Month: December 2011

Now For Something Uplifting

I apologize for making you guys suffer through my rant but to make up for it I have a nice story about anonymous people being awesome:

After a Good Samaritan helped her pay off the layaway bill she’d accumulated to buy Christmas gifts for her grandchildren, Lori Stearnes planned to collect her paycheck Friday and head to Kmart anyway.
Her new plan: Pay the stranger’s kindness forward by using the money she’d budgeted to instead support somebody else.

“It just gives you a warm feeling,” said Stearnes, 53, of Omaha. “… With all the things going on the world, just to have someone do that is so, I don’t know, it’s hard to put into words.”

At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents.

Fuck yeah. It’s always nice to read stories about people helping other people out without the coercive force of government being involved.

Fuck Rich Santorum

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I could bold the following text, I could italicize it, I could even put it in 24 point font but nothing could emphasis the words well enough to express my feelings. Fuck Rick Santorum. Seriously, fuck him.

It’s no secret that I hold zero love for any of the Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul. With the exception of Dr. Paul every moron in the race is a complete idiot devoid of any capacity for critical thought. Saying this I can also say they’re all better that Rick Santorum. Even crazy religious zealot Michelle Bachmann has moments where she makes some kind of sense.

Santorum’s entire police can be summed up as, kill all the brown people and gays. What a sanctimonious jackass. During last night’s debate he was practically jacking himself off because he got so excited about the prospect of bombing everybody in the Middle East, Central America, and South America. I’d be surprised if he didn’t orgasm on the spot when he started talking about bombing the fuck out of Iran, because what we really need right now with our eminent economic collapse, vast government corruption, and the ongoing destruction of civil liberties is another fucking war. Yeah, let’s do that.

Then you have his absolute hatred of homosexuals. He was ranting about how he would make it illegal for gays to marry and even ripped Romney apart for his unwillingness to do everything in his power to prevent gay marriage in Massachusetts. While I still have no fucking clue how the state every got involved in the concept of marriage in the first place I’m even more baffled by the fact that they get any say in defining marriage. Who cares if two people of the same sex want to get married? Who cares if one man wants to marry multiple women? Who cares if one woman wants to marry multiple men?

After listening to Santorum’s dumb ass ramble on about killing foreigners and hating on gays I’ve come up with an idea for a new reality television show. We sent Rick Santorum on a tour to gay bars throughout the Middle East. Before anybody brings it up, yes there are gay bars in the Middle Easy. There is a market and that market is being fulfilled whether openly or through the black market. Either way we sent him to these bars to converse with the locals and express his ideas an opinions and let hilarity ensure. I realize the length of this show will be short but that’s kind of the point.

Please Santorum, from the bottom of my heart, I urge you to drop out. Not just drop out of the president race but drop out of this country entirely. Just get the fuck out. We don’t need your war mongering homophobic ass here.

Fuck Rick Santorum.

Rant mode disengaged.

Mission Accomplished… Again

Have you heard? We’ve declared victory in Iraq… again! I guess we had so much time winning last time we’ve decided to relive the glory and declare our victory a second time:

The US Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, told troops the mission had been worth the cost in blood and dollars.

He said the years of war in Iraq had yielded to an era of opportunity in which the US was a committed partner.

Only about 4,000 US soldiers now remain in Iraq, but they are due to leave in the next two weeks.

All the troops are finally coming home, except for the paltry 15,000 that will be in our Vatican City sized Iraq embassy of course. I’m also betting that many of our troops in Iraq aren’t coming home but instead being redeployed to Afghanistan to prepare for our eventual invasion of Iran.

Seriously there’s so much damned doublespeak involved with our “exiting” Iraq that I can’t keep the meaning of some basic words straight anymore.

Ron Paul Calls for Criminal Charges Against Eric Holder

At least one person in Washington DC is still on the up and up. Ron Paul has officially come out and said Eric Holder should be criminally charged for his involvement in Fast and Furious:

Congress is currently investigating Fast & Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder has already been caught making at least one false statement under oath.

Gun rights advocates have been asking why Republicans aren’t calling for criminal charges against Eric Holder. Many have criticized FOX News for giving the story little coverage. CBS national news has been breaking most of the new details related to Fast & Furious. Recently Eric Holder yelled at a reporter at an event in DC. He blamed the media for public outrage over Fast & Furious, and told a reporter “you guys need to stop it.”

Today, Texas Congressman Ron Paul became the first GOP president candidate to call for criminal charges against Eric Holder.

Speaking to syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones, Paul called for Holder to be “immediately fired.” Paul went on to say “I think it was criminal,” and called the operation a “false flag.” He said that there needs to be an immediate investigation into Holder himself, and said Holder “deserves charges.”

Kudos to Ron Paul for demanding what nobody else has and brining up the fact that Fast and Furious was a false flag operation to advance gun control. Holder’s false flag operation has lead to the death of both American and Mexican citizens just so the current administration could fabricate a scenario to advocate for more gun control.

Nanny State Moving to Ban All Portable Electronic Use by Automobile Drivers

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Secretary Ray LaHood has been demanding a blanket ban on all cellphone usage by drivers, going so far as to advocate cell phone jammers be built-in to every automobile. Now things are heating up as NHTSA is officially pushing for a ban on all portable electronic usage, with the exception of GPS, while driving:

According to the NHTSA’s latest numbers, 3,092 people died in 2010 as the result of distracted driving, including talking on a cell phone or texting. While that number is down from 2009, when NHTSA reported 5,484 “distraction-related” traffic deaths, the numbers aren’t comparable because of a change in how the agency categorizes accidents. And despite laws in many states banning handheld cellphone use and texting while driving, a driver survey by NHTSA found that nearly half of drivers are still making calls from their phones, and 10 percent are still reading text messages.

