The headline is The Pope drops Catholic ban on condoms in historic shift but even after reading the article I can’t help but think (someone else said this long before I thought of it, but I don’t remember who it was), “If you don’t play the game you shouldn’t be in a position to make the rules.”
Category Archives: Current News
Neighbors
My son and a neighbor kid got into some trouble last Spring. A minor property crime against the local grange– a stupid, boyish stunt. That’s the first big mistake in this series.
John Law got involved and came down HARD on the two kids. Really serious shit, as if they were career, hard-core gang leaders or something. Second big mistake. No one’s really responsible either– things go largely according to a pre-ordained plan in a largely manditory system. I would have thought this could be settled better, more efficiently and with more focus on restitution and correction, by neighbors talking to neighbors, but John Law has to get his piece of the action or he feels all left out and stuff. Instead, my first news of this came after the kids had been arrested. Watching the excitement on Hawaii 5-O and hardly ever even getting to slap the cuffs on some kids in a small town can be a bitch I guess. Maybe we’re all bitches now. Some people seem to think so, or wish it were so.
Fast-forward several months. My son’s “partner in crime” from last Spring was found dead this Saturday morning. Someone spotted his body near a bridge a few blocks away and made an anonymous call (who does that?) to 911. I still don’t know the cause of death and it would be irresponsible to speculate. All we know right now is; it has been reported that foul play is not suspected.
While making a huge pot of soup from our garden vegetables, duck eggs and yearling elk heart (which is tender and wonderful– thank you, Chris) this weekend, I thought back to 1977 which is when my sister and niece were killed. Some of our neighbors brought over prepared food for us, and it was very well received. It’s so simple, yet it makes a lot of sense. When you’re tragedy-struck, you probably have less, or no, appetite and you sure don’t want to fix meals or go shopping when you have all the aftermath to deal with, and the grief. But you have to eat, so I thought of bringing the parents and surviving son some of the soup and some other things this last Sunday.
Then the doubt kicked in. Third big mistake. “I don’t even really know these people, and for all I know they might hate the very idea of elk heart (Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies offering ‘possum-n-grits, chicken fried skunk, or some such, comes to mind), they might be offended, or maybe they’d blame my son for what happened or something. Maybe they don’t eat meat or these other things.” All this stupid, inane garbage prevented me from going down there straight away. The wife was out of town at a rehearsal, the kids need to stay on their homework—all the regular stuff adds up too.
An offer of help can always be refused, but at least you’re giving them the option and asking nothing, which is the whole point. Isn’t it? I’ve gone stupid and wobbly in my old age. Yakkity yacking more and doing less, maybe.
A few days later I finally got around to going over there with some home-made sweet cider and some fresh duck eggs. The grandmother answered the door, and I spoke to her and the mother. They were extremely gracious, appreciative and talkative, almost fawning, but that’s not the point. I’d decided in advance that if they slammed the door in my face I’d be OK with that. They informed me that the kids’ father is now in the hospital in intensive care for, among other things, not eating. (sigh)
If you think someone might need a little gesture of help, and even if you think your offer is dumb, maybe you should just offer the damn help. Git ‘er done. But I’m not finished here;
A community social network of some kind can be a precious thing, and whether you’re an atheist, agnostic, or haven’t thought much about it, your local church organizations can and do offer that sort of network. So long as they don’t go all hell-fire and brimstone on people, they are potentially a great value to society. I’ve harshly questioned organized religion, and I think with good reason. Some of them are downright evil, some have fallen in with the Tides Foundation or other global leftist organizations, but the argument isn’t all one-sided.
Time was when churches, the Rotary Club, Elks, Moose Lodge, Eagles, Granges and so on were THE centers of local community action. Now it’s a coercive, increasingly centralized government in concert with what can only be described as communist agitators and punks (such that now even the very term “community action” connotes leftist agitation). Which would you rather?
Warehouse fire near Royal City
As I was driving across central Washington on my way back to Idaho tonight I stopped to take pictures of a warehouse fire just east of Royal City on the south side of Highway 26. I’m pretty sure this is the warehouse.
Click on the pictures to enlarge.
