Nearly 11 months before the presidential election, differences like this are not meaningful, even before you throw in the poll's 3 percent margin of error. So many things can change -- both in terms of the images of the candidates and the problems facing the nation -- that all crystal balls should come with the kinds of warning labels emblazoned on cigarette packs.
Having grown up within (what I like to call) pissing distance of Iowa, this caucus seems like a no brainer. Remember how journalists thought Dean had a chance? I know the upper midwest. These people talk one way to journalists and pollsters because they don't want to appear awkward and backwards. Truth be told, the vast majority of Iowans I have met are closeted bigots and racists who are not trend setters. The front runners are clearly Clinton and Obama. These are the only two worth any attention. And if I know anything about Iowa, Clinton will trounce Obama because it is far better to give your support to a woman (add redneck Iowa farmer gag sound here) than to a black.
Iowa liberals are some of the most conservative Democrats you'll ever meet. Granted, the ones active in the party are not, but the majority of Iowa yellow-dog Democrats are just liberal enough to admit that the KKK is a bad thing, unions are a good thing, and Republicans fuck over farmers. To them, Clinton is man enough for the job. That is better than they would say about Obama in private.
Don't believe me? Fine. In 2006 I predicted the outcome of over 90% of the elections just by looking at photos of candidates. Block out all data about the possible candidates, look at the accompanying photo, and choose the winner. Hillary by a landslide in Iowa.
It seems a lot of people aren't really understanding this issue or my take on it. For those wondering why the Lakota will never forget Wounded Knee, a history reminder.
To the non-Indians of South Dakota and the rest of America, Dec. 29, 1990, was another day. But to the Lakota people, it was a day they commemorated every year since 1890. It was a day when nearly 300 of their relatives were shot to death in cold blood by the enlisted men and officers of the Seventh Cavalry. Ironically, 21 members of the Seventh Cavalry were awarded Medals of Honor for this horrific slaughter of women and children.
Ah, but those were different times requiring different measures, were they not?
In early December of 1990, as the 100th anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee approached, I wrote the cover story for USA Today. I quoted an editorial that appeared in the Aberdeen Saturday Review on Jan. 3, 1891, just five days after the massacre.
The author wrote about those terrible “Redskins,” his favorite word for Indians. He wrote, “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”
That editorial calling for the genocide of the Lakota people was written by L. Frank Baum, the man who would later write, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
Similar terms to 'untamable' have been used for Native Americans since the Europeans first came over here. In some of the earliest communications sent back to the homeland in regards to the matter it was often noted that Indians make poor slaves since they seem to have an indomitable spirit.
I reiterate, we gave the Jews back their ancestral homeland after Hitler's Germany tried to wipe them out. We don't even have to give back the Lakota's lands, just cease insisting it doesn't belong to them. And I say we throw in Northern Minnesota for good measure. A nation really needs a sea port, even if it is an inland sea port like Duluth.
Why do I support a Lakota Nation? Total selfishness. This is one of those clear cases where government in conjunction with the media will try really damned hard to craft a reality in which everyone will ignore the situation and it will just go away. I want to see a different kind of reality created that is a thorn in the side of the descendants of the liars and crooks who can't seem to keep treaties they sign regarding environmental issues, prisoners of war, torture or relations with aboriginal peoples. I like to see habitual liars and crooks get screwed.
It is also in the best interests of the preservation of Native American culture, even if it is only a small slice of it. As we move forward and get our butts off of this giant rock and out into space (which we as a people will do, damn it), Earth will be best used as a living museum (in my opinion). It can be like those living history places that are only interesting to a handful of visitors and to almost all of the people working there. In that same vein I would like to see Europe eventually split into the World War recreation area and the rest can be a giant Ren Fest.
Recognize the right of the Lakota to self determination. Accept your own right to self determination.
The people who say they want things to change but go about instigating this change in the same old boring ways they always have.
The people who say they don't want things to change but will hop on board with any lunatic that says they have a new idea.
These two groups are made up of the same damn people! We've got a country full of racist rednecks who insist on funding Chinese Communism by shopping almost exclusively at Wal-Mart. These closet Fascists love filling up gas guzzling vehicles because they feel guilty about hating the Arabs and Latinos we get our oil from. A bunch of pro-American, flag waving, blindly patriotic fools who give almost all of their money to giant corporations that fuck them over and outsource their jobs. They love the abuse. And they yell and scream about how there aught to be a law against them being able to do such things to themselves so that they can be abused further when they break the law. They watch the cops on television entrapping people, illegally entering their homes, and giving them the smack down with little or no reason and get all teary eyed thinking, "That could be me." The nation suffers from codependency and the American people love the abuse.
It's almost 2008, and I want people to vow to make a change. Make it part of your new year's resolutions to shake things up a bit. Tired of things either not changing enough or changing too much? Probably both. Then vow to change that. I want every American to stand up and say, "I'm sitting down right here until I get what I want!" Be assertive and demand to be abused into submission openly and fairly. If you are tired of the way things are then wake up to a new reality. Call in well to work and don't show up. We are Americans! We can buy everything we want and that includes civil liberties, just never take them out of their protective packaging or they'll lose their collector's value.
Because the joke is on the foreign markets. All that money we have been paying them to do our jobs and make us products is absolutely worthless. The wealth envisioned therein is a figment of a dream of a reality that never was.
Are you tired of candidates that make sense screwing you over? How can someone who makes sense represent a country that is so damn messed up? Vote your wildest desires and greatest fears. Let someone who doesn't make any sense screw you over. Vote Jake!
I am very ill prepared as a candidate. While walking around the Pike Market in Seattle someone approached my campaign manager about his pin. Since I was right behind him and also wearing the same button, he referred the man to me. The man loved the button and was also sporting several pro-union and anti-war buttons on his coat. I gave him my pin on the spot. We spoke for a while with him doing most of the talking. A short while after parting ways he came back to find me and we talked some more. These exchanges made me realize how poor of a job I am doing with my inter-personal public persona. Up until this point the only people who have asked me about the pin have been people I am already acquainted with.
