On the Rim of Insanity

The National Security Agency: Evil or Incompetent?

2013-06-12T20:24:00.001-04:00

Forget about Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden for a few minutes. Well, forget about questioning their loyalty or patriotism. To me, the question is probably just misdirection because it helps to distract us from the real question everyone should be asking: is the National Security Agency evil or just plain incompetent?

Let’s start with incompetent. The argument for this is simple: do you really expect us to believe that they have to collect all of that data for the simple purpose of identifying terrorists? Let’s be honest about Islamic terrorism: it barely ever happens in the United States. Yes, there have been some serious incidents. Yes lots of people have been killed by Islamic terrorism. But let’s be honest about it: you are more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than a Islamic terrorist.

The sheer volume of data that the NSA is collecting in order to combat terrorism really just highlights how clueless they really are. If they have trouble identifying the bad guys without clogging up Internet bandwidth, then they must completely lost as to who and where the enemy is, right? There are simpler ways to go about identifying people with ties to terrorism. Hell, even the supposed perpetrators of the recent Boston bombing were on watch lists long before they allegedly carried pressure cooker bombs there (I say allegedly because the official story has so many holes, it makes their documentation look like Swiss cheese. And I hate Swiss cheese).

In fact, I would argue that because just about every American terrorist attack has been perpetrated by people that the Federal government has been watching at some point before the act, it seems like this whole argument of safety and protecting us is nothing but bunk. It’s like if you were a child who was attacked by a dog and then in the hospital as you lay there gasping for air through your crushed ribs, your mommy or daddy told you that he or she knew the dog had rabies but decided to go get coffee instead of warning you. That is how incompetent the NSA is if they are going to claim that they need this level of surveillance.

On the other hand, they could just be run by a bunch of evil bastards. The kind who like to look through your XBox Kinect cameras and jack off to you jacking off to that porn game you got (yes, they do exist). Or maybe the like watching your children dance. Your underage children. Or maybe they just want to know where you are so they can kill you.

Maybe I’m just exaggerating a bit, but in all seriousness, there has to be a larger use for this level of data gathering. Considering that the warrants obtained under the USA PATRIOT Act are more likely to be used in Federal drug investigations than in actual terrorism cases, it is not a far-fetched assumption.

Why did Chief Justice John Roberts suddenly change his mind about Obamacare? How did David Pretraeus’s private emails get leaked so easily? With the NSA rooting through all of our online garbage, it looks like a no-brainer to me.

Usually in fiction, when you encounter a total surveillance state, it is usually some dystopic society. Most of the time, the ideas of Big Brother watching you are portrayed as evil. And yet here it is really happening and the prospect of the United States government being filled with evil assholes doesn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind.

So which is it really? Are they evil or incompetent. Either way, the U.S. Federal government is well beyond its Constitutional limitations and should be completely abolished, its assets seized by the American people, and its leaders exiled to Nigeria.

Or Siberia. Or the upper atmosphere. Whichever is easier.

The American Citizen is the Enemy

2013-06-11T22:02:00.001-04:00

Right now Bradley Manning is on trial for aiding the enemy. He has already plead guilty to charges that will put him away for 20 years. The Federal government, under orders from the President, is trying to put him away for another 37, effectively meaning they want him to die in prison. For dumping a bunch of mostly innocuous data into the hands of Julian Assauge, himself hiding in an Ecuadorian embassy to avoid ridiculous rape charges (news flash: it’s not rape if she regretted having sex with Julian Assauge after having sex with him, even if she had to fake her orgasm).

Recently, NSA surveillance details were leaked by one Edward Snowden, a former government contractor. This was more or less an open secret as most people know that we should be getting much faster Internet bandwidth were it not for the NSA’s own illegal intercepting of all popular forms of communicating over the web. Fearing for his life, he has fled to Hong Kong and now flat out disappeared. I personally would have fled to Uganda in order to commit to building some kind of infrastructure there, but that’s me.

In both cases, these men did what so many other people inside government should be doing. They are ensuring that the so-called Republic we live under is a Republic. You cannot properly vote for any candidate in any Federal election if you do not know what the government is doing. It is that simple. In order for representative democracy to have meaningful elections of any kind, you must have access to the full scope of what that government is doing.

These days, nearly every form of business the government engages in is classified. You cannot contract with the Post Office without at least Secret level clearance. I know as I have worked for companies that have tried to obtain them for me, although I think my application fell through the cracks. Not that I’m sad about it, as I view government contracting work as nothing more than worthless, unfulfilling, and tyrannical.

The fact is, pretty much all of what is currently classified by the Federal government should not be. All emails from just about every department and agency should be readily available to the public. Unfortunately, instead of allowing people to see what goes on in government, the current system would rather punish or murder those who expose it.

Right now, Senators and Congressmen are calling Snowden and Manning traitors. I can only conclude that they do so because they believe that both men are aiding and abetting the enemy. But in this case, the enemy is the American Citizen, or rather, an informed American Citizen.

That is how the Federal government views all of us. What other logical reason could there be for them to collecting all that private information on all of us while demanding privacy in what they do?

Besides the fact that they are all a bunch of assholes I mean.

The United States Is Not a Free Market Country; It Is Fascist

2013-06-08T11:14:00.001-04:00

The United States is not a capitalist country. At least not in the free market sense, but more in the Marxist sense, which can better be described as a Fascist economic system. Case in point, note this appointment to Sprint’s board of directors:

Sprint Nextel Corp. says retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will join the company’s board of directors and serve as its security director.

Sprint said Friday that Mullen will take on the new positions after SoftBank’s proposed $20.1 billion takeover of the company is complete. The deal faced government scrutiny over concerns that SoftBank, a Japanese company, uses Chinese networking equipment that could leave U.S. networks vulnerable to snooping and hacking.

Mullen, 66, will be the company’s contact with the government for all security measures.

