Maybe Carlin Was Right

So now there is no one left to vote for. At the beginning of this long election season I could see no difference between Obama McCain and Clinton. They are all the same centrist robot pushed forth by the two big parties. It feels like 1999 again when there was no apparent difference between Bush and Gore. Over time though, like with all politicians, the candidates have revealed which freedoms they hate and what they want to spend our money on.

Yesterday the Green Party announced their presidential candidate will be Cynthia McKinney. Yes, that Cynthia McKinney. Its confusing to me that the Green party would field a candidate that is obviously not capable of being president. This woman has no self control and is fixated on trivial issues. At best, she would be an embarrassment to the country if she were on a world stage, at worst she would spark an international incident with her lack of tact and decorum.

The only reason I mention the Greens here is because I am now at a loss for whom I shall cast my vote. Obama voted for the FISA bill. That's just about the only concrete thing I know about the guy. That and he was a crusader to ban guns until he decided to run for president. McCain is little better. From being the maverick Senator that stood up for what he believed in even if it was against his own party, he has cozyed up to right wing religious fanatics, stood up for the party that betrayed him in 2000, and gone against his own campaign finance laws and ideals. He was an idealistic war hero that stood above the corruption of politics and filth of Washington before he lost the primary to Bush. Now he is just another pandering politician trying to tell you what you want to hear. This election makes me feel like its last call and I am being hit on by a drunk sociopath.

The Libertarians have put forth Bob Barr of all people. Holy fucking mother of everliving fat! Bob fucking Barr! This man was regarded as the most right-wing conservative politician in congress. He was anti-drug, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, he tried to outlaw all non-Abrahamic religions in the military, and he voted for the PATRIOT act. Now he has criticized his vote for the patriot act, advocated the repeal of the income tax, and paid lip service to legalization of pot, which is apparently sufficient for the party heads of the Libertarian party. This is why I call myself philosophically libertarian rather than identify with the Libertarian party. They are more concerned with taxes and free trade than with actual liberty. So now there is no one left to vote for but freedom hating hypocrites.

Its like a bad movie and they are running out of extras. Seriously, Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney? This is the best we can do? There are hundreds of people in politics at the national level. Senators, Representatives, Judges, Party heads. Most of us know businessmen and fucking actors that would be better choices. I feel like I am in a poorly written political farce that has run low on budget and can't afford more actors with lines.

Burning Down The House

A man was tazered after he drove around a police roadblock to get to his house that was on fire. The cops say he was resisting, uncomunicative, and reached for a weapon, and drove on the sidewalk endangering people. Except witnesses disagree. Witnesses say he identified himself as the resident, and that the police continued to tazer him after he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground. Also the video on this article shows where he went off the road and that it had no sidewalk.

So I ask you our standard questions: Did use of a tazer save anyones life here? Did the tazer act as a substitute for lethal force where lethal force was called for in the course of the job of a peace officer?

Sure the guy behaved foolishly when he drove around a police roadblock, but he was never a threat to anyone. In a stressful situation where you are panicing from your house being on fire, wouldnt you prefer a bit more discression in your police?

The Friday Bacon: a Fringe Element Original

Lately, there has been a great bit of controversy swirling around the origin of the Friday Bacon, and whether or not there are any pretenders. Rest assured, the other blogger in question began with his bacon thread with a post titled, "The Bacon Post," written in November of 2007, while th'Dave began with "Friday Bacon" column in September of 2007. This should authoritatively settle any disputes.

The Friday Bacon

This is me frying burgers and bacon together. it makes both of them taste much better than just combining the two after the cooking process.

Aparently the whole bacon thing wasn't original, even the concept of the Friday Bacon was thought up by some other blogger. I wish I had thought of it first so I could get all uppity.

Sen. Feingold Breaks it Down

Sen. Feingold, in the video below reminds us why it is that people participate in the democratic process. It's a long lecture, but it's the most authoritative denunciation on the the government's program possible given today's classification restrictions. We can only hope that the ACLU's lawsuit, timed with Bush's signature, forces the judicial branch to step in and hold those responsible for abrogating the rights of American citizens to be held accountable in the way the law proscribes. After all, how strong is the rule of law when the government itself is known to disregard provisions and limitations on its behavior? Why should anyone be allowed to be immune from allegations of rape, for instance? Maybe I'm deranged. But someone really deranged would wonder why anyone votes at all. By the way, that's not a scream you're hearing, it's the utter silence of a society looking on in horror as an elected body completely contravenes their desires.

Obama (D-IL), Yea

That is the sound of Obama voting to set your freedom, privacy, and security back to the days before Nixon. Again a major piece of legislation is pushed through with no real discussion and no in depth understanding of what the law does. Instead the Bush administration and the power hungry, do-nothing senators push their message of fear that has inexplicably continued to work for them for seven years. It helps that there isn't any press coverage.

Remember these are the same people who had sufficient intelligence to prevent 9/11 but failed to. Yet they continue to say they need to listen in on to all of our calls. They continue to say that we need to give protection to the phone companies that may have broken the law in their rush to give all of our information, calls, Internet traffic, and emails to the government. They also continue to say that if you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. Ahh the old standby of the people who want a police state and the conformists who support them. In case you weren't paying attention in elementary school that is the kind of shit we don't stand for in America. The fourth amendment was the founding fathers declaration that Americans should not have to be subject to such a weak red herring. I have also explained in previous posts why law abiding persons have every reason to have lawful secrets and to fear a government with too much power or information. For example, what if the Democrats decide to create a political smear machine and hunt out every gay conservative through the massive amount of information this will create? Then the law abiding, republicans will see what they have to fear from the fruits of their own fear mongering and lust for power.