I’m nearly certain the warehouse contained some sort of agricultural products. It smelled like burning grass or grain.
When Do We Get a Real Contest?
In response to Joe’s recent post here, I want to get this on record;
The communists both here and abroad are becoming increasingly disappointed in Obama because he’s not doing enough to wreck this country fast enough.
In other news; look for the old guard Republicans to embark on a scorched Earth policy as the Teaparty begins to wrest control away from them. As the Smarter-Than-Thou (Progressive-leaning) Republicans are forced to retreat in shame, or switch parties in pride, they will attempt to burn the Republican Party and loot its treasuries. We may now have the rich entertainment of watching the communists’ and the capitalists’ final disillusionment with their respective parties. We may get a straight up contest of ideologies yet, in which of course the American Principles of Liberty would win.
The current parties, desperate to maintain power, will do everything possible to avoid such honesty.
I recently heard a communist radio talk show host calling, hysterically of course, for the Dems to get busy with the mud slinging already, and with abandon, ’cause they weren’t taking this contest seriously. Cool, except that the Republicans have been doing their evil work for them of late.
Perfect!
There was a call-in to one of the Marks that fill in for Limbaugh, responding to the Mark’s favorable comments on the “Fair Tax” today. The Mark repeated Steve Forbes’ call for a flat 17% income tax.
The caller tried to make the point that, although 17% would represent a large tax cut to the rich, which isn’t a bad thing, it would represent an undue hardship for those with the lowest incomes. The Mark’s reply was that at least this makes everyone a taxpayer, and therefore we’d all have a stake in things. True, but the major point was missed, in my opinion, by the host.
The correct reply to the caller’s concern is; “Perfect! Now you’ve started down the road to understanding, Little Grasshopper! If 17% percent is too much for the poor, it is too much for everyone else. If 17% will restrict the poor, it will restrict everyone else.
Let’s refer to the poor as our canaries in the income tax coal mine. If 17% makes the canary sick, we’re all being slowly poisoned, and whether we notice it right away or not, we’re all inhibited or restricted because of it.
Reduce taxes and investment and employment increase. Raise taxes and investment and employment decrease. Even if all you care about is revenue to the fed gov, and the issue of personal liberty is meaningless to you; do you want 17% of 14 trillion, or say, 8.5% of 28 trillion? That’s the sort of question we’re asking here. I say if there’s going to be an income tax it should be constitutionally limited to 5%. Any more than that not only cuts into charity in a big way, it encourages a black market, and stifles liberty and economic growth. If the fed gov can’t make it on a 5% flat tax, they’re either doing too much or wasting too much, and they need to be replaced with someone who can do the job right.
There’s another mechanism working here, that is at the same time obvious and proven, largely unreported, and almost never discussed. That is; America once was, and can be again, a haven for creativity, productivity, wealth creation, and a haven for wealth in general. Make it a safe bet that your property rights will be protected, and capital will flock to America, while at the same time wealth creation will be, once again, popping and scintillating across the fruited plains.
Let the enemies of Mankind go off and bang their heads against a concrete wall someplace. It doesn’t matter, so long as they’re ignored and powerless here.
Quote of the day—Thomas Jefferson
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short.
Thomas Jefferson
June 11, 1807
To John Norvell.
From The Great Thoughts (link is to the 2nd Edition, mine is the 1st Edition–1985)
[In regards to the truthfulness of the mass media not a lot has changed in the last 200 years. But what has changed is the ability of people to easily invalidate such news sources and render them far less powerful than what they once were.—Joe]
Yellow cake uranium from Iraq
This isn’t current news in any way shape or form. I just want it documented for my easy reference. I thought I had but I can’t find it.
I keep running into people that claim “there were no WMD found in Iraq”. Well, maybe in some strict sense that is true. The chemical weapons had already been used on his own people with the remainder smuggled to Syria prior to the 2003 invasion. And the yellow cake uranium was already known from the U.N. inspectors before the invasion.
Yellow cake uranium? Isn’t that what everyone said Bush lied about? There couldn’t have been any of that found or it would have been big news that all those people that said Bush lied would have been wrong!
