Sunday, March 07, 2010

Soiled Detentions

John McCain and Joe Lieberman have introduced a bill into Congress under the title Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.

The bill is, I guess, meant to act as a wedgie deterrent threat to individuals who may be considering stepping onto an airplane with a bomb in their underpants, and to other such diaper clad, nonsense spouting individual belligerents nursing grudges against the United States.

The problem with the bill, as Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic points out in a piece titled A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully, is the language of the bill, as it currently stands, would allow it to be equally utilized against United States citizens and actual terrorists alike.

According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

(There is no distinction between U.S. persons—visa holders or citizens—and non-U.S. persons.)

Be careful out there.

Linked via The Independent Institute.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/07 at 08:55 AM
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Friday, March 05, 2010

“An Armed Society is a Polite Society”

Robert Heinlein must be credited for the title to this post.  The complete quote is as follows.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

I thought of this quote after reading the following headline.  USA Gun Owners Buy 14 Million Plus Guns In 2009 – More Than 21 of the Worlds Standing Armies Combined

The article also includes this information.

14,033,824,000 billions rounds of Ammo
Assuming each gun buyer bought 1000 rounds of ammo for each purchase, and you and I know that it is way, way more than that, that would be easily 14,033,824,000+ billions rounds of ammo fired by USA gun owners.

I must say, that in my errand runs today, ninety-nine percent (99%) of the individuals I interacted with were very polite, but then of course so was I.

Linked via Jeffrey Quick, who titles his post on this subject Got gunz?, and then quips.

Why hasn’t any firearms trade association given Obama an award for “salesman of the year”?

I say, got manners?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/05 at 02:22 PM
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Laughable Census Data Privacy Assurance

Here’s a headline regarding census data privacy from sixteen (16) hours ago.

Gov’t offers new assurance census data is private

Here’s a headline from Scientific American from two (2) years ago, Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II.  Here is the opening to the Scientific American article.

Despite decades of denials, government records confirm that the U.S. Census Bureau provided the U.S. Secret Service with names and addresses of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

How are you feeling about the government assurance on census data privacy, now?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/05 at 08:00 AM
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Motiveless Shooter or Clueless Government Officials?

From an AP article on the Pentagon shooting, posted at Yahoo! News under the headline Official: Pentagon shooter was well armed.

Keevill said he did not know the shooter’s motive.

“I have no idea what his intentions were,” he said.

And this statement, which precedes the above quote from the article, seems to add weight to the clueless side of the equation.

Noting that Bedell was wearing a suit, Keevill said: “There was no indication based on the way he was dressed that he had hostile intent.”

Posted by John Venlet on 03/05 at 07:22 AM
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Thursday, March 04, 2010

Polishing Away the “Patina of Legitimacy”

Wendy McElroy has posted an interesting essay titled All politicians and candidates threaten my freedom.  The title to the essay, itself, speaks a truth which should be self evident, but Wendy expands on this in a thoughtful manner, and in a manner which I would hope bring about deep, personal, individual reflection about what exactly is occurring when you mark an X on a ballot.  From Wendy’s piece.

The foregoing description of a “just” politician doesn’t describe any currently existing one. All politicians today assume office with the claim of having jurisdiction over the lives of people who did not vote for them, of people who opposed them or did not vote at all. The question for libertarians is: how can one human being properly assume immense power over the freedom and person of unconsenting others. If rights, like freedom of speech and association, are inalienable and equal-to-all, then how can you cast a vote that transfers control over my rights to another person? Especially, how can you do this against my will and over my protest? For a libertarian, the answer is clear. You cannot transfer or nullify another person’s rights by making an X on a ballot. All you can do is enable a power-seeker to assume a patina of legitimacy when he claims jurisdiction over and uses force on the unconsenting.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/04 at 02:32 PM
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Census 2010 Civil Disobedience, Sort Of

Census 2010 is quite close to hitting full stride, now that U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves’ dog sled ride is over, and the fifteen thousand dollar ($15,000.00) totem pole commerating Census 2010 has been carved and raised.