What I really came here to do is rail against Obama for voting for fear and against freedom. I was really excited by Obama after his first speech regarding the racist conspiracies circulating in his church. That speech showed real leadership and had the potential of elevating the national dialogue regarding race. I was particularly excited because after months of hearing nothing but the words "hope" and "change" I finally knew something of substance about Obama. I was beginning to understand the rock star level of excitement that surrounded him. The last week has completely eliminated any enthusiasm I once had. Despite the "embarrassing pejorative" Jessie Jackson leveled at Obama, it is true that he has been giving up his convictions to appear more mainstream. Obama has been a crusader against gun rights, and even though I disagree with him, I was disappointed to hear his quiet measured reaction to the decision by the supreme court that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own a handgun. Then later it was announced that Obama was in favor of the death penalty. I don't particularly have an opinion on the issue but I do know that if you want to get elected in this country, especially at the national level, you better be in favor of the death penalty. Combined with his taking the side of the freedom haters in congress this all spells out that Obama is another political robot just to act as a face. He is the dickless face of a party with no balls. Hows that for a pejorative?

Compassionate Conservatism Gets Compassionate All Over the Environment

So apparently the big news today is that Cheney is an asshole and has been "secretly" trying to suppress testimony regarding global warming. The LA Times has decided to be clever and link this to when Cheney crafted U.S. energy policy in secret, working directly with energy industry lobbyists. They may be reacting to the fact that that story got no mileage seven years ago. It appears that the only reason anyone is paying attention to this latest move by the friendly and lovable members of the Bush administration who only want the best for the American people, is because someone in the Democratic party finally grew some stones and is standing up to this shit.

People on the right fringe give Al Gore tons of crap about "An Inconvenient Truth" but he never even brings up this shit. Its understandable why a respectable person would refrain from pointing the finger at the people who are trying to suppress the truth in order to gain a financial benefit. Usually when one decrys the influence of the big bad oil companies they immediately get labeled as a kook or a conspiracy nut. In some cases this kind of arm waving behavior may be paranoia but when the manipulation of public sentiment is actually happening why can't it be pointed out in a legitimate discussion? Why is the standard response to pointing out information manipulation the logical fallacy resort to ridicule? And why is that the end of the public discussion of the manipulation?

The Friday Bacon

This is the $11 bacon cheeseburger I ate on Friday.

Hand Wringing by Freedom Haters

After the Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that the Second Mendment protects an individual right to own a handgun for self defense there was much hand wringing from self righteous freedom haters across the globe. Editorial pages were filled with bias that dragged the national dialog down. The sense of loss was palpable among those who wished to ban guns. Even from news outlets that one would not particularly expect to have such a bias. Clearly they were upset that they have forever lost the possibility of not only banning guns, not only banning handguns, but also requiring trigger locks, and possibly also having to submit to concealed carry programs. All the editorials combined over the four days would be enough to give the impression that banning of handguns was a mainstream position without regard for whether or not it is true. One of the many reasons the MSM continues its fall from relevancy. Normally all this arguing that fear should trump freedom gets me really upset but now that the point is moot, I allowed myself to feel smug.

The worst hand wringing came from FBI director Robert Mueller who took the opportunity to go off topic and claim that universities are hotbeds for terrorist sympathisers. While he still maintained focus on what he was griping about, Mueller also managed to act as a fear monger when he wondered aloud whether guns would be allowed on university campuses. This after Scalia expressly stated in the majority opinion that gun bans on school and government property remained in effect and are reasonable restrictions on a citizens right to self defense.

Blood Diamonds

It may be beating a dead horse to talk about blood diamonds except people are still buying them, the artifical custom of the diamond engagement ring persists, and the average person does not feel blinded by rage when they see a commercial for diamonds. Also, you may be wondering what sparked this posting. I didn't just see the movie Blood Diamond and have my eyes opened to this tragedy and rush out to tell the ten people who accidentally come to this blog every day. I have been pissed about this injustice since I was a little high school hoodlum but I recently stumbled on my notes from last summer regarding this topic and I stumbled on this article on Fark.

That article recounts an older story regarding how the value of diamonds was artificially inflated and bullshit symbolism was imbued into the diamond. It recounts how a common stone with little intrinsic value was kept from the market in order to artificially create a low supply while some clever advertisers associated the diamond with eternity and love and forced every man in western society from then on to spend two months salary on a worthless crystal of carbon for fear of sending the wrong message to the woman he loves. Fortunately, for their trouble, those advertisers will have to crouch in the desert of sodomites for all eternity. Unfortunately love isn't enough to overcome the demands of consumerism in our culture, or informed women who truly loved their future husbands would insist on not wearing murder on their hands. They would not be able to look at their enggement ring and see the love of their husband but would instead witness blood flowing from the stone on their ring, the blood of the children who died in the mines and the men and women who were murdered when a new militia came and took over the mine.

Remember those anti-drug adds just after 9-11 where the Bush administration and John Ashcroft were trying to capitalize on nationalism in the war on drugs? They implied a connection within the drugs trade wherein money American teenagers spent on pot went into the coffers of the terrorists who had attacked us. The same is true of the diamond trade. If you buy diamonds, you are putting money into Osama Bin Laden's pockets.

What about the Kimberly process you ask? What are you some lobbyist for the diamond industry? For the rest of you, the Kimberly process is the method the diamond industry created to pretend they were doing something about blood diamonds as a public relations scheme. The process is entirely voluntary, completely self-administered with no accountability, and there are large financial disincentives to poor african countries to conform rigorously to the process's own loose guidelines. Given the fact that emeralds and rubies come from conflict ridden regions in Colombia and Burma respectively, and the gem industry turns a blind eye to the suffering inflicted on people in those areas, it is unsuprising that their own method of self monitoring the origins of diamonds is far from robust. This is what it looks like when evil people try to do good but can't stop thinking of their own greed.

