12.11.06 - I Don't Buy Stuff From Slave Owners

I saw a very nice SKS rifle at a gunshop this weekend. And very reasonably priced too, ($149 USD). But I didn't buy it though. See, Norinco, the (so-called) People’s Republic of China state arsenal’s commercial entity, manufactured it. I have no problem with buying ex-Soviet or former Warsaw Pact state arsenal surplus weapons and ammo. But I won't buy anything from a current slave state. I'm funny that way. I'd even buy an ex-Nazi weapon if it was a good value and I needed or wanted to buy it. But not from a current slave state.
No way.

L. Neil Smith and some others suggested a boycott of Smith & Wesson, Ruger and some other US gunmakers who weaseled for public relations and political reasons and supported the Brady Law, Assault Weapons and High Capacity magazine bans. Why reward such weaseling eh? And LNS had a good point. I kind of feel the same way. I am not gonna buy from some Commie state commercial entity just to get a better deal when I could get one from a former commie liberal democracy, even ones as tainted as Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria are.

Call me strange, but I just won't do it.

12.06.06 Cultural Snobbery & its Enablers

Reading this short article sure opened my eyes about the effects of ideology in the marketplace for ideas

Thomas DiLorenzo wrote:

"Shortly before his excellent book Bully Boy, a biography of Teddy Roosevelt, was published my friend Jim Powell emailed me that something called 'Publishers Weekly' had attempted a 'preemptive strike' on the book by slandering it on Amazon.com. The obvious objective of this attack was to try to stifle sales before the book was even released.

I had noticed this outfit before and thought it very odd that it often has the very first comments about newly-published books on Amazon.com and other book sites, yet the comments are all anonymous. Who are these people, and why do book sellers give them such a prominent place?

Searching the internet, I discovered that its anonymous 'reviews' (which are actually catty little diatribes) are distributed to hundreds of publishers, libraries, and booksellers. The editor-in-chief of this shadowy operation is one Sara Nelson, formerly of Glamour and Self magazines, those pinnacles of American intellectual rigor and serious scholarship.

It is well known that the commercial publishing industry in America, like universities, Hollywood, and so many other institutions, is almost totally dominated by liberals and leftists. So much so that it was newsworthy a few years ago when Random House established a division (Crown Forum) that would publish conservative books, as did a division of Penguin Publishing. Before that, only Regnery Publishing was known to publish conservative or libertarian books on a regular basis. So it was big news when, all of a sudden, there were three – out of hundreds – of commercial publishers that would not automatically censor manuscripts submitted by conservatives or libertarians."

Go figure! I wrote something along those lines myself on this blog a few days ago in re podcasts noting the snotty reaction non-mainstream culture critics express toward writings that conflict with their core beliefs, whether they make good points or not.

12.05.06 - A Local Soldier Comes Home in a Flag Covered Box

US Army 2nd Lt. Emily Perez, West Point's First Female Grad Killed in Iraq, is Laid to Rest

Nothing brings the consequences of our wars abroad home like these kinds of events. A nice local kid (age 20) returned home from his deployment in Iraq in a flag-covered box. Dead of course. He was not a Pat Tillman or a famous West Point grad or anything "special," so don't expect a NY Times story about him in the national media. But he was a smart, handsome young stud, a star athlete in the local Catholic high school league and made the honor roll every semester. Why he chose to enlist in the US Army instead of going to college or something better than enlisting, I'll never know.

I met him a few times and I see his grandmother frequently at the neighborhood gas station. The local newspaper is full of letters to the editor about what a great kid he was and what potential he had. The common themes of these letters are that "he died for his country" and "this is the price we pay for being free," ad nauseum. Whatever.

In this rural part of Michigan I inhabit now people are very pro-Bush, pro-war, and solidly Republican. And yet it these people that seem to bear the impact of the War Party's bloodletting personally. That is to say with the flesh and blood of their own children. I have to believe that this viewpoint is some sort of psychological defense mechanism people use in order to justify the unjustifiable to themselves.

They pay in other ways for Bushism too. W's Social Darwinian corporate welfare policies have cost Michigan more jobs than any other state in America; paying your bills and keeping a roof over your head becomes steadily more difficult here. And yet they vote GOP cuz it's "pro-life" or for similar social policy issues. Go figure?

Thomas Franks wrote a book a few years back asking the same questions that I'm pondering now. Why do people knowingly and consciously support politicians that do their level best to degrade their well-being, ruin the economy, kill and injure people far from our shores, and get their own children killed and injured in doing so? Why indeed?

12.02.06 Some Paranoid Rumblings

Is this rifle and others like it about to be banned?

Rumor has it (from the usual suspects), that the new Democratic majority in Congress will again pass an Assault Weapon & High Capacity Magazine Ban into law. And this one won't expire or sunset like the old one did in 2004.

