the cause of individual freedom in the world.
This is the same thing that the book/documentary Bush's Brain says about Karl Rove. Regardless of whether it's true or not, Rove is one ruthless sumbitch and is not to be messed with. He's truly the Goebbels of our generation--a man to be admired but most of all feared.
"You ought to be thanking your fucking stars that you're alive and healthy. And that you don't live in a place where you have to work like a dog just to starve or get shot in the street."
You know the Internet has come into its own when sex offenders start their own blogs to advertise their crimes. What an idiot. He should be publicly castrated.
This is just smart risk management and I've got to give props to the financial sector. The terrorists won't catch us sleeping on this again unless they build a net structure attack into their plans. But there are probably risk management measures for that happening as well.
I think I'm starting to see a pattern here. If you see Rudy walking down the street, I'd advise crossing to the other side--someone must have put the mojo on him.
I believe that the whole interruping Pink Floyd during "Comfortably Numb" action backfired on MTV more than anything. I believe this action will go a long way towards making up for that. Good for you, MTV execs--finally a good decision.
I liked Stern's early stuff but I haven't listened to him in years. I can't imagine that his program is better than Opie and Anthony's show right now (especially with Jimmy Norton on board--possibly the most viscious and quick-witted comedian around today). As far as David Lee Roth goes, I won't be tuning in to hear what a decrepit rock star thinks about the world--if I wanted to hear news from that angle, I would have listened to Bruce Springsteen and voted for John Kerry.
This guy says he can prove that the scenes were already in the game's coding and that his mod merely unlocks that coding. Either way, this is no game for children.
I have played GTA III and GTA Vice City and found them both to get extremely boring after about three hours of playing. My advice, is to not waste your money. If you want porn, buy porn and don't settle for animated subsitutions that only waste your time.
If this is true, imagine all the money that is currently being allocated to education being dried up. That industry will probably do all it can to block a cure--this is just the sad but true facts about beauracracies and the half-wits that run them.
Most people prompted with the question of who the best director is will fire off Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola or Tarantino. These are each fine directors with a great catalog but for me it comes down to one guy--Cameron Crowe. Jerry Maguire is one of top three favorite movies of all time and Fast Times at Ridgemont High defined my youth.
I still find myself walking around doing hack quotes of Mike Demone ("That's the attitude, Rat, The attitude is that you don't care whether she comes, stays, lays or prays. No matter what happens, your toes are still tappin'.")
Vanilla Sky was whacked out but it was still good. Say Anything made John Cusack one of my favorite actors (Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity sealed the deal).
So, Cameron Crowe, here's to you being one of the coolest and most talented writers and directors out there. I can't wait to see Elizabethtown this Christmas.
I am absolutely dismayed by the lack of foresight for these supposed G8 leaders and their "doing well in the War on Terror" bullshit. Do you realize what a shameful embarassment it is that a major terrorist attack has taken place in the same country as the world's top 8 leaders currently starting a meeting about how to make the world a better place by carving it up just a little more and shifting resources around like houses on a Monopoly board? And don't give me that shit about Scotland being a different country than England. It would be like arguing that an attack wasn't in the United States because it took place on the border of Mexico and not in Northern Texas. It's an absolute fucking disgrace, is what it is.
Where was the intelligence? Where was the forewarning that a terrorist group might attack on the day a major global summit of the "Zionist Crusaders," as the enemy refers to our nations, was taking place? Have we made any positive changes to the process of information gathering, analysis and action since 9/11? If this is demonstrative about how the world is securing itself then I think I just heard a big flush.
We have had our foot on the necks of these terrorist pigs for two years now and have refused to apply major pressure because of world opinion. Well, what is the world's opinion of massacres in their subways and government buildings? What is the world's opinion of escalating shadow attack plans involving chemical and biological weapons that could melt your face like the Nazi in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" being forged in caves and spider holes around the world with the same ruthless efficiency principles that the US Navy uses in its Project Management?
Now is the time to apply pressure if it is ever going to be applied. Now is the time to snap the necks of the worshippers of the graven image who see the world through archaic eyes that only know worship and blood lust. Now is the time for those carrying the flag of their God to lay it down for the flag of their country and then lay that down for the flag of their clan and that for the flag of solipsitic freedom that lies in heart of every breathing man woman and child. Now is the time for the righteous to rise and defend one another so that the future sanctity of the liberty of humanity may be preserved and spread about the earth with the goal that every human child will smile in security regardless of which planet they are living on.
Heaven has nothing to do with the ridiculous desires and fears humanity has concretized into holy books, broken relics, foolish figureheads and pie-in-the-sky political ideologies. Heaven has nothing to do with the murder of other human beings because they don't believe the same foolish nonsense that I believe. Heaven is a state of being that resides only in the moment and whose doorway is the relationships we have with those around us. The worshipper of time and its decaying icons, the blasphemer of the spirit, will never find the key to open the door to the kingdom of righteousness until they lay down all their flags.
These are the things we should be talking about because these are the things that matter. But the media machine that feeds off fear and ignorance will never stand for substantitive discussions. This is why it is every global citizen's duty to seek out quality information that is not filtered through a corporate or centralized source.