The Softbank takeover of Sprint still needs FCC and shareholder approval but is expected to be complete in July.

Note a few points about this article:

The appointment of a retired admiral to Sprint has nothing to do with national security. Any national security concerns could be met without some old guy who probably knows less about cell phones than you do. The reason for this appointment is clearly done as a means to strong-arm a private company into hiring a retired, top-ranked military head. It happens all the time where former Congress-people are given cushy jobs somewhere solely because they can lobby for the company.
In a free market system, the government has no business approving anything. The FCC is not regulating “public” airwaves here, but private ones owned by Sprint. So for them to intervene demonstrates that they are not following their original protocol, but an expanded one.

The fact remains that our nation has not been running a free market economic system for a long time now. Hell, I don’t know if our nation has ever been free market. But I do know that most people (idiots) will read this and assume that this is all part of the free market system we live under. Because I have choices between McDonalds and Wendy’s and Burger King.

Fools.

Attention Boomers: PULL THE TRIGGER!!!

2013-06-04T22:18:00.001-04:00

It seems that humanity’s most self-absorbed generation is finally reaching the predicted end:

Turkaly said he regrets his attempt to overdose on tranquilizers, which he attributes to social isolation. But in one grim respect he is far from alone: He is part of an alarming trend among baby boomers, whose suicide rates shot up precipitously between 1999 and 2010.

It has long held true that elderly people have higher suicide rates than the overall population. But numbers released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a dramatic spike in suicides among middle-aged people, with the highest increases among men in their 50s, whose rate went up by nearly 50 percent to 30 per 100,000; and women in their early 60s, whose rate rose by nearly 60 percent (though it is still relatively low compared with men, at 7 in 100,000). The highest rates were among white and Native American and Alaskan men. In recent years, deaths by suicide has surpassed deaths by motor vehicle crashes.

It is hard for me to acquire any sense of sympathy for the Baby Boom Generation. They had great ambitions and were the first ones to believe in the lie that you can do anything when you grow up. Now they are facing nothing but a collapsing nation, endless war, debt, and isolation from their children who more or less despise them. And many of them deserve the spite from their own children as they have taken what was once a booming and prosperous nation and turned it into an international bully strapped by debt and massive economic contraction.

Just about everyone in power these days are from the flower power generation. And despite their best efforts, they accomplished nothing. They didn’t bring about peace, love, and legal drugs. Instead we have disease, death, and massive incarcerations. And don’t get me started with the immigration problems they caused and continue to encourage.

No, I have nothing but contempt for these losers who decide to off themselves. The whole article is just a piece that holds them up as victims when in fact everything wrong in their lives is their fault. And if they are more than willing to end it all early, I won’t stop them.

Being Anti-Utopian

2013-06-03T20:34:00.001-04:00

I am anti-Utopian. You should be too. If you are, then good for you. But you may be a Utopian despite believing that you are not. I am sure that most Americans are Utopian, despite the best efforts of suppressing their own pride. It is something that permeates humanity’s very soul and will not simply go away.

Do I have my own visions of a perfect society? I do. But these visions are usually squashed as soon as I leave my condo and venture out into the real world. It’s usually when I find myself faced with an individual who has acted in a very careless fashion by disrespecting the property rights of others. It is usually something inconsequential too, like leaving the cleaning wipes in the cup holder of a treadmill rather than walking to the trash can and throwing them away. It really shouldn’t annoy me so much, but it reminds me of why Utopias are just pipe dreams.

Human beings cannot rule themselves very well. And yet, allowing other to rule them is just as bad, if not worse. It has become abundantly clear that allowing individuals the right to vote for their own leadership has just given rise to distractions and disappointments. After all, only a sniveling, unprincipled weasel would stoop so low as to run for political office. Compromise is the action of a weak-willed and cowardly man, yet compromise is often the language of politics.

To be anti-Utopian means to keep your pride in check and realize that there are probably several solutions out there and that by simply stating that being, say Communist or Anarcho-Capitalist is not necessarily the answer. For the Communist, it is quite clear that forced collectivization does not work as the mass graves of the past century would tell you. For Anarcho-Capitalism, it is clear that they don’t understand the true concepts of justice nor do they have any concept of the value of human life. Do you seriously expect society to simply allow a serial killer to be exiled to his or her apartment after all the mass killings they’ve done? Sometimes I wonder if anarchists have any idea how foolish they sound.

Being anti-Utopian means you are not tied down to a specific ideology but that you recognize that the ultimate goal of the individual is to simply live life. You top goal is to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in your work. Simple desires make for a much simpler life.

For me, this blog and everything related to it is merely a hobby. I used to think I could make money doing it, but I’ve now come to realize that I got in the game too late and that there are much more interesting (and deserving) people out in the blogosphere. I used to think I could change the world, even just a little, but these days I’m content with just writing down whatever comes to mind. It is obvious to me that the only way to get high traffic volumes is to criticize semi-celebrity atheists or popular war veterans. At least that is what Google Analytics tells me.

I only wish to share my ideas and to caution my readers that not every political ideal is the be all, end all. Many get stuck in their dogma and become zealots who are just as bad as the people they oppose.

The truth about politics and political viewpoints is that there are no political solutions to any of the problems we face. Politics is the socialization of conflict. As such, it requires constant conflict in order to maintain itself. So any political ideology, be it anarchism, Socialism, conservatism, or fascism is inherently prone to maintain conflict in some way in order to retain power in some way.

The only solution is found in what you do about your own life. And many of us have problems that are big, costly, and require great sacrifice in order to solve them. You do not have the right to vote for someone who promises the easy out. All you’ve done is taken the path of the Utopian. And the end of that road is not a pretty one.

Never Forget: They Died For Nothing

2013-05-27T11:56:00.001-04:00

I must speak, that I may find relief;
I must open my lips and answer.
I will not show partiality to any man
or use flattery toward any person.
For I do not know how to flatter,
else my Maker would soon take me away.