The Friday Bacon

Free The West Memphis Three

The Arkansas Supreme Court denied the appeal to reopen the cases of the convicted. The court has refused to hear the newly arisen DNA evidence that indicates the convicted were not at the location commonly believed to be the scene of the crime, and no DNA from the convicted was found on the victims. This leaves open the previously denied federal appeal.

I Got Yer Millitia Right Here

Today the Supreme Court Ruled that the Second Amendment ensures an individuals right to own and possess a firearm. Few people were suprised by this decision. Either in its ultimate result or in its scope. Scalia, who wrote the position for the majority, has previously written opinions for the court in gun control cases that are fundamentally similar to this result. The Court has said in the past that the right enshrined in the second amendment is an individual right but it is not a right without restriction. This can be seen in past cases regarding the federal ban on fully automatic rifles such as in Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600 (1994).

The cases and statutes throughout the United States have created a general guideline that seems to indicate an individual may own as many guns as they wish for recreation, sporting, or self defense, but may not own military equipment, and may be restricted in time and place of usage and transport within reason. The definition of what is military equipment changes frequently as can be seen by the recent expiration of the Brady Bill which forbid removable magazines of a capacity over ten rounds among other things. This most recent ruling not only ensures the individual's right to own and possess firearms, it also sets a line that may not be crossed in restricting type of gun and how it may be possessed and transported. This is because the D.C. gun ban that is overturned forbid ownership of a handgun. The court has clearly declared that this type of restriction violates the Constitution. The law also required registration of other firearms and that those registered firearms be locked when in the home. It is already well settled law that when transpiorting a gun one must have it locked and the ammunition must be locked in a seperate container, but today's Supreme Court ruling seems to indicate that a local law may not require that one keep ones guns locked in ones own home.

The ruling also seems to indicate that legislation requiring registration of firearms also goes to far. Many may not understand why this would be objectionable. After all, you have to register your car. The principle difference there is that there is no constitutionaly protected right to own and operate a vehicle. This is more than just a trite observation. Though a car may seem more essential to one's daily life, Congress may decide one day that cars are too dangerous and too polluting to allow in private ownership and ban them. However possession of a weapon is a right granted to us by our creator, like freedom of speech, and is protected by the Bill of Rights. The second reason to object to registration of firearms is a bit more paranoid. Firearm registration just gives the government a list of what law abiding citizens have guns ans what they have in their arsenal. The fear of armed government agents going door to door with a list and confescating the firearms of law abiding citizens in a time of emergency, when they are more likely to need them, is less paranoid when you remember that it happened and happened recently. When Bush suspended posse comitatus after hurricans Katrina and the national guard confiscated guns from people who were just trying to defend themselves from looters and murders who were roaming the streets after the disaster.

Despite the apparent clarity, the actual bounds of the Supreme Court's decision will be heavily litigated and fought over. The lawsuits have already started. As this article indicates these lawsuits by the NRA were already in the works before the decision came down.

The Walk of Shame

A conservative, pro-life congressional candidate, knocked up his girlfriend, said he didnt want the baby and then paid for her abortion. I can has hypocracy?

Politicising the Mail Room

We have previously commented on this blog about the propencity of the Bush administration to not only engage in cronyism in hiring but to prefer political supporters over more qualified candidates to the detriment of the function of U.S. governance. The depths to which people were vetted based on their loyalty to the individual that currently holds the office of the President had not been previously revealed. This article describes that it was policy to prefer ideologs at every level of hiring, even down to lowly interns. The ideology-based hiring went so far as to violate the law.

I am not the least bit suprised. Many people would call me cynical for that. Which leaves me wondering at what point, after consistently being vindicated in my cynicism towards government corruption does it cease to be cynicism? When do the people who werent expecting it to get worse get told they are seeing the world through rose colored glasses?

The punchline of the article is that this political monkeying around with the hiring process has not only hurt these specific individuals, but it has hurt the program through which these professioinally inferior, political zombies were hired, and this has hurt the agency of the Justice Department by filling its ranks with substandard ideologs.

George Carlin May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008

It may be cliche but I hope it isnt trite to say that commedians are the ones most free to speak the truth. In between jokes about scabs and finger nail clippings George Carlin had tremendously precient social commentary about freedom of speach, the prison system, religion, big corporations, advertising, and government. After 9/11, his bit about airline security seemed eerily prophetic.


As someone who's art was frequently subject of attempts at censorship, he took a long view of history.

Cleveland Ohio: Terrible American City or The Worst American City?

Cleveland is such a terrible cesspool that the suburbs long ago seperated themselves from it politically and financially as much as possible. This amounts to dozens of tax districts in one county. Each of them jealously guarding their hoard like the poison spewing worms they are. They also tax you both in the city you work and in the city you live. So if you commute from a residential suburb to a commercial or industrial town for work then at tax time you get double teamed up the asshole by fat government dicks.

As you can probably tell this is rather personal for me since this double-dick ass fucking I am getting from these cities amounts to a bill for $100 a month. These are cities in the rust belt. The industry left decades ago. The sewers overflow when it rains. The roads have huge and frequent holes which make them worse than most gravel roads I have driven on. These cities don't plow the snow all winter. There are packs of wild dogs roaming the streets at night. Arson is on the rise. What is that money going for?

More golden pig idols?

The Friday Bacon

Flag Burning

In this image you see President Bush defacing the American Flag in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 700 Destruction of the Flag of the United States. That is the same statute that forbids flag burning. The amusing thing is that flag burning is protected speach under the first amendment but being an arrogant jingoist and writing your name on the flag may not be.

Global Food Crisis: Corn Prices

Now we have the numbers. This is probably the start of the predicted rise in corn prices from the midwest flood that will push all foods and comodoties higher globally. Because not only is there less corn now, we will be exporting less.