Cobbling together a majority to pass this vampire-like measure (that some of us thought it was dead!) with the help of "moderate" Republicans and "common-sense" but ostensibly pro-Second Amendment Dems likely won't be that difficult, eh? Especially given the opportunism and the fecklessness of the Bush Administration. WTF, Bush doesn't have to face the voters again, so who cares if gun owners and the NRA are pissed if he can trade a sign-off on a new AWB for something he really cares about? Bush might veto such a law, but then again he might not. But why take the chance? Hit your local gun show and stock up now folks! Word to the wise.

12.02.06 Not Everyone Agrees with My Take on the Boston Tea Party

Police Decry Web Site Naming Narks & Informants
I bet they do.(Associated Press)



Not Everyone Agrees with My Take on the Boston Tea Party
To each his own.(Anarchism.net)

What's the Coolest Thing You've Ever Built?
Short list: Time machine, dead cat catapults, grocery conveyors. Hilarious. (via Slashdot.org)

Never Mind Your Credit Score, What's Your ATS Rating?
"The DHS Automated Targeting System (ATS) is used to create threat ratings for travelers based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and various other information, including data on where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered." (The Shadowmonkey blog)

Third World $100 Laptop to Retail for $450 in US
Go figure. (Beat the Press blog)

Killing Habeas Corpus
"In habeas-corpus proceedings, the government is required to bring a prisoner—the body—before a judge and provide a legal rationale for his continued imprisonment." The GOP controlled lame duck congress' parting gift to national security. (The New Yorker)

The Muses (2003)

Journey from 'Nebraska'
"How an artist who restricted his canvases to the basic elements of shape, light, and color developed over the next forty years into the one who painted The Muses is one of the great stories of American art in our time(...)"
(New York Review of Books)

EP078: The Shoulders of Giants
"The Pioneer Spirit was a colonization ship; it wasn’t intended as a diplomatic vessel. When it had left Earth, it had seemed important to get at least some humans off the mother world. Two small-scale nuclear wars—Nuke I and Nuke II, as the media had dubbed them—had already been fought, one in southern Asia, the other in South America. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Nuke III, and that one might be the big one.
SETI had detected nothing from Tau Ceti, at least not by 2051. But Earth itself had only been broadcasting for a century and a half at that point; Tau Ceti might have had a thriving civilization then that hadn’t yet started using radio. But now it was twelve hundred years later. Who knew how advanced the Tau Cetians might be?"

A short story podcast from EscapePod.com/

Why Do the Words "freedom" or "liberty" Make People Roll their Eyes?

Remember the Name of this National Landmark, Anyone?

I was listening to a Radio Free Liberty podcast in a coffeehouse in a medium sized mid-Michigan college town near where I live earlier today. I had the volume down, but it was still audible beyond the close immediate area near my table. (And no, I wasn't using the earbuds).

It seemed as if every one of the upscale college and professional types who encountered my podcast and who asked me what I was listening to had a greatly diminished opinion thereafter, and usually did the "eye-roll" thing as well, when I told them it was a podcast from “Radio Free Liberty.com”. It seems that the mainstream media has so inculcated these sheep with the idea that anyone or anything that upholds, supports, and advocates for liberty is now viewed as some sort of off-the-wall extremist nutcake.

Have the American people become so cowed and fearful that most of them find the very thing that is best about American culture is now seen as a shameful thing that embarrasses them to even have mentioned?

Well, not completely. About dozen or so scruffy lookin' types (i.e. non-white collar, non-university types, in other words real people) asked for RFL’s web address. They must have been sincere too, because most wrote it down.

More Airport Security

A "sanitized for public viewing" example of what TSA screeners will see. The actual image is much clearer and shows more details.

This new technology is creepy. But it will probably prove somewhat useful and it is certainly less embarrassing than being patted down and frisked or being told to undress and be searched in a public area.

As for the shills selling this technology to the TSA and others, well their disclaimers go like this:

“[The] TSA said the X-rays will be set up so that the image can be viewed only by a security officer in a remote location. Other passengers, and even the agent at the checkpoint, will not have access to the picture.

In addition, the system will be configured so that the X-ray will be deleted as soon as the individual steps away from the machine. It will not be stored or available for printing or transmitting, agency spokesman Nico Melendez said.”

Not yet anyway. And how long do you think it’ll be before Britny Spears’, Lindsey Lohan’s, Brad Pitt’s, and other persons of interest to the tabloids x-ray scans make their way onto the pages and websites of the yellow press? Given the potencial financial rewards now made possible to the low paid TSA drudges, not very long, I’m thinking.

The more troubling aspect is what will happen when shopping mall security types, local cops, and other dubious sorts get their hands on this technology? Nothing good I fear. As with most of this stuff, for every person caught trying to enter a courthouse or airport with a knife or bomb they'll be many, many more of us who get "caught" wearing a truss or leg brace, wig or toupee, with a dildo, pocket knife, or some other embarrassing but private, and wholly legal, item. Not to mention "suspicious items" that will require more scutiny. But now the whole wide-world will know about it and have hard copy and digital images to bandy about, too. Creepy.