But yes, there was yellow cake uranium found in Iraq. Some news media did report on it but it didn’t get wide circulation. It made the news when Canada bought it and it was all safely out of Iraq in July of 2008.
Here are some details from the AP:
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.
550 metric tons isn’t just some samples for experiments at your local nuclear physics classes. It’s many, many nuclear bombs worth of material.
Here’s a story you may have missed over the long holiday weekend: 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium worth tens of millions of dollars were shipped out of Iraq to Canada. The material was transported in 37 military flights in 3,500 secure barrels, according to the Associated Press.
There hasn’t been much of a fuss about this material because it had been discovered already by United Nations inspectors after the first Gulf War. But it took a second American war in Iraq to move the material out of the Middle East. For all the talk about America’s failure to discover Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, this is a big deal. We’ve reported on claims by top Israeli officials speaking on the record that Iraq smuggled its chemical weapons to Syria before America invaded in 2003.
The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. Saddam Hussein had already invaded Kuwait, launched missiles into Israeli cities, and harbored a terrorist group, the PKK, hostile to America’s NATO ally, Turkey. To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam and the same corrupt United Nations that failed to stop the genocide in Darfur and was guilty of the oil-for-food scandal would have been too big a risk.
The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.
The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.
The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.
Think about that the next time someone says, “What WMDs?” Or they say, “What media bias?”
Why are liberals so violent?
The guy yesterday that held people hostage at Discovery Channel making demands that they “save the planet” by having a programing agenda that advocated for the voluntary extinction of humans (thanks to Ry for sending me the link to his webpage) will be dismissed as a nut case. This is probably valid but perhaps further consideration should be given to the topic. Don’t forget that not only did this nut case base his philosophy on the work of Al Gore but so did Ted Kaczynski.
We have known for a long time that anti-gun activists have strong violence tendencies. And such things as John Cusack’s “I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES [OF DICK] ARMEY AND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS” is not all that uncommon.
And of course all the great genocides of the last century were under leftist regimes.
The Animal Liberation Front, and Earth Liberation Front are two of the top domestic terrorist organizations in the U.S. and are, obviously, liberal. Add in the Weather Underground, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Symbionese Liberation Army, and lots of other leftist terrorists going back to at least the 1960s and you realize that while they don’t have a monopoly on illegal violence they dominate to such an extent they might as well have a monopoly.
Why are liberals so violent?
My hypothesis is that at some level they know that is the only method by which they can achieve their goals. They, almost by definition, believe in the power of government to “do good” no matter what domain they enter into. They believe in central planning and “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” But as George Washington said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” Government is force. It is violence. Every dictate of the government is backed up with people with guns who job it is to force compliance.
Those who want to expand government, by definition, want to expand the use of force to achieve their goals. It should therefore come as no surprise that liberal individuals and groups are inclined to use violence to further their goals even outside the domain of government.
This also might explain why most liberals are opposed to the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It explains why they keep insisting, long after the courts have ruled otherwise, that the Second Amendment only protects the power of a state to arm itself independent of the Federal government. The explanation is that they see the willingness inside themselves and those they associate with to use violence and they fear it. They believe they, and everyone else, might use violence in an unethical manner if allowed the tools and the opportunity. They believe in the wisdom of “the central committee” to temper the violent impulses they believe the individuals to have.
This might also explain why liberals accuse the others of violence tendencies. They are projecting the worst fears about themselves onto their opponents.
These violent tendencies can be dealt with at the individual and small group level via the police and the legal system and amount to noise in the big picture of things. It’s at the governmental level that we have genocides with millions dead in the span of a few years. It is at the government level that we must enforce strong restrictions on their power to deliver violence against individuals. This is why we have a constitution that (by design, not in practice) limits governments to a small set of enumerated powers and the Second Amendment to stop a runaway government from becoming tyrannical. One might even be able to make the case that the Second Amendment isn’t only not about hunting–it’s about protecting us from liberals.
Update (6/16/2016): The Orlando Florida gay nightclub shooter was a registered Democrat.
More examples from here:
In 1865 a Democrat shot and killed Abraham Lincoln.. President of the United States.
