Month: January 2018

People Are Going Batshit for Crypto

People are going batshit for crypto. When the Long Island Iced Tea Company changed its name to Long Blockchain its stock jumped by 50 percent. Similarly Hooters’s stock jumped by 50 percent when it announced its blockchain rewards program and Kodak, which I didn’t realize was even still around, enjoyed a stock increase of 60 percent when it announced its blockchain-based currency. It seems like the mere whisper of the word blockchain is enough to get investors excited.

Let us return to Long Blockchain though. When the company announced its name change it justified it by claiming that it was going to buy cryptocurrency mining hardware. After baiting investors Long Blockchain announced that while it was still planning to invest in cryptocurrency mining hardware it didn’t have a definite timeline:

But today Long Blockchain announced it was scrapping the stock offering. The company says that it’s still planning to buy bitcoin-mining hardware. However, Long Blockchain says that it “can make no assurances that it will be able to finance the purchase of the mining equipment.”

Every time Bitcoin’s price increases detractors claim that it’s a bubble that will soon burst and leave everybody who invested penniless. Little did they know that Bitcoin itself wasn’t the real bubble but the technology it’s based on, blockchains, was. And yes, when the mere whisper of adopting a technology causes your stock to significantly jump in value, you’re operating in a bubble.

War is Good for Business

Working in the military-industrial complex must be nice. While companies in other industries are forced to market their own goods and services, companies in the military-industrial complex enjoy subsidized marketing from the United States government:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is nearing completion of a new “Buy American” plan that calls for U.S. military attaches and diplomats to help drum up billions of dollars more in business overseas for the U.S. weapons industry, going beyond the limited assistance they currently provide, officials said.

President Donald Trump is expected to announce a “whole of government” approach that will also ease export rules on U.S. military exports and give greater weight to the economic benefits for American manufacturers in a decision-making process that has long focused heavily on human rights considerations, according to people familiar with the plan.

Not only will military attaches and diplomats provide free marketing but since the weapons sold by the United States have a tendency to fall into the hands of its and its allies’ enemies this proposal could create a continuous cycle of sales. First the United States sell weapons to one of its allies then those weapons fall into the hands of its allies’ enemies then the allies need to buy more weapons to fight off their enemies.

Policing Even Less Dangerous than Last Year

A lot of people, especially those involved in or somehow connected to law enforcement, believe that policing is a dangerous job. However, policing doesn’t even make the top 10 list of dangerous jobs. Not only is policing fairly safe but it has been becoming safer for decades:

The number of police officers killed on duty dropped to near a 50-year low in 2017. As of December 28, 2017, 128 officers died in the line of duty. That’s down 10% from 2016, when 143 officers died, according to new data from National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Perhaps it’s time to do away with the practice of letting police justify their violent actions by claiming that they have a dangerous job and just want to go home at night. Their job isn’t all that dangerous and those who are working jobs that are actually dangerous seem to manage just fine without gunning down everybody who looks at them wrong.

The United States of Rome

I’ve been on a huge Roman history kick for the last several months. Currently I’m reading Rubicon by Tom Holland. I’m a bit over 200 pages in and it has been an excellent read. The history itself is fascinating but the various parallels between the twilight of the Roman Republic and the United States are also worth noting. For example, the Romans had a similar strategy when it came to justifying war. From page 152:

The Republic was never so dangerous as when it believed that its security was at stake. The Romans rarely went to war, not even against the most negligible foe, without somehow first convincing themselves that their preemptive strikes were defensive in nature.

Like the Roman Republic, the United States never performs a preemptive strike without first convincing itself that its target is an eminent threat even if there is no plausible threat. Furthermore, the Romans had a similar attitude towards the “rights” of its citizens. From pages 202 and 203:

At stake was the issue of what to do with Catiline’s henchmen. Many were of good family, and it was forbidden by the severest laws of the Republic to execute any citizen without a proper trial. But did the state of emergency entitle Cicero to waive this sacred injunction? Caesar, still nervous that the hysteria might sweep him away, proposed the novel idea that the conspirators should be imprisoned for life; Cato, opposing him, demanded their execution. Here, in the clash between these two men so matched in talent, so opposite in character, was the opening salvo of a struggle that would eventually convulse the Republic. For now, it was Cato who emerged triumphant. A majority in the Senate agreed with him that the safety of Rome was more important than the rights of individual citizens. And besides, who ever heard of imprisonment as a punishment? The conspirators were sentenced to death.

Like in the Roman Republic, the rights of Americans end where the politicians’ perception of safety begins.

The Founding Fathers put a lot of effort into emulating the Roman Republic and that effort wasn’t wasted. As the United States marches into its twilight it continues to emulate the Roman Republic as it marched into its twilight. Perhaps the next stage of the United States will be a monarchy as well.

Sending a Message

Admittedly I’m speculating here but Roy Moore’s accuser’s house burning down shortly after he lost an election due, at least in part, to those accusations is a pretty big coincidence:

Roy Moore accuser Tina Johnson lost her home Wednesday in a fire that is now under investigation by the Etowah County Arson Task Force.

Tina Johnson, who first came to public notice for accusing Senate candidate Roy Moore of grabbing her in his office in the early 1990s, said her home on Lake Mary Louise Road in Gadsden caught fire Tuesday morning.

