Thursday, February 24, 2011

I see my fate before me . . .

I just looked over the last few posts here. Lately I've wanted to step up the blogging, so I wanted to see how I was doing. I noticed that I have been all about government lately, and I see my future.

I'm not going to be a greeter at a discount store after all. I'm going to become one of those smelly old geezers hanging around a McDonald's every morning, who's mission it is to tell everybody how screwed we are.

Hey, I'll follow you out to your car if I have to.

Washington's budget...

This will fix things. A college student illustrates the contemplated budget cuts in a way that shows just how seriously the administration is taking budget worries.

Break out the tinfoil beanies . . .

Here ya go! The commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the gummint the legal authority to regulate based on what you are thinking, according to Judge Kessler:

As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress's power . . . However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forego health insurance is not "acting," especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that action. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.

Can't write any more. Have to quick change into my red gym shorts and hurry off for the mandatory morning mass calesthenic exercises. Healthy mind in a healthy body, you know. See, I'm gettin' my head right, boss.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

She says Marx is dead . . .

Once in a while I run into a person who asks, with their bare face hanging out all naked and innocent, why I'm against socialism. What's wrong with wanting to take care of everybody?

My short answer is that it has never worked any place it's been tried and it pretty much increases the sum total of misery wherever it's tried, except for a blessed few, and that the poor under socialism are poorer than the poor under capitalism. I don't bother with a long answer because I figure that if people won't accept my short answer, they are impervious to the logic of a long answer.

But that may be uncharitable of me. So if you want a long answer -- not too long, you can read it in less than three minutes, easy, even if you have to use your finger and mouth the words silently -- go here. The interesting thing is that you can see how Marxist thinking has infected our own body politic, to the point where people who should know better don't even realize that they are echoing Karl Marx.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Met any new friends online lately?

This isn't funny.

Looks like the government wants to spread its message -- propaganda -- and figures you might not be all that trusting. Or gullible. So the government wants to pretend that it's just some guy. The government is soliciting for a contract to create fake people to be managed with "persona management" software. Through these persona, the government agents will be interacting with us on social networks. It can spread messages that appear to be part of a groundswell, and gather information about its "friends" -- that means us -- on the social nets.

This is repulsive and is certainly not what I thought they meant when they said government was going to be transparent.

I guessby the time they know all about us from being one of our "friends," they would already have advance information about who is most efffectively opposing government programs. They would then know whose house to go to first, when the "disappearancings" start.

Not that this is the intent of this program now, I don't think. But what would prevent it?

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Today, I shut down 84,000 websites to keep the world safe from pornography and aren't you proud of me, Mommy?

So, to shut down ten child pornography websites, our government shut down thousands of non pornographers, and called them pornographers? (See here.) These other eighty-three thousand nine hundred ninety were people were doing nothing illegal, presumably, but they were shut down and slapped with a badge of child pornography. It's defamatory. It's impairment of contract. It's also a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech -- it's government doing it.

Why do these people still have a job?

I think that the responsible individual or individuals in the vast government intellectual swamp (growing as we speak) should be publically identified, vilified, and fired in some suitable ceremony, all as a means of encouraging other bureaucrats to pay-effing-attention-to-what-you-are-doing! Make 'em wear a dunce cap while appearing on television.

Because this event is simply bright, shiny evidence that some our government employees are inept on a grand scale, and they are not accountable for the damage they do.

And we are going to look to this government to do something to increase employment, or literacy, or public health, or reduce obesity, drug-abuse, or homelessness, or shield us from an international politico-religious blood cult buried in a culture that accepts honor killings and female genital mutilation? No. We shouldn't expect good results. We should expect what we've been getting. Ineptitude. The government we have now? It's evidently not the same sort of people who planned the Normandy invation, or strung telephone cable across ocean floors, or put a man on the moon, or electrified a nation with four time zones in a generation or wiped out smallpox and polio. This is now a government that outlaws plastic bags and tobacco.

We are paying for a helluva lot better government then that which we are getting, and there should be some adjustments made.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Smothering anti-government demonstrations . . .

shouldn't be all that tough. They always try to fill up a large square in the capitol city, right? Get rid of the large squares so there's no good place to assemble for more than about 20 people. Why do you need a square where thousands of people can gather anyhow? Yep. No doubt about it. Capitol squares are cause of the downfall of dictatorships, sooner or later.

I don't know how that got there. It's not mine, really. It must be my cousin's . . .

Story here.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

U.S. approves Russian state-controlled company's taking over two uranium mines in Wyoming . . .

It's okay if a Russian company takes control of an existing and a proposed uranium mine in Wyoming, according to our government.

I have a couple of questions, beyond the obvious question of - -

What the hell are you thinking?

First, has anybody explained Obamacare and what it is going to cost to do business in the U.S. with all of the expensive social programs built in? Oh, wait a minute. They probably experienced that sort of thing as unwilling members of the Soviet. Nevermind.

But second, isn't this just another example of foreigners being willing to do jobs that Americans won't do?

Friday, February 11, 2011

If you want peace . . .

make them scared of you. One good act of belligerence could go a long way towards gentling things down, internationally, I'm thinking.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Iranium . . .

Got an hour or so? You can watch Iranium, here, for free. At least for a while. This shows what we are facing, and how it came to be.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Snow and ice . . .

Take a look at this. Most of the entire northern hemisphere is covered by ice and snow. But not Portland.

Must be some slackers aren't doing their part to assure global warming.

Time to start reading up about glaciation, I think. I have read that the earth has been pretty much completely ice free at times, and at other times pretty much covered in permanent ice, and that major glaciation kind of scours the earth clean of the records of previous glaciations. I know that about two thirds of the earth is ocean, where people don't live, and I know that much of the land surface is relatively unpopulated, so that if the activities of people are contributing to climate change, it's probably only on a small fraction of the surface of the earth and consequently is probably only a small percentage of the cause of climate change.

So, are we entering a glacial age? Or leaving one?