I need more practice talking to total strangers about my campaign. I've got the information in my head. I just need to get used to not acting with my usual 'I'm just going about my business' demeanor and instead make the person want to run away from the flood of anarchist propaganda I start spouting. After all, any sane person should want to flee when a politician starts spouting rhetoric of any kind. It should be the natural reaction. When Ronald Reagan said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help,'" he was a liar. The phrase is all too true, he just didn't mean a word of it. I mean it!
So I need to get the word out there. Government sucks. I'm running for President to shut it down. I'm also running for President so I can make cool campaign items that help people experience their own personal t-shirt nirvana. All Presidents are rat bastard liars. Irony is magnetic.
A few of my friends have posted about this and I want to mention it as well. According to articles I have seen from multiple sources (French, Australian, and domestic), the Lakota have withdrawn from the treaties of 1851 and 1868 to declare themselves independent of the United States of America.
"Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit," shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. "They never honored the treaties, that's the reason we are here today."
That is a strong statement. I admire such strength. When elected President of the United States of America I swear to honor their choice.
Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.
When elected President I will honor this as well, returning the aforementioned property to the Lakota as it is rightfully theirs.
The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free - provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Mr Means said.
If not elected this sounds like a deal worth considering. It means I'd have to give up surfing and take up snow boarding instead. Though if their diplomatic missions go well I will still have access to several good surf spots.
The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and said they would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas.
After World War II we gave the Jews their ancestral homeland back to them despite other people living there. This deal seems a lot more cut and dry. Best wishes and hopes for many years of peace and prosperity to our Lakota neighbors!
Seriously people. Get excited about this. Support it and celebrate it. Create a new reality.
In an article from Salon Life the debate continues over the difficulties of being female and running for President in a nation where women are supposed to remain young and sexy and if they cannot, then men should dump them for chicks just out of high school.
Hillary Clinton is 60 years old. In an age of lifts and injections and implants, we are beginning to forget what 60 years old looks like in nature. But as the daughter of a very beautiful woman who turned 64 on Tuesday, I can tell you that without intervention, it involves wrinkles and grooves, valleys worn deep by years of laughing and talking and furrowing a brow and reading in bad light and yelling at children.
Sixty years on a man looks similar, and a cursory examination of former presidential candidates at critical, exhausting stretches of a race would turn up pallor, flappy necks and dry skin. In the weeks before Bill Clinton (one of our youngest candidates ever, and thus one of our least pruney) was elected, he lost his voice. It was regarded as a mark of how hard he'd been working, how many sleepless nights and stump speeches and greetings, how many germy hands he'd clasped. And we've all seen what years in the Oval Office do to a candidate: From Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton to George W, there is ample evidence that being president is not a job for anti-aging enthusiasts.
If democracy is all about people getting the leaders they deserve, then this election is Hillary's. If people are so concerned about a wrinkled woman being President, then they deserve a wrinkled female President. If I believed these things were decided by honest voting, I'd entertain the idea of voting for Clinton just to foist her on the people who say nay for all the wrong reasons.
But it would be a far better joke to foist me upon them instead.
There have always been conspiracy theories. Some are absurdly bizarre and far-fetched. Others are far too plausible. An interesting thing to note about conspiracy theories is that ones that turn out to be true often reveal the truth far too late in the game for anything meaningful to be made of it.
Take the whole 'Who shot JFK?' conspiracy as an example. It is extremely difficult to find someone who believes Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. But try to get a coherent and plausible explanation from each person who doesn't believe the Lone Gunman theory and you'll get several different stories. The majority of votes would probably go to the CIA orchestrating it. Take those theorists and ask them why. The group will be further divided. Was it because of Kennedy's foreign policy plans? Was he going to announce that aliens from another planet had made first contact? Was Hoover jealous of Kennedy and get the CIA in on it with promises? And even though there is more reliable and relevant information available on the subject now than there ever has been, the timing is such that most people just don't care anymore.
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, while working as co-editors of the Playboy Forum, would get loads of letters asking about nearly every conspiracy theory under the Sun. This is what lead to them writing the Illuminatus Trilogy. They started with the premise of what if every one of these conspiracy theories were true? Which of course they can't be. Of course. But it makes for a very interesting tale.
It is partly because of conspiracy theory that I continued to be an Anarchist long after I should have grown out of that phase. Taking a look at the last two Presidential elections, it seems painfully obvious that if there wasn't a predestined result, there was at the least a concerted effort to manipulate, orchestrate, and otherwise cheat at the game. They got away with it because those within the system and thus in a position to do something about what happened are either corrupt or arrogantly and idiotically ignorant to the true nature of the beast. As long as there are positions of power to be had, no matter how symbolic that power, there will be those who will do everything in their power to get it. That is one of the reasons I remain an Anarchist.
Every rule system can be exploited. I should know. One of my senior year hobbies was going through the student handbook and seeing how many rules I could break without ever getting in trouble. Some were far too easy to break and I did so openly, flaunting it in front of those who were in a position to supposedly do something about it. Others I broke openly as though those rules just didn't apply to me. They never applied those rules to me. Still others I broke with the help of friends who I could trust to keep the whole thing secret. Yes, there was a conspiracy! The worst thing that ever happened to me was getting a talking to about inappropriate dress. No other punishment came of me hacking away at nearly every rule they had.
There has been a deliberate and quite open conspiracy of politicians to do the same to the rule of law in this country. That is why laws are useless. They have proven that even constitutional 'guarantees' are useless. Yet I go about my life blissfully ignoring all of this. Why?
Because I have a theory. It's a theory that politics is a bit too much like advertising and celebrity right now. And the funny thing about advertising and celebrities is that if you ignore them, they fade away. And there are several others in on this theory. It's a bit of a conspiracy, really. And once this group of secret individuals reaches a critical mass, the government will cease to exist. Join the Conspiracy!
Nearly 40 lawsuits have been filed accusing AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel Corp. of violating U.S. privacy rights.