In 1881 a left wing radical Democrat shot James Garfield President of the United States who later died from the wound.
In 1963 a radical left wing socialist shot and killed John F. Kennedy President of the United States.
In 1975 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at Gerald Ford, President of the United States.
In 1983 a registered Democrat shot and wounded Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.
In 1984 James Hubert, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 22 people in a McDonalds restaurant.
In 1986 Patrick Sherrill, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 15 people in an Oklahoma post office.
In 1990 Jame Pough a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 10 people at a GMAC office….
In 1991 George Hennard a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 23 people in a Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen , TX.
In 1995 James Daniel Simpson, a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 5 coworkers in a Texas laboratory.
In 1999 Larry Asbrook, a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 8 people at a church service.
In 2001 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at the White House in a failed attempt to kill George W. Bush President of the US.
In 2003 Douglas Williams a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people at a Lockheed Martin plant.
In 2007 a registered Democrat named Seung – Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people in Virginia Tech.
In 2010 a mentally ill registered Democrat named Jared Lee Loughner, shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others.
In 2011 a registered Democrat named James Holmes went into a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people.
In 2012 Andrew Engeldinger a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people in Minneapolis.
In 2013 a registered Democrat named Adam Lanza..shot and killed 26 people in a school in Newtown CT.
Sept 2013.. an angry Democrat shot 12 at a Navy ship
1968 James Earl Ray… worker in George Wallace’s presidential campaign(Democrat), shot and killed Martin Luther King…..`
June 2016 Registered Democrat, Omar Mateen, murdered 49 people and wounded more than 50 others at the Orlando nightclub Pulse.
Update 1/7/2017:
One scientist confirms the claim that leftist are violent and has a different hypothesis as to why:
Update June 19, 2017: Surveys show that criminal prisoners who identify as Democrats outnumber all other political affiliations combined by a factor of more than two to one.
Update February 27, 2018: See also Elaboration on the inherent violent nature of the modern liberal.
The Blaze–A new news source
Glenn Beck announced a new news site on his website last night and on his show this morning: TheBlaze.com.
It looks interesting.
Just scanning a few stories I particularly liked the stores about the Education Secretary urged government works to attend the rally led by Rev. Al Sharpton on August 28th and the one about Human Service Secretary says the Whitehouse will use reeducation to convince voters the health care bill was a good thing.
In addition to doing their own research and reporting they also have AP stories such as EPA Now Denies Plans to Ban Lead Ammunition.
I haven’t looked around for the evidence yet but I expect we will see signs of incipient aneurisms in the political left over this.
Our mission is to defend the homeland
Chet came by my office today and started talking about “When we were kids.” We are about double the age of most of our co-workers and have a little more in common with each other than we do some of the other people. We both grew up on farms. He in Kansas. And, of course, me in Idaho. It gives us a perspective that “some of the younger folk” don’t really appreciate. We remember when most of the homes had outhouses instead of indoor toilets. And our parents lived through the “Great Depression”. We remember what our parents told us about what they and others had to do to make it through. I keep wondering if that will someday be referred to as “GD I” and this go around “GD II” but that is another story.
We talk about economics quite a bit. “What is it going to be like this time?”, we ask each other. Back then it was a world-wide thing too. That was what enabled Hitler to gain power.
This time it wasn’t economics that Chet wanted to talk about.
“Remember those old movies about WW II when the Germans would stop someone on the train and demand their papers?”, he asked.
My officemate had stepped out for bit and I knew we were going to have “a session”. I leaned my chair back and put my feet up on my desk and said, “Yeah. I remember.”
He continued, “We used to think how scary that was. How terrible it was they would do something like that. Right?”
“Absolutely!”, I agreed.
“There is an article in the New York Times today about how our government is doing that today on trains that run between New York City and Detroit”, he said.
I told him I had just read a blog post about that same sort of thing this morning. We chatted a while about it. Neither of us knowing what we could really do about it. “But it sure ain’t right.” we agreed. We always used to believe it couldn’t happen here. We were “special”. We were a free country and that sort of thing just didn’t happen here. It couldn’t happen here.