Labor Relations

The Teamsters held a protest Saturday to protest high gas prices, and a bad deal they got from FedEx as well as to tell their membership not to vote for John Mccain.

As is usually the case with these sorts of things, the old media isnt covering it. Honestly, I find it frustrating to cover myself. They don't say anything meaningfull about why they are protesting or what they are angry about or what they want to solve the problem. This whole exercise was just to get a bunch of surly men together, dressed alike, to shout slogans at each other. I doubt its effectveness and whether it has any meaning.

I desperately wanted to air their grevances and give some much needed coverage to labor issues here, but all I got was an ear full of rhetoric.

The Global Food Crisis: Too Much Water

Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, And Illinois have all been hit by massive flooding over the last week. Some heroic boyscouts have garnered all the press from this storm but there is another story with wider reaching implications. The flooding has caused damage to farmland across the nation's breadbasket, ruining thousands of acres of fields prior to harvest. These fields are primarily corn and as detailed in a prior posting, corn is the backbone of the U.S. comodoties market. Further, such a huge loss in corn will cause the prices of all foods to rise even more than the international food crisis has caused. The bottom line for you, expect to pay more for all kinds of meat, cerial, grains, milk, and of course, gasoline.

This all brings up the concept of inflation. The general rise in the price of goods as measured by the United States excludes the cost of comodities like food and energy(oil). The standard reason given for this is that even when the economy is stable the costs of oil and food fluctuate wildly and are thusly not directly pinned to the general economy. That reason turnes into a mere excuse to ignore bad news in times like these where inflation is being driven by world crisis level food prise increases and devistating growth in cost of oil. Yet economists will continue to use the old measure and more tellingly the old media will continue to parrot what they are told in their role of controling the public.

Tim Russert: 5/7/1950 - 6/13/2008

Tim Russert Died of a heart attack on Friday. Tim Russert was one of the few reporters left who had the ability to speak truth to power. He could be trusted to ask hard questions about real issues to politicians and when they tried to weazel out of it with rhetoric or prefabricated statements, he would follow up with more tough questions and hold their feet to the fire. His dedication to honest journalism displayed a respect for the average people that is absent in most news coverage today in the old media. The professional respect and dedication he showed are why he is one of my heros. The world is a better place for him having been in it.

The Walk of Shame: Bush Looses Again

The Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration today. The high Court held that despite what the President and the Neo-Cons say, everyone has natural human rights. A foreign citizen has the same human rights that you and I have under the United States' legal system. A person cannot be drprived of those rights by having a certain lable applied to them such as, terrorist, or enemy combatant. Perhaps the Court realized that such things need to be proven beyond simple conjecture. The court also held that people cannot be imprisoned by the United States for an indeterminate period of time, and that anyone imprisoned must be charged with a crime. You know, basic things that are at the foundation of this country and our system of justice.

The Supreme Court came down on the side of freedom and justice today and has once again renewed my faith in our system of government.

The Walk Of Shame: Gubinatorial Spending

The governors mansion in Texas was burned down, probably due to arson. This morning the Governor declared he would rebuild his mansion regardless of the cost to the people of Texas. It is interisting to me that a government official would vow to spare no expense in rebuilding his own mansion when there is a mortgage crisis going on now and millions of people are finding themselves homeless.

My Letter to My Congress People in Regards to Impeachment

Please: Copy and paste (though make sure you make it gender appropriate!)

Sir,
I have lost faith in government, though I do still trust you. Please, please please, support, to the best of your abilities, the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. It is worth it. This is not a merely symbolic gesture (and if it was, Congress would be all over it.) It is a message to the American people that the rule of law stands. It is a message to voters, who thought they were voting for action. It is a message to the rest of the world that we are not a rogue nation, that we are interested in a global community AND that we can be a country that can take care of itself.
It is also more than a message. It is a head start on the "truth and reconciliation" process that we will need to be on when the criminals are out of the White House. It is a head start on rebuilding our federal services and departments, our military strength, our stability and economy.
Finally, if you impeach him on the grounds Rep. Kucinich has put forth, then maybe justice will be served to the criminals and the truth behind 9/ll can still be hidden (it's a win-win situation!) Thank you, and, rest assured, you will turn a regular supporter of you into a life long one with a strong stand in support of Kucinich.

Cleveland Ohio: Terrible American City, or The Worst American City? Impeachment Edition

Dennis Kucinich(D-Ohio), the elfin-looking, vegan, UFO-seeing, hot-wife-having Representative from Cleveland has introduced articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush.

I have mixed feelings about many things in that first sentence.

First, Kucinich is a profoundly inefectual represenative. None of the bills he has proposed has ever been passed. Which statistically boads ill for the prospects of these articles of Impeachment. Kucinich will propose any legislation that will get headlines. Kucinich's legislative strategy seems less directed at serving the people of his district but rather intended to provoke headlines that get him enough free attention for his reelection.

The things Kucinich champions with his doomed legislative action are the kinds of things that are the cause of the people, or crafted to promote peace and justice in simple language. So when these things are defeated it makes Kucinich look like he is a champion of the conserns of the common man. However, even if this is genuine and Kucinich really is a champion of the people he is rather Quixotic. Personally, I think the persona of a crusader for justice that tilts at windmills has been crafted by him to keep him in politics. That being said I am willing to live with an inefectual elfin-jester of a representative that loudly champions justice and freedom and peace rather than the typical congressman who is a shill to big industry and lobbying groups and justifies his corruption by dragging home as much pork as he or she can suck out of the public coffers. So even if the virtue Kucinich parades in front of the cameras is fake, Ill take fake virtue over unashamed corruption every day.