Backers of immunity, who include some Democrats as well many of Bush's fellow Republicans, contend companies should be thanked, not punished, for helping defend the United States.
Thank you. Thank you for helping to defend the United States. I had no idea you were such crusaders for freedom. Since you telecoms are so interested in the preservation of the American way, once elected I am opening up special positions in Afghanistan for the top 10% of every phone company that turned over private information to the federal government without making them get the necessary warrants. Consider it my way of saying, "Thank you!" and giving you yet another opportunity to 'defend the United States'.
And a very real thank you to the one super huge telephone company that declined participating in the warrant-less spying program, Qwest. You may still be a big evil corporation, but at least you're a big evil corporation with a conscious. Thank you Qwest.
This is a Second Amendment alert from the National Sword Association.
Your right to keep and bear arms, specifically your right to keep and bear swords (more commonly referred to as 'wielding'), is under attack. All NSA members should immediately write their representatives. If you are an anarchist, write to the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen. This is important as...
The government said Wednesday it would ban the sale of samurai swords because the weapons had been used in a number of serious, high-profile attacks.
As members of the NSA are no doubt aware, a sword is an important constitutional right. We should be getting swords into the hands of more people, not less, and giving them proper training. Imagine if on September 11th there had been just one man on each one of those flights with a sword who had been trained in its use*. Those terrorists with their puny box cutters wouldn't have stood a chance. He could have skewered all of them in one good charge. Maybe even a decapitation or two. All while not having to worry about the threat of sudden cabin decompression as the result of a bad gun shot. And the kids get a heck of a show, too. You know they all love that ninja and kung fu shit.
In 2000, Robert Ashman murdered a Liberal Democrat councilor at the offices of Cheltenham MP Nigel Jones, who was also seriously hurt in the attack.
A year earlier, Eden Strang seriously wounded 11 people when he went on the rampage with a samurai sword at a Roman Catholic Church near his home in Thornton Heath, south London.
So even though this is happening in Britain and not the United States of America, it is still important for all NSA members to write their representatives (or a suitable 80's Brit-pop band if as aforementioned) and let them know that this is a country with a constitution and our Bill of Rights prohibits such limitations. Remind them that this is America, damnit!
*This is presuming al Qaeda is a real entity, Bin Laden is not just a CIA agent, and there really were terrorists of Middle Eastern origin armed with box cutters on those flights. Which of course is the case. Of course. I mean maybe it would be different if everybody else in the world knew that the CIA was behind the Kennedy assassination while America remained in denial despite an accumulation of extremely damning evidence. But that isn't the case at all, either.
No shit! Isn't that exactly what marines are supposed to do? Don't the armed forces actively recruit dim witted and impoverished thugs without a whole hell of a lot to live for and then train them and pay them to be killers? It's not rocket science. It's the reason soldiers can kick ass at warfare. It's also the reason it makes no sense to use them as a security force. Cops are trained to use deadly force as a last resort and they can still barely keep their fingers off the trigger. Marines kill. It's their job. Headline could just as well read, "Garbage man guilty of trash removal."
But here's what happened.
A US marine has been found guilty of killing an Iraqi soldier while they were on night-time patrol in Fallujah.
(Holmes) said he suspected that the Iraqi was signalling to insurgents with a lit cigarette and a mobile phone.
Soldiers aren't cops. Get them the hell out of Iraq now!
That's why, in the end, even if you're not for Hillary, what Bill Clinton says about choosing a nominee makes sense. 'This electability thing is a canard; it doesn't amount to a hill of beans,' Clinton told voters in Iowa. 'What you need to figure out is, who would be the best president.'
Check that out. I actually agree with Bill Clinton.
It's actually not an earth shattering revelation. I also agree with him that cigars taste better when moistened.
Having grown up in Reagan's America with all of the 'Just Say No!' crap pummeling my eyes and ears (and if I had been able to read braille I'm sure the tactile senses would have received it as well) a node clicked on my way to work.
America is suffering from addiction. There are pushers everywhere telling you to say 'Yes!' They are on college campuses giving it away freely. They are in the ghettos hustling every which way they can. The pushers of this new addiction are so bold as to advertise in newspapers, on television, on radio, via direct mail, using billboards, and even on the internet. So called experts say it is a good thing, go ahead and try it, everyone needs a little to lead a healthy lifestyle. It's not all that different from the golden days of cocaine where people touted it as a cure for just about everything.
I'm talking about credit. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a recovering addict. The easiest way to quit this addiction is to never get hooked. It starts with something simple like a credit card or a car payment. Before you even realize what has happened you are hooked, addicted, looking for every penny you can scrounge up just to support the habit. Right now I feel like I'm on the methadone plan. Slowly weaning myself off of the hard stuff just so I can get on with my life. The mail keeps delivering credit card offers. Every car dealership is guaranteeing me that I will be approved for a loan on a new vehicle. Computer companies and book stores say I can save money on my next purchase if I just sign up for their credit card today! They offer you a taste that can lead to a lifetime of debt addiction.
Take it from a recovering junkie, it's not worth it. The one time that everyone is telling you to say yes is the time you should actually be saying no. And at one point in my life I did hit what I consider rock bottom. I had creditors calling me, late bills piling up, and no way to pay for that one more fix that might get me through until the next billing cycle. So I quit. But it isn't easy to quit. I'll be going through withdrawal symptoms for some time. And I guarantee you that if I had never started, if I had never enhanced my lifestyle using credit, I'd feel far better about myself today.
Have you ever seen what credit does to people? What it can do to a family? It can ruin them. It can force them to live in fear of the dealers who got them hooked. They can lose their car, their furniture, their stereo, their house, and still the bastards will come after them for more.
Fuck Nancy Reagan! Take all the drugs you want. Just say NO to debt!
'The clerical regime is continuing its drive to obtain nuclear weapons,' Mohammad Mohaddessin of the France-based group, listed as a terror organization in the United States, told a news conference in Brussels.
