Archives for July 2014

Is it just me? I only got this because, owing to flying airplane stuff, I get email alerts from my local peeps.

Hello everyone,

We have VIP movement in the area tomorrow in case you are flying. Please check the TFR’s and take caution.

Obama the Choom Master—probably with his Stupid Bitch in tow (that post is from 2007)—will be gracing our presence in their Public/Private B-747 tomorrow evening. Ever asked yourself why, since it’s “public property,” you couldn’t get within 100 yards of the thing—much less get a ride—even after a lifetime of paying your taxes, getting cancer, and it was your dying wish?

The answer, of course, is that it’s not “practical”—because then, everyone would want to be King, or minimally, graced by his presence—which is my point. Nobody ought ever be President. Or King. And nothing has changed in hundreds of years, materially. You are still a pawn subject, albeit with more stuff. Are you also a whore, whose mind can simply be bought with stuff and comforts?

Bread and Circuses, animals?

Our Presidents kills numbers of innocent folks around the world, and imprison numbers of domestic citizens over peaceful activities such as to make the Kings of the past blush so envious, they’d probably lock themselves up for 2 days and emerge with a very swollen member.

…So this is the state of The Land of the Free, now? If you intend on doing a Hundred Dollar Burger tomorrow (this is where you fly somewhere for lunch—uh, bikers do it too, only I think they call it the $100 coffee) just know: there’s an euphemism afoot. What do I mean by that? Remember when it went from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC? Well, VIP means: Very Important Person. Since you are more moral and upstanding than any President or King ever in the history of the planet—since I presume that you live your life in a voluntary, give-&-take dynamic with your fellow human animals the vast majority of the time, eschewing violence and force to get your way—doesn’t it seem ironic that you are not a Very Important Person…while those who kill, torture, and imprison the most are so Very Important? …Plus, you fly your own airplane if you got one…

What does that make you?

Is it that we live in this upside-down world where most people are just subjects, subject to domination by other humans, and that’s just the way it is? The VIPs used to be anointed by some things called sovereignty, The Divine Right of Kings, and whatnot. Since then, there’s this new App called Democracy. You get points for voting one way, and having the King do the other. Cool App. It’s amazing; because, while it’s wholly predictable, 0% of people who play it ever predict correctly. Now: that’s one killer, successful App. Best of all, it costs America, currently, about $1 Trillion in added National Debt, such that every person over the age of 18 gets to play it and be wrong every time, challenging them to play it again and again—because it’s NOT insane.

…President Barack Obama (and his Stupid Bitch) is scheduled to fly into San Francisco International Airport tomorrow for a short fundraising visit in the South Bay.

Obama is slated to arrive on Air Force One around 9 p.m. ahead of a Wednesday reception and luncheon to raise money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at the Los Altos Hills home of Judy and George Marcus.

George Marcus is the founder of the real estate brokerage firm Marcus & Millichap.

Other dignitaries expected at the 10:15 a.m. fundraiser include House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, and DCCC chairman Steve Israel.

According to an event invitation, ticket prices started at $10,000 for lunch and a photo with Obama. A $32,400 ticket includes entrance to a VIP reception, lunch and a photo.

Protesters supporting net neutrality plan to demonstrate outside the presidential visit between 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. Wednesday.

The group, organized by MoveOn.org, is urging Obama to support unrestricted, equal access to the Internet.

Organizers have said they are demanding Obama keep his promise to preserve the “open Internet” and publicly state that he supports the Federal Communications Commission treating the Internet as a public utility.

Net neutrality advocates have been rallying against FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to create a two-tiered system that would allow service providers to offer faster connection speeds for fee-paying content providers and a second, slower speed for others.

Obama will continue onto Los Angeles on an early Wednesday afternoon flight from SFO to end a three-day West Coast fundraising trip.

He will be in Seattle today before flying to the Bay Area.

At my old, getting cantankerous by the day, 53, I am really getting to loath privilege, per se.

I get treated like royalty by friends, family…everywhere I go. Somehow, I get away with writing scathing rebuke as you see in the foregoing while still being treated as I would like to treat most others. Golden Rule.

I’m but one anecdote, but I’ve been doing this for 22 years and have no intention of letting up.

Have you ever considered that when you read my balderdash and get a visceral rise that makes you uncomfortable—unless you either lash out at me, dismiss me, or whatever—that you simply lack my experience? Do you understand that when I see some of you doing that, I remember what it was like to think like that 20-30 years ago, and I’ve received judgement ever since, daily?

Do you live your one and only life in fear and trepidation over what others might think or feel? Do you recoil at the fear someone might have the temerity to JUDGE you? I judge people every day, and I’m anxious to take in the judgements of others, for 22 years, and it’s nearly daily. In this way, I get to practice the dialectic of Thesis –> Antithesis –> Synthesis. Those who judge and criticize me are ultimately far more valuable than those who applaud me.

After all, if there is a Heaven and Hell, I most assuredly want to go where all the cool cats are going to be. At least I’ll get lots of schooling on how I could have been cooler.

…My idea of eternal torture is waking up with an awful hangover every morning. It’s quite a lot better, in my view, than waking up and having to don robes, to go sit at the feet of some VIP in worship.