Census 2010 forms are now being delivered to homes across America by more conventional means than dog sleds, and individuals are considering whether to simply complete the census form, partially complete the census form, or simply ignore it.  I’ve encouraged Americans to skip Census 2010 as a form of polite, civil disobedience on multiple occasions in these pages, but each individual must decide for themselves whether they will complete the census form, partially complete the census form, or toss the census form into the round file.

What I would like to address is the partial completion of Census 2010 forms, which Diana Hsieh, amongest others in the blogosphere, discusses.  What is suggested, in these various discussions, is partial completion of the census form, i.e. answering only the question asking the number of individuals living at a certain GPS marked address.

While I appreciate the reasoning behind partial completion of the census form; providing the census bureau only the number of individuals living at a certain address; I think providing only this information is providing the State with exactly the information it most covets in order to maintain its aura of power and appearance of largesse.  To wit:

Census information affects the numbers of seats your state occupies in the U.S. House of Representatives. And people from many walks of life use census data to advocate for causes, rescue disaster victims, prevent diseases, research markets, locate pools of skilled workers and more.

When you do the math, it’s easy to see what an accurate count of residents can do for your community. Better infrastructure. More services. A brighter tomorrow for everyone. In fact, the information the census collects helps to determine how more than $400 billion dollars of federal funding each year is spent on infrastructure and services like:...

You’ll note in reading the above, which is taken from the How It Affects the Nation page of the Census 2010 website, that it is the count of individuals which is deemed most important to the census bureau, i.e. the State, in order to determine wealth redistribution policies, the number of representative overlords allocated per state, how to create more government serivces rather than less, and other assorted and sundry State instituted programs/legislation/etc. leading to that utopian “brighter tomorrow for everyone,” oh yeah!  Thus, if individuals only provide the census bureau with the number of individuals residing at a certain address, the bureau is being supplied with the exact information it most covets to maintain and expand their control of individual American lives, and the State will gladly thank you for your compliance.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/04 at 08:46 AM
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Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Hiding the Truth is Standard Procedure

I am not prone to conspiracy theories as I think said theories mostly gain legs, analogy wise, via the old adage to test the doneness of spaghetti by throwing it against the wall and see whether it sticks.

With that said, I point to the latest revelations of hiding the truth emerging out of Washington, D.C.  That revelation is headlined as follows, BREAKING: ‘Anti-Lobbyist’ Obama Administration Recruited Left-Wing Lobbyists to Sell Bogus ‘Green Jobs’, and the story informs Americans that the green jobs so heralded as being just over the horizon if Amercia would just invest billons of dollars in wind energy are a fantasy.

I think that this newest revelation regarding government malfeasance in manipulating data of so called green initiatives, if not actually in bed with the foolishly named “climategate” revelations, with cap and trade filling out the threesome, reveals something dark and forboding, not only about the United States but all governments currently in power throughout the world.

Hiding the truth, which is more commonly called lying when an individual is caught in the act of hiding the truth, is now standard procedure for States throughout the world to maintain and expand their control of individual lives and businesses.

Link to bogus green jobs story via Instapundit.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 07:07 PM
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Looking Straight at the Problem Which is Obama

Malone Vandam, in a post titled Why America is nervous, points to and quotes from a Victor Davis Hanson piece titled Obama Fatigue.

Hanson’s piece is definitely worth a read, but Vandam’s comment, after reading Hanson’s piece, are point on and a must read.  Vandam’s complete comments follow.

Hanson is good throughout that piece, but still, like almost everyone writing about Obama, he’s averting his eyes to some extent. This president is not just the Democrats’ version of George Bush. There’s something so wrong about him that it’s nearly impossible to miss. What that thing is has nothing to do with his race. In fact, he is helped by being nominally black. It distracts the mind and the eye from the more fundamental problem: the sense that this man has no respect for America or Americans and, worse, means to bring harm to this country under the mask of a political messiah.

Yes, he’s an amateur in the wrong sense of the word, he can’t lead and wouldn’t know where to lead if he could, he’s cheesy and deft at being cheesy, and he creeps out anyone prepared to look the situation in the eye. But that leads to something else. It leads to a burning existential reality: he is being reckless with our lives and our future and he does not or cannot care.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 02:55 PM
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is a Crybaby

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, according to this article, is crying to the government for more regulatory oversight over one of its competitors, Google.