As for impeaching president Bush, thats a whole different ball of fishooks. I think President Bush should be impeached. He has been accused of exactly what Nixon did, and Republican party officials have been found guilty of manipulating the vote in Ohio in 2004. There is also the intelligence failure leading up to the 9/11 attack, extrordinary rendition, torture, the lies in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and so forth. However, much of that is just a deriliction of duty and does not amount to a crime. Furthermore, the stuff that he could be charged for is going to provoke a long hard legal battle.

This president has proven that he is beligerant in the extreme to any type of criticism or legal attack on his power. This is bolstered by the neo-con adgenda to make the office of the president extremely powerful. This adgenda is backed up by jmore than greed and evil but by long hours of thought and legal scholarship. This goal at inflating the power of the president is backed up by legal philosophy that argues that these cruel and wicked things that have been done by and on behalf of this administration are actually legal. The simplest way to explain this is that they believe anything the president says is ok, is legal. The insand and frustrating thing to know is that they have the knowledge and scholarship to back this madness up in court if that is what it comes to. The three attornys general that this administration has gone through are proof that there are many in high places already that subscribe to this philosophy of presidential preeminence. All this promises to produce a long and hard legal fight if the congress actually has the stones to follow through.

That is the other problem. The Democratic party hasn't had the testicular fortitude to stand for anything other than giving themselves a pay raise for as long as I have been old enough to read. They cant cut off the funds for the war and they are afraid of a long fight with the Bush administration. But they arent afraid because they will loose, these chicken-shit legislators are afraid of the fight itself. They arent afraid of the possibility that they will losse and this insane legal reasoning that the president's will is law will become the law of America. They are afraid of having to stand up for something other than giving themselves a pay raise. Sen. Feingold (D-Wisconsin) the only one in the senate chamber with cajones enough to still be called a man explained it best. He wrote to me that he believes that any attenpt to impeach Bush would be a waist of time. All impeachment proceedings would do is, distract the congress from repairing the damage he has done over his tenure in office. The long fight would be a circuis and all that would be accomplished would be sound bites and grandstanding. I can only assume that House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) believes something similar when she says that impeachment is off the table.

Much has been said of this kind of pragmatism and cowardice and is being played out in many editorials of this kind. I think the fight must be fought or these legal philosophies will slowly slime their way into the American legal system. Unless resisted this belief that power is greater than justice will destroy freedom.

The Friday Bacon

This week the friday bacon is late because all of the contributors to this blog were out in shacks in God's country where there is no internet. This is also where the comment that makes up this weeks friday bacon comes from.

"Ugh... All that bacon just hit my heart. I wish I could taste bacon with my heart"

Tasers Galore!

To start off what otherwise might be a drab and depressing column about Tasers with a bit of humor, here is a case, from Hamilton, Ontario, of Tasers accidentally setting a perp on fire. With a mind to use it as an improvised weapon, the suspect hid a can of hairspray in his belt, which ignited and set the poor victim of physics aflame briefly. The officer, who extinguished the flames, has been completely cleared of any wrongdoing.

In a twisted web of impartial recollections, contradictory statements, and colorful characters, a Palo Alto man without address is questioning whether police were justified in deploying Tasers against him. I'm not sure how it's reasonable to assume a two liter bottle is a dry ice bomb and thus justify deploying a Taser, but that's what makes this case so interesting.

In a tragic case of would haves and could haves, Robert Ingraham of Thibodaux, Louisiana died after officers deployed a Taser on him. Sadly, this article is lacking in detail, but statements like "he should have gone to court" or "he should have not hit his wife" seem rather inconsequential when one remembers that a man died. The only real questions are "how did a 27 year old man die from a Taser shot?" and "how could this have been prevented?"

In a rare show of positive PRwerk for Taser International, the New York Times reports a study into a case where Taser put someone back into a normal cardio rhythm after 40 minutes in a cold lake in Connecticut. Please don't try this at home, or even in a hospital for that matter.

Australia Withdraws from Iraq

Australia handed over their mission to U.S. command today and began withdrawing their remaining troops. At least they aren't capitulating to terrorism like the Spanish.

The Friday Bacon

Bacon and Breasts are both mainly fat and perfect for snacking on. I don't know why this hasn't come up before, but it makes perfect sense. Bacon flavored breasts. You probably should take the bacon off the breasts before cooking.

The Nacirema

So aparently American Indians are buying up the land that once was theirs. This has become possible recently through the generous donations made by the white man at the native's traditional style gaming longhouses. They are also taking the ironic move of uitilizing a treaty that could only have been a cruel legal kick in the face when it was enacted. After using violence to drive the natives off their lands the U.S. then made it possible for the natives to buy the land back. How generous! Well now the American Indian tribes are using that treaty to take the land they buy out of the tax base of the local municipality it used to belong to and into their own sovjerenty. And OH! to hear the white man cry when you disrupt his tax base!

The thing that pisses me off the most about local governments is that they act as if the land within their boarders and the tax money they expect to bring in is theirs instead of the property of the people they are supposed to serve. Exibit A Now that someone is using the machenery of capitalism and the law to their own advantage and exercising their rights, these local governments cry foul, gnash their teeth, and beat their chests untill the blood comes out. These local government "leaders" need to have a lesson in real American freedom but sadly this is the kind of corruption that infects local government like a festering boil.

In the meantime some crazy fuckers have gone and disturbed a previously uncontacted tribe in the Amazon just to prove they exist. Now droves of anthropologists will stream down there looking for them to figure crap out. Nowhere is Heizenburgs uncertainty principle more appropriately glossed over into a philosophical statement than with regard to anthropology. The presence of the anthropologist that examines the culture alters what he is examining tremendously. All this, and social anthropology can barely call itself a science.

