Friday, February 27, 2009

return of the gun grabbers

The same race baiting cretian that said we should have racial "dialog" is now going about showing that the new administration is even less trustworthy.

Obama promised no gun grabbing.
But look what his Attorney General is doing already.

In case the ABC news link disappears.
This one shows Holder is even less trustworthy than Pelosi.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/pelosi-tosses-cold-water-on-reviving-assault-weapon-ban-2009-02-26.html

And this one is from Hannity

Well, I guess we will have to keep a close eye on these guys.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

security cameras

As the crime rate rises, partly due to the recession, and partly due to the crumbling of our society, more and more there is a call for surveillance cameras. This is a particularly insidious threat in and of itself. As I have written before, corporations and governments (really the same thing) will ALWAYS abuse any power given to them. Without a framework of limits on their use, which we need yesterday, mission creep of these things will erode privacy and liberty at an ever increasing rate.

Much has already been written on this subject. Here are just a few examples:

dailymail in uk: Graffiti artist pulls audacious stunt despite CCTV

wired blog: US Surveillance

justicetalking blog: When the watchers watch themselves


Here I have nothing more than a couple of thoughts to throw in:
Security cameras can be generally lumped into 4 categories:

1. Privately owned, like residential.

2. Small business, like the neighborhood grocer or church.


3. Big Corporations, like Wal-Mart and Lockheed Martin

4. And then there is government, under which I would, of course, include any contractors engaged in business directly for the government, whether it be a highway construction crew or the shell corporations created to run "red light cameras" and "speed control cameras."

I would love to see a comprehensive plan on how to prevent the mission creep, ever extending retention dates, and ever expanding reach of these cameras, lest we someday awaken to a truly Orwellian existence.

Of course, I would favor ever increasing restrictions going from least restrictive in category 1 to most restrictive in category 4. But all of this is mostly just academic fodder. The average citizen has no power to limit the reach of government or corporations. But we can make our opinions known, and hopefully someone will stumble across them and give them some consideration.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Obama sized future

The future, under President Obama, looks grim. After each of his major public displays this month (Feb 9 and 17th) the markets tanked. And for good reason. His economic stimulus plan is far from what the economy needs, in order for it to return to the status it had in 2006. But is that really a bad thing? Do we really want to return to overinflated housing prices and trillions in consumer debt?


What we do face, in the short run(and this is completely out of Obama's control), can either be described as a long term recession or a short term depression. For the next year or two, we will not see any recovery, but instead will (hopefully, and this IS within Obama's control) see a cleaning out of our national excesses.


It is likely that we will recover from this recession in several years, but as a socialist/corporatist nation, rather than capitalist. Of course, we haven't really been capitalist since the Great Depression (which, in the future may be known as GD1, with this one known as GD2, just as we now have WW1 and WW2)


From a different point of view, we have not had real capitalism since the 1880's, when we saw the rise of the corporate states. (see 1886 Supreme Court Case, where corporations were given the same rights as persons) Corporatism has been with us for centuries, but was relatively unknown in the US when the Constitution was written. In addition, at that time, corporations were recognised to be instruments of the government. Those two facts may account for their absence from our Constitution.


There may be a silver lining to Obama's Presidency. He does seem (at least on the surface) to stand for the rolling back of some of the excesses of the corporate world. He has already come out in favor of Net Neutrality, and maybe he will be more sympathetic to the citizenry and listen less to the school of thugs on the subject of DRM.


This won't negate the facts that he is much more likely to abridge our (the citizens) Constitutional Rights in favor of increasing the power of the federal government and the power of the political parties (which are constitutionally repugnant). On these things, we will just have to wait and see.



Much of what is written above is in direct conflict with my religious thoughts. I truly believe that the end times are upon us, and that Jesus will return within the next 25 years. Possibly within the next several years. This does not negate the fact that we must carry on in light of the fact that He might not return when we think He should.

Until then.

Friday, February 06, 2009

we have a new word: porkulus

The word is derived from stimulus, though at first I thought it was from fabulous. (I would put a smily there, if I could remember how. :) )

A few mentions:

Weapons of Mass Discussion
http://massdiscussion.blogspot.com/2009/01/latta-on-porkulus.html

National Taxpayers Union
http://blog.ntu.org/main/post.php?post_id=4244

Under the Hill
http://underthehill.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/obama-got-his-porkulus-bill-passed/

Taxpayers Union says that government growth is the threat, not pork.
I would say it is both, and this bill represents both.