But it is. It is happening here, right now. And as Roberta X said this morning, Getting Used To It Doesn’t Make It Right.
My officemate returned and Chet left with us both shaking our heads in sadness.
I found the New York Times article and after I read it I went over the Chet’s office. “The government is claiming that if they are within 100 miles of an international border or the three mile limit off the coast they don’t need warrant or anything. They can just grab people they think are ‘of interest’ and demand they prove they are citizens”, I told him. “Right here in this office we are within 100 miles of the Canadian border.” I let it sink in for a couple seconds then continued, “Think of what 100 miles inland from both coasts, the Gulf, and both the north and south borders cover. I’ll bet 50% of the U.S. population is covered by that.”
Chet and I didn’t have much to say after that you wouldn’t have already concluded. We could be headed for some scary times. We talked about it for a couple minutes and went back to work. I think we just got used to it.
If it makes you feel any better about the whole thing–the agent in charge of the Rochester station told the New York Times, “Our mission is to defend the homeland.”
Yeah, I’m sure it is. I think I heard that line in a movie when I was a kid.
Bigotry is an ugly thing
Bigotry is terrible no matter where or when it happens. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when it happens in a place like San Fransisco. At least no one has been bashed in this latest incident.
As much as I would like to confront them I’m pretty sure Ry has the right idea.
Reid loses NRA endorsement
The vote on Elena Kagan’s confirmation to the Court, along with the previous
year’s confirmation vote on Sonia Sotomayor, are critical for the future of the
Second Amendment. After careful consideration, the NRA-PVF announced today that
it will not be endorsing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for re-election in
the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Nevada.
Don’t take pictures of your criminal activities
I just wonder if they will use the video as evidence at their trial, thereby putting it into the public domain:
Authorities identified the suspects in a break-in at a rural home at Elma
after viewing a sex video filmed by a pair and recognizing them.According to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office:
A neighbor who had come to collect mail while the homeowner was away walked
in on the pair as they were having sex on the floor. The naked couple fled,
leaving behind a stolen camera .A 39-year-old woman was arrested in Montesano on investigation of burglary.
An arrest warrant was issued for a 31-year old Elma man.
Layers of Oversight
Heard on a local AM radio newscast this morning;
A Deary (Idaho) man charged with aggravated assault and unlawful discharge of a firearm into an inhabited dwelling.
The firearm was described as;
“…a three oh eight caliber shotgun.”
At first I thought maybe it was a combination gun and they just did a clumsy job of describing it, but no. They just got it wrong. I wonder how many people had to approve the copy before it aired, and how many other mistakes they’re making regularly that I wouldn’t notice so easily.
It’s like the talk show host I’d never heard of, but ran into briefly the other night. He sounded pretty good, like he knew what he was saying about relationships and politics, until he started talking about getting electricity from any point in space, from gravity. HE had the answer, which the oil companies had kept secret for generations! At that point you have to not only question everything he says, but seriously doubt it. It might not even be fair to cast doubt on all his human behavioral analysis based on his lack of understanding of physics. One can be well versed in one subject and ignorant of another, but it’s very hard to take someone seriously again after hearing such an ignorant bit. We all make mistakes, but wow. In the case of a news service, with reporters, editors and anchors, it’s a different story. Those proverbial Layers Of Oversight are supposed to catch these things.
What lesson was learned here?
While I am pleased with the outcome:
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out
a knife.“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you
go,'” Diaz says.As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You
forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the
night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on
here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?'”Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then
I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get
dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.…
When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to
have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So
if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I
gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave
it to me.”
I have to wonder how often such a response to robbery will turn out so benign and how many potential thugs will be enabled by this story. I fear that such a response on a broad scale would encourage crime more than shame criminals into rethinking their career path.
Do criminologists have currently enough data to give us good answers to the obvious questions brought up by this story? If not, what sort of experiments could be run to get the answers with minimal risk to the experimenters?
Is there some sort of reliable character assessment can be done in the second and a half it takes to draw and fire your gun in the face of a deadly threat such that you are out an hour of your life and $20 rather than days or weeks of your time and many thousands of dollars defending against a civil suit or criminal charges for shooting a “choir boy”?