Sweet! Bush now has a group supporting his claims that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but they are terrorists! That is freakin' awesome! It's too bad that most people are too stupid to really appreciate that. To you stupid people who don't get it, promise to vote for me and I'll explain it to you, but only if I get elected. (If I can secure the support of the stupid I can rule the world!)
And I'm sure a group of terrorist exiles have no reason to lie about Iran's nuclear intentions.
Dame Jane Roberts, chairwoman of the commission, told The Observer she believes it is time for some radical thinking to revive interest in voting. 'We want to incentivise voting and we are keen on the carrot rather than the stick. You could, for example, put people into a lottery. But it is up to local authorities to come up with all sorts of ideas that would suit in their local patch.'
Incentivise? That's a new word for me. That is corporate marketing speak if ever there was any. That is about as Lindsey Nagel as you can get. If you get that reference, buy yourself a donut. Incentivise!
Has anyone considered that low voter turn out might have something to do with the people running for... Incentivise! Damn. Just can't get that out of my head. Back to business. Some musicians will sell out stadiums but are you going to waste your time sitting through some piece of shit show just for a chance at a jackpot? Come on. They incentivised it. Okay, some people will. Others it will just turn off more. Incentivise? Might as well set up a buffet or an arcade.
Or maybe I'll go hold my own general election... with blackjack, and hookers!
Russia must achieve nuclear arms parity with the United States, Itar-Tass news agency quoted First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying on Friday.
'Military potential, to say nothing of nuclear potential, must be at the proper level if we want ... to just stay independent,' Tass quoted Ivanov as saying. 'The weak are not loved and not heard, they are insulted, and when we have parity they will talk to us in a different way.'
This is it! This is our big chance. Once elected I'll make them eat those words just as badly as Reagan did, but in a Jake sort of way. I'll order the destruction of every nuke we've got and then insist that Russia live up to its pledge of nuclear parity. Failure to comply will result in the CIA dropping acid in their water supply. I'm sure they've still got the plans lying around somewhere.
A while back I had a notion about gas prices and inflation. What if gas prices really weren't going up that much? What if the value of the dollar is just dropping that rapidly? It would be an excellent ruse. The nation uses gas to transport just about everything we purchase. The price of gas goes up, so the price of food goes up, and the price of electronics goes up, even the price of books goes up. But the price of digitally delivered goods has remained somewhat stable.
If the price of gas is a ruse to cover for the devaluing of the dollar, why would the price of digitally delivered goods remain stable? Because the price of these goods should actually be going down! The increase in bandwidth and ever increasing storage capacities coupled with ever expanding electronic markets means that electronic content should be dirt cheap. But those people creating those products, generating that content, still have to buy very real goods such as food, clothing, shelter and iPods. With the cost of those items rising, the cost of electronic content has remained stable by the grace of an expansion of the online customer base.
According to this chart, I'm wrong. Charts don't lie and it says that in inflation adjusted dollars that gas prices have hit an all time high.
But inflation is only one factor. It is typically an indicator of the domestic economy's state of health. It is not always a reflection of the value of that nation's currency versus another nation's. If you look at exchange rates over time, the dollar hasn't been doing so hot. Factor that in to the data in the chart (that would never, ever lie to you) and I might just be onto something.
Gas prices aren't really going up. They are just an excuse to raise the prices for everything and blame it on them damned foreigners rather than taking responsibility for our domestic economic woes. Shut down the Federal Reserve, return to a currency based on a real good (such as gold, silver or heroin) and gas prices should stabilize.
That's my theory and I'm sticking to it until something better comes along.
I had a feeling where this headline was going (and I was right), but it still struck me as stupid. Having large numbers of troops fighting continuing wars in two, count them, TWO Mideast countries and bases in others is not a hands-off approach.
Oh, wait, he meant his hands. Just like he had a hands-off approach to Vietnam. Yeah, that draws skepticism from me as well. Call me old fashioned (like from ninth century Scandinavia), but if you're leader of the people and you want to wage war you had better be the first one into battle and the last one out. The hands-off approach never got anyone into Valhalla.
Him: So what's with all the 'A' stuff? You trying to be Captain Anarchy or something?
Jake: Actually this is my campaign gear. I'm running for President.
Him: Alright. What's your platform?
Jake: I want to tear down as much of the government as I can and hopefully put myself out of a job.
Him: You know, if you had some advertising money and could get that message out there, I'd bet you'd get a hell of a lot of supporters from across the spectrum.
This year for the holidays I'm not asking anyone to get me anything. Instead I ask that you get something for yourself. I want you to order up some Vote Jake! Anarcho-American gear. Then I want you to wear it out in public to increase Jake awareness. People will ask you, as they do me, "What's with that weird 'A' thing?" That is your opportunity to tell them about your jerk friend (who was too cheap to give you promo materials) who is running a write-in campaign for President. While shirts, hoodies, and canvas high tops are all really cool, I'd appreciate just a simple button that you can attach to your jacket, cap, bag, or nipples.
And send me pictures of you wearing my stuff. That would be really awesome.
Or if some gals would rather save their money and just send me pictures of "Vote Jake!" written on their breasts, I would appreciate that kind of support too. And if guys want to tattoo it on their penis and take a picture of it, I'll pass the photos on to some campaign insiders who might appreciate that.
Here's an issue the other candidates won't touch with a pole of any length. Prostitution. In the well known words of George Carlin...
Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal?
We're talking about the world's oldest profession. It predates human kind. Many animals will give gifts to the opposite gender in exchange for sex. That is prostitution. In modern times there are women, married women, who will deny their husbands sex until they get their bathroom painted or the lawn mowed. That is prostitution. But in a new and interesting twist, I give you whoring for charity!
A Chilean prostitute has auctioned 27 hours of sex to raise money for the country's largest charity during an annual fund-raising campaign.
Maria Carolina became an overnight celebrity in the conservative Roman Catholic country, making news headlines and appearing on talk shows since she made her unusual donation to the televised charity event, which runs for 27 hours starting on Friday evening.
