Thoughts Aloud

Archive for April, 2009

I just reread my “Dark Ages II” essay, where I make the case that we are inexorably sliding into another dark and uncivilized era, and that there is absolutely nothing we can do – that we would permit ourselves to do – to prevent it. Someday I should get around to tightening it up, as it is a bit of a wide ranging rant. It was actually just a lengthy post to a Freethinker group I was engaged with over two years ago. Most were ACLU type atheists, who had unwittingly adopted anti-Christian activism as their creed, and Progressivism as their dogma. Although I am a freethinking godless heathen, I was an enigma to them as a conservative leaning libertarian, who valued traditional American principles and values, and considers Marxism and Islam to be greater threats to America and my Liberty, than their preferred fear of a Christian theocracy.

My primary antagonist was a decidedly Marxist retired college professor, who was proud of his active participation in the ZPG movement back in the ’70s, which he had never outgrown. He saw politics as a purely Left/Right duopoly and considered anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy a reactionary Troglodyte. He was always trying to bait me into an off-topic political debate, by painting me as a mindless “Ditto-Head” for challenging PC orthodoxy. “Dark Ages II,” was the point when I finally unloaded – through the muzzle.

It had the intended effect of throwing the group into dismay and even shocked disarray for a time; but they soon regrouped and typically demanded cites to peer reviewed scientific papers to back up my assertions. I simply referred them to Google and Mark Steyn’s book, “America Alone”; but I sure wish I had this video clip I stumbled across last night available at the time:

Watching it is sobering. I note with some chagrin that once again of late, I have allowed my disdain for the Progressive movement to drag me back into paying attention to politics and rather passionate if feeble efforts to combat the scourge. As I occasionally point out in my posts here and elsewhere, I am a realist and deal with the world as I find it. I engage in my duty as a Patriot, not out of any false hope that I could make a difference to posterity; but for the sheer sport of it.

I do what little I can simply for the pleasure of throwing sand in the gears, and irritating over-schooled and under-educated Progressive fools. I do it out of the utter contempt I harbor for the altruistic Utopian dreamers, who have destroyed Western civilization in general, and are feverishly engaged in the final destruction of my country. Since I don’t believe in Hell, I yearn to make the pathetic leeches as uncomfortable as possible while they live. That most of them I encounter on the net are so bitter and angry pleases me, and I love to twist their tails.

It is as good a hobby as any for my retirement years; and as sad as reality is, in a way it is easier to indulge it knowing that it won’t make a damn bit of difference in the end. At least the Progressives won’t have the place very long before the Mexicans take over. Then the Mexicans will lose it to the Muslims. Just think, our great great… grandchildren will be saying their devotions to Allah five times a day in Spanish, and the oh so righteous altruists will still be spinning… in their graves.    ◄Dave►

Addendum:

Gabe’s link below in the comment section to J. R. Nyquist’s column, “The Investment Climate in 2059” is well worth the read. The concluding paragraph begs to be added here:

I am amazed by those who think the U.S. economy is going to recover, that global peace is attainable, that American liberties are going to survive American barbarism. Look at our culture today: men are no longer men, and women are no longer women; capitalists no longer uphold free market principles; constitutional government no longer adheres to the Constitution; enemies are treated as friends. Nobody reads the signs. Nobody sees what is coming. Look at the birthrate among Europeans. Look at the abandonment of European culture. Look at the Muslim birthrate. Europe will be Islamic in fifty years. Long before that, the Russians and Chinese will achieve nuclear dominance of the globe. What do you think the investment climate will be in 2059?

Here is an interesting item that I find amazing hasn’t been in the news. I just received a phone call from my upset sister in North Carolina, asking me if I knew anything about the Census bureau gathering the GPS coordinates of everyone’s front door. She had just had an altercation with a purported Census worker at her front door keying her address into a GPS device. She thought it was some sort of scam and tried to take the person’s picture; but was told she was not permitted to do so. Then to her amazement, the Sheriff was called on her for interfering with a Census worker!

My sister is very aware of what is going on, reads the newspapers, watches cable news, listens to talk radio, etc.; and she just couldn’t believe this was for real, because she had heard nothing about any such survey. I had seen a report on a Patriot forum of a similar encounter in another State about ten days ago, so I Googled “GPS Census.” The only thing close to a MSM news report was something from NPR, which I didn’t bother to check out. The most prominent entry was a piece yesterday on “American Daily Review” entitled, “Big Brother GPS Doorway Census” by Douglas V. Gibbs:

The Decennial Census in 2010 is around the corner, and technology promises to be of great assistance to the process of counting the number of Americans residing in this great nation. Instead of using paper-based lists, surveys, and the like, however, the United States Government has developed a paperless method to achieve their census goals. Efficiency and accuracy are the promised bi-products of these new technology-based programs, which includes creating Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates for the front doors of American homes. This way, in addition to the current satellite location and picture of your property from the roof, the government will now have a GPS coordinate for your front door.