-Job 32:20-22

The above verse comes from the book of Job. Most people overlook the book of Job, especially followers of the heretical prosperity gospel. The essence of the story is that sometimes bad things happen, even to righteous men, and that God does not always protect you from them. The above quote is toward the end, just before God Himself confronts Job as a whirlwind and basically humbles him. Job, you see, was asserting that he was righteous before God and did not deserve the calamity that had befallen him. Meanwhile, three of his friends were asserting that God had punished him for some wrong he had committed. And while both sides made excellent points, both sides were ultimately wrong: Job for justifying himself rather than God and his three friends for not being wise enough to counter Job.

Enter Elihu who uttered the above words. He was the youngest of those beside Job and had held his tongue because he believed that maybe Job and his friends were wiser than he. When he found that they were not, he burned with anger and went on a rant about the righteousness of God. He started off with that statement, indicating that although he was young and probably less experienced than those around him, he knew enough to know that he must speak up.

And so on this Memorial Day, I must speak up. I must speak without flattery and be brutally and distastefully truthful: those soldiers we honor today died for no reason. They may have died a heroic death. They may have saved their fellow soldier’s lives in the process. And such things are admirable.

But they were sent to illegal wars or immoral wars. In the last half-century starting with the Korean War and everything up until now, there has been no Constitutional war. The Constitution requires that the Congress draft and approve a formal declaration of war. There hasn’t been a formal declaration of war since World War II. Hence, all previous wars in which brave soldiers fought, bleed, and died for were illegal.

Beyond that, pretty every war in the 20th century was immoral. World War I, for instance, was not our fight. Our nation was pushed into it by a bunch of Anglophiles who hated Germans. Of course, then President Woodrow Wilson stated that it was a war to spread democracy. Sound familiar?

With World War II, it gets worse. While Germany committed serious atrocities to their own people, our own government conspired to push Japan or Germany into attacking a United States military base in order to justify entering the war because, again, our country was still being run by Anglophiles. And so, for the sake of entering the United States into a war where hundreds of thousands of Americans would die, President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed innocent men to die at Pearl Harbor. This is all documented and well known by many.

And so we spend the day going through ceremonies and honoring the dead soldiers in some sick way of worshipping the State. We honor the dead as a means to promote the government agenda of needless death. We think it patriotic to parrot slogans like “Freedom isn’t Free” when we can’t explain how a soldier in some piss-poor, backwater country could possibly be defending our freedoms. In the meantime, the Federal government, along with the State and local governments, continues to take away all of our rights and freedoms that God gave to us.

So honor the soldier. But never forget why he died in the first place. Never forget that he died for no good reason.

The United States Government Is The World’s Largest, Greediest Corporation

2013-05-20T20:13:00.001-04:00

I am always fascinated by the Left wing and their hatred of big corporations. Now, I have my problems with corporations, such as being declared people without being held liable for crimes they commit. But it is amazing that the Left will harp on big corporations while turning a huge blind eye to the world’s largest and most evil of all corporations: the United States Federal government.

Case in point, this should serve as a small example:

The agency’s Direct Loan program delivered a $24 billion profit on loans made in 2012, and nearly $27.5 billion on 2011 loans. All told, over the last five fiscal years, the Education Department has generated $101.8 billion in profit from student borrowers, thanks to low borrowing costs for the government and fixed interest rates for students, budget documents show.

So let me get this straight: most private companies can barely make more than a few million and most of that goes to the employee salaries and benefits. Besides that fact that the Affordable Healthcare Act federalized all student loans, consider the other benefits the Federal government enjoys as the sole provider of student loans in the United States:

All Federal student loans cannot be done away with bankruptcy. Basically, if you decide to declare bankruptcy, you cannot get rid of your student loans.
When you are delinquent on your student loan payments, your wages will be garnished without the benefit of a court order. So if you don’t pay your student loans, you won’t be able to defend yourself in court. You’ll just have a check with less income.
If you don’t have any traceable income, then the US Dept. of Education will have your home raided.
Student loans are largely for poor people as the more wealthy can usually afford college for their children. So basically, the US gov’t is profiting off of the poor through exploitation.

Naturally, the Left will continue to insist that going to college is necessary and that student loans are needed for poor people. Except that when you add up the total amount of student loans that college goers, especially poorer ones, acquire, you find that all we end up doing is providing most young people mediocre skills at best and crippling debt payments. A PhD sounds less appealing when your only prospect is a barista job and a 400 dollar a month loan repayment plan.

Meanwhile, the thought never crosses the minds of our benevolent leaders to forgive most student loan debts. Of course, if they were to do so, whatever amount was forgiven would be declared as income on your next tax return (another aspect of greedy government).

And I’m supposed to believe in the system and think that more government regulation and control will protect me from big corporation greed when the US government is the greediest and most selfish corporation of them all?

Body Mass Index Takes A Blow

2013-05-14T21:19:00.001-04:00

I’ve said before that the Body Mass Index measurement was a garbage calculation. Now it looks like people are starting to realize that a nearly two-centuries old calculation is not the best measurement of your health:

Measuring the ratio of someone's waist to their height is a better way of predicting their life expectancy than body mass index (BMI), the method widely used by doctors when judging overall health and risk of disease, researchers said.

BMI is calculated as a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres, but a study found that the simpler measurement of waistline against height produced a more accurate prediction of lifespan.

People with the highest waist-to-height ratio, whose waistlines measured 80 per cent of their height, lived 17 years fewer than average.

Keeping your waist circumference to less than half of your height can help prevent the onset of conditions like stroke, heart disease and diabetes and add years to life, researchers said.

For a 6ft man, this would mean having a waistline smaller than 36in, while a 5ft 4in woman should have a waist size no larger than 32in.

