Month: February 2012

It’s Presidents Day

Today is Presidents Day and in honor of the holiday I think we should all take a moment and reflect on what the President really is:

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat.

The presidency – by which I mean the executive State – is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community.

The presidency is nothing less than a dictator whom wields almost limitless power through the issuance of executive orders. If a president wishes to round up a bunch of people and toss them into concentration camps he must only issue the executive order. Is a citizen of the country giving the state headaches? No problem, just order his execution! What is a president to do with a country he doesn’t like? Go to war without even consulting Congress. Speaking of Congress, what is a president to do if they pass a law he doesn’t approve of? Ignore it.

We shouldn’t be celebrating the presidency, we should be condemning it. This country was founded on the ideas of personal liberty, an idea that has been entirely stomped on by every president that has taken office. Yes, even George Washington.

The FBI Stops Another Agency Created Terrorist

It’s a good thing we have the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) out there creating terrorists to fight, otherwise the American populace wouldn’t have fear stricken into their hearts. Last week the FBI “stopped” a plot that could have ended with nobody being hurt:

A man has been arrested near the US Capitol building as part of an anti-terror investigation, US officials say.

Amine El Khalifi, 29, of Alexandria, Virginia was taken into custody by the FBI.

Officials told US media the man thought he was heading to carry out a suicide attack on the Washington DC building, home to the US Congress.

Why do I say nobody would have been hurt? Because the FBI supplied “explosives” were inactive:

He carried a vest he thought was packed with explosives, reports said, but had in fact been supplied and made harmless by undercover agents.

“Explosives the suspect allegedly sought to use in connection with the plot had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public,” a spokesman for the US Justice Department said.

Hell the FBI didn’t even let him get as far as the Capitol grounds:

Mr Khalifi was not arrested on the Capitol grounds and had been under surveillance for several weeks, AP reported.

This is the new strategy of the FBI. First they find somebody who is, for all intents and purposes, harmless but also fairly gullible. An agent will make contact and begin encouraging the non-violent individual to perform acts of violence. After enough goading the person finally agrees and the FBI agent supplies the sucker with a device that is claimed to be an explosive. With the fake explosive in hand the man is arrest and charged with attempting to commit and act of terror. Had the FBI never been involve, had they never approach, goaded, and provided weapons to the man it is almost certain that man would have never caused harm to anybody. Yet this is how the FBI is able to drum of fear and justify their ever expanding budgets and enforcement powers to the American people.

Don’t fall for this kind of shit.

The Gas Price Spike Act of 2012

Periodically I like to cruise sites like GovTrack, OpenCongress, and the Library of Congress THOMAS looking for interesting pieces of legislation. I found a true gem with HR 3784, the Gas Price Spike Act of 2012. What does this bill do? It places a tax on any profits made by oil companies that are beyond “reasonable.” That isn’t the best part though, what defines “reasonable” is whatever the newly established Reasonable Profits Board decides:

`(a) In General- In addition to any other tax imposed under this title, there is hereby imposed an excise tax on the sale in the United States of any crude oil, natural gas, or other taxable product a tax equal to the applicable percentage of the windfall profit on such sale.

`(b) Definitions- For purposes of this section–

`(1) TAXABLE PRODUCT- The term `taxable product’ means any fuel which is a product of crude oil or natural gas.

`(2) WINDFALL PROFIT- The term `windfall profit’ means, with respect to any sale, so much of the profit on such sale as exceeds a reasonable profit.

`(3) APPLICABLE PERCENTAGE- The term `applicable percentage’ means–

`(A) 50 percent to the extent that the profit on the sale exceeds 100 percent of the reasonable profit on the sale but does not exceed 102 percent of the reasonable profit on the sale,

`(B) 75 percent to the extent that the profit on the sale exceeds 102 percent of the reasonable profit on the sale but does not exceed 105 percent of the reasonable profit on the sale, and

`(C) 100 percent to the extent that the profit on the sale exceeds 105 percent of the reasonable profit on the sale.

