Category Archives: Freedom

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the essentials of freedom

I truly wonder whether I’m an internal alarmist who then occasionally flies off the handle in an external fashion aboard this degenerate blog.  Until I read a line like:

“The share of the world’s populace living in countries with a free press fell from 38% in 2005 to 31% in 2015;”

In other words, less than one third of our planet has the ability to live in a free society enabled by free speech.  I would have hoped for at least half, but I guess I was wrong.  Read the article.

Then read the other three articles The Economist put into their latest issue.  One.  Two.  Three.

My feelings on all this are pretty clear, but I’ll shut up now, and hope you take the time to read it all.

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enjoy the zoo while you can

A child was endangered, a gorilla got shot, people are now angry about both, and in the end I think the only thing that’ll matter in the long run is this is just yet more justification of why we’re all bound for the crypt as a human race.

I’ve got no idea what my point of this post is, I’m just a bit frazzled, do or do not bear with me.  It’s your call.  Your were warned.

There is a ever growing path in society to just go around and dispense with things that offend people:

– You’re not supposed to play tackle football anymore because it’s dangerous.  Do folks conceptually understand just how perilous driving a car is?

– You’re not allowed to criticize Erdogan anywhere on the planet anymore without getting sued or charged, even though he’s essentially a dictator.  Even Frau Merkel is in on this plan.  Did she happen to forget what opinion the Stasi took on such matters when she was a kid?

– Do you have a varying political opinion from your friend, co-worker, or acquaintance on the street?  Shame on you.  You should be silenced.  We must all agree on everything.  Or else.

– If you happen to every once and a while prefer unhealthy food, then you’re just not understanding that one day a giant 300 pound strongman will be appointed by the courts to stand over your shoulder and hit you with a stick for not eating a pre-approved, organic, sustainable food option.

– If you love the zoo?  That just means you hate animals and want them to suffer.

– Down with squirrels.  Because why not?

When I was a young lad my Parents lost me in the middle of Disney World.  I seriously remember looking around and having lost track of where I was with none of my family in sight.  I must have been about eight or something.  Not knowing what else to do, I just sat down on a bench figuring they’d be back at some point.  And sure enough, probably about fifteen minutes later my Dad strolls up and all was well.

But think of all the wonderful things that could have happened to me:

– Fallen into the It’s a Small World river and drowned.

– Run amok pawning candy off total strangers.

– Got myself kidnapped by the Goofy mascot who would then have taken me to his gingerbread house.

– Proposed marriage to the princess and demanded to remain in this World forever.

But now because a child falls into a gorilla enclosure, the universe has apparently collapsed.  Folks with either too much time on their hands or no appreciation of the planet’s (or their own) actual problems feel the need to detonate the lives of the kid’s parents.

It’s literally international news.  These parents are going to have their lives and reputations detonated by the trolls.  In our brave new world, social media no longer allows you to make mistakes.  You have to suffer for being a flawed human being.  Which means you have to suffer for drawing air from the atmosphere.  Because we’re all flawed human beings.  What a wonderful moment for humanity.

I suggest, that if folks have an issue with these parents making a mistake, they need to put down the fucking stone.  But I don’t really get a vote.

Yet that’s not enough for some people, for since a gorilla was killed, we now need to bang on the zoo drum.  For you see, the zoo is evil.  It captures wild animals and put them in a cage for our own amusement.  It’s positively barbaric.  If that gorilla had not been in the zoo, it’d still be alive.

Except that it wouldn’t.  Because it would have died.  Because with some rare exceptions, almost every animal lives longer in a zoo then it does in the wild.  Do you know why?  Because wild nature is a freaking thresher.  It consumes life with glorious abandon.

Depending upon your viewpoint, it could also be said humanity consumes life with glorious abandon.  You know what won’t help with that?  Closing zoos.  Think we already care almost nothing for the planet?  Wait till four year old Timmy can only read about tigers in a book.  Because the tiger zoo was banned in 2036.

And only Timmy’s rich classmates’ parents (who were the elitists that demanded all the zoos close) have the cash to take their kids on a tiger safari, in which they’ll have to be encased in bubble wrap surrounded by armed guards.  Because life is dangerous you know.  In 2037, kids won’t be allowed to do anything.  I fear for this future.

