Month: May 2010

  • Remembering the price of freedom

    There are a lot of good Memorial Day posts and this one quotes Reagan’s 1986 “Price of Freedom” speech, and has a sad photographic reminder that not everyone “celebrates” Memorial Day. It’s a day simply to remember those who gave their lives for this country. Traditionally, American presidents go to Arlington Cemetery for the Arlington…

  • What good are friends if they don’t hold your feet to the fire?

    Thaddeus McCotter is a congressman from a neighboring district, and I saw him speak at a Tea Party rally in Plymouth on April 15. I have a video of some of his speech somewhere, and were I better organized I could upload it which I found and uploaded to YouTube so readers can judge for…

  • King Canute is in over his head — a mile deep!

    A lot of ink has been spilled over the fact that a lot of oil has been spilled — and continues to be spilled — into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. President Obama was here in Ann Arbor not long after the explosion, and he said…

  • Why can’t I own my own stuff?

    Much as I have been enjoying Linux, one of the biggest hassles I have had (more in some distros, and less in others) has been in the video streaming department. I previously discussed the Flashplayer problem, and a way to work around it, but the main reason for these problems is not technology per se,…

  • Tom Ligon At Balticon

    Details here. Tom announced his presence here: I’ll be giving one of the opening talks at the Balticon Science Fiction Convention this Friday, May 28, at 9 PM, near Baltimore, MD. This will be an updated version of the talk I’ve given before. I won’t have any earth-shattering news, but I will have my recently-overhauled…

  • DISCLOSE my ass!

    Congressman Tom Price has a piece about HR 5175, the so-called DISCLOSE Act. This is the Democrats’ retaliation for the Citizens United case, which ruled that there is still a First Amendment right to produce political films and held McCain-Feingold unconstitutional. Apparently, though, they want to get tough on bloggers and make them register and…

  • Confidential Doctor-patient relationship? Or suspect criminal conspiracy?

    In the Drug War front, the situation in Mexico may have become completely uncontrollable, but not to worry! Our drug enforcement agents are continuing to launch raids on doctors in this country and charge them with overprescribing pain meds. The legal system being the way it is, a charge of overprescribing now translates into racketeering,…

  • Weird fetishism for the Constitution

    In a post about the police raid in which a 7 year old girl was accidentally shot by an officer, I missed a horrifying detail which makes the incident more egregious. The SWAT team fired a flashbang grenade into the room in which the girl was sleeping. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the building…

  • How Many Has She Tricked?

    Why do beautiful women get cheated on so much? “Beautiful women are prey to men who want to use their beauty to elevate their own status. Because of their beauty they’re used to being adored, and they are flattered by guys who go completely goo goo for them,” explains relationship expert, Dr. Gilda Carle, who…

  • And they can’t be fired!

    Here’s an incident epitomizing the stubborn bureaucratic recalcitrance which has the most of the country in a deathlock and which fuels the Tea Party Movement. A notorious (and famously incompetent) Philadelphia principal who presided over the racist attacks on Chinese students — and who was found not even to be properly credentialed to be a…

  • “This incident will be reported.”

    Nothing like getting a good morning scolding — especially from an operating system. All I did was enter a very simple command sudo fdisk -l Which is only supposed to read the fdisk output (showing the layout of the hard drive). Anyway, because poor little Eric wasn’t logged in as root (even though I am…

  • Outraged over outrage itself!

    Back from a well-deserved vacation, Glenn Reynolds said this: It’s amazing, though, how much more relaxed I am when I’m not being exposed to the latest outrage on the Internet . . . . That made me feel less crazy. Sometimes it feels like being online means round-the-clock exposure to constant “latest outrages.” And there…

  • Free Book

    Ed Driscoll notes that J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night is available for free download. “Just look at TV news or read a newspaper,” Schulman said. “Plot point after plot point is identical. In my 1979 novel I have General Motors go bankrupt — General Motors then files for bankruptcy. I have Europe issue a common…

  • Family Feud

    There is a Drug War going on in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. As you might expect, it is not going well. CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico– Authorities battling drug traffickers in this violent border city have begun to suspect that their efforts to impede the flow of drugs into the U.S. has fostered demand–and turf wars–on their own…

  • when tales become narratives, look out!

    In a comment to an earlier post, commenter Gringo said, I like hearing your computer tales. Talk about asking for it. If it’s tales you want, it’s tales you’ll get! So onto the latest tales. I have now installed and tried out innumerable Linux distributions in various old computers, and thanks to the tricky but…

  • Revisionist History

    More video: Glenn Beck Part 2 Glenn Beck Part 3 Glenn Beck Part 4 Books mentioned: George Washington’s Sacred Fire New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • The Narrative People

    Last night I watched a movie about Rwandan genocide that made me sick. Especially the scene showing hapless UN soldiers who had been ordered to withdraw being confronted by the doomed Tutsis they refused to protect. The Tutsis were already surrounded by gleeful Hutus waving machetes while gloating in anticipation. One Tutsi leader begged a…

  • A Republican You Can Believe In

    H/T Vanderleun at American Digest Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • Rand Paul on the CRA

    Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths? Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part–and this is the hard part about believing…

  • Matt Barber and Andrew Sullvan care deeply about your sexual desires!

    Looks like it’s “I TOLD YOU SO” time. In a post not long ago, I noted that gay activist busybodies and anti-gay busybodies both share a similar mindset where it comes to privacy in matters of human sexual freedom. They don’t like it: There are gay activist busybodies who don’t believe in leaving people alone,…