Game Review: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals My Life as King

Released two weeks ago with the first batch of Wii Ware FFCCMLAK is the most expensive Wii Ware title so far at 1500 Wii points, and it takes up a lot of space on the Wii's internal memory. That price tag can baloon because of the seperately purchaseable ad on content that ranges from 100 - 800 Wii points. Ad on content still feels like part of the game is being held for ransom away from me and I have to be fucked in the asshole by the people making the games availalbe in order to get a complete game. Personally I find the core game to be $15 dollars worth of entertainment but the ad on content does not add the value its price point demands. Especially if you consider that in order to get all the available dungeons, equipment, and jobs, the price of the game jumps up to become the most expensive Wii game yet available for the console. Its a clever marketing strategy but in a game like this where content that was available at launch is being kept seperate from the game it feels like a huge middle finger in the face of the consumer. Unlike a game like say Rock Band where one buys new songs that become available after launch.

Speaking of songs on Rock Band, you may have noticed that Motley Crue was the first group to realize the obvious, that selling music to an interactive experience greatly increases its appeal.

Apart from having a cold metal dildo shoved up my ass by Nintento and Square, FFCCMLAK is a highly entertaining game. It is a sim in that you reconstruct your fathers fallen kingdom from the memories of its people and it is an RPG in that you walk through this kingdom you are building as the young son of the king. You actually spend half of the game as a cheerleader for your subjects, raising the ir morale and improving their family relations, and you spend the other half of the game managing your adventurers.

Unlike most other Final Fantasy games you dont actually go out into the world and battle monsters. You can't even leave the walls of the castle. This combined with the mediocre graphics is where Square Enix obviously put together a cheap game to rake in some online cash. That said, the game isn't sloppy. The polygons are well shaped and are well contoured for what people have come to expect in a 3D video game.

The game itself is plenty entertaining if you like the thought of managing an army of adventurers. FFCCMLAK also gives an interisting perspective on towns in the Final Fantasy universe. If you have ever wondered why there are towns in the middle of a monster infested wilderness with weapon and magic shops and aparently no other commerce, this game gives some perspective. Managing your adventurers gets a bit annoying when the individual you intended to give a job just won't show up to to the job, and at times its difficult to understand why completely healthy adventurers flee from combat while low level adventurers throw themselves into fights twice their level.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Cybernetic Simian Overlords

In some bizarre attempt at mad science, scientists have created something that has the best chance of destroying civilization since the nuclear bomb, cybernetic monkeys.




We all know that the things most likely to destroy life as we know it are robots that have achieved scientience, hyperevolved monkeys, or zombies. Now mad scientists have combined monkeys and robots as if they are goading God on in an arrogant attempt to provoke the apocylapse. The next time congress tries to ban armor piercing ammunition remember, robot monkeys.

The Friday Bacon: Late as usual

Polygamy, Marriage, Religion, Freedom

Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere
with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one
believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would
it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could
not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was
her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be
beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into
practice?

Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 166 (U.S. 1878) This quote does an excelent job of outlining the freedom of religion. What freedom it does guranty and what freedoms it does not. It is explained generally enough to cover almost any situation where someone tries to raise religious belief to justify some crime they have committed. More than that, it actually gives a moral outline so rare in the law. That a religious belief does not excuse a wrong act, is an excelent precept with which to weed out those that believe that God will excuse their sins if only they belive correctly.

The above quote also informs people where their right to believe as they please ends and the rights of others begins. You can believe abortion is wrong, but you cannot stop women from having them. You can believe vaccinations are against the commands of God but you cannot keep them from your children. You can believe creationism, but you cannot teach it in schools.

However that line of reasoning is used below to justify the government meddeling in marriage.

From that day to this we think it may safely be said there never has been a time
in any State of the Union when polygamy has not been an offence against society,
cognizable by the civil courts and punishable with more or less severity. In the
face of all this evidence, it is impossible to believe that the
constitutional guaranty of religious freedom was intended to prohibit
legislation in respect to this most important feature of social life. Marriage,
while from its very nature a sacred obligation, is nevertheless, in most
civilized nations, a civil contract, and usually regulated by law. Upon it
society may be said to be built, and out of its fruits spring social relations
and social obligations and duties, with which government is necessarily required
to deal. In fact, according as monogamous or polygamous marriages are allowed,
do we find the principles on which the government of the people, to a
greater or less extent, rests. Professor Lieber says, polygamy leads to the
patriarchal principle, and which, when applied to large communities, fetters the
people in stationary despotism, while that principle cannot long exist in
connection with monogamy. Chancellor Kent observes that this remark is qually
striking and profound. 2 Kent, Com. 81, note (e). An exceptional colony of
polygamists under an exceptional leadership may sometimes exist for a time
without appearing to disturb the social condition of the people who surround it;
but there cannot be a doubt that, unless restricted by some form of
HN21constitution, it is within the legitimate scope of the power of every civil
government to determine whether polygamy or monogamy shall be the law of social
life under its dominion.

Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 165-166 (U.S. 1878) Why? Why does the government get to fuck around with my marriage? Why did I have to go pay some beureaucrat to file some paperwork so that I can go to a state approved church to solmenize the commitment I have made with my wife? Because marrage is the foundation of the state? Fuck you! All that is saying is that the state and all the members of the society demand a benefit from my love for my wife and that I pay for them to have the priviledge.

All that is said when someone says that marriage is the foundation of society is that they want the benefit of your children. The benefit that more productive members of society bring. Fuck you! You have no right to demand that my marriage be of any value to you. Even in a capatilist society where each of your fingers has a dollar value attached to it the value of my future children cannot be demanded by you for no compensation.

If you want control of marriage you owe me. You owe me for the increased efficiency of a two person household. You owe me at least the cost of producing the children you will benefit from. Not only that you owe me the value their future labors will bring to society and the taxes they will pay. The cost of raising a child to adulthood is huge but only a fraction of what that person puts back into society. That value is increased tremendously if that child moves on to higher education. You have no right to demand that value and the control over my life to get it.

