Month: September 2011

Shitty Situations

File this story under sad but amusing. The Metro Narcotics Agency in Las Cruces, New Mexico forced a woman with no criminal history to submit to a cavity search. After having a hand shoved up her ass and nothing being found the woman was then billed for the pleasure:

A Las Cruces woman has been charged $1,122 by a local hospital for a forcible body cavity search ordered by the Metro Narcotics Agency that did not turn up any illegal substances.

She is now asking the county to pay her hospital bill.

Ultimately the Narcotics Agency footed the bill but not until the woman took the case to court. Why the Agency didn’t pay the bill as soon as nothing was found is beyond me but then again how the government can force you to submit to a cavity search is also beyond me.

Glock Begins Program to Swap Out Gen4 Recoil Springs

Since the release of the Gen4 Glock 17 there have been a great number of reliability complaints. I’ve seen some of this first hand with my Gen4 Glock 17. Although it functions flawlessly in my hands it’s a regular jam-o-matic when a smaller person tries to use it. After long last Glock has finally issued notice that they are swapping recoil springs free of charge.

Republican Candidate Debate Roundup

Last night I had the… opportunity… to partake in watching the Republican Presidential Debate with a surprisingly large group of awesome people. First of all let me sum up the debate in one sentence: everybody on the stage besides Ron Paul was a fucking idiot.

Now that my bias is out there for all to see let me talk briefly about the debate. First of all as per the usual Ron Paul was mostly ignored during the debate. He was asked something around four questions, none of which were asked of other candidates and all of which were loaded. For example the inquisitors guys with the questions asked all the candidates if they would keep Ben Bernanke as the head of the Federal Reserve then they asked Ron Paul why he hated children (technically they worded the question around welfare to which Dr. Paul answered that such things were the responsibility of each individual state because he actually read the Constitution).

General consensus of my group was that Michelle Bachmann looked like a vampire. I believe bets were taken at some point on whether or not she would turn into a bat and fly away at the conclusion of the debate.

Gary Johnson performed admirably… wait he wasn’t invited because he’s one of the very few people who the media hate more than Ron Paul (or Ron Paul is simply too popular and the media knows there is no way to silence him completely at this point).

Romney was on the war path yet again. If he had his way we’d storm over to the Middle East and kill every man, woman, and child there which would then be followed by the construction of a huge palace as a testament to the greatness of the American war machine and as a warning to the rest of the world to submit or die.

I have no idea why Huntsman was there considering the percentage of votes he’s not been receiving in recent straw polls. The same can also be said of Herman Cain but at least he’s kind of entertaining on stage. Santorum was there but for the life of me I can’t remember anything memorable that he did.

Finally we have Rick Perry. Perry was an interesting person to watch in last night’s debate because I’m pretty sure he just had Ron Paul’s books sitting up on his podium for his notes. It’s amazing that a man who issued an executive order to force 12 year-old girls to be injected with Gardasil after being lobbied by large pharmaceutical companies all of the sudden has a message of liberty.

The debate was concluded by asking each candidate (except Gary Johnson of course, because he’s not cool enough to be invited to the party) what they would do about illegal immigration which is where Ron Paul made the most memorable statement of the night. With the exception of Ron Paul I think each candidate supported building a giant demilitarized zone fence between the United States and Mexico. Ron Paul was the only candidate to bring up the fact that a fence used to keep people out can also be used to keep people in. That was a brilliant observation considering the tyrannical direction this country keeps continuing towards. My biggest problem with the idea of building a fence between American and any other country is the fact that it could be used in the same manner as the Berlin Wall.

On a final note I think a new debate rule should be put into place for future Republican debates. From here on out each candidate should only be allowed to play the Reagan card three times during a debate. Seriously, after last night I’m thoroughly convinced that a great number of Republicans believe Reagan died on the cross of our sins. Once again Ron Paul was the only person that had enough balls to say Reagan’s message was good but the results of his presidency were not (massive deficit spending after preaching fiscal conservatism for instance).

Tips For New Bloggers

Did starting a blog suddenly become the in thing to do? I’m asking this because several of my friends have started their own blogs within the last few months and one of them actually believes he’s going to make money on his writing endeavor. Although I feel my friend’s profit seeking mission will end only in failure I thought I’d try to help him out as well as any other new bloggers out there. In this post I will post my findings and observations as far as blogging is concerned.

First let me explain why those getting into blogging should take what I say about blogging seriously.