This is a fantastic idea. I wish I could incorporate this into my campaign fund raising. If this were a legal way to raise campaign funds, I bet Mary Carey(NSFW) would have had a shot at beating Arnold Schwarzenegger. I say let's legalize all forms of prostitution including as a campaign fund raising technique. That way the people can choose between corporate whores and public whores. And I'm sure I would be a stand-out candidate for President.
They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."
Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.
That's right. Yet again we are losing an important source of potential domestic revenue to outsourcing. Let's put the puritanical bullshit aside, let people engage in consensual activities for money, and show rich, older, white women that there is good reason to buy American!
Former President Bill Clinton is spending more time on the road by himself plugging Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the senator from New York. His campaign celebrity is being matched by Oprah Winfrey for Sen. Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat challenging Clinton, and actor Chuck Norris for Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee.
Chuck Norris? Really? The same Chuck Norris who is most famous for kicking people's asses? Wait, I don't think people know him for anything but his martial arts skills. And Jackie Chan could kick his ass any day of the week. And Jet Li could take on Jackie Chan and Chuck Norris at the same time without breaking a sweat. Oprah would be judging and Bill commenting, because they're both smart enough to stay out of a fight involving Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Chuck Norris.
I need to get me one of them celebrity endorser thingys.
Australians vote to choose leader. Sounds good. I think Americans fought a war to choose their leader, but that was over 200 years ago. Now that we've been choosing our leaders for over two and a quarter centuries many Americans have discovered that it isn't much better than having one forced upon you. So they dropped out of the process.
Participating in elections is compulsory under Australian law.
And I've heard it said that the USA should do likewise. At one time in my life I even argued in favor of such a scheme. Now I am neither for it nor against it. Just like the most recent election in state of residence. We had two ballot measures, I read them over, and decided that I was really neither for nor against either one. In fact one of them was going to suck balls either way! It was either more of the same suckage or a change to a new kind of suckage.
That is why I neither condemn nor support compulsory voting. If not voting could make a difference it would be outlawed. If voting could make a difference it would be outlawed. Under compulsory voting I fear things might actually get worse! After all, there were states where in 2004 there was no need to rig the election in Bush's favor. There was an actual majority of voters who looked at the ballot and said, "The last four years were so fucking awesome I want four more years of that!" Thank you sir, can I have another! Under the current structure I can at least delude myself into thinking that the clear majority didn't want to vote for either of those clowns. Under compulsory voting I would have to accept that the vast majority are actually just lazy and ignorant.
Since I'm digging myself a bit of a hole here, I'd just like to remind the lazy and ignorant majority to vote Jake! I know that means you have to remember how to spell my name because I won't be listed as one of those little check-off boxes. So just remember to write in... never mind. Go ahead and choose whether you want to be ass fisted with the right hand or the left. Or stay at home and let someone else decide how you'll get raped.
Want to see me get excited about voting again? Add a "none of the above" selection. Until then keep Fisting the American Dream and Vote Jake! (Aren't I just Mr. Sunshine?)
Lying face down on the ground a shell shocked, Mr Massey says 'officer I don't know what you are doing, I don't know why you are doing what you are doing' to which the officer replies 'I am placing you under arrest because you did not obey my instruction.'
Somebody has been watching too much South Park. Yes sir. No sir. You are correct sir. May I suck your cock sir? Perhaps you would like to have your way with my wife sir. I will do whatever you say sir, even when I have not broken the law.
This amazing video reveals how eroded civil and constitutional rights have now become. The officer had no legal right to make Massey sign any document he did not understand.
Or does it show exactly how dumb some cops actually are? When they beat the shit out of Rodney King it was a citizen who taped it. This dumb fucker filmed himself!
Tasers are supposed to be the last response before lethal action, however, police now use them as if they are batons or pepper spray.
Damn, that makes me feel so much better. I'd much rather get beaten with a baton and pepper sprayed when I disagree with a cop over what speed I was actually going. When I feel 50,000 volts pulse through my body I want absolute certainty that the next thing I say will result in it never being able to be used against me in a court of law so why bother with having my rights read to me.
Cops are little more than state sponsored thug gangs. I don't know if they were always that way. Yes, there are some good cops out there. There are also some damn fine Hells Angels, Latin Kings, Christians and Muslims out there. Your organization is only as respectable as the least among you. You are only as good as the company you keep. If the victim's wife had emerged from the truck with a gun and shot the cop in the back of the head it would have been totally defensible and within her rights (in my opinion). Everyone would have plainly seen on video that she was protecting her family from a deranged, power-mad lunatic with a lethal weapon.
And I still can't get past the fact that he was dumb enough to do all that in front of his own camera. Further proof that I completely over-estimate average intelligence. God I hope I don't win the election and find myself as the leader of a nation full of people like that. Lucky for me elections are rigged so I can't win.
After looking around I have decided to move my campaign gear shop from CafePress over to SpreadShirt for a greater range of apparel and design options. It won't happen immediately, but most likely soon. That doesn't mean the CafePress shop will close, but it might. So just in case you wanted one of those really cool Anarcho-American shirts in military green (just like Jake wears) or an Anarcho-American button (just like Jake has) then you should go order it up now.
On my drive home from work this morning I hatched a plan to rant about the First Amendment. Back in my teen years my peer group had a lot of hippie envy. At least a certain number portrayed a certain level of nostalgia for the mystique surrounding the Summer of Love and the few years surrounding it. Some would even go so far as to actually wish for another Vietnam so they could protest just like the hippies did.
Congratulations! You got your wish, didn't you? And did you rush out and protest? I hope so. And what you probably found there was a Free Speech Zone. Not exactly what your hippie dreams had imagined things being like. But a vote for Jake will make it right for you. It will be an even First Amendment trade. We'll do away with Free Speech Zones and replace them with Free Press Zones. That's right, we'll protect the reporters from the public by erecting a fence around them far away from any news that might be happening. That way the fair and balanced approach might actually make sense.
The Supreme Court set the stage Tuesday for a historic ruling on whether the fiercely debated 2nd Amendment protects the rights of Americans to keep handguns at home.