While I find no good reason to go by these arbitrary standards (and they are arbitrary and very unscientific), it is refreshing to see the shift. I’ll grant that obese people will not live long, healthy lives but at the same time, these measurements are too general and take little consideration for family history and many other factors.

And of course you won’t live forever, no matter how much you exercise and eat right.

Abortion “Doctor” Found Guilty of Murdering Babies

2013-05-13T19:59:00.001-04:00

Good news today: Kermit Barron Gosnell was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder. The horror stories I’ve heard about what went on in that clinic belong in a late-1970s Italian movie, not in real life. Whatever your stance is on abortion, you have to be a real monster to think that what this man did is perfectly okay. Or just a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood.

It takes a special kind of person to look at a newly born baby and want to cut their spines with scissors. Maybe we can borrow the professionals who stone women in Iran for rape and have them execute their ancient justice on such psychopaths.

Of course, now people will claim that Gosnell is an aberration in the “respected” field of abortion. That most abortion doctors would not do what Gosnell did. I wish that was true.

It would be one thing if Gosnell and other abortion doctors were just following orders, much like the guards at the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. At least they have Milgram’s Obedience test to fall back on. No, these people have purposely chosen a field that involves intentionally scrambling the brains of the unborn for cheap money. In many cases, those unborn babies are children of black mothers, so they are probably racists as well.

But enough of this grim talk. A jury saw through all the political bullshit and found Gosnell guilty. It is a good day when justice is served properly rather than having to shoot him in his church.

12 Year Old Stands Up to Cop

2013-05-09T21:36:00.001-04:00

I’ve seen videos of police officers intimidating young people, so it’s nice to see the opposite for a change.

If a police officer cannot be bothered to obey the little laws, how much more will he disobey the big ones when things are really bad? And we all wonder why Boston become a police state in a matter of hours following the Boston bombing.

The police who behave like this have no interest in serving and protect. That slogan is nothing more than propaganda to lull the dumb masses into thinking the police are guardian angels when in fact they are merely men with legal use of force and usually higher than average paychecks.

On a related note, I remember reading about the Soviet revolution in Russia and how one of the things that disgusted people was how the Orthodox priests were given special privileges. Is this not the same thing, only instead of state-sanctioned religion, it’s just the state. Some days I wonder if separating church and state was a good idea considering the sheer lack of morality among modern day bureaucrats, uniformed or otherwise.

You Aren’t Raising Him

2013-05-07T20:51:00.001-04:00

Let me make this perfectly clear: my son is not your investment. He is not an investment. He is a human being.

You didn’t drive my wife to the hospital while she was screaming about not wanting to have her baby in the car. You weren’t there when she was pushing out all the filth and then pushing him out without any medication to alleviate the pain.

You aren’t there when we feed him. You aren’t there when we change his diaper. You aren’t there when he smiles at us for no reason other than he is just happy to be there.

You aren’t there when he is in pain and cannot help himself. You aren’t there in the dead of night to fix him a bottle or to soothe him back to sleep.

You don’t sing to him. You don’t dance for him. You don’t talk to him.

No, to you he is only an “investment” in your pathetic Utopian ideals. The kind that always lead to killing fields, mass graves, and crimes against humanity. Of course, you have break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?

If you or any of your kind come near my child, violence will ensue. You can count on it.

Buying The Cow Means Free Milk Every Day

2013-04-29T21:36:00.001-04:00

A couple at my church are getting divorced. I’ve known them since I was in middle school. They have three daughters, two of whom are engaged. And yet, it doesn’t come as a huge surprise to me. They always seemed a little distant whenever I was around them. I didn’t expect them to be always cuddling in public or anything but I never seemed to notice them acknowledge each other being in the same room. Like they were roommates who were just waiting for the lease to run out.

I found out from my wife who talked with the woman about it. She says that they had gone to counseling and did everything she could think of to get it working. She also says that he was openly seeing another woman in front her. Well, he was getting dressed up to go out on dates with her.

I don’t know the man’s side. I wish I did because I am certain he has his own, very good reasons for adultery. I am not saying that he was right to do so by any stretch of the imagination, but I suspect that he did this because he no longer felt married to his wife.

As a man, I can safely say that sex is a crucial part of a successful marriage. If you are not having sex regularly, then you marriage is in trouble. Unless there is a physical reason for not being able to have sex, then you will have a marriage problem.

I know, you’ve probably heard the whole line about getting married for sex is like buying the cow for the milk. But using that analogy makes you a giant, feminized pussy. If you bought the cow, you get free milk every fucking day, provided you take proper care of it, right?

The problem with modern Christianity is that it has diminished the role of men and made them think like women when it comes to issues of marriage. As a Christian man, I can meet all of my needs either on my own or with friends, save for sex. I can only get sex through proper marriage. Other than that, I need my wife like a fish needs a bicycle.

This does not mean that I want to divorce her or that I despise her. She just got back from an overnight trip with my son and I missed both her and my son a whole lot (my son more, but he’s a baby who smiles a lot so it’s really hard to compete with that). I am just saying that everything, save for sex, that she brings to the table is stuff that I can take care of as well. The reason I want her around is related to David Ricardo’s comparative advantage.

The sign of a healthy marriage is how often the couple has sex. And a woman who refuses sex is guilty of sin. And while a man has no right to sin in response, he will, over time, decide to look elsewhere to meet his own desires.

I don’t know if this is what really happened between this couple I know. Honestly, I probably will never know the whole truth of what happened. And I won’t pry into their personal lives. But I wonder, did any of the therapists and councilors they met with ever suggest that maybe the wife do more to satisfy her husband’s needs? Or did they all just tell him to be submissive to his wife in the commonly unchristian manner in which our modern society accepts as normal.

Most People Are Idiots

2013-04-26T07:30:00.001-04:00

The video really says it all.