You may have noticed I’ve done a bunch of design stuff over the last few days.

But I wanted to change the header image, so finally got to it today. I think I have about 6 now, and they load up randomly. I’ll be adding more pictures-worth-a-thousand-words over time (do reloads or click different internal links to see what’s there now). Suggestions or submissions welcome…but I only work with images that are a minimum of 940px wide.

I’ve done it all myself, but one thing I’ve not been able to figure out is that I want to put the title and tagline above the header image, and in a single line. Same background color code as the menu (with white text), so that it sort of creates a boundary area above and below. Seems to me that all I need to do is apply padding of 30px or so to the header image, set background color, and go from there; but nothing I try works.

Anyone has tips, appreciated; or, if it’s more than off the cuff, I’m happy to PP some bucks.

Update: Thanks for the help. As you can see, I got steered in the right direction. Just a bit of custom CSS code did the trick.

Sorry to rain on your picnic, but America will never be a free country until hot dogs and buns come packaged in equal numbers.

So I must speak out.

It’s probably good they have holidays like this, in a bread and circuses kinda way. Religion isn’t the only placating, pacifying opiate of the masses.

Patriotism is second.

When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government.

― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

I quote another founder; but unlike Paine, a slaveholder.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It’s the only meaningful official American document, and it precedes the actual formation of the United States—somewhat distinct, though folks conflate the two all the time. Even that founding document is mostly a load of crap, easy to tear apart on moral grounds—just as Lysander Spooner tore apart the Constitution on both moral and logical grounds (No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority).

The true problem with the United States is that it has few critics of its foundational basis. I say that it’s quite no surprise that America is a fucking wreck now, because its foundation is such a flawed sham. Slaveholders waxing on about human freedom and independence. There should never be a reconciliation or “historical context” about any of it. They owned other people.

A good country, that does not make. Look around.

They were unqualified and thus, America is a fucking mess.

Via Wikipedia:

The Constitution of the United States was drafted in 1787, and included several provisions regarding slavery. Section 9 of Article I forbade the Federal government, from banning the “importation” of persons that an individual state’s laws considered “proper to admit” until January 1, 1808, though a tax of ten dollars each was allowed. Article V prohibited amending those portions of Section 9 before 1808. By prohibiting Federal banning of the slave trade for two decades, Article V effectively protected the trade until 1808, giving the States 20 years to resolve this issue. During that time, planters in states of the Lower South imported tens of thousands of slaves, more than during any previous two decades in colonial history.

As further protection for slavery, the delegates approved Section 2 of Article IV, which prohibited states from freeing slaves who fled to them from another state, and required the return of chattel property to owners.

In a section negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, Section 2 of Article I designated “other persons” (slaves) to be added to the total of the state’s free population, at the rate of three-fifths of their total number, to establish the state’s official population for the purposes of apportionment of Congressional representation and federal taxation. This increased the power of southern states in Congress for decades, affecting national policies and legislation. The planter elite dominated the southern Congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly 50 years.

Are Americans not the most brain-dead in the world, $17 Trillion in debt, and they’re still spending capital as though they just saved the world from Hitler and and an Emperor born of the sun.

Laf. America used to be 10 in the world for a while, in terms of economic freedom. Now it has slipped to like 14. Yea, laf at those commie-ass Democrats all you like, but flag-waving republicans are just as fuckatarded.

Finally:

The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America. Saw a short interview the other day with Frank Buckley, George Mason University law professor, and had to look into the book. It’s just so up alleys and I hope it become relevant. Still trying to decide whether to get it in hardcover or Kindle, but I suspect the former. If you do listen to that 5 minute interview, you just may get a sense that this is a very thoughtful man and you’d do good to take in what he has to say. I know I am.

Here’s the description:

This remarkable new book shatters just about every myth surrounding American government, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers, and offers the clearest warning about the alarming rise of one-man rule in the age of Obama.

Most Americans believe that this country uniquely protects liberty, that it does so because of its Constitution, and that for this our thanks must go to the Founders, at their Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.

F. H. Buckley’s book debunks all these myths. America isn’t the freest country around, according to the think tanks that study these things. And it’s not the Constitution that made it free, since parliamentary regimes are generally freer than presidential ones. Finally, what we think of as the Constitution, with its separation of powers, was not what the Founders had in mind. What they expected was a country in which Congress would dominate the government, and in which the president would play a much smaller role.

Sadly, that’s not the government we have today. What we have instead is what Buckley calls Crown government: the rule of an all-powerful president. The country began in a revolt against one king, and today we see the dawn of a new kind of monarchy. What we have is what Founder George Mason called an “elective monarchy,” which he thought would be worse than the real thing.

Much of this is irreversible. Constitutional amendments to redress the balance of power are extremely unlikely, and most Americans seem to have accepted, and even welcomed, Crown government. The way back lies through Congress, and Buckley suggests feasible reforms that it might adopt, to regain the authority and respect it has squandered.

I don’t care what happens to America. I don’t hope shit hits fan, but I suspect it will, eventually.

My #1 focus is getting myself to a freer country in the next 3-5 years.

My dream is to die a non-American.