Can you believe we are even having this conversation? But there is a very legitimate problem at the heart of this issue. To interpret the actual meaning of the Second Amendment would require a fully functional understanding of legal English as used in the 18th century. Even then people disagreed on what it actually meant. For while the originator may have had one idea, it was amended and changed and debated to reflect the ideas of a number of people who may not have agreed at all.
But to me when something says I have the right to keep and bear arms I tend to think it means I have the right to keep and bear arms. Not only can I keep a handgun in my house, I can shoot things with it in my house. And shooting handguns inside the house can be a hell of a lot of fun. I could never deny someone that experience. Hell, play William Tell if you want. Go nuts.
For some reason the writers strike is making a lot of people get all huffy and puffy in this direction and that. What is a Presidential candidate to do to avoid controversy and maintain his support base?
Screw avoiding controversy! I support all striking workers. Every last one of them. And so should you. Strikes happen when the members of the union decide they don't like the way things are and they want to see a change. So they unite and agree that while it sucks to make no money at all, that is exactly what they will voluntarily do until things change. It is a democratic process that represents the will of the majority. I figured most Americans would automatically be in support of such a thing.
And it always seems to end up being about the money. I want more money. You want more money. Everyone I know wouldn't mind having some more money. Even Bill Gates hasn't given up on the idea of having more money and continues to charge for his company's products. So when people say they want more money you should stand up, raise your fist in the air and say, "Hell yeah, brother! I want more money, too."
I think it would be a grand idea if everybody in all occupations across the globe from mercenaries to fishermen to iron workers to chefs to CEO's to politicians to the guy who has to mop out the booths at the porn shop, everybody go on strike now! Permanent Universal Strike! I endorse PUS! And so should everyone who is Still Fisting the American Dream.
In order to better understand the traditional pirates with all of their yargh's and avasts and peg legs and hooks and rum, we need to understand the environment that created them. Or at least half assed guess at it because I want to construct a model that is accurate to the way I view things and facts might get in the way. It's the presidential way of assembling information.
The pirates that most people think of with all of their salty language and swashbuckling ways were a direct result of the East India Trading Company and their 21 year monopoly on trade in many parts of the world. This control of the world's richest sea routes by one company lead to the expansion of slave labor and conscription.
When individuals are forced to work against their wills, they can get a little pissy about it. While every ship in the fleet was essentially controlled by the world's first publicly traded multi-national corporation (we're talking about the East India Company in case you forgot), each ship operated as a microcosm independent of the supporting host. The sailors knew each other and could form trusting relationships with each other. In their world, the captain of the ship may as well have been the King of England. The captain was the final say on all matters. And if the sailors got fed up with their appointed leader, they could easily band together and mutiny.
So after hauling sugar and coffee and tea and toys coated with lead paint across the globe under the rule of a representative of a ruthless multi-national, what are you going to do for a job? You can't go into private practice. Your old boss has an exclusive contract and, well, you kind of killed the supervisor and stole the ship. It doesn't look too good on a resume. So privateering in illegal goods is a pretty good option. So you set about trading in all those things that other people in legitimate business don't want to touch. But the boss is kind of pissed about the whole losing the ship thing. He could give a flying fuck about the captain. But ships cost money! So they try to get it back. Forcibly. As privateers you can either run or fight. Since you fight dirty, you figure your odds are pretty good. You kick over the pursuing vessel and shiver your timbers! The thing is filled with valuable stuff. You can take this shit for yourself. Maybe even sell some of it. In the grand scheme of things it kind of feels like payback for their years of treating you poorly and never giving you a raise on your annual review dates. And the hours sucked! And they wouldn't let you drink! And they didn't allow you to bring the prostitute on board even though all the guys had chipped in to book her for the entire voyage and had all agreed to share her nicely! Well screw them! I think they owe us a bit more than this, right lads?
So that was pirating. And I think the resurgence in piracy, especially media piracy, has similar roots for a lot of people. I wouldn't say a majority. I'm fairly certain that the majority don't even really think about it. But there are those who do. They see a company charging too much and the people working at the top of it having better stuff than they do. Many have even worked within those old industries and revolted. We have a pirate resurgence as a result of giant multi-national corporations seizing monopoly like controls. People have the tools with which they can steel and share with other pirates. What they do is not legal, but the way the companies they steal from operate shouldn't be legal. Many of these big companies are exploitive and use their power to squeeze out competition.
So I support pirates and will grant all pirates complete amnesty to operate within the borders of this country. As long as they share the rum.
So I just realized that while I previously posted UFO's and Politics Again I never actually posted a link to the original story that prompted the 'Again' portion on the other one. So here is the Slate Magazine article.
Bill Richardson's a believer. So is Dennis Kucinich. Even Rudy Giuliani is willing to admit that extraterrestrials might be out there. The 2008 presidential race is starting to look like an Alf convention. Last week, Kucinich's alien beliefs were outed by his good friend Shirley MacLaine. Her new book details Kucinich's run-in with a UFO on her porch: 'It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind.' One can only guess what those directions may have said.
'We gave it our best shot, and for a while it seemed like the American people actually had a chance of coming out on top,' Weare, NH resident Mark Simmons said at a press conference in front of his suburban home. 'Unfortunately, as much as we'd like to remain optimistic, it's become clear that this just isn't our year.'
But they aren't the only ones talking about this. What does the New York Times in an article titled 'Why Vote?' have to say?
Because voting exacts a cost - in time, effort, lost productivity - with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your "civic duty." As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, "A rational individual should abstain from voting."
The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given election are very, very, very slim. This was documented by the economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than 56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898. For all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns out that they are exceedingly rare. The median margin of victory in the Congressional elections was 22 percent; in the state-legislature elections, it was 25 percent. Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly 1 billion votes, only 7 elections were decided by a single vote, with 2 others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past 100 years - a 1910 race in Buffalo - was decided by a single vote.