Shit happens.  Parents make mistakes.  Zoos make mistakes.  Kids make mistakes.  I make mistakes.  You make mistakes.  Your very act of driving a car is more dangerous than anything you do.  Even if you frequently eat or drink poorly to the point you endanger your own life.  You should be allowed to run your mouth to folks about anything without fearing the lawyers or secret police show up at your door.  But you should also be wary of breaking out the social media bat to club somebody you’ve never met.  And the zoo is still a great place.  Because it teaches kids about nature in a manner they’d never experience otherwise.  And in the end this benefits nature.

And in the end I’m going to lose this fight though.  I’m going to get overruled by governments, outrage trolls, do-gooders, and all the others to whom the previous paragraph is viciously offensive.  So enjoy the zoo while you can, I guess.

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you have to live with it

Ponder if you will, this simple scenario.  It takes one hour for a normal cardiologist test to check your heart for the detrimental presence of alien spores.  But your particular cardiologist (we’ll call him Gil) says it’ll take him at least three hours to test you.  And his error rate for the test is north of 90%.  So you’ll just have to take his word for it.  You of course reject all of this, and decide to go to another cardiologist.  Until Gil starts cracking up and delightfully informs you that he’s the only cardiology practice on the planet.  You have no choice.  You have to live with it.

We’re regular TSA haters on this degenerate blog.  Partially because I fly a minimum of a dozen times a year, usually nearly double that.  In that time I’ve seen some real, real anger inducing stuff.  I’ve seen the TSA aggressively frisk a well dressed grandmother, scream at a small child, allow a person without an actual passport past the international checkpoint, and on and on and on.

For what?  Kindly take a moment to gaze upon the latest saga in a 15 year journey of incompetence.   If you’re flying out of Chicago, the TSA needs you there three hours early to do something that traditionally only took one hour.

There are the usual troubling nuggets in this article:

– Apparently after all this time they still can’t process the concept of peak season travel numbers.  This is their business.  This is what they do for a living.  But nobody seemed to bother to write on a napkin the number of booked tickets verses the number of screen personnel and do some simple math.  After all, it’s just your life, so whatever.

– The TSA continues to pound TSA Pre as the solution to all of your problems.  As before though, you’ll still have to pay $85, get fingerprinted, and conduct a formal interview with a TSA bureaucrat who’s undoubtedly fully qualified for the job of determining whether or not you’re a vicious terrorist.  So TSA Pre is the answer to the problem of the TSA’s removal of your time and money.  And thus the solution is for them to take more of your time and money (and your privacy).  So you can get back what they already took from you.  In any other construct not government, that’d be called theft or blackmail.

– All of this might be worth it if the TSA actually did the task assigned to them.  But as the article reminds us, the TSA fails at its mission well over 90% of the time.  In fact, the article actually mentions the raw numbers which I’ve never seen before:

undercover security operatives managed to smuggle 67 illegal weapons or simulated bombs past TSA security on 70 tries last year, that TSA officials were unable to properly vet 73 aviation employees who had links to terrorism, thereby allowing them access to secure areas,  and that senior managers have a long history of bullying whistleblowers who identify potential problems.

In 15 years the TSA has never successfully stopped a single terrorist act.  They’ve never caught a guy at the checkpoint.  But if you play devil’s advocate to try and make the argument about deterrence, all I can say is with a failure rate of 90%, if an actual terrorist had actually tried, he’d probably have succeeded.

So what’s all this been?  For 15 years?  Smoke and mirrors.  Power, money, and the bureaucratic inertia survival of an organization, no matter how incompetent or rude or unfair to you, the citizen.

But don’t worry, Congress is all over this, solving the problem like they typically do:

On Tuesday, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) called on TSA Administrator Peter V. Neffenger to resign if the long wait times at airports such as O’Hare and Midway are not resolved by Memorial Day.

Senator Kirk seems to think wait times are the reason to clean house.  Senator Kirk is thus burning his day sitting under one tree, surrounded by flies, scratching his head, completely unaware that he’s in the middle of a whole forest.  Bravo.

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I guess eventually I’ll be banned from Britain

Oh, that Trump dude, he’s so wacky. You never know what he’s going to say next. For instance, he wants to halt Muslim immigration, which to my back of the napkin math means my uncle couldn’t have married my aunt, but I digress.