Dumbing It Down For You

2013-04-24T21:41:00.001-04:00

Since most people despise logic and rational discourse, I think I’m going to dumb it down for you all. Keep in mind that all of this is provable:

If you favor gun control, then you support rape.
If you favor the war on drugs, then you support the forced sodomizing of drug users.
If you favor the war on terror, then you support burning children alive.
If you favor economic sanctions against countries who don’t like ours, then you support starving children.
If you favor the police actions in Boston in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing, then you do not support the Constitution.
If you favor Federal regulations, then you are not a capitalist.
If you favor Defense Contractors, then you are not a capitalist.
If you favor the CIA, then you favor drug smuggling.
If you favor the war in Afghanistan, then you favor heroin use.
If you favor immigration, then you favor the destruction of the American ideal as the Founding Fathers envisioned it.
If you favor gay marriage, then you are a Statist.
If you favor restricted marriage licenses, then you are a Statist.
If you favor personal property taxes, then you favor centralized, Soviet-style planned communities.
If you favor higher education, then you hate young people.
If you favor abortion, then you hate black people.
If you favor the UN, then you support child rape.
If you favor more women in the workplace, then you support lower wages.
If you favor minimum wage laws, then you hate young people.
If you favor the Republicans, then you support corporatism.
If you favor the Democrats, then you support corporatism.
If you favor the Libertarian Party, then you are a Statist.
If you favor any other third party, then you are a collectivist.
If you favor the Federal Reserve, then you hate the free market.
If you think the banking system in America is representative of the free market, then you are a moron.

Great Speech by Mike Rowe

2013-04-18T20:54:00.001-04:00

When he states that we have declared war on work, he’s right. Considering that there are probably over 50% of Americans who get welfare from the government in some form or another and that living at the poverty line yields more disposable cash, is it any wonder?

Hard work, no matter how messy, has its rewards. You may not get rich, in fact you probably won’t, but at the same time you will have a sense of accomplishment. Moochers are unpleasant people to be around. Producers are always more cheerful.

Looters can go to Hell.

A Major Modern Misconception About Banking

2013-04-17T21:19:00.001-04:00

One of the biggest misconceptions that just about everyone in the modern makes is about the relationship between the consumer and their bank. I suppose “relationship” is a strong word. More like the agreement that you have with your bank. The problem is that the consumer assumes that all the money he or she deposits into a bank is effectively theirs and that they can withdraw it whenever they want.

The problem with this concept is largely due to the fact that the average person doesn’t know how fractional reserve banking works. Even more frustrating is that those who do tend to still think that banks are contractually bound to give you your money on demand. The problem is, most people don’t understand the actual rules that govern modern banking.

There is nothing complex about it really. Simply put, whatever money you deposit into a bank or other financial institution is no longer your money but the sole property of said institution. I know that the popular theory is that this is not the case and that it is still your property; that the bank is simply holding it for you.

They are not. They are using the money you’ve given them to make investments of their own. Usually this is in the form of loans, but it could also be used to buy other things that bankers believe will give them profit. It really depends on the bank and what kind of business they do.

This is why it is vitally important that the wise consumer look at what his or her bank is investing it. Because said consumer is investing in the bank. Every deposit you make is an investment in the bank. Just because you are able to take your money out of it from time to time doesn’t mean it is yours. You are simply cashing out some of that zero percent interest loan you’ve made to the bank. The interest rate on your savings account is really just interest earned for loaning money to them. It’s a shame that you can’t dictate the interest rate yourself, but that’s another topic of discussion.

The general point is, the bank owns your money and has the power to determine when you get it. Generally, you can get it whenever you want, however, this does not mean that you can get it all the time. As the citizens of Cyprus found out the hard way, the money you have in the bank is not yours.

Now, there is nothing inherently bad with this arrangement, other than the outright fraud involved with the terms of the contract. Most often bankers will not tell you this simple truth because they, quite simply, either don’t understand this or they are merely shrewd businesspeople. Either way, you won’t hear it from them, unless they are being honest.

So long as you understand the true nature of how the banking system works and are comfortable with investing in a bank, feel free to do so. Now, I personally recommend that if you are going to use a bank, you’ll need to use local banks or credit unions and not the big banks. At a local bank, you should be able to track the owner down in case of he makes some bad investments. It’s kind of like owning a gun to deter criminals.

While I know that many libertarians and other assorted proponents of the free market will argue against what I have written here, I tell you that they do so from a more theoretical stance than a practical one. Historically, the banks have always considered the money they have in their vaults to be theirs, regardless of who has claim to it. Cyprus was just the latest example. So please, spare me your pie-in-the-sky theories about how banking works. Because like so many other idealistic dreams that come from man, it is never how it works in practice.

From Political to Apolitical

2013-04-16T23:28:00.001-04:00

I was conservative once. I was libertarian once. I don’t think I was ever on the left side of the spectrum as anyone with half a brain can see that their ideas bank on people being either meat puppets with no free will or being inherently good. Any person who has any knowledge of humanity can easily determine that neither is the case.

These days I look at myself as more of an anti-Utopian. With conservatives, I slowly realized that they are engaged in groupthink, much like the liberals they so despise. This is not to say that liberals are better, just that conservatives don’t have individual thoughts. They claim to be pro-Constitution, yet balk at people when the hypocrisy of their stances on war, police state, and religion in government are clearly not part of the Constitution. Also, they are not anti-big government, just anti-liberal big government.

For libertarians, it gets more complicated. I agree with many of their views, but unfortunately, they tend to view the world in an idealistic fashion. They believe that people are inherently rational economic actors, which is the economists way of basically reiterating what liberals say about people. While it is true that people tend to do good things more often than not (even the really bad ones), we always have a slip in our rational minds and engage in some kind of foolish behavior.

I agree with libertarians, not because I believe that without government things will be better, but because I don’t trust the people in government to live up to their stated intentions. People have an inherent evil inside of them and whenever they acquire a significant amount of wealth or power, that evil amplifies. If you win the lottery, all your character traits will be amplified and you will end up being someone you never imagined you could be.