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer intends to keep the regulatory heat on Google as his company strives to lessen its rival’s dominance of Internet search.

In an appearance Tuesday at a search engine conference, Ballmer said Microsoft believes Google Inc. has done things to gain an unfair advantage in the Internet’s lucrative search advertising market. He didn’t specify the alleged misconduct.

How unfair of Google to be so successful and to have such a dominant search engine capability enabling Google to rake in millions of advertising dollars, so naturally Microsoft CEO Ballmer wants the government to strong arm some of the market profitability into Microsoft’s pockets, with the support of other jealous search engine companies.

The article also informs us that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is against government intervention in the search engine advertising market profitability.

“I am actually not interested in government intervention in anything,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz told reporters during a Tuesday lunch to celebrate the company’s 15th anniversary. “I think for the most part markets work. I don’t wish antitrust on anyone.”

Which could make one think that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is a principled individual, but, alas, that is not the case at all as is evidenced by this sentence from the article.

Yahoo also lobbied regulators to oppose the agreement that would give Google the electronic rights to millions of hard-to-find books.

One of the last quotes from Ballmer in the article is the following.

“There is an advantage to having the power of two, as opposed to the power of one,” Ballmer told the crowd at the Search Marketing Expo.

Yeah, and the advantage of the power of two is that it would allow Microsoft to gang up on Google, since the one to one battle for success in maximizing search engine advertising revenue is being sorely lost by Microsoft.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 02:22 PM
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Civil Disobedience Can Be Rewarding

Civil disobedience, as Thoreau advocated, though recognized and admired by many individuals, is seldom put into action by individuals due to fear of the State for whatever act of civil disobedience may be contemplated or acted on.

Though the State should fear its citizens, that is seldom the case, as is amply illustrated by the State’s continued intrusive control of individuals through various forms of legislation, all of which carry some penalty for non-compliance to install the fear the State so badly needs to control individuals.

With that said, here is an act of civil disobedience wherein the State loses and the civil disobedient individual is rewarded.

A nurse who was handcuffed when she refused to draw blood from a drunken-driving suspect has settled her lawsuit against a Chicago Police officer for $78,000, according to city records.

Here’s a quote from the nurse’s attorney.

“It is important to remember that nurses work for hospitals and not the Chicago Police Department,” Hofstra’s attorney Blake Horwitz said Tuesday. Horwitz said his client understands the need for officers to obtain blood samples, but “it just has to be done through proper means.”

Horowitz’s quote begins well, but then wanders off course when he concedes the State’s force backed request would be legitimate if “done through proper means.”

Handcuffed nurse settles for $78,000

Viddies of arrest at linked story.

Via The Obscure Store.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 12:20 PM
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AARP - Are You Sick or Something?

I’ll shortly hit the half century mark, and in commemoration of this auspicious event the AARP, always on the ball and in search of aging recruits to swell their ranks like an aged persons ankles, has sent me an AARP membership application, though I am assured that my admission is “guaranteed,” if I am the age of 50 or over.  Isn’t that special?

The AARP “application” informs me that I will receive handsome benefits, in exchange for my sixteen dollar ($16.00) membership payment, good for one (1) year, which are as follows.  The “award-winning” AARP The Magazine, AARP website access, which anyone can access anyway, the AARP Bulletin, and lots of AARP email spam in the form of newsletters.  Other benefits the AARP promises are discounts on travel and other services, access to health related benefits, note that said access to health related benefits is not a guarantee of benefit, and access to financial programs.

Additionally, the AARP membership application informs me that another of the benefits I’ll enjoy for joining AARP is that they will provide a spokesperson for my rights, in case I’ve gone mute or lost my marbles I guess, to represent me in Washington and all 50 states, fighting age dimscrimination, protecting pension rights, Social Security and Medicare.  My own personal lobbyist whose job is to somehow enable me to claim what I have not earned, with the State as my strong armed robber and the AARP as the State’s cheerleader.  How nice.