John Wayne once said that if you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. We've got them by the balls--it's time we squeezed and started explaining to the Third World just what the benefits of individual freedom are and that this freedom is endowed to them by whichever metaphor they choose to use as a filter to protect them from a true experience of the divine in the moment which can never be captured in words or ideas but which can make all the difference in everyone's life.
It's time to squeeze. It's time to step down with ruthless precision tempered by the utmost possible compassion and guided by the highest quality information. It's time to end this fucking game before far more people than the guilty get punished and lose their lives because two groups of human animals refuse to evolve.
Imagine the mixed drinks that can be made with a mixer of fresh pussy juice? It'll give a whole new twist to the Screwdriver and the Sloe Screw Against the Wall.
Seriously, too much time on his hands. I see this and think, "What a stupid ass!" What could this guy have done if he had put his time to more productive uses?
In this day and age of instant access to common people on the internet, the government will lose big when it sides with corporate whores seeking legal protection for their theivery of private property. Word up!
This looks cool...big ups to the memory of Big Poppa. You turned it out BIG--you're double album is still standard rotation when I get a rap itch for cruisin' to the classics.
Now we can watch Pink Floyd without the soul-sucking corporate advertising whores cutting to a commercial in the middle of Comfortably Numb (I'm talking to lame ass MTV here).
I'd like to see the story of Buddha where he is a fat ass black ghetto prophet that reaches illumination in the bathroom of a crack house. What a stupid cultural recycling idea this is...
With research like this, we should be able to break most of our dependence away from fossil fuels in the next ten to twenty years. Then we should offer this technology to other countries at a discounted rate; doing this will break the backs of the Mid East oil cartel and we'll literally watch the Saudi wealth pool dry up and with it, their long-time funding of terrorist actitivities against the United States (the whole "keep your friends close and your enemies closer.")
I believe that President Bush will be remembered in history as one of the greatest Presidents whose tenure in office did more to set the stage and pace for global human evolution than any President before him since FDR. But the Bush family has been duped by the Saudis for nearly thirty years--I have to believe that it is ignorance and not complacency or even partnership that is the reason behind the Bush family's close ties with a country that provided 80% of the hijackers on 9/11.
The spam problems in the e-mail realm today will be highly offset as people begin switching to RSS aggregators and personalizing their Internet surfing activities.
Look, it's inevitable that you're going to lose some of your stock. But the fact that there aren't enough funds in place to replace everything stolen as well as a system that provides enough security to prevent the theft in the first place means that a bunch of beauracrats and political tight asses are running the show and aren't cared a lick about true public education.
I don't think I would have any problem if the government made it easier to buy guns and then require a license to purchase bullets. You need a license to purchase many other things in our society and why make it easy for people who acquire firearms illegally to purchase ammunition to go with it.
Besides, the black market in bullet sales the will rise up will demand that quite a few more criminals die from blowing themselves up making homemade bullets than are making homemade firearms right now.
I haven't read this book yet but I've seen the movie before and I just watched it again after being so impressed with Christian Bale's performance in Batman Begins. I have actually liked Bale since I saw him in Swing Kids back in the late 90s. But American Psycho is a very interesting movie in that it depicts the white American male at the peak of his power--the 1980s Wall Street stockbroker. The world was in the palms of their hands.
Patrick Bateman descends into homicidal madness in his own mind. At the end of the movie, one is left seeing no difference between if he had actually performed the murders himself or just entertained them to their grisley demise.
It is actually an improper artistic product in the Joycean sense. It is indicative of the level of violence that many of us approach the human beings around us every day. Most of us are good at sublimating these passionate antisocial tendencies but there are some of us that aren't--these people take actions that infringe upon other peoples' lives and properties of others should be removed from society indefinitely and sent away to do hard labor on interplanetary mining colonies that will be sprouting up in the near future.
I have been waiting for Antimedia's blog to be indexed on Blogshares so I could snatch it up. I spent about $4,700 buying 4,000 of the 5,000 available shares (1,000 are held in reserve for the blog owner) and the value of his stock went from $0.52 a share to $7.61.
His blog has only begun to take off, so I'm holding onto this stock for a while. I want to multiply my money by a factor of ten before I sell it off or it splits or whatever.
By the way, if you'd like to buy shares in Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers, you can pick up shares at $12.71 (down almost $2 because I sold a lot of my own stock to buy Antimedia's).
By the way, in case you didn't know; Blogshares is a fantasy stock market that uses imaginary money to value blogs and allow for their trade. It's really cool because you get to invest in people's talent and marketability and if you know someone like Antimedia is on the upswing, you can take advantage of it. Eventually, the free blogging services are going to be able to sell advertising space on their blogs on the basis of what it's current value is in the readership market. I would recommend anyone who wants to become serious about blogging get their blogs onto their own hosting server, which I am going to be doing soon enough.
These guys absolutely ripped this story a new ass today on the air and I haven't laughed harder in a long time. I can't repeat what they said because taken out of context it would seem like racist ranting, but they were absolutely right about the double standard being applied. These black dudes were in an Italian neighborhood admittedly trying to steal a car and got their asses handed to them. Oh well, that's why I don't go downtown at three in the morning and go peeking in ghetto windows--because that's an easy way to get dead real quick.
Jimmy said it best today, "You liberals have lost your fucking minds."