Libertarians seem to believe that with less government or no government, people will prosper and wealth will increase. While I agree that human innovation and production is stifled largely due to government influence, I have my doubts as to how a society will collectively behave if government were suddenly gone. Another problem is that most libertarians think that their chance at running things is just around the corner. Certainly with the rise of Ron Paul, it could be argued that it is. However, most people are conditioned to believe in many of the lies of the necessity of government and cannot conceive of a society outside of it.

This kind of thing will probably never change. The fact that young people these days are taking to Ron Paul and many of his ideas is probably meaningless as the young can afford to waste their time. As you get older, you get more focused on what you need to do in your life and for your family. We don’t get more then a collection of decades in this life and then we fall asleep (or just rot away). I’ve found that I have a very small window where I will gain the most wealth in my lifetime and I will not squander these years. I have seen so many people nearing retirement with jobs that don’t pay what they should and careers fading quickly. This kind of thing is inevitable, no matter what you do in your life. Very few people can make large amounts of wealth when they are reaching their golden years.

So I have resigned to the fact that things will never change. At least not in big ways. I’m fairly certain that most laws passed by Congress are really just ways to keeps things the same while looking like they’ve made significant changes. Obamacare was certainly one of those laws.

But I no longer look for what needs to be fixed or what can we do to make all these problems disappear. Instead, I choose to ignore them and live my life according to a higher power. I will strive to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And I will strive to love others as I love myself.

And I will eat, drink, and find enjoyment in my work. This is the gift of God to man and one that we shouldn’t dismiss so lightly.

Hope You Had a Happy Tax Return Day!!

2013-04-15T22:10:00.001-04:00

I know I’ve probably posted this before, but I think perfectly illustrates the frustration we all feel at having to “voluntarily” pay taxes.

And remember, when the government saves words like “temporarily” or “voluntarily”, it usually means the exact opposite. Yes, they’re liars and thieves of the highest order.

Questions About Obamacare Three Years Later

2013-04-06T20:15:00.001-04:00

I haven’t blogged in a while, mostly because I recently was let go from my nice, work-from-home job and had to find other employment. Fortunately, my job profession is in high enough demand these days that it didn’t take long for me to get a couple of job offers. On top of that, my wife and I have been working to keep my two-month-old son alive so we can keep the tyrants known as Social Workers off our backs (but I have better reasons for keeping him alive; mostly it has to do with healthy organ storage).

Through all this, I had to look into better medical insurance plans because I’ll be damned if I am going to pay 1800 dollars a month under COBRA and because the Federal tyrants will fine me for not having insurance. Which brings me to a bunch of questions about the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka Obamacare) that I haven’t heard any pundits talk about:

If the act lived up to its namesake, then why is there a fine for people who do not buy health insurance? Seriously, if they wanted to make it affordable, why didn’t they just mandate all insurance plans to not exceed 500 dollars a family and leave it at that? I know that politicians have little to no grasp on economics, so I would never put it past them to do this, but at the same time, isn’t it not odd that this notion never crossed their minds? (I know why, but that’s another topic)
If there is a fine for people who haven’t bought their own health insurance, then why do we still have Medicare and Medicaid government plans in place? I mean, since it is illegal now to not have health insurance, then shouldn’t we stop wasting billions of dollars on these plans and make poor people and the elderly pay for their own plans? And shouldn’t people who are on Medicaid and Medicare be fined because they don’t have health insurance?
If the whole mandated coverage of pre-existing conditions was part of the bill, then why did I have to fight with Cigna last fall to make them cover what they considered a pre-existing condition? So either Cigna didn’t get the damn memo from Congress or the politicians outright lied to the American people and pre-existing conditions are no longer covered. Or there is specific language in the bill that targets me or people like me (young, white producers who pay their own way). I didn’t read it, I’m just going on what I was told.
If the act was supposed to make healthcare more affordable, why did they eliminate the use of Flexible Spending Accounts with over the counter drugs? I mean, it’s bad enough that I have to be treated like a criminal every time I go to get Claritin-D (or it’s cheaper knockoff) every time I go to a pharmacy, but now I can’t get it free of taxes?
Why was there language in the bill to rework how student loans work? I mean, couldn’t that have been a separate bill entirely? I serious question the attention span of these morons in Congress given all the riders they put in their bills.

The simple fact is, Obamacare only secured the jobs and careers of major medical insurance executives and that’s about it. The one thing you can count on when it comes to any institution, be it government or private or whatever, is that nothing changes unless the pain of keeping things the way they are is much greater than the pain of changing it. From software development to government programs to the Catholic Church, this is probably one of the few fundamental rules of human organization.

In the end, Obamacare proved that the old saying from the late King Solomon is right: there is nothing new under the sun.

Idiots With Diplomas

2013-03-12T12:29:00.001-04:00

Recently, it came out that 80% of all New York City high school graduates require remedial education courses in order to enter the state-run community college. The head of the NYC department of education has claimed that NYC schools have a 40% increased rate of graduation, in his own defense. In other words, he’s dumbed the courses in order to meet arbitrary and vague goals. He’s failed to understand that there is a different between a diploma and the knowledge that said diploma is supposed to represent. He should probably be fired.

But he won’t be, largely because it is nearly impossible to get fired in you are in the education department in NYC. Hell, you could molest, then murder dozens of school children and draw a paycheck while sitting on death row. Seriously, in NYC child molesters are still employed by the school system, they just sit in the teacher’s lounge waiting to be processed out, all the while drawing a paycheck. Wally, Dilbert’s co-worker, would be envious of such a job.

Why is it important to mention how hard it is to fire know sex offenders from NYC public schools? For the simple reason that if they can’t even fire the child molesters, what fear do teachers have of doing their jobs right? I’m talking about motivation being the key factor and the greatest motivator in a better job at your place of employment is the ominous threat of being fired or “let go” or laid off or whatever term they use these days.