What I find rather humorous about Trump is how seriously folks take everything he says, even though it’s quite clear that Trump doesn’t take everything he says seriously. The dude’s just talking off the top of his head, but every word he speaks is dissected like he’s thought about it for three weeks. Probably because the media and politicians are used to vetting political statements that took three weeks to write.

Well, Trump and Sanders aren’t like that. Both these dudes are cut from a different mold. Which is part of the appeal that’s kept them in the game. Folks don’t want their leaders to spout something they wrote three weeks ago. It’s fake, it’s disingenuous, it plays the average voter for a fool.

I actually kind of hope we see a Trump and Sanders election. I really do. Perhaps this will result in absolute disaster for the Republic? Yeah, maybe, but when the alternative was Clinton and Bush, I’ll take my chances with these two new nut lunatics. Particularly when 99% of the fringe policies they’re spouting (such as Trump’s Muslim ban or Sanders’ single payer healthcare) have absolutely zero chance of ever becoming law.

The British Parliament should probably be talking about important things, oh say, such as the forthcoming EU vote, federalism of the Union, or whatever. Eh, I guess it’s easier to take on Trump over his Muslim proposal, it doesn’t require them to actually do anything.

Hey you know this Jeremy Corbyn dude’s said some pretty horribly sexist offensive things too. In addition to having some policies that would see Britain conquered by Luxembourg. Maybe he should be banned from Britain?

Either way though, whether you hate these guys or love them, I prefer to let free speech be free speech, and let things get resolved at the ballot box. Except if you’re the British Parliament, in which case you prefer to handle things yourself. And so the birthplace of free speech spent a good portion of the weekend once again showing why the British construct is headed for the gutter.

In Parliament’s view, free speech should be handled on a case-by-case basis as determined by whatever the government says, and the ballot box and liberty be damned. And so Britain shall adopt the free speech policies and enforcement methods of Saudi Arabia or China. Neat.

And so I guess eventually I’ll be banned from Britain, for writing something on this blog deemed offensive, or what I say to my friend in the bar. I’ll tell a dirty joke or whatever, and I’ll get tapped on the shoulder, and it’s a Brit MP wearing a $9K suit, and he’s like, “You’re banned, you can’t say that.” But I’ll just shrug, “Eh, you guys are no longer worth visiting,” and then go back to drinking my beer.

MagnaCarta

Magna Carta – soon to be banned from Britain as offensive to the values of the ruling political elite

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when do you send in the army?

So if you were a citizen of Brussels, then at this point you’ve been robbed of a whole week of your life earlier this year and now, all of New Years.  Why?  Terror threats.

Well, what is that?  Apparently it’s whatever somebody says it is.  Just ask your Los Angeles school district neighbor.  I’ve already ranted about this without purpose, it is what it is.  You just need to read the remarks of Belgium’s leader to understand what happened here, he cancelled all of New Years because of:

“…information we have received.”

How long do leaders figure their people are going to just put up with this?  How long are the average working folks of Brussels going to put up with having their lives altered because of information their leaders have apparently received?

With this kind of weak leadership, it is any wonder folks are turning to new fringe political parties and leaders?

I have no idea.  Neither does Donald Trump or Francois Hollande.  I just would think, at a certain point, that your normal average human would eventually get aggravated to the point that they’d expect something to be done about it.  Instead of doing what Europe does best: muddle through.

For now, the European answer, and I suspect the American answer is you just put the army on the streets.  Europe’s armies now guard the streets.  And the American police are mostly armed and equipped the same way as European armies, so it’s all the same to me.

And armies now guard museums, government buildings, mosques, synagogues, and the freaking zoo.

If you live in Brussels, and the Islamic State is responsible for ruining your life, when do you draw the line and demand your leaders deal with the problem at the source?

I fear, the answer is, you don’t.  You muddle through.  Particularly because as it stands, Belgium virtually has no deployable army.  Which is sad when you look at what they did in 1940.

So you’ll say, well, I’m a lunatic.  True.  But where do you draw the line?  If you honestly prefer a life where every public occasion you attend with your family requires a cop / soldier armed with an automatic rifle?   Just say so.  Tell me you want to live like that.