GPS coordinates of your front door will make it easier for the government to monitor you. The U.S. Census Bureau is simply an excuse – a harmless looking means of obtaining the front door coordinates. The creation of GPS coordinates for front doors has nothing to do with the Census, in all honesty, no matter how much the United States Government tries to convince you that it does.

Why would the U.S. government desire the exact location of your front door to be entered into their GPS data base when they already have the location of your home in the system?

Read the rest of it for his speculation and several references for his piece. Going to the belly of the beast, the Census Bureau’s PIO back on 3/25/09 released, “Census Workers to Verify Addresses in the U.S. - First Major 2010 Census Operation to Employ 140,000.” Here it is in its entirety:

The Census Bureau will launch a massive operation on March 30 to verify and update more than 145 million addresses as it prepares to conduct the 2010 Census.

Nationwide, more than 140,000 census workers will participate in the address canvassing operation, a critically important first step in assuring that every housing unit receives a census questionnaire in March 2010. All information is kept confidential. The countdown to the 2010 Census is officially one year out on April 1.

“A complete and accurate address list is the cornerstone of a successful census,” said Tom Mesenbourg, acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau. “Building on the achievements of the 2000 Census, we have been testing and preparing for the 2010 count all decade, and we’re ready to fulfill our constitutional mandate to count everyone living in the United States.”

The first publicly visible activity of the 2010 Census is ahead of schedule. Address canvassing kicks off a week earlier than originally planned and should conclude by mid-July. The operation will use new hand-held computers equipped with GPS to increase geographic accuracy. The ability to capture GPS coordinates for most of the nation’s housing units will greatly reduce the number of geographic coding errors caused by using paper maps in previous counts.

“The primary goal of the census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place,” Mesenbourg said. “Because the census is used for reapportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the distribution of more than $300 billion in federal dollars every year to state and local governments, it’s essential to get this first step right.”

Over the last several years, the Census Bureau has been actively working on updating its geographic databases and master address files. From implementing the Local Update of Census Address program where more than 11,500 tribal, state and local governments participated in a review of the Census Bureau’s address list for their area, to increasing the precision of the GPS mapping, many advances have been made to compile the most comprehensive listing of addresses in the nation.

The address canvassing operation will be conducted out of 151 local census offices across the U.S, with most offices beginning on April 6. In most cases, census workers will knock on doors to verify addresses and inquire about additional living quarters on the premises. This is the first census to include group quarters (such as dormitories, group homes, prisons and homeless shelters) in the address canvassing operation, which should improve both the accuracy and coverage of the final count.

There will be one final opportunity to add new home construction in early 2010 prior to the mailing of the census questionnaires.

Census workers can be identified by the official Census Bureau badge they carry. During the address canvassing operation, census workers may ask to verify a housing structure’s address and whether there are additional living quarters on the property.

2010 Census workers will never ask for bank or social security information. All census information collected, including addresses, are confidential and protected by law. By law, the Census Bureau cannot share respondents’ answers with the FBI, the IRS, CIA, Welfare, Immigration, or any other government agency. No court of law or law enforcement agency can find out respondents’ answers. All Census Bureau employees — including temporary employees — take an oath for life to keep census information confidential. Any violation of that oath is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and five years in prison.

Somehow, that last paragraph isn’t all that reassuring. I suspect the intrusive questions they will ask next year are insignificant compared to the data they are collecting right now. The very fact that there is a deafening silence from the news media over what is going on is ominous. My sister can’t be the only Patriot who has had a confrontation with them over this (although she did make her big brother proud).

Why aren’t there news stories about them? One would think that it would be in the best interest of the Census bureau itself to make sure people aren’t freaked out by these “legal” trespassers, just to protect their own employees from the risks of being mistaken for some scam artist, as my sister suspected. Do read Gibbs’ speculation, and I am sure you can think of a couple of concerns of your own. Big Brother indeed… ◄Dave►

After explaining why, “There Will Never Be a Middle Ground,” Bruce Bialosky asks four very cogent questions:

We deserve answers to four questions from the Democrats who continue pursuing this issue:

1) The Democrats kept asserting that use of “torture” techniques has been a major recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. They repeat this mantra at every opportunity. If so, please let us know how they know this. How many terrorists that have been recruited attribute their joining the cause to our “torture” of other terrorists? Do they have a Gallup Poll on this? Do they have in-depth studies of the terrorists and their motivations? We deserve to see this material so we can make an educated analysis of the situation. Without such information it is reasonable to suppose that someone spouted this out once and now it has been repeated a thousand times with no substantiation.

2) The point that the techniques that have been used do not produce results. After the mantra about the recruiting tool, this comes out of their mouths next. Whether you believe the techniques used should be used or not, to purport that torture does not work defies hundreds of years of use of torture. Surely some torture was done just because the people involved were sadistic. But please don’t foist some study by a PhD upon us and ask us to buy that. In fact, it is clear that the CIA personnel involved have disclosed that vital information was derived from the prisoners. Tell us you are against it for moral reasons, but don’t create a lie that it does not work. That is insulting to our common sense.