But there is a more important point: the closer an election is, the more likely that its outcome will be taken out of the voters' hands - most vividly exemplified, of course, by the 2000 presidential race. It is true that the outcome of that election came down to a handful of voters; but their names were Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas. And it was only the votes they cast while wearing their robes that mattered, not the ones they may have cast in their home precincts.
The Onion got it closer.
And have you ever noticed how there always seems to be this push to get young people to vote? Or was that Phillip Morris trying to get young people to smoke? Or was that Budweiser trying to get young people to drink? I can't seem to keep it all straight.
Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich may have been ridiculed for saying he had seen a UFO, but for some former military pilots and other observers, unidentified flying objects are no laughing matter. An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials called on the U.S. government on Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings.
Former presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter are both reported to have claimed UFO sightings.
And I've seen one. After a while you learn not to talk about it all that much. You just get sick of answering all the questions from people who weren't there and couldn't possibly understand. So you just live with it, get on with your life, and run for President.
"It's a question of who you going to believe: your lying eyes or the government?" remarked John Callahan, a former Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the CIA in 1987 tried to hush up the sighting of a huge lighted ball four times the size of a jumbo jet in Alaska.
"It would certainly, I think, take a lot of angst out of this issue," said former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who said he was among hundreds who saw a delta-shaped craft with enormous lights silently traverse the sky near Phoenix in 1997.
For some reason this nearly retired long time conservative still considers me one of the few sane ones at work. Right after ranting about how fast the current administration is destroying our country he launches into this...
Him: Speaking of loser politicians, all the Democrats running for President were at some event and they play the national anthem. There's our boy Obama standing with his hands in his pockets. And this guy wants to be President? If you're running for President you should have a little respect for the country you want to lead.
Me: Actually, I'm running for President with a pledge to tear the whole damn thing down.
I may not be much for singing the national anthem, but I have a mix tape in my truck with a celebrity saying the pledge on it. Every time I listen I say it right along with him.
No matter how much I am enjoying having an extra hour on this lovely day, I still think Daylight Saving Time is stupid.
Adding daylight to afternoons generally benefits shopping, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours, but it can cause problems for farmers and others whose hours depend on the sun. Extra afternoon daylight appears to cut traffic fatalities; its effect on health and crime is less clear. An early goal was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, formerly a primary use of electricity; nowadays, though, DST sometimes increases overall electricity costs and peak demand.
A vote for Jake is a vote for abolishing this stupid ritual.
In other news, US has decided it is way too late for quick return to constitutional rule in the US. Some maintain hope for an eventual return while some drink beer and horde ammunition and still others just up the medication.
Supporters of Mr. Colbert’s candidacy have said it cast an amusing and revealing eye on the hype and folly of presidential politics and could have brought younger voters into the process.
But it also drew critics, who said it was a self-promotional distraction that was draining news media time and attention away from a serious campaign.
Kicking off another year of NaNoWriMo. Any documentation of this effort will happen over at Repeated Expletives. If you want to read the result of my 2005 endeavor, you can download the e-book or purchase a paperback over at Lulu.com. My 2006 effort, while a very interesting journey, was far too random for publishing. I didn't want to subject even my friends to that.
So what's in store this year? Sequel!
No sense, no sanity. No rules or propriety. Can you dig that with a spade or a shovel? Then you might just get underground. There are good folks and lawful folks and never the two shall meet. There are bad folks and awful folks but only one can ride with me. This isn’t poetry, damn it! This is life. This is morning. This is when the rooster crows but that’s happening on the other side of the mountain. All the concrete and stucco and aluminum siding in the world can’t reflect the sound inwards to your little hole in the world. But you wake up. Sooner or later you have to wake up. The trick is to not go back to bed.
The road calls to you. The interstate is for everyone. The back alley can get you there. Do you dare? Do you care? Wrap yourself in leather and wrap your mind in tomorrow. This one is going to get bumpy.
Aaron Russo's America: Freedom to Fascism isn't a great film. It's not shot very well, it comes across as extremely one-sided and pushy, and the editing leaves you with an uneasy feeling that things are not in the context they should be in. But you want to trust the film maker's sincerity. This was a film that he truly believed needed to be made and shown to the public. So as he was dieing from cancer of the bladder, he did just that. America: Freedom to Fascism was made by a man with nothing to lose, and it shows. (Full film on Google.)
The film is full of conspiracies involving a group of elite bankers. This is nothing new. The idea of an international banking conspiracy is centuries old. All such conspiracy theories must be taken with a grain of salt no matter how well documented. But two particulars really caught my attention.
After an entire film of documenting the evils of the Federal Reserve, the illegality of the federal income tax, how the government wants to implant identification chips in everyone, and how electronic voting machines can be used to rig elections, I was ready for his list of 'what to do about it'. Ironically he suggests you only support politicians who pledge to do away with the Federal Reserve system. If all he says is true, what good is it to vote in a rigged election for anyone? Which totally works in my favor because if I lose I can claim that the election was rigged against me. With no paper trail nobody can prove me wrong. Hurray for electronic voting machines!
What really stood out were the political comparisons. Often people being interviewed or Russo himself would say, "That's not America. That's Fascism!" or "That's not what the founding fathers intended. That's Communism!" Over and over again. That's Fascism. That's Communism. Communism, Fascism. As I recall, the Communists and the Fascists were fundamentally opposed political systems. In the Spanish Revolution it was the Communists and Anarchists fighting against the Fascists. And in World War II the Communists were our allies against the Fascists. How could our current government be compared to both the Communists and the Fascists simultaneously?
What do the Communists and the Fascists have in common that is also true of America's political system? Once it hit me, the answer seemed incredibly obvious. All of them are governments. The role of government is to govern.
(transitive) To make and administer the public policy and affairs of; to exercise sovereign authority in.
(transitive) To control the actions or behavior of; to keep under control; to restrain. Govern yourselves like civilized people. a student who could not govern his impulses.
(transitive) To exercise a deciding or determining influence on. Chance usually governs the outcome of the game.