But I’m wondering if the lesser evil to the West’s freedom is a brief army of say 100K troops, mostly American and French, who carve a swath against the Islamic State for about 3 months and destroy it.  Then everybody wags their fingers and says, “Don’t do that again.”

And then you leave the Middle East to figure out the wreckage on their own terms.  And if they screw it up, and the Islamic State emerges again, you do another 3 month invasion all over.

Do you think this is a shit idea?  Maybe.  My idea might suck.  But at least it’s an idea.

The only idea on offer from idiots like Trump is to expel an entire religious group. The only idea on offer from all the leaders of Europe is to cancel New Years.  I’ll stand by the lunacy of my idea.  It’s better than anybody else’s.

belgian police

What’s really creepy about this shot, is that the Belgian police are all wearing masks while inside their own capital city.  And, look closely, the BBC has blurred the faces of those cops who aren’t wearing masks.

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we’re all apparently going to die

While driving down the highway carrying on with my joyful day, bound for a cool Christmas party, I was interrupted by the government to remind me that I’m going to die.

For you see, the highway information signs told me “if you see something, say something” and provided me with a number to call.  This was on every single electronic sign.  All of them.

So this is of course the government approved way of telling you to be vigilant for terrorism.  Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!  But don’t forget to watch out for pipe bombs!  You don’t want to see your Holiday Season ended with some bloody flesh infused shrapnel, do you?  Love, Your Government.

But the sign didn’t tell me any of this.  It just said, “if you see something, say something”.  Well, I see things all the time.  Should I call the number every time I see something?  If I didn’t think it would get me added to the terrorism watch list, I’d call that number and be like, “Hey, I ah, I see a bird.  Just thought I’d say something to you about it.  Talk to you all again soon.”

They also posted these signs all around my work that say the exact same thing.  The government is of course doing this because they want you to know they’re on the case.  They’re here to fight terrorism and keep you safe.  It’s why Obama has given a couple of speeches about it lately.

Let’s leave aside for the moment that folks who actually see something tend not to say something for fear of being accused a racist, which is why the San Bernardino killers’ neighbors said nothing.  This is a worthy concern when you can’t read any online publication nowadays without seeing at least two or three people accused of various kinds of racism each day.  Even your 18 month old cousin is a dirty racist I’m sure.

Let’s also leave aside that probably about 100 Americans have died in domestic terrorism related gunfire since September 12th, 2001.  In that time, over 400,000 Americans have died via gunfire.  You can be pro-gun or anti-gun, but those are the facts.

So what’s really going on here?  To me, it’s quite simple, all you need to do is read between the lines of the placard:

dhs

The Department of Homeland Security needs their logo on this, why?  Why would they need to put their logo on there, why not just leave the statement as is?

Because, of course, the DHS needs to exist.  The first goal of any human organization is to ensure its survival.  DHS wants you to know that they care.  DHS wants you to know that if you see something, you should say something.  Even though you’ll never see anything.

You’ll be struck by lightning before you’ll see one pipe bomb in your life, I assure you.  But thanks DHS, it’s good to know you’re there, because when we’re scared, you have a reason to exist.

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want to understand why Trump is winning? see LA schools closure

Any Republican / Democrat paid party politician, operative, or acolyte will be happy to kindly inform you why Trump and Sanders are a joke, fad, or a circus.  The British or French paid party politician, operative, or acolyte will tell you the same thing about Corbyn, Farage, or Le Pen.

You’ll hear random things along the lines of: “Well, Trump is supported by the 23% of Republicans who actually vote in the primary which means only 8% of America’s total population actually backs him.”

Or: “Corbyn got elected party leader by a bunch of radical young supporters who flooded the Labour Party who then won’t actually be around for the next election in 2020.”

Eh, maybe.

Though Farage took only one seat at Britain’s last election, he still picked up 13% of the vote.  Le Pen just won over 50% in multiple districts before the mainstream parties ganged up and utterly destroyed her folks in the second round.  The point has been made in multiple circles that if America’s presidential election cycle had a parliamentary timeline, as in it lasted say eight weeks instead of two freaking years, that Trump might have had a legit shot at the big chair.  In one month Corbyn added more party members than all the other parties total size, combined.  Only one American presidential candidate has consistently filled whole stadiums, Sanders, and increasingly now, Trump too.

