The gas gauge broke. There was no smartphone app to tell me how much was left, so I ran out. I had to call the local gas station to give me enough to get on my way. The gruff but lovable attendant arrived in his truck and started to pour gas in my car's tank. And pour. And pour.
"Hmmm, I just hate how slow these gas cans are these days," he grumbled. "There's no vent on them."
That sound of frustration in this guy's voice was strangely familiar, the grumble that com... (more)
(May 4, 2012) - Today is the anniversary of the Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard. The shootings should serve as a reminder to us of what underlies all political processes: violence. The political process should more aptly be named the process of violent imposition, because any edict, no matter how small or inconsequential, is ultimately enforced with the threat of death.
Let’s assume that an American critic of U.S. foreign policy goes abroad and travels around the Middle East delivering a series of lectures, speeches, and articles attacking the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He refuses to support the troops, saying that when people are engaged in wrongdoing, regardless of their particular occupation, they should not be supported by people of conscience. He repeatedly calls for an end to U.S. imperialism and interventionism, including a t... (more)
Politicians over the last quarter-century have held strong to the conventional wisdom that being "tough on crime" will win elections and appease the public's appetite for safety. And for the most part, it seems Americans did feel this way (if you don't think so, just ask Michael Dukakis). To alleviate the public's overblown fear, or even to slake a thirst for retribution, our lawmakers have repeatedly deemed mo... (more)
"I want to make sure that people understand: actually, drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties [in Pakistan]. For the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against Al Qaeda and their affiliates."
President Obama, January 31, 2012
The bureau counted 260 strikes [in Pakistan] by Predator and Reaper drones since President Obama took office, and it said that 282 to 535 civilians had been "credibly reported" killed in th
As the media turns up the heat on Obama's medical marijuana crackdown, one of the excuses he's giving is that they're just going after businesses that are violating state laws. In the President's own words:
The only tension that's come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. [Rolling Stone]... (more)
Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington’s excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China’s territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States’ national interests.
On April 26, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 248 to 168. CISPA seeks to grease the sharing of data about people between government and big business. CISPA states,
The Director of National Intelligence shall establish procedures to allow elements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat intelligence w
I was just down at the "feed and seed" buying two baby chicks to replace my female duck that was carried off by a bird of prey, leaving one lonely male duck behind. No one told me that ducks don't like chicks. The rest of the story is, well, let's just say "it's complicated."
In any case, the details distract from the reason I'm bringing this up at all: The store was bustling with activity and filled with rural people of all ages. Yes, lots of kids too. Prepare yourself for a shoc... (more)
Tasca is in the middle of disciplinary hearings that may result in her termination from the Bogota, New Jersey Police Department. She stands accused of "bizarre and outlandish" behavior in two incidents a year ago during which she revealed herself to be "A danger to other police officers."
Her first supposed offense – which wasn't me... (more)
Let me be the first to say, congratulations, Mr. Stein! One of the best things that could ever happen to you was made official Wednesday. After you violated the Pentagon’s rules banning free speech (itself a violation of the 1st Amendment protections to the same) the Marine Corps unceremoniously discharged you.
I know nothing of your military experience, whether you witnessed personally the horrors of war. My hope is that you did not. In either case, you w... (more)
Over the course of the last decade or so, “western democracies” have put Stalin’s Russia, Saddam’s Iraq, even Orwell’s fictional Oceania to shame when it comes to constant monitoring of people’s daily lives.
These days you can’t swing a cat without hitting a surveillance camera (unless it’s in the nose of one of those new-fangled drone aircraft that only a flying cat could reach), swipe your debit card or use your cell phone without at least having your location recorded in a data... (more)
Two years ago, I was the soul of generosity. I had culled through my sizeable collection of CDs and found 30 discs that I was happy to give away. My social circle went nuts, praising me as the great giver. They were so happy to have such fabulous music for free.
This week, I tried the same thing, with an even more generous offering. No takers. I'm sitting here with a pile of CDs containing what was considered great two years ago, yet I can't find a home for the discs today. There ... (more)
For many people around the world, the first they had ever heard of the great economist Friedrich A. Hayek came from a rap video. That's right. Some 3.4 million people have watched “Fear the Boom and Bust” since its release two years ago. It has been shown in classrooms and been featured in countless stories on economics.
The functioning of millions of our consumer products has been wrecked by government regulations in ways that are extremely hard to detect and difficult to narrow down. The other day, I wrote about discovering the reason lawn mowers have mysteriously stopped working and stopped improving over the last decade or so. (I now have a hack that I can tell you about.)
But that's just the beginning. Someone pointed out ... (more)
In 1861 Samuel A. Cartwright, an American physician, described a mental illness he called "drapetomania." As Wikipedia points out, the term derived from drapetes, Greek for "runaway [slave]," and mania for madness or frenzy.
Thus Cartwright defined drapetomania as "the disease causing negroes to run away [from captivity]."
"[I]ts diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service... (more)
Assuming his guilt of all the criminal charges leveled at Edwards, he is indeed an even more unsavory person than I always believed. Since I never liked him at all, this is no faint condemnation. Nevertheless, I find it horrendous that he faces up to 30 years in prison for these dirty deeds.
Consider the charges: Conspiracy, four counts of recei... (more)
As we trudge through another presidential political season, the media seems to have already declared that the race will be between Mitt Romney and incumbent Barack Obama.This same establishment media appears desperate to identify meaningful differences between the two candidates.Yet they are in lock step on many of the most pressing issues facing America.
Sure they may have minor differences in how to bailout the economy through corporate welfare, or how to fight the... (more)
Lily Tomlin used to say “I try to be cynical, but I can’t keep up.” Writers of dystopian sci-fi have the same trouble keeping ahead of actual reality.
Forty years ago, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, in the Illuminatus! trilogy, portrayed a near future in which the ruling elite used a wave of assassinations a la JFK, RFK and MLK to terrorize the American public into accepting a full-scale police state. “The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the pub... (more)
I confess that I have trouble sometimes figuring out the nature and logic of the so-called war on terrorism. The following are what seem to be the principles of this “war”:
1. Since the “war on terrorism,” according to U.S. officials, is a real war, the president has all the powers of a military commander in a real war, and those powers, they say, are the same omnipotent powers that are wielded by military dictators. Thus, during the war on terrorism, the president wields the po... (more)
I recently wrote an article that addresses the subject of sociopaths and how they insinuate themselves into society. Although the subject doesn't speak directly to what stock you should buy or sell to increase your wealth, I think it's critical to success in the markets. It goes a long way towards explaining what goes on in the heads of people like Bernie Madoff and therefore how you can avoid being hu... (more)
During the 2008 credit crisis, a horde of central bankers, Treasury officials and large corporations screamed that the end of the world was upon us — unless trillions of your money were spent (or created) to prop up the existing financial and banking systems.
The presumption was that the existing structure must never be changed, or the Fed's control over the financial and monetary system ever brought into question. Everything is just as it should be. This is a minor blip on the ra... (more)