You have no right to meddle in my spiritual ritual and put restrictions on whom I can have to officiate the ceremony of my marriage. Every person has the same connection to the devine as each other. We all had the breath of life put in us by the creator and none of us has any more or less than our neighbors. No schooling, licence, building, location, costume, or ritual can increase or decrease that, nothing. Yet there are judges that have invalidated peoples marriages because they did not like the manner in which the person officiating the ceremony obtained the title of "minister." This is just the state insuring the continued existance of the professional clergy.

I hate that there is legal effect to the state's yoke of control over love. I hate that I could not stand up for my beliefs and refuse to register my marriage because it would send a terrible message to my wife that there was something deficient about our love.

That said, I don't give two shits about polygamy or gay marriage.

Even if I agree with the Supreme Court's rationale that polygamy fosters patriarchy and totalitarianism, it does not justify the state sticking its fingers into the exercise of faith. Back to the thought I started with. There must be some limit to the distinction between belief and action because faith is meaningless if one cannot act on ones beliefs. Clearly there must be limits, but cutting off all action leaves faith as a mute quadrapalegic.

I don't know where I would place the marker. Ideally the law would reflect morality but it does not and not all things that are wrong are illegal and not all things that are illegal are wrong. As a libertarian I want to say that ones right to act on ones beliefs ends when they interfere with the rights of another but that can be a sticky area to hash out. Harm can be a good way to solve that problem. When an act of one person harms another can be a good place to say their rights have ended but that is still far too broad and vague. How do you define harm? And so forth. It might be glib to end this way, and all of this falls below the standard of legal reasoning, but it is pretty easy to detect the harm eminating from Warren Jeffs' brand of polygamy.

The Torture Debate

The national discussion regarding the use of torture and extreme rendition is often cut short by declarations that this is a time of war. Such declarations are not usually followed by any explination as to what significance that should have because most of the time they are made by people that have no interist in actually considering the value or appropriateness of torture. Though now it appears there are legal consequences of the torture that these people had previously been unwilling to think about. Unfortunately these are not the legal consequences of those being responsible facing justice. They are the natural consequences of the unreliable information that is gained from torture. Followed by the that information gained through torture being unusable in court because of the tainted nature in which it was obtained.

Even if you do accept that torture does work and that it is called for by the current situation, the torture debate is more than just an argument over whether extreme measures are acceptable during a time of war. There are at least two other issues.

First, intelligence failures prior to 9/11 indicate that the US intelligence community doea not need more information since they had enough to know the attack was coming, and they are too incompetant to use the information they do have.

Second, there are serious questions about whether the person being detained under suspicion of being a terrorist is actually guilty of anything. People have been spirited away, aparently based on nothing more than a muslim sounding name, tortured, and released after months when it is discovered a mistake was made and that these people were not criminals or if they were, after the CIA had fouled up the investigation.



Many people are not conserned with this because they don't have muslim sounding names and are merely mundane white people living in the heartland. This should consern everyone because it is the start of a slippery slope. If the people responsible for this get away with abducting and torturing innocent people for something as vaguely defined as being a suspected terrorist it is a small step to other criminal suspects and then another small step to the imprisoning and torturing of people for legal but unpopular behavior. And then you have the thought police.

These steps are smaller than most people want to believe because the first step has been so large. That people that are merely suspected of being terrorists are being tortured is highly significant. It causes the ensnarement of innocent people based on unchallenged circumstantial evidence.

Yager-bombing the Middle East

Aparently Hillary Clinton was able to drink McCain under the table in Estonia. This raises serious questions for the McCain presidential campaign. How can we expect a presidential candidate to be hard on the terrorists when they go easy on their own liver? While they both only consumed four(4) shots of vodka at least we can assume Hillary could out drink both Osama Bin Laden and Muqtada al-Sadr because muslims are not permitted to drink alcohol and we can assume they would not be prepaired for it. We have yet to hear of any exploits of Obama's capacitiy to imbibe intoxicants and this story raises the question. How much can Obama drink? For that matter how much can Ron Paul drink? Obama looks pretty lanky, and Ron Paul is no spring chicken but experience is what counts. Also, the story lacks information on how large a shot is in Estonia. I would assume that being married to President Bill Clinton would give one plenty of experience with keeping ones composure after consuming mass quantities of alcohol. So I was quite shocked to find that the contest had ended after four shots. Perhaps that is just when McCain threw in the towel. Which brings us back to the question. If McCain gave in to Hillary after just four shots of vodka, how can we believe his talk that he will stand strong against the terrorists and win the war in Iraq?

The Walk of Shame

There is a set of common arguments that have as their basis the assumption that morality flows from religion. Any athiest will tell you how foolish this is. One need only look to history to learn the lession that people are terrible regardless of what God they kneel to or whether they believe or not. Something that is frequently overlooked is just how dangerous it is to have faith in religion or the law to make people treat each other well. If someone is not killing you or raping you or not robbing you because they are afraid of God or jail then that person is actually evil. Not only evil but an evil coward.

All that crap was to introduce this article about an accused child molesting pastor.

The Friday Bacon

Bacon Fried Rice

Bush Seeks Coalition Against The Troops

Since the run-up to the war in Iraq anyone who has questioned the Bush administration has had to endure ad hominem attacks on their patriotism and accusations that they don't support the troups. But it has been the Bush administration that has failed to support the troops. If you are like me, when Rumsfeld attempted to justify the lack of adaquate but available armor plating on hum-vees, you were so overcome with rage that you passed out half way through the press conference. The hypocracies and outrages continue even in these late hours of the dark years of the Bush administration as the President has promised to veto an expansion of the GI Bill.