Put another way, folks on the left and right of modern Western democracies are pissed off.  Put another way, everybody’s  really pissed off.

Why?  The answers are legendarily complex.  But I’ll give a simple reason right now:

See LA schools closure.

Basically what’s happened today is unelectable bureaucrats decided to detonate the lives of millions of people over a supposed bomb threat.  It shows a ruling structure that values safety over reality; risk aversion over problem solving; cowardice over measured action.  Nobody will ever be held accountable over it.  Nobody will be fired.  And so this behavior will be left to fester and grow inside the bureaucratic mentality nationwide.

I bet the man / woman / people who made this call today don’t even have their kids in LA’s schools.  Instead, I’m sure they all live in gated communities, and their kids go to private schools, and are thus not effected by their decisions.  After all, better safe than sorry.  We wouldn’t want to take the chance that the twelve-year-old-ISIS-mimic on the e-mail was actually a liar, would we?

How would I have wanted them to respond?  Go look at what New York City did.  They gave the ISIS-mimic e-mails the finger, and carried on with their day.  This behavior is to be applauded.  But unfortunately, NYC has the NYPD, which thanks to 2001 is essentially its own standing army / intelligence service.  The NYPD is unique, and gives NYC’s leaders a lot more flexibility to take risks that I think all of America’s leaders are not willing to take.

Thus, the LA school system is showing everybody what it takes to cripple most of America’s governing institutions nowadays.  ISIS/ISIL/morons can just set up a phone bank in Raqqah and call in several hundred bomb threats to America on the same day, and bring the country to its knees.  And so, in today’s modern culture, a terrorist phone bank is an effective weapon of mass destruction.

The problems resident in today’s Western democracies are massive.  But the people (you, I hope) are starting to discover that the party politician, operative, or acolyte who’s supposedly there to solve these problems, are in fact so useless that they throw their cards on the table at the first hint of danger from [insert pathetic hack entity’s name here].

If the LA school system’s / police leaders can’t function under these circumstances, what chance do they have of solving chronic student underachievement or massive crime?  Or what example are they showing their students / citizens on what it takes to survive in a modern, ever-changing, dynamic, dangerous world?  I don’t have to go down this stupid “it’s cold out” school closure road again?  Do I:

https://arcturusproject.com/2014/01/08/88/

Ask yourself, if Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Farage, or Le Pen had answered the phone and fielded the bomb threat, what would have happened?  Would they have folded too?  Would they have told the caller to “get fucked”?  Would their answer have depended on whether the person answering was from the left or right?  As in, maybe Trump would tell the ISIS-mimic to “get fucked” and Corbyn would have just folded too.  Eh, maybe, but I tell you what, I’m not sure I’d want to get in a bar fight with Jeremy Corbyn, dude’s probably cracked his fair share of skulls with a vacant bitters bottle like four decades ago.

I don’t know?  I truly don’t.  But the bottom line is, I think that the answer would at least have been different.  And when the leaders of government of both the left and right are failing, the people will search for just that:

Something different.

There’s a reason people have more trust in the local dry cleaner than the government today.  It’s because I think more and more, the system is not a reflection of its people, but a reflection of the desires of a secluded-hypocritical-risk-adverse-self-serving elite.  Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Farage, and Le Pen are all in play for this reason.

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you will be made to pay

The other day I strolled into my neighborhood shopette to purchase a pack of alcoholic beverages known locally as beer. I struggled to determine which style I desired to buy as I’m generally indecisive and as there are so many delicious options. But then I was shocked as I felt a sharp pain at the base of my back and I quickly found myself being led down the beer case aisle with a firm hand on my shoulder.

“Just right this way, Sir; just right this way,” the man said. I thought about struggling but it seemed as if the man could read my mind for as I made to break free the pain in my back increased and I realized I had a knife to my spine. I managed to glance over my shoulder and I was aghast to find my captor was no less than The Monopoly Man.

Our journey concluded in front of the ubiquitous Bud and Miller case. For of course they’re usually side by side. “Pick one,” The Monopoly Man whispered seductively in my ear. Sweating, and scared out of my mind, I meekly uttered, “Which one?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he firmly responded. Five minutes later I departed the shopette with a six pack of Bud or Miller. I can’t remember which as I was too concerned with the fact that I’d soiled myself shortly after The Monopoly Man returned the switchblade to his pocket and disappeared behind a Grolsch display case, never to be seen again.

bud

Why yes, yes it is.