(transitive) To control the speed, flow etc. of; to regulate. a valve that governs fuel intake.
(intransitive) To exercise political authority; to run a government.
(intransitive) To have or exercise a determining influence.
It doesn't matter if you are talking about Communists, Fascists, Republics, Democracies, Theocracies, Juntas, Oligarchies, Aristocracies, or even Meritocracies. The role of Government is to govern. Under all of the above definitions that means control.
Which is why I am proud to be an Anarchist candidate. In this rigged election that I am destined to lose through no fault of my own I swear to do everything in my power to put all government out of a job. That includes my own job as President. I ask of you, the American people, can you handle that? Can you handle true freedom? Are you ready to take full responsibility for yourself and your actions? Are you ready to cast off the systems of control known as Government?
Political scientists at the Cato Institute announced Monday that they have inadvertently synthesized a previously theoretical form of government known as megalocracy.
"We were attempting to recreate a military junta in a controlled diplomatic setting, and we applied too much external pressure," said head researcher Dr. Adam Stogsdill, a leading expert in highly reactionary ruling systems. "The resultant government has the ruthless qualities of a dictatorship combined with the class solidarity of a plutocracy—it's quite a remarkable find."
New data from the Internal Revenue Service show that income inequality continues to widen. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earn more than 21 percent of all income. That's a postwar record. The bottom 50 percent of all Americans, when all their wages are combined, earn just 12.8 percent of the nation's income.
Considering the magnitude of challenges ahead for America, it seems only reasonable that taxes should rise on the wealthy. Taxing the super-rich is not about class envy, as conservatives charge. It's about the nation having enough money to pay for national defense and homeland security, good schools and a crumbling infrastructure, the upcoming costs of boomers' Social Security (the current surplus has masked the true extent of the current budget deficit, but it won't for much longer) and, hopefully, affordable national health insurance. Not to mention the trillion dollars or so it will take to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is now starting to hit the middle class.
Such conflicting emotions.
Of course the rich should take on a much heavier tax burden than the poor. Right? Any non-profit will tell you that a single rich benefactor will give you more than you can squeeze out of 'memberships' and other small donations from the peons. The government doesn't require the wooing of donations, it can just take what it wants. Unless you want to run for re-election and raise the uber funds that require a massive influx of cash from the wealthy.
Of course those who benefit directly from government programs should take on the burden of funding those programs. It just makes sense, right? What billionaire needs Medicare, Social Security, public schools, or even the police for that matter? Let those who can't afford private security collectively pay for public security. What are we, a bunch of communists?
Nobody has ever won an election by pledging to raise taxes. While I love to prove people wrong, when someone tells me that a massive stab wound directly to the heart is always fatal, I'm not going to start a series of experiments to discredit them. So I can solemnly promise not to raise taxes on the rich, poor, or middle class. I won't raise taxes on businesses or imports or anything else.
The first step towards healthy taxation is to end compulsory taxation. But who will pay for roads and cops and judges and (insert favorite government program here and don't pretend like you don't have at least one that you actually sort of like)? You will have to pay for all of this. Each year the government, in hopes of collecting funds for projects, sends out a tax proposal with each item identified individually, not as one big spending bill. Each of us can then go down the list and say $5 for schools, $20 for Lunar exploration, $1 for the Coast Guard, nothing for the CIA, etc. We send in how much we are willing to pay to fund our favorite projects and what we don't like doesn't get our money. Could it actually work? Maybe. It has got to be better than what we've got going on now.
Secondly, abolish the Federal Reserve. Hell, abolish money. We don't really need it. If you've got skills, services, or stuff then you've got all the currency you'll ever need. That sounds stupid even to me, which is why I think we should try it out. Anything that simple has got to have some flaws. I promise to abolish the monetary system and all wealth and debt associated with it, just to see what happens.
At the very least, the government needs to learn to live within its means. I've watched quite a few non-profits go about business the government way. They figure out what they want, and then go sparing for change. Totally ass backwards. I've made that mistake myself and can attest to the stupidity of that kind of logic. Always look at what you've got before you go spending it. If we don't the military will quickly grab up every penny in the budget to fund a coup against me.
"Now is the time to stand with the Cuban people as they stand up for their liberty,' Bush said in remarks at the State Department. 'And now is the time for the world to put aside its differences and prepare for Cuba's transition to a future of freedom and progress and promise."
As far as I know, the Cubans most likely to despise Castro and Communism are the ones no longer living in Cuba. Most of them are Americans now. That's what happens. When you don't like the way things are being done, you get up and leave for some place different. Unless you can't find any place that is really any better than what you got. So since I can't go move to someplace better, I have to make this backwards hick nation more tolerable.
And when I say backwards hick, I'm really talking about the American people. But not you, dear reader. I am certain you are far better than the average filth just because you are reading my words here. You are part of the social elite soon-to-be ruling class that will purge the stupidity from the White House, fix the economy, give away free top notch health care to everyone, cater to born again Christians and atheists alike, and can be used as a laxative and to relieve minor back pain. Because you and your close circle of friends are right and everybody else in the world is wrong and it is Your turn to play on the monkey bars no matter what Jimmy and Ms. Crabapple say about sharing.
Damnit Bush! Now I want fried plantains. Thanks for bringing up Cuba, jerk. No Snake Oil for you!
Hey kids! Use your decoder ring to find out what Jake is really saying.
The difference between me and the local progressives? I say out. They say they are willing to entertain a Plan B if the Dems will just come forward with one. The chickenest of the chicken hawks.
When a friend is part of a destructive relationship what idiot would tell them, "Draw up a plan for a slow withdrawal in which key benchmarks must be met"? Withdrawal. Total and immediate. Leave a 'Dear John' for them to find in the morning with the ring in the envelope.
The swine are reading my blog. Top of the hour morning news discussion on Portland's Air America station, KPOJ? The Christian Right defecting from Giuliani and Republican women defecting for Hillary. The pigfuckers are stealing my material.
People seem to be having a hard time choosing between Democratic Candidates in Iowa.