This is particularly significant in relation to war profiteering, the topic an earlier posting on this very blog. The members of the administration who ducked out of military service and their friends and business associates rake in the cash while overcharging the government on essentials for the troops, telling the manufacturers not to include available additional armor, force wounded soldiers to live in decrepid conditions, and deny expansion of the GI bill. When the government is being overcharged here its you and I that are being screwed in the pooper.

These soldiers have taken it on the chin from this administration and continue to step up and volunteer to serve this country. It is a true testiment to the indominable spirit of the United States soldier.

More Fucking Earthquakes!

The last year leading up to the Olympics has taught us many things about China and reenforced some old lessons about what to expect from a one-party communist state. One thing in particular that China has had an unfortunate chance to display is their efficiency at disaster relief. As this article attest the Chinese don't fuck around when it comes to responding to a natural disaster. The real test comes in the long term aftermath where the response is measured in terms of how quickly life returns to normal for the residents of the disaster struck region. I don't foresee a state-run news outlet covering anything less than a complete victory.

We're gonna' shove our aid up your river delta!

I just read the most insane article regarding humanitarian aid I have ever seen. At first I thought that this must be from the Onion but it turns out this is not satire, this is from Time. Its from fucking Time! Christ on a fucking unicycle!



First paragraph; "How dare a foreign government exercise its sovereignty and refuse our great aid?"

Second paragraph; "If they won't accept our paltry hand-out we shall force it on them with violence!"




I sent them a little feedback. You have to believe me that I was trying my damndest not to sound like a crazy person but if you have read anything on this blog you already know how hard a time I have with that. Here is my editorial reply.





"The entire premise of this article seems like a thought that isn't even reasonable enough to rise to the surface of an intelligent person's mind. How did it become a Time article? The very idea that the U.S. should invade a country because they won't let us provide disaster relief to them is completely absurd. This is the kind of juvenile warmongering that one would expect from the far right of the blogosphere because it is too insane for Fox News. Just because a country is governed by evil men does not give us the right to violate their sovereignty."

War and Business as Usual

When one learns of phenomenal profits reaped by elected officials during their tenure, the typical reaction isn't necessarily one of disgust. However, when one learns that several officials personally profited off of W's decision to go to war, any American citizen who claims to 'support our troops' should be incensed. Incredibly, to belabor the point with an altogether morbid and tragic twist, the fact that 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, one is left simply flabbergasted.

Why, after all, should the voters attempt to disregard an individual's rational choice? If the decision is presented that one must vote against or otherwise hinder and impede a potentially illegal invasion of another country yet lose billions of dollars (and counting) in the process, or wave a flag and cash the checks, the voters should not expect much.

Clearly, many American politicians are in the business of war, but how much of this business is really in the public interest?

The Friday Bacon

Expert Testimony Powers, Activate!

I wish to preface what I am about to say by clarifying my position on Tasers and also preface that with this disclaimer, that the other contributers to this blog may not necessairly share my views.

I think the Tazer is a good and useful technology. I think it is a wonderful substitute for a gun or pepper spray for self defense, depending on your preference. If you feel threatened but don't want to kill anyone or are intimidated by a gun, then a less-lethal taser can give you a comprible amount of self defense in its ability to incapacitate. The Taser also has advantages over pepper spray because it is relatively contained and the effect is limited to the individual hit with the wires. With pepper spray you release a cloud of fine particles that can shift with the wind, cover your clothes, and should never be discharged indoors. I have accidentally pepper sprayed myself and being just as incapacitated as the person you are attempting to flee from is a ticket to disaster town. A taser is a weapon but is not a firearm and that legal distinction makes it far more practical as a person's self defense device since you can use them in more states and carry them across more state boundaries without fear of breaking the law. They are still subject to certain restrictions though.

My problem is not with the Taser devices. My problem is with the cops and thugs that use them as a weapon for torture.

Ohio is one of the few U.S. states where a judge may overrule the county coronor as to the cause of death on a death certificate. When the Summit county medical examiner ruled that three suspects had been murdered by police and that Tasers were partly responsible for the heart failure, Taser International sent is lawyers to Ohio to get a judge to change the record. yesterday they were successful.

I am not the least bit suprised that Taser International would use every means at their disposal to protect the reputation of their flagship product. Given the nature of how the devices tend to be used, I think they would appear to be better corporate citizens if they denounced misuse of their product by pointing out these are the actions of bad people and that their device does not have discretion as to who it electrocutes.

I see two odd clashes in the public statements of Taser International. They loudly proclaim their support for law enforcement. Cases like the one above lead to the assumption that this support of law enforcement goes beyond providing a useful tool to suport a necessary public institution, and actually extends to blind support of the individuals that wear the badge. Admititadly that is a bit of a strech. But it is hard to see this case as anything other than an interference with justice.

The second clash of policy with reality I see within Taser International is what I percieve as a sympathy for the arguments of the anti-gun lobby. It is commendable that Taser International takes every step possible to insure the safety of each of their devices. The instruction manuals are concise and effective, the models for civilian use are locked with a security code so only the person who purchased them can activate the device, they even sell a camera that attaches to the device that starts recording as soon as the safety is switched to the fire position so that there is video evidence that it was necessary to fire. It is admirable that Taser Interantional has chosen to go the extra mile in providing for the safe and proper operation of their products. This intersects with reality because the company and its devices cannot control when they are used. just like a firearms company cannot control when their guns will be used or who will get their hands on them. Once an object is sold it is beyond the control of the manufacturer. So the problem here is that while Taser International is not responsible for misuse of their devices by wicked cops or juvinile thugs, they inject themselves into these instances, insisting that their inanimate device that is beyond their control is incapable of being misused. My main point here is that the Tazer is a good and useful less-lethal alternative for self defense and law enforcement but Taser International needs a more mature and consistant public relations policy.

The Friday Bacon