$104B is a lot of money for a beer company. $104B is a lot of money for anything. $104B could buy you ten nuclear aircraft carriers or 20 years of budget for America’s PEPFAR anti-AIDS program. But AB InBev is using it to absorb SABMiller. Why? Straight cash, folks.

Should you care? After all, nobody is made to buy beer. Alcohol is scientifically a poison to your body. It’s why you get drunk. So technically speaking, I don’t suppose there’s any reasonable difference between deliberately ingesting alcohol, and deliberately ingesting drain cleaner. It’s just that one is more poisonous than the other. Except that beer is tastier, so there’s that.

But this purchase is the latest in a trend. Depending on where you live, there are only about three mobile phone providers you get to choose from. The health insurance companies are merging now too. Experts predict that eventually instead of having five health insurance companies that there’ll be only three soon enough.

The health insurance companies claim they need these mergers to keep costs down. So good news, your health insurance cost will go down over the next five years. Guaranteed. They’ll swear to it.

The problem with capitalism is you need genuine competition for it to work. Otherwise you get something other than capitalism.

AB InBev has shelled out $24.3M in political campaign contributions equally split between the parties, as well as $102.3M on lobbying the government. SABMiller’s numbers are $2.1M and $21.0M, smaller, but still equally split between the parties. Hmm, why would they give an equal amount of cash to each party?

You certainly shouldn’t really care about AB InBev and SABMiller. Instead, you can just always buy tasty Yuengling.

But I suspect you do care about health insurance. Or the cost of your phone plan, seeing as how you can’t compete in the modern knowledge economy without one. How about the cost of your Internets? Or your power bill?

The same thing is happening to them all. You will be made to pay. The Monopoly Man is sure of it.

The Monopoly Man

“Terribly sorry old chap but you’ll be made to pay lest you force me to slice you open.”

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the current sadness of American politics

I’m pretty sure if the Founder Fathers are boozing it up in Valhalla right now, that they’re also shouting, overturning tables, and generally pissed off with what they’re observing.  Everybody seems inclined to pick a side.  I refuse to pick a side when it seems both sides are in the same business of destroying us all.

Obama took to the stage today to say such encouraging things as:

“Many of the same people who made the case for war with Iraq are now opposing the Iran deal…”

“I am not saying this to be provocative,” Obama said. “I am stating a fact . . . the choice we have is some kind of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in three months, but soon.”

I’m pretty sure he said all of these things to be provocative.   And so, a guy who came to Washington to apparently change Washington, has fallen victim at every point to the typical unhelpful Washington tactic, demonize your opponents, at every opportunity.  I tend to, somewhat, give Obama the benefit of the doubt in that he may not have been this way before 2008.  But surely, at this point, he’s as much a part of the problem as anybody else.

On the other side we have a circus which would make a medieval bazaar look tame.  Tonight, 10 people are going to “debate” for the honor of leading the free world.  And by debate I mean they’ll answer canned questions by hack reporters trying to play “gotcha” while they read off sound bites in an attempt to get noticed for that key “one-liner”.  In other words, the very definition of style over substance.

I think Trump’s a fringe goon unfit to lead a lemonade stand.  And I wouldn’t vote for him.  But I truly hope he completely detonates tonight’s debate format.  It’s truly a farce, a disgusting way to pick a presidential candidate.  But there will be 27 more of them run by both parties before the election.  Swell.

But soon, Trump will be gone.  And then the other side will have their own debate using the same format.  And then eventually we’ll have an election to pick the next person who gets the honor to become president, go to Washington, and demonize their opponents without conducting anything reasonable.  Gee, isn’t it all great.  What’s not to be excited about!  [waves American flag; while wearing 11 campaign buttons; singing America the Beautiful; drunk; in an unlit basement]

And nothing will change.  The Founding Fathers will still shout from Valhalla.  And the rest of us not involved in politics will still hope these idiots somehow don’t manage to destroy us all.

debatestage

textbook picture Circa 2345 describing the key reasons for the downfall of the Republic