1. I’ve been blogging for a couple of years.
2. I’m now raking in thousands of dollars off of this site.
3. Respectable companies now give me products to review and look forward to my findings.
4. As you can see I’m an expect on webpage design.
5. My opinions are respected throughout the world due to this very site.

OK so only one of those five things is actually true (hint: the first one). But I believe blogging for a couple of years is as much as you can hope for when it comes to blogging credentials. These are my tips for making a successful blog.

Nobody cares about your personal life. Let’s just get that out of the way right now. Unless you’re a fucking Navy SEAL nobody is going to read a website that consists primarily of posts about your personal life. The reason for this is simple; your life is boring. Although there is no problem with slipping in some information related to your personal life once in a while it shouldn’t make up a majority of your posts unless your goal is to have a readership that is mostly made up of friends and family.

Update regularly. If you want people to visit your website then you need to give them a reason. Somebody who updates his website a couple of times a month isn’t likely to develop a reader base beyond the size of that local communist newsletter put out by the liberal arts student working in the basement at the A/V department of your college. My goal is to write a bear minimum of four new posts every weekday although I strive for more. This gives my meager readership something to come to my site for beyond the giant checks I send them to artificially inflate my numbers (note: if you’re not currently receiving a check then you’re not in the club and you’re not getting in so don’t ask). Overall I think this is the most important thing when creating a blog.

Express your opinion on the topics you write about. I know a lot of people complain that news in this country is too biased. Have you have stopped to ask yourself why such biases exist? It’s because nobody wants to watch, read, or listen to completely unbiased news. If you want to understand what unbiased news would be like pick up a scientific research paper and read through it; that’s as close to an unbiased news sources as you’re going to get and it’s damned boring. When people just want the news they can go get it elsewhere, when people want an opinion they turn to blogs. Be outspoken about your opinion because that’s what runnings a news sources is all about, just ask Benjamin Franklin.

Have fun. Seriously your blog shouldn’t exist to make money but for your personal amusement. If you aren’t having fun then you’re not going to update regularly and you’ll never establish a consistent readership base. Without a consistent reader base you’ll never be able to brag about the size of your e-penis which is really the only reason anybody posts anything on the Internet.

Don’t listen to other bloggers. Yup I made you wade through that entire series of text just to close by saying that you shouldn’t listen to me. Why is that? Because only you know what you want to do. Your blog should be fun for you and that means doing what you want to do. I’m also well aware of the fact that I’m an asshole, there’s no need to let me know.

Meta Censorship

South Korea seems to be a bastion of free speech these days:

In South Korea, even the censors are being censored. Professor K.S. Park, who sits on South Korea’s nine-member Internet content regulatory board, has found his own blog under threat of censorship when he used it as platform to speak out for transparency and free expression.

Did you get that? Even the censors are being censored. That’s about a meta as you can get without being censored in South Koera.

If anybody can read this blog in South Korea let me know because I’ll have to step up efforts to get on their censor list. It’s not because I don’t want people from South Korea reading my blog, it’s because I want to get on as many government lists as possible around the world.

The Graphics Suck

Jay shows us a very classy new video game called Tea Party Zombies Must Die. The objective of the game is to walk around and kill zombified versions of… I guess supposed tea party members although I’m not sure when Bill O’Reilly started being considered a member of the tea party.

I have to say the effort put into this game is so half-assed that it’s depressing. Here’s some advice for those out there who want to make a game around a political message, just write a mod for a popular existing game. Tea Party Zombies Must Die has shitty graphics and the gameplay is more repetitive than an infinite loop. The creators of this game could have made something awesome (in other words fun to play) by writing a Left 4 Dead mod or something along those lines. Instead they put out a shitty Flash game with no replay value.

I Wouldn’t Put it Past the IRS

I think I’ll present this with very little comment:

Imagine this scenario: The IRS may soon just do your taxes for you — and send you the bill.

If this sounds farfetched, it’s not.

With a new congressional “super committee” tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in cuts by November, creative ways to find additional revenue are in high demand. And allowing the IRS to prepare you taxes could be one solution.

The idea has been around for a while, but has been picking up steam in recent years. In 2006, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) argued it would close a $345 billion annual difference between what the government believes taxpayers owe them and what the IRS actually collects, which he calls the “tax gap.”

No possibility of a conflict of interest there. That was sarcasm in case it was missed.

Success As Defined By the State

If you spent a bunch of money to violate the rights of motorists by setting up and manning DUI checkpoints what would you define as success? According to the agents of the state in Salt Lake City checking 2,000 cars and finding 0 drunks constitutes success:

UHP Sgt. Ted Tingey said in two spots, officers found no drunk drivers out of approximately 1,000 vehicles that came through each checkpoint.

