Ed Menendez's Blog

You Might Be a Murderer and a Thief If...

Outside of a self defence scenario, Would you kill someone? Would you pay someone to kill for you? It's only a semi-rhetorical question.

Taking a life is murder. Taking liberty is slavery. Taking property is theft. Would you do these things? Would you have others do these things for you? Probably not. But someone steals, murders and owns slaves in your name every day. The government does all three of these things every single day. When we pay for GM, give money to Isreal or print government welfare checks those are all theft. Your liberty is taken away every day when the governments bans pot, bans guns and prevents you from leaving or entering the country. The government murders people daily through "preemptive" wars.

If you voted for the government to do these things, you're stealing, murdering and creating slaves of future generations. If you support the government, congratulations, you are too! No fireworks or BBQ for you on independence day.

Here's a clear and concise definition of liberty and how it can never be legally taken away:

AvaTint Launched!

The site very simply takes your avatar and turns it into any color you select. The online community is starting to do this to support and protest many things. This is the 2.0 way of making your page background black for a cause.

We created this site in 90 minutes using Django on June 19th.

Bush + Obama Debt = Slavery

You probably recall the term "Taxation without Representation" as being a motto that fueled the American Revolution. The idea is simple. Englishmen in America paid taxes which were spent by a government they did not have a direct representative in.

Bush & Obama have done the same. When a government borrows money, the politicians who spent the money do not have to answer to the people who pay that debt. Instead of being separated by distance from the people paying, these politicians are now separated by time.

When you're forced to pay and not represented, you are a slave of the state. Be sure to send thank you letters to your slave masters from the future. Or, be sure to go to one of the TEA Parties and be a part of the next revolution.

Also, change your avatar color to yellow at AvaTint.com to protest the increased government spending.

Global Warming and Gay Marriage Don't Matter

When someone on the left, as socialists are often referred to in America, talks about Global Warming, now called Global Climate Change™, it often has the same ring to it as when someone who seriously believes about supernatural dieties speaks about god. Let's compare.

Besides the believing in god thing, some may sum up the religious right as those people who think you should have no fun. If you have fun, god will smite you.

Some may sum up the religious left as those who believe that you should not focus on producing wealth and industry. If you do, you will be smote.

Of course, both generalizations are inaccurate. Unfortunately for everyone, both sides hold truths in their arguments that get missed because both groups get lost in the trees of their arguments and completely forget about the forest. On the right, the point is to be a moral person. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat.

Easily Code Templates for iPhone in Django

Sometimes, you want to create a custom page for an iPhone or other small phone browser but don't want a custom URL or view for it. This can easily be handled by using the mini_render_to_response function.

Lawyer Army 1.0

Is government better than the people?

As we've been told again and again... capitalism has failed. It's not our fault that we believed property values would go up like a man over dosing on ED drugs. It's not our fault that we lied on our mortgage forms. It's definitely not our fault that no one checked those forms. We wouldn't have lied if we knew someone was going to look at it. It no one's fault. It's the system's fault. If we had a better system, none of this would have happened!

Let's investigate this system we're going to discard.

Hollywood Draft Private League Launch!

This new game allows you to play in a more traditional fantasy game model where you draft from a pool celebrities. This allows fun things like draft parties, benching players and all the regular things those familiar with fantasy sport already know.

MyEmailDraft.com Launched!

The site solves one simple problem. Messy email based fantasy drafts. Our goal was to make something as simple to setup as an email draft but without any of the downside.

Drug Warriors Terrorize Freedom

America has a very strong tradition of protecting speech. With good reason. Tyrants can never control thoughts, but if they can control speech, then they control your thoughts and indirectly your actions. Ultimately that's what they care about. Since it's prudent to solve the problem in utero, controlling speech is simply an abortion of your actions.

Tyrants, however, are clever animals. While Americans are militantly vigilant of the right to speak freely, we're not so vigilant of everything else. Tyrants are happy to let you say whatever you want, as long as you do what they say.

You're Too Little to Not Fail

Recently, you may have heard the term "Too Big to Fail" (TBF). TBF is simply a euphemism for well connected. The company or industry being spoken about is too well connected and has too many lobbyists. Notice how the financial sector and auto industry both get bailouts, but the realtors and the builders get nothing. The reason for this is that realtors and the construction industry don't have enough lobbyists making laws for them in congress. Too bad for them. Even worse for the rest of us since we've committed our kids to paying off a few trillion dollars in debt. AIG is too big to fail but your kid is little enough to saddle with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

How To Download Your Favorite Shows

I will show you how to download your favorite shows automatically and convert your PC into a DVR. You don't have to sit there and download it. Just leave your PC on and it will be ready for you within a few hours after the show is published. All you need is a fast internet connection and some software. You do NOT need a cable TV connection, antenna or any of that retro gear. It's nice to have a PC or laptop that you can connect to a TV but that is not required. If you hate your cable company this is a viable cable TV replacement. Of course you will need to be able to obtain a license to view many of these shows, but there are a few out there that are free. It's beyond the scope of this article to encourage you to break imaginary property (IP) laws.

Why Class Warfare is Immoral

There are some who are quite confused as to why people would vote against their own "best interests". It seems to me to be quite condescending to know what is in the "best interest" of an entire class of people. Looking past that however, I will try to explain, why such "confused" people think this way.

Violating the golden rule is universally wrong. By forcing, at gun-point, some people to pay a large portion of their income to an organization; we'll call it the Government and not The Mob for now; while requiring others to pay absolutely none is just wrong. Just because you see someone walking down the street with the latest shoes you have been looking at for weeks, doesn't allow you and your friends to steal those shoes. Just because you're stealing those shoes through the proxy that is the U.S. Government doesn't make it any better.