So with no motivation to do a good job, NYC teachers (and I imagine so many other school districts all over the country) end up fudging it and allowing idiots to graduate. Instead of being proud of weeding the stupid people, the people who refuse to learn and are better off with a job that has a nametag, we are instead graduating children with subpar skills and sending them off to college. They then take more than four years to get a Bachelor's Degree and end up with a ton of student loan debt and a severely limited job market as every other asshole with a below average GPA also took the same major.

The problem with modern education is that it is simply outdated. We are operating on a Prussian model from the 1800s which was mostly designed to encourage obedience to the government rather than actually educate the little tikes. Looks like after a century and a half, they have finally succeeded in making people subservient to the State.

Most people are better off simply homeschooling at this stage. With such high rates of failure among the State-run schools, it is really a no-brainer. At this point, the whole system is too broken to fix, so it should probably be scrapped and replaced with something better, like a free market educational system.

Of course, no one ever considers the free market option. Their diplomas made sure of that.

The Filibuster Against Murder

2013-03-11T17:34:00.001-04:00

Last Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul filibustered the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director. This was not unusual as I recall Democratic Senators filibustered (or threatened to) judicial appointments under President George Bush (because democracy needs to be overridden by the court system populated by Leftist Statists). What was different about this filibuster was that it was a real filibuster, in that Senator Rand Paul stood and talked for 13 hours.

He didn’t do this because he hated John Brennan. He did this because John Brennan was the grandfather of the use of military drones and he wanted to highlight the current presidential regime’s use of them. Recall that a couple of years ago, President Obama approved drone strikes that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. The father was accused of colluding with terrorists in order to attack the United States. Really all they could possibly pin on him was the Fort Hood shootings as he was the cleric allegedly in contact with the deranged shooter. His son was another problem entirely.

His son, you see, was taken out because the CIA feared that he might join up with terrorists following his father’s death. In other words, not only did the Obama administration act as judge, jury, and executioner in killing Anwar al-Awlaki, who they charged with riding in the wrong SUV in Yemen, but they also charged his son with pre-crime and summarily executed him as well. The United States Federal government murdered two American citizens on foreign soil because of either what they might have done or what they might have done.

What does this have to do with the filibuster? Well, Senator Rand Paul asked Attorney General Eric Holder if he believed the President had the power to ~~murder~~ assassinate Americans on US soil with drone attacks if they are deemed to be terrorists (or, as Homeland Security Secretary ~~Miss Hardcastle~~ Janet Napolitano would label them: war veterans and libertarians).

The response he got was vague, wordy, and ambiguous at best. You know, the kind of bullshit lawyer-speak we all get from time to time from people. And so, without a real answer from the Whitehouse, Senator Paul took to the Senate floor and stood for the most basic right of every person: the right to life.

You see, the President wants full authority to murder people like you and me. It doesn’t matter what ideology you possess or how much in the inner circle you are, if a man has the authority to kill other people without any check in place, he is effectively the dictator of the realm he oversees. There is nothing more coercive than having your life threatened.

Of course, the Democrats (mostly), the Republicans (mostly), and just about everyone in this country don’t see it that way. Like Federal tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood (which never, ever, ever go to abortions**wink, wink**), everyone assumes that such power will be used on the “right” people and never themselves.

Because it can’t happen here.

The Death of Our Nation

2013-03-01T18:11:00.001-05:00

The world is a mess. It always has been. It probably always will be for as long as mankind remains mortal.

And no matter what religion you ascribe to, or don’t ascribe to, you can be sure that just about everyone agrees that something is wrong with the world. Like it was supposed to be better but somehow, it has lost itself.

I can’t speak for other religions, mostly because I have not studied them nor practiced them, but Christianity and Judaism teach us that the world lost its “perfection” when the first Man and Woman sinned against God. From that point on, the world was cursed by God and mankind suffered the ultimate price for the evil that Adam had committed: death.

And so mankind has created massive civilizations that were always better than the past one only to seem them collapse on their own corruption and degeneration. Whatever the dominant moral principle was in that society was abandoned. Whatever was the cornerstone of that civilization was rejected in some way.

The result is always the same: collapse, destruction, and despair.

My point in all of this is that the United States is no different. The cornerstone of our nation was the Constitution. It wasn’t a perfect document. It had its ambiguous meanings that were open to interpretation. It had loopholes that have allowed subtle power grabs. It also failed to provide clear recourse for leaders who openly violate it. Maybe the Founding Fathers were too optimistic of human nature in the Republic they designed. Whatever the case may be, it was still the law of the land.

A more fundamental belief is that Christianity played a large role in the drafting of the Constitution, along with some of the Enlightenment-era philosophers, such as John Locke. While the beliefs of the Founding Fathers did play a crucial role in the creation of the Constitution, understand that the Constitution is not a Christian document nor was this nation founded as a Christian nation in the sense that Iran or Saudi Arabia are Islamic nations.

Today, roughly 80% of the people who live in this country claim to be Christian. This is not speculation on my part, but based on what George Barna observed and wrote about in his book The Seven Faith Tribes. He also wrote that 66% of all Americans claim to be Christian, but do not take their faith all that seriously based on their actions and behaviors. This is readily apparent in how the entertainment industry tends to cater to the lowest common denominator (mostly sex and violence) in order to entertain us. Or in how the Bible Belt treats Ron Paul when he urges people to love their neighbor as themselves.

In any case, it is quite clear that the very foundations of the United States are being either outright ignored, ridiculed, or paid lip-service too by the majority of people in this nation. It is unfortunate as this country is currently a representative democracy and, as such, we are get lower and lower quality men and women who seek office as a result.

Now, I’m not saying that the men and women of yesteryear were perfect, but many of them were certainly better people than the slime we have to deal with these days. In many cases, for example, the hint of extra-martial affairs was probably enough to sink a politicians career. These days, if a politician gets caught with a nearly underage intern in a homosexual affair, he’d be let off the hook.