“It’s a great opportunity to see that people maybe finally are getting the message to either have a designated driver, take a taxi ride home, or call a sober friend to come pick them up,” he said.

Or it could be that the drunks know where your checkpoints are and take an alternate route. But that’s OK because violating 2,000 peoples’ rights is fine so long as one drunk is caught… even if they haven’t caught a drunk yet… so they tell me.

Checkpoints are another way for the state to accuse you of a crime they have no evidence of. They turn everybody entering these checkpoints into de facto criminals where innocence must be proven as opposed to guilt. It’s another example of the state shitting all over due process.

If Your Right Requires the Labor of Another It’s Not a Right

Everybody repeat after me, “If the labor of another is required to provide your right then it’s not a right.” California is looking once again to prove itself as the looniest state in the Union by making home ownership a protected right:

California could ban lender-initiated home foreclosures, under a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would make home ownership a fundamental right.

Initiative 11-0014 could appear on the ballot in November 2012, if supporters submit more than 800,000 voter signatures necessary to qualify the measure.

You can read the text of initiative 11-0014 but I think the following piece sums it up:

Makes home ownership fundamental right. Prohibits lenders from foreclosing
on California citizen’s personal home. Requires lenders to assist California borrowers not paying on home loans due to financial hardship or illness. Requires lenders to reduce home loan principal to reflect drop in local property value i fmore than 10 percent, and to reschedule payments, reduce interest rates, and/or refinance without new credit review. Requires lenders to refinance home loans a t minimum cost within 45 days of request i f loan has been maintained for three years. Provides back property tax assistance to homeowners.

First of all you can’t infringe on a right to own property if you don’t, you know, own the property. What is proposed is so full of cognitive dissonance that it would make the head of a logical person literally explode if they attempt to make sense of it. First of all if you have a loan on your home then it’s not your home. Let’s look at what a mortgage is, it’s a loan that is backed by real physical property. That is to say you give the title of some property to a person giving out loans and they take it as collateral. When you take out a mortgage you are saying, “I promise to pay back my loan and if I fail to do so I relinquish the ownership of my property to you.”

Until you pay back the loan you are not the owner of that property. A mortgage is an exchange of ownerships rights; the entity giving the loan exchanges the right of ownership of a sum of money for the right of ownership of the collateral. Until the loan is paid back with any contractually agreed to interest the entity who gave the loan is the owner of the property. Thus what this initiative proposes is impossible because it’s claiming to protect the “right of home ownership” by pissing all over the right of ownership.

That’s just one glaring problem with this initiative. The other glaring problem is the fact that it is trying to declare something a right that requires the labor of another to provide. A right to property means you have a right to ownership over legitimately obtained property not a right to be provided property by another. The difference between the two is huge. For instance I can’t have a right to own a home unless I can build the entire home myself of materials I can entirely produce myself. If my “right” requires action from another either that right isn’t a right or I get to declare select people as slaves. The same logic applies to healthcare, unless you can provide your own healthcare you can’t claim a right to it.

If I can homestead or purchase a property, extract the raw resources needed to build a home form that homesteaded of purchased property, refine those materials into a state usable to build a home, and then build a home entirely of those materials by myself then I can claim a right to it. On the other hand a failure to perform any of the following procedures means that I must rely on another to provide a link in the chain of home ownership and thus can declare no right to owning that type of property.

You have no right to owning a home but you do have a right to the ownership of your labor because you are a self-owner. That means you can exchange your labor for a home but you can’t demand somebody provide you a home outside of a voluntarily agreed to (by both parties) exchange. That’s why a right to ownership of your labor doesn’t translate into a right to own specific types of property.

I’m not sure how so much stupid was written on paper. It baffles me that somebody unable to see the cognitive dissonance in this bill is able to read or write.

Shut Up Peasant

Remember slave, defiance of the government will not be tolerated:

More than 200 people were arrested outside the White House Saturday following two weeks of protests directed at President Obama in an effort to persuade him to deny final permitting of a controversial 1,661-mile pipeline that would carry oil from Alberta, Canada, to Port Arthur, Tex.

The arrests follow more than 1,000 arrests made since protesters arrived in late August to conduct sit-ins along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Those damned people peacefully assembling to demonstrate their opposition to something the government is proposing! How dare they defy the will of the government! Don’t they know there are procedures in place to contact “representatives” to voice opposition? After all it’s much easier to ignore the peasantry when they’re sending letters and making phone calls than it is when they’re physically in front of the White House yelling.