`(4) REASONABLE PROFIT- The term `reasonable profit’ means the amount determined by the Reasonable Profits Board to be a reasonable profit on the sale.

Emphasis mine. Whatever this Reasonable Profits Board decides becomes the amount that is taxable meaning if they decided profits of $1,000 was “unreasonable” they could begin taxing oil companies that made profits exceeding $1,000. Glorious huh? They get to define any amount of profit as “reasonable” and tax accordingly. If this bill passes I would expect it to take no more than one year before this idea gets applied to other industries.

Nigel Farage on Greece

Nigel Farage is hands down one of my favorite government actors in Europe. He’s always quick to bring up the sham that is the European Union (EU) and comes up with some stellar one-liners. His speech on the recent happenings in Greece was great:

Being good blokes the people who uploaded the video to YouTube also provided a handy transcript. One of the biggest hypocrisies in the EU is the constant use of the word democracy while the governing body of the EU is composed of appointed officials. After listening to his speech it’s pretty easy to see why the people of Greece are pissed off:

Well Commissioner, you picked the right man. Puppet Papademos is in place and as Athens caught fire on Sunday night he rather took my breath away. He said, ‘Violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country.’

What democratic country?

He’s not even a democratically elected prime minister. He’s been appointed by you guys. Greece is not run through democracy now, it is run through a Troika. Three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and cannot do.

The violence and destruction that you saw on Sunday is being caused directly because people are having their democratic rights taken from them – What else can they do?

Greece has basically been turned into a dictatorship with the rulers being appointed by the governing body of the EU. Obviously the people of Greece, whom believed they had a say in the happenings of their government (a mistake many people make), are unhappy that their democratic process has been tossed out the window and replaced with a puppet government likened to something American would put in a country that was looking to turn communist.

And I must say, if I was a Greek citizen I would’ve been out there, joining those protests on Sunday. I’d be out there trying to bring down this monstrosity that has been put upon those people.

This is why I like Farage, he’s willing to say things most politicians would never conceive of.

And in his efforts, in the Puppet’s efforts to get the MPs to vote for the bailout package, he warned them, that if they didn’t do so there would be a dramatic decline in living standards.

Well, has he looked out the front door?

Has he seen the fact that 50 per cent of the young people are unemployed already. Has he seen the fact, that the economy, far from stalling has contracted for five years in a row, and is now accelerating on a downward death spiral – a contraction of 7 per cent per annum.

Greece is being driven into the ground, and I think, frankly, when it comes to chaos, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

These policies are driving Greece towards a revolution. They need to be set free. If they don’t get the Drachma back you will be responsible for something truly, truly horrible.”

I’ve mentioned the economic issues in Greece and how the state promised the people everything but delivered nothing, while still taking everything. Unemployment is rampant, taxes are high, and the only thing that appears to be on the horizon is even higher unemployment as public employees, who makes up 22% of the employed people of Greece, are let go.

The government of Greece has broken its promise the the people and the people are not happy about it. Honestly I would love to see the people of Greece walk into Athens, toss the current bums that call themselves government out on the street, and be an example to every other state in the world of who has the true power. The attitude many of the founding fathers of this country held regarding revolution were correct, it’s the right of the people to overthrow their government when they feel the government no longer serves a legitimate purpose. The government of Greece no longer serves a legitimate purpose and the people are well within their rights to overthrow the current tyrants.

Monday Metal: The Wanderer by Elvenking

We’re going down the path of some serious nerd metal in the form of Elvenking. Elvenking is a classic example of how power metal is also one of the nerdiest musical genres every invented. While power metal requires a high degree of technical proficiency it also generally deals with themes involving dragons, fairies, and other elements traditionally found in fantasy. What can I say? It sounds awesome:

70 Years Ago Today

Today, February 19th, 2012 marks 70 years since Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed military personnel to round up Americans of Japanese Decent and place them in concentration camps. Well known actor George Takei was placed in one of these camps as a child and was later interviewed about it:

Without so much as charges Americans of Japanese decent were rounded up, put onto trains, and hauled to concentration camps where they spent years behind barbed wire under the watchful eyes of machine gunners standing in surrounding guard towers.