To round out the benefits which are to accrue to me for turning 50 years old the AARP also notes that they have over 2,000 local chapters, safe driving courses, volunteer opportunities and a reduced-fee legal service network.  Wow!

In small print, on the back of the detachable AARP application, for aging folks who can still read unaided by spectacles, magnifying glass or other reading aid, I am informed that if I become an AARP member they will share my information with companies the AARP has selected to provide AARP member benefits and which “support AARP operations.”  Though I can opt out of this information sharing by calling an 800 number or emailing them, if I joined, it would probably be too late for my opting out to be effective, as the application would have been processed and my information sold via payment by the selected companies’ support for AARP operations.

I’m going to pass on joining, as I do not need or want the AARP’s supposed benefits of membership, and besides, these type of groups make me want to aarp in my commode.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/03 at 09:10 AM
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Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Wolly Mammoth Entrepreneurs

In a LA Times piece headlined Woolly mammoths resurfacing in Siberia, we learn the following.

Hand-to-mouth reindeer herders on Russia’s desolate tundra have coexisted with the traces of mammoths for generations. Romanenko claims that there are cases of long-frozen mammoth meat being thawed and cooked, or fed to the dogs.

Now entire villages are surviving on the trade in mammoth bones. And a new verb has entered the vernacular: mamontit, or “to mammoth”—meaning, to go out in search of bones.

Good for them, and their sense of self reliance, I say.  Mamontit!

Posted by John Venlet on 03/02 at 05:25 PM
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A Civil Disobedience Salute to Brit Nick Hogan

A British pub owner, Nick Hogan, has the dubious distinction of being both the first individual to be prosecuted, and now jailed, under Britain’s no smoking laws, part of Britain’s Health Act of 2006.

A former pub landlord yesterday became the first person to be jailed in connection with the smoking ban.

Nick Hogan, 43, was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to pay a fine imposed for flouting the legislation.

Two years ago Hogan, who ran two pubs in Bolton, became the first landlord convicted of breaking the law for allowing his customers to routinely light up in his bars.

Mr. Hogan, after being convicted for allowing individuals freedom of choice in his pubs, rather than forced, meek acquiescence to Britain’s no smoking laws, refused to pay a fine of £3,000 and court imposed costs of £7,236, and thus has landed in jail.

But the married father-of-two refused to pay the fine and yesterday, after repeatedly being hauled back before the courts, a judge sitting at Bolton Crown Court finally lost patience and jailed him.

I salute Nick Hogan and wish him well.

Pub landlord is first person in Britain to be jailed over smoking ban

If you are so inclined, you can make donations to assist Nick Hogan in paying off the State imposed fine and court costs at the blog Old Holburn, whose posted motto is as follows.

You can stick your CCTV, Police State, wheelie bin Stasi, DNA, WMD, “Social Cohesion”, benefits for all, guilty until proved innocent, don’t do that it’s illegal now, can’t say that, ID cards for all, where are you going, what have you been saying/doing/reading?, can’t photograph that, how very dare you, golliwog banning, global warming, we know where you live, we’re watching you Soviet Utopia up your arses. Sideways.

Fine sentiments.

Linked via Tom Palmer.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/02 at 04:37 PM
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Monday, March 01, 2010

Nothing to See Here in Ogden, UT

The “suspicious substance” found in an IRS office in Ogden, Utah is not hazardous.  Nothing to see here, citizens, move on.

Official: Substance at Utah IRS bldg not hazardous

Posted by John Venlet on 03/01 at 07:09 PM
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The Federalist Papers - A Childish Cautionary Note

Political correctness reaches a new low, in an introductory cautionary statement regarding The Federalist Papers.  Per a post at The Corner by Jay Nordlinger, you can read a note from a Corner reader which states the following.

Our home library needed a new copy of the Federalist Papers (the old copy having succumbed to 25 years of thumbing, page-turning, and note-taking). The new copy, published by Wilder Publications in 2008, offers this disclaimer:

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

Not wanting to simply accept that this is accurate, I clicked over to Amazon.com to see whether the Wilder Publication of The Federalist Papers actually printed the above “disclaimer.”  Sure enough, they did.

Judas priest.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/01 at 02:16 PM
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