Go to your corners!
This reminds me so much of when my brothers and I were very young and our mother would tell us to go stand with our noses in the corner after we got in a fight:
The Justice Department has settled a turf war between two federal law
enforcement agencies.A recent audit by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General found
nationwide conflicts between the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives over which agency is in charge for federal explosives
investigations.Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler wrote a memo to FBI Director
Robert Mueller and Ken Melson, currently the top-ranking official at the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, laying out the new framework.Grindler’s eight-page memo calls for the FBI to be the lead agency for
domestic terrorism explosives investigations as well as explosives probes with a
link to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. ATF will be the
lead agency for everything else in the explosives realm.Grindler also ordered the two agencies to do a better job of coordinating
their work on explosives investigations.The new document says that the two agencies will develop a plan by Nov. 1 to
consolidate explosives training, with the goal of starting joint training by
early next February.
While I am of the opinion the ATF should not exist at all and the FBI should be not be involved in 90% of the stuff they are involved in I suppose this is a generally a good thing. It is less likely criminals will benefit from the turf war.
But still I think of it as sort of like Germany attacking Russia in 1941. Germany shouldn’t have been attacking anyone but if they are going to do it anyway you want them to do it to the most evil of your neighbors.
Once Again, Ladies and Gentlemen…
…Bill Whittle, or rather, not Bill Whittle but an essay written by Bill Whittle. He’s an excellent writer to be sure, but his work is backed by research which makes it downright valuable.
In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.
That’s our argument. Ronald Reagan said it in different words, but that’s the come-back to any and all modern “liberals” or “Progressives”.
I was a little disappointed by the lack of mention of education. Talking with each other, yes, but that bloated, hateful, destructive monster we’ve been accustomed to calling “Public Education” has to go. Just as our first amendment protects religion from corruption by government, so too must we protect education from corruption by government. It is every bit as important. Hillsdale College perhaps shows us one way to do that, but feeding the monster at the same time one is trying to mind one’s own business makes it more difficult.
Whittle wraps it up thusly;
We can do it. And we’re gonna do it. We are going to whip these communists out of their boots. And starting next time, we’ll start figuring out exactly how.
Ok. Good. By all means, read the whole thing.
Automated blacklist checker
As you probably already know some bloggers have been sued (for details see here, here, here, here, and here).
I don’t have problem with people enforcing their copyrights. But there is the concept of “fair use” which also needs to be taken into account. It is the general impression that the lawsuits do not recognize “fair use”.
The best plan of protection proffered so far (I have something else in mind that will take some more legal research) is to not link to any content from the offending news organizations (“blacklist” them).
Searching your blog for existing content that should be removed or edited is going to be dependent on the type of blogging software you use. Sebastian has something for WordPress.
Here is something to use with dasBlog software.
In private email Robb Allen reports if you have direct access to your data store you should be able to do something like:
SELECT * FROM posts WHERE postContent like ‘%{website}% OR postContent like ‘%{website2}%’ etc.
For future links I have created a web based utility that will check a link for you to see if it is on the blacklist. Some people got a preview of it last week. This morning I updated it so that it can handle heavier traffic and it looks a little prettier. Feel free to share it with whoever might have need of it.
Who Knew…
…that there would be warm water on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, that there would be sunlight on the Gulf, or microbes in the water?
It seems the major catastrophe that was supposed to happen, that the anti capitalists desperately wanted to happen, isn’t happening. Damn it!
FYI; Diesel fuel, for example, needs to have preservatives added to it, or it will rot in the tank. Yes, it’s food for little bugs otherwise. I know that, ’cause I used to run a diesel car.
Quote of the day–Ed Black
Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past 10 years can actually be
credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the
ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner. To stay on the edge of innovation and
productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity,
innovation, and, as today’s study indicates, an engine for growth for our
country.
Ed Black
Fair Use Worth More to Economy Than Copyright, CCIA Says
President and CEO of CCIA.
September 12, 2007
[I’ve been doing some research into “fair use“. For the obvious reasons.
There may be other options as well as those I have seen discussed. I’ll report back if I find anything “interesting”.–Joe]