What’s even more disgusting is what Takei explains regarding the questionnaires prisoners were required to fill out when it became apparent a labor shortage existed in the United States. After being imprisoned for a year the prisoners were asked if they would take up arms in defense of the United States and if they would swear allegiance to the United States while forswearing allegiance to the Japanese Emperor. The second question was a catch-22 because it insinuated that the prisoners, many of whom were born in the United States, had sworn an other to the Japanese Emperor and thus justifying their detention. I’m glad to hear Takei’s parents refused to take up arms in defense of the United States or swear allegiance to this country. Nobody should take up arms in support of tyrants and those held in the concentration camps were getting a front row seat to tyranny in action.

Peace Sells but Who’s Buying

Apparently not Dave Mustaine:

Speaking of news, you were a correspondent for MTV during the 1992 presidential election. What’s your take on US politics in 2012?

“I’m just hoping that whatever is in the White House next year is a Republican. I can’t bear to watch what’s happened to our great country. Everybody’s got their head in the sand. Everybody in the industry is like, ‘Oh, Obama’s doing such a great job…’ I don’t think so. Not from what I see.

“Looking at the Republican candidates, I’ve got to tell you, I was floored the other day to see that Mitt Romney’s five boys have a $100 million trust fund. Where does a guy make that much money? So there’s some questions there. And watching Newt Gingrich, I was pretty excited for a while, but now he’s just gone back to being that person that everybody said he was – that angry little man. I still like him, but I don’t think I’d vote for him.

“Ron Paul… you know, I heard somebody say he was like insecticide – 98 percent of it’s inert gases, but it’s the two percent that’s left that will kill you. What that means is that he’ll make total sense for a while, and then he’ll say something so way out that it negates everything else. I like the guy because he knows how to excite the youth of America and fill them in on some things. But when he says that we’re like the Taliban… I’m sorry, Congressman Paul, but I’m nothing like the Taliban.

“Earlier in the election, I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn’t gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney’s done against Newt Gingrich, and then the volume at which Newt has gone back at Romney… You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I’m hoping that if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House… and that it’s Rick Santorum.”

While Dave has become loonier by the year his endorsement of Santorum slightly surprised me. Being a born again Christian has lead to lots of idiotic decisions including his refuse to play many old Megadeth songs because they’re “satanic” in nature and playing shows with “satanic” bands. Either way with his absolute fear of a new world order I can’t believe he thought supporting a tyrannical bastard like Santorum was a good idea.

My respect for Mustaine has been dwindling for ages now but it’s almost entirely gone. The man fronts a band that was once great and is responsible for writing much of the Metallica material I really enjoy but his loony ranting is difficult to separate from his music.

Apple Announces OS X 10.8

I haven’t been posting much technology news as of later. Mostly this is because there hasn’t been much worth writing about and this really isn’t an exception. Apple quietly revealed the next version of OS X, named Mountain Lion.

With the exception of and iOS-esque notification center, nothing announced about 10.8 really grabs my attention. I guess that’s a good thing since my Mac Pro (1,1 model) won’t be officially supported anymore.

I Admit this Would be Fun

I’m a total nerd, which is obvious to anybody who has spoken to me for more than five minutes. As a nerd things like this excite me:

Excavating a basement using professional machinery is nothing new but doing it with radio controlled (RC) scaled models is something unheard of. Welcome to the little big world of Joe, from Saskatchewan, Canada.
For the past 7 years (!), Joe has been digging out his basement at an average annual rate of 8 to 9 cubic feet using nothing more than RC tractors and trucks!

And we’re talking about the whole nine yards here – he starts by transporting the excavator on an RC truck to the basement, unloads it, digs and uses other trucks to transfer the dirt up to the ground through a spiral ramp! He even has a miniature rock crusher!

There are photographs of the mans progress that are worth look up. All I can say is that this man deserves some recognition for simply being awesome.