Last year I analyzed NHTSA’s numbers and found their claims of cell phone usage increasing the rate of accidents to be entirely false:

Like I said if cell phone usage has been causing automobile accidents it should be noted on the total number of accidents yearly. The data published by the NHTSA goes from 1988 to 2008 which is what we’ll concern ourselves with. So how much have automobile accidents increased? Here’s the funny thing, they haven’t. In fact the number of accidents has been on a slight downward trend since 1988.

In 1988 the total number of automobile accidents was 6,887,000, in 1990 it was 6,471,000, in 1995 it was 6,699,000, in 2000 it was 6,394,000, in 2005 it was 6,159,000, and finally in 2008 it was 5,811,000. It seems the only correlation that exists between the increase in cell phone subscribers and automobile accidents is a slight downward trend (which I’m absolutely not implying is causality).

Inevitably this is where somebody will point out the reason for the downward trend are laws banning cell phone usages while driving. The problem is that isn’t true. From what I’ve been able to find the first law banning cell phone usage while driving was enacted in New York in 2001. The downward trend in automobile accidents has been going on since the late ’80′s at the very least. If the downward trend was occurring before the first law banning cell phone usage while driving was enacted that indicate a third party reason. In fact a recent study confirms exactly what I’m saying.

It’s nice when I’ve written so many posts that I can simply reference previous posts to explain a point. The bottom line is automobile accidents have been on the decline since, at least, the 1980s while the first law banning cell phone usage in automobiles wasn’t passed until 2001 meaning a third factor must be playing into the dropping accident rate. Banning the use of all personal electronics by drivers is nothing but knee-jerk nanny state malarkey. Stupid people do stupid things and passing a law banning the use of portable electronics by drivers isn’t going to fix anything (but will give the state more money in the form of citations and tickets which is probably the real reason behind this push).

If this passes people like myself will no longer even be able to use portable MP3 players to play music in their vehicle. As with most government regulations this one is entirely reactionary to a non-existing problem and has numerous unintended consequences.

Gary Johnson Running for Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee and I Don’t Blame Him

Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson has announced his intentions to run as a Libertarian Party candidate instead

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson will drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination and instead seek to run as a Libertarian, according to the Independent Political Report.

The switch, which has been rumored for weeks, is set to be announced Tuesday.

I don’t blame him, the Republican Party has treated him shittier than they’ve been treating Ron Paul. Johnson has only been invited to two of the debates as far as I know and gets not mention anywhere. At least the Libertarian Party will let Johnson speak and now they won’t have to relegate themselves to running a former spook like Bob Barr.

Obama Was Just Kidding About Vetoing the National Defense Authorization Act

Remember when Obama said he was going to veto the National Defense Authorization Act? Well he was just kidding:

President Obama has dropped his threat to veto the 2012 defense authorization bill after his advisers concluded that revised provisions about detainees would not harm national security.

The new “language does not challenge or constrain the president’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Emphasis mine. I wanted to bring emphasis to his reasoning for threatening a veto. Yesterday I said he had less than noble intentions when he threatened to veto but now we see what those intentions are. Obama was simply pissed because he thought the new language was going to strip him of some precious tyrannical power. Now that he’s sure his ability do whatever the fuck he wants to American citizens is secured he’s more than happy to pass the bill.

More Fear Mongering by the Department of Homeland Security

The federal government never stops with the fear mongering. They likely realize that if those of us residing in the United States don’t remain fearful we’ll be less likely to surrender our civil liberties and money peacefully. This time the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is claiming Al Qaeda is planning to sew bombs into people:

That’s right: Al-Qaida wants to surgically implant bombs into people. Or so the government claims.

Not that there’s an imminent threat, says the Department of Homeland Security. Or a surgery bomb plot that’s been foiled at the last stitch. No, this was just an “aspirational” terror plan – one that the government is now ever-so-conveniently leaking.

[…]

Supposedly, this fantastical story is based on “new intelligence,” Reuters reports. And we’ve been told by people in position to see such information — who wouldn’t talk on the record — that this is more than just a page from the last Batman script.

What was the source of this “new intelligence?” Bruce Schneier explains:

Actually, not really. This is an “aspirational” terrorist threat, which basically means that someone mentioned it while drunk in a bar somewhere.

What’s next? Perhaps DHS can pilfer the Moonraker script for their next round of fear mongering, then they could have Al Qaeda in space!

The Real Reason Obama is Threatening to Veto the National Defense Authorization Act

Obama has been threatening to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a section that will authorize indefinite detention of anybody accused of being linked to terrorism in any way. His supporters are pointing to this threat as proof of Obama’s willingness to defend the rights of American citizens. Unfortunately, for all of us, that’s not true. How can I make this claim? Easy, his administration were the ones that asked language in section 1031, the section authorizing indefinite detention, exempting American citizens be removed. Don’t take my word for it, let Senator Carl Levin explain [MP3].

If Obama gave a crap about civil rights he would have been demanding the language remain in the bill. Knowing he demanded the language be removed it’s obvious there is an ulterior motive for threatening a veto and it most likely isn’t benevolent.

Even though there were videos of this speech floating around they have apparently been removed from YouTube (I found four instances of the video, all were said to be removed by the user when I tried to view them). Thankfully I was able to find a copy of the speech on No Agenda Show Notes. The copy I linked to is from there but uploaded to my server so as not to waster their bandwidth unnecessarily.