3) Please explain why the Bush Administration is responsible when leading members of Congress from both parties were fully aware of what was being done and condoned the actions?

4) Please define what you are going to do to extract information from high-level prisoners of war. If you don’t like the techniques used then what are you going to do? We were not putting these people on the rack or cutting off fingers. In the realm of techniques of information extraction, these are relatively mild and people of good conscience can disagree whether they were actually torture. But now that these procedures have been taken out of our playbook, what are we going to do when we have a legitimate suspect and a plot to blow-up O’Hare has been discovered? We deserve to know how you are going to save thousands of innocent lives.

Until we have a clarification on these points we cannot take these people seriously. It appears they are against military action and just drowning in their hatred of whatever Bush-Cheney did during their term. Real matters of grave seriousness are at stake here and from all appearances we cannot take the current administration and their cohorts seriously. That, folks, is scary.

Personally, I quit taking any of them seriously long ago. If they weren’t screwing up my country so badly, I would just ignore all of these clowns as irrelevant to my pursuit of happiness. ◄Dave►

If Texas governor Rick Perry doesn’t stop speaking sweet nothings in our ears…

“I got asked, and I said … Texas is a very unique place. America is a great union. And I see absolutely no reason for Texas to leave. But if Washington continues to disregard the states and continues to try to force states to change the way that they govern, who knows what may happen?” he said Thursday. “I refer people to the first part of the Declaration of Independence.”

…Texas is going to have to secure all of its borders to keep from being overrun by Patriots wishing to live once again in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Where does one apply for immigration papers for the Republic of Texas? ◄Dave►

This is chilling to watch. As you go through minute six, please keep in mind that this was recorded 24 years ago. Normalization? ◄Dave►

The sagacious George Carlin understood “Earth Day” for what it was, and explained environmentalism as only he could. His unique species may now be extinct; but thanks to YouTube, his work remains immortal. If you are offended by Politically Incorrect thoughts, Piously Incorrect words, or Common Sense – viewer discretion is advised. ◄Dave►

According to the AP, Californians are seriously considering a Constitutional Convention. I am still unclear what I think of such a notion:

“If the purpose is to make it easier to raise taxes, there will never be an agreement,” Runner said, adding he was concerned about who would be chosen as delegates to the convention.

“California is a very diverse state,” he said. “I can’t think of anything more emotional or controversial than choosing who the delegates would be to rewrite the state’s constitution.”

Organizers are proposing that 200 people serve as delegates, including 80 elected officials from across the state.

In addition to budget reform, backers want to change the constitution to allow nonpartisan or “open” primaries in hopes that more moderates will be elected to the Legislature. They’re also proposing that the constitution allow local governments to collect and spend tax revenues, rather than have them centrally controlled by the state.

Of course, the thing they are trying to achieve – reducing the 2/3 vote of the legislature to approve a budget – I am solidly against. The risk of opening this can of worms seems great; but if CA did it, it would probably start a trend that could end in a national version, which just might be the only thing that could save our nation from itself. The big question, as suggested, is who gets a seat at the table. I would want to eliminate all politicians; but then again I would want to eliminate all moralizers and anyone with an agenda to use the law to impose their own model of utopia on freemen. It is a tricky issue for sure. ◄Dave►

This ruling from the 9th Circuit gives me cognitive dissonance:

BELLEVUE, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Second Amendment Foundation today applauded the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for ruling that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states and local governments.

The majority opinion was written by Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, with a concurring opinion from Judge Ronald M. Gould, who wrote, “The right to bear arms is a bulwark against external invasion…That we have a lawfully armed populace adds a measure of security for all of us and makes it less likely that a band of terrorists could make headway in an attack on any community before more professional forces arrived.”

Although the court found against the plaintiffs in the case of Nordyke v. King – Russell and Sallie Nordyke, operators of a gun show in Alameda County, CA – the court acknowledged that its earlier position that the Second Amendment protected only a collective right of states has been overruled by the Supreme Court’s 2008 historic ruling in District of Columbia v. Dick Anthony Heller. That was the case in which the high court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right to keep and bear arms.

“This is a great victory for advancement of the fundamental individual right of American citizens to own firearms,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “The Ninth Circuit panel has acknowledged that the Heller ruling abrogated its earlier position on the Second Amendment, and it further clarified that the Second Amendment is incorporated to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment through the due process clause.”

Did I awaken in an alternative universe, or did the Ninth Circuit not only acknowledge, but actually expanded on the Heller ruling? Wow! ◄Dave►

The Orders We Oath Keepers Will Not Obey:

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.

2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people

3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.

10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

I wish I could have been there. ◄Dave►