After neighbors and some utility workers called 911 shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday, the Lookout Mountain Fire Department responded to the scene. By the time the flames were extinguished, Johnson and her family had lost everything they owned.

I’m not necessarily implying that Moore had a hand in this. He strikes me as a spiteful enough man to pull something like this though. However, it could have also been one of his supporters who was particularly upset about the election results. It could have also been somebody who hated Moore and wanted to make his supporters look vengeful. Then again it could have also been an accident or a random act of arson. But it strikes me a suspicious nonetheless.

Representative Advocating for a Return to Slavery

A lot of people in the United States are delusional about slavery. They believe that it ended after the Civil War. In reality the rules were merely modified. Before the Civil War slavery was defined by skin color. Slaves were black. After the Civil War slavery slowly began to be redefined by criminality. If you were found guilty of a crime, you could be enslaved by the government. That definition remains today but now there is a representative with senatorial aspirations who wants to remove all criteria and make everybody a slave:

Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke hopes to introduce a bill to Congress this year that would require all young people to spend at least a year “in service to this country.”

O’Rourke, who currently represents the 16th District of Texas, which includes El Paso, held a town hall in Corsicana on Thursday and shared his idea with those in attendance.

Why should the government pay market rates for labor when it can simply force people to work for it whatever compensation it deems appropriate (maybe you’ll get paid a pittance like soldiers do or maybe you’ll be paid nothing at all)?

I’m probably too old to qualify as a “young person” but if I did qualify, I’d refuse to partake just as I would refuse to go to war if drafted. While each and every one of us who lives in this country has relegated ourselves to an amount of abuse by the government there is always a line. My line is overt slavery and I’m guessing that I’m not the only one.

Continuing the War Against the Homeless

Greg Schille had a plan to help the homeless individuals of Elgin, Illinois during this especially brutal winter. He invited them into his home for a “slumber party.” However, the City of Elgin wasn’t pleased with his actions. Elgin already had a solution to its homeless problem, exposure, so it threatened to condemn his home if he didn’t cease giving the homeless shelter from the cold:

A suburban Chicago resident who was offering up “slumber parties” in his basement for homeless people in his neighborhood during dangerously cold weather says city officials have given him an ultimatum.

Stop the “slumber parties” or the house will be condemned.

Greg Schiller, of Elgin, said he began letting a group of homeless people sleep in his unfinished basement last month during brutally cold nights, offering them food, warm beverages and a cot to sleep on while watching movies.

Yet again we see the fact that you don’t own your home. If you did own your home, you could do with it as you pleased. If you wanted to shelter homeless people in your basement on especially cold nights, you could. But you don’t own your home, the government does. You’re merely allowed to lease it so long as you pay your rent property taxes and abide by the ever increasing number of rules.

We also see yet again that city governments don’t want the homeless helped, they wants them gone. In the eyes of a city government the homeless are a problem and the only solution is to make them go away. To that end city governments try to pass ordinances that make the lives of homeless individuals as miserable as possible in the hopes that such ordinances will encourage them to move elsewhere. Not only do these ordinances criminal homelessness but they also criminalize helping the homeless. If these ordinances result in homeless individuals freezing to death, all the better as far as the city governments are concerned.

As She Should

The mother of the victim of the recent swatting incident is calling for the officer who killed her son to be brought up on charges:

An attorney representing Lisa Finch, the mother of a man who was killed by Wichita police last week after a “swatting” prank call, is calling for criminal charges to be filed against the officer who fired the fatal shot.

“Justice for the Finch family constitutes criminal charges against the shooting officer,” attorney Andrew Stroth told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

As she bloody well should.

As I said in my original post, swatting is a byproduct of trigger happy law enforcers avoiding consequences for their actions. If law enforcers were held responsible for their actions, it would likely instill a sense of responsibility into law enforcers. If law enforcers had a sense of responsibility, swatting wouldn’t be a thing because few departments would respond to an anonymous tip by deploying a SWAT team to a provided address to perform a little shock and awe. Instead they would investigate the matter to determine if the reported incident is even legitimate and then act accordingly.

I really hope that the officer who shot Andrew Finch ends up facing criminal charges. Storming a home and gunning down an unarmed man in response to an anonymous call is criminal.

I’m Altering the Deal

Jeff Sessions who, even for a government goon, is a particularly loathsome piece of shit announced that the federal government will again pursue states that have legalized cannabis:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday rescinded a trio of memos from the Obama administration that had adopted a policy of non-interference with marijuana-friendly state laws.

The move essentially shifts federal policy from the hands-off approach adopted under the previous administration to unleashing federal prosecutors across the country to decide individually how to prioritize resources to crack down on pot possession, distribution and cultivation of the drug in states where it is legal.

“We have to stop people from smoking the jazz cabbage less they begin listening to the music of the negro!” –Jeff Sessions (Probably)

At least I assume that’s Session’s motivation for this announcement because the drug can’t be too dangerous since the states that have legalized it haven’t gone up in flames. But I guess the federal government feels the need to fulfill its prophesy that cannabis kills by siccing its murderous thugs on cannabis users.