I don’t think that a collapse of the United States government will be a huge, civilization-crushing event for the majority of Americans. The fact is, most of us tend to live out our lives without too much direct need from the government. It will make things harder for many of us in the short-term, but in the long run things may get much better as the pieces are picked up. So long as the right people pick up the pieces (and to be sure, those people better be armed to the teeth in order to ensure liberty is preserved).

But the state of things within the government is always a good indication of how far gone our civilization is, considering the people provide direct legitimacy to these drug-addicted sex hounds who presume to rule over us.

Unlawful Laws

2013-02-28T13:24:00.001-05:00

It is important to remember that the United States Constitution is only as good as the people who have sworn to uphold it. Mike Maharrey’s logic in this video is sound though and he makes great points.

The mentality among Congress people these days is that any law they passed is constitutional until the Supreme Court reverses. In other words, they can pass any law they want, require the executive branch to enforce it, and you have to wait for its constitutionality to be tested starting with the lower, inferior courts all the up to the Supreme Court. This process takes years sometimes. Meanwhile, the bureaucrats are busily writing into the Second Set of Books (the mandates and decrees which enforce the laws) and are adapting policies to implement the law.

Inevitably, the Supreme Court will usually side with the State over the people. They have, after all, made a career in working for the State in some capacity. A lawyer is merely an agent of the State, regardless of whether he or she is a private attorney or a public official. Their whole job description is about making sure that people stay with the boundaries defined by the State. And this is why we shouldn’t be surprised with decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson or Kelo v. New London or any other case in which the rights of people were infringed over the interests of the State. Remember, it was the judges who allowed factories to pollute in the 1800s and who told citizens that any money you deposit in the bank is not yours to withdraw.

Thus, everyone with an agenda gets away with it, regardless of what the supreme contract of the land says while the producers lose more and more to the looter and moocher classes.

And we are told by pundits of both the Left and the Right to work such a corrupt system in order to fix it?

Abolish the FDA Part 1323: Diet Milk

2013-02-26T16:37:00.000-05:00

Now, more than ever, the Food and Drug Administration needs to be abolished. They are increasingly becoming the largest crony capitalist agency of the United States Federal government. Case in point is this latest gem:

IDFA and NMPF request their proposed amendments to the milk standard of identity to allow optional characterizing flavoring ingredients used in milk (e.g., chocolate flavoring added to milk) to be sweetened with any safe and suitable sweetener—including non-nutritive sweeteners such as aspartame. IDFA and NMPF state that the proposed amendments would promote more healthful eating practices and reduce childhood obesity by providing for lower-calorie flavored milk products. They state that lower-calorie flavored milk would particularly benefit school children who, according to IDFA and NMPF, are more inclined to drink flavored milk than unflavored milk at school. As further support for the petition, IDFA and NMPF state that the proposed amendments would assist in meeting several initiatives aimed at improving the nutrition and health profile of food served in the nation's schools. Those initiatives include state-level programs designed to limit the quantity of sugar served to children during the school day. Finally, IDFA and NMPF argue that the proposed amendments to the milk standard of identity would promote honesty and fair dealing in the marketplace and are therefore appropriate under section 401 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 341).

On top of that, the International Dairy Foods Association and the National Milk Producers Federation are pushing to keep these new additives out of the listing of ingredients in milk. In other words, they are making Diet Milk and not telling anyone. Central planning at its finest.

This can have far-reaching consequences. I know that aspartame is a very controversial additive, being blamed for various things ranging from macular degeneration to cancer as well as not doing a damn thing about obesity, but I will instead focus on what I do know: my father is allergic to aspartame. It’s like a lactic acid allergy not a peanut allergy.

Do we know how many kids out there are also allergic to the additive? How many kids out there will start shitting themselves at school because of the FDA’s own misguided policies and short-sightedness? Maybe the FDA should just corral all the allergic into a camp where kids can concentrate more despite shitting themselves.

And don’t you love how they are using the excuse of reducing sugar intake as their justification for making Diet Milk? How about the school cafeteria’s stop serving garbage and the principals across America get rid of the damn vending machines? Instead it’s to poison our children with a dubious additive that may not even accomplish the state objective in the first place.

The FDA is largely an irrelevant organization these days. In an era where social media can spread more information much faster, do we need a government agency overseeing the safety of the food and drug supply. If anything, they misreport what they do and instead try and allow things like Diet Milk to occur. In a true free market system, no company would dare attempt such a thing as the backlash would be huge. Instead we have a nanny state trying to poison children and telling us it’s for their own good.

How The Government & Media Cheated Ron Paul

2013-02-22T10:01:00.000-05:00

Remember: representative democracy is just a dog and pony show. For almost two centuries in the United States, our Presidential candidates have been handpicked by whatever the dominant business interest is of the times. For example, both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, both long-time rivals even in the Presidential race of 1860, had close ties to Illinois Central Railroad. Douglas himself was a shill for them, providing the typical government privileges and Lincoln was a lawyer who represented them.

The fact is, Ron Paul got the most individual donations to his campaign in comparison to every other candidate in both parties, especially from the military. Yes there were top brass who denounced him, but you have to view top generals and admirals in the armed forces as nothing more than bureaucrats in fancy uniforms. They have long forgotten the horrors of war, if they have ever experienced it, and come up with cute new ideas to destroy the armed services (like partying during basic training and putting women on the front lines).

If the past election proved anything, its that the President is a puppet figure head of dominant financial interests, nothing more. This is why Barack Obama spends more of his time vacationing than leading. He doesn’t have to do anything as the bureaucratic machine moves ever forward and is run by handpicked corporate favorites.

This is why Ron Paul was treated as he was in the mainstream media and by the Republican party elite. They could not stand a true leader in the office as the Presidency still does hold a lot of potentially untapped power.