Author: David

Yes, there is real abuse at Gitmo. And it’s detainees abusing their priviledges and their guards

I’m not even going to quote from this article. Just go read it.

Scram. Beat it. Get gone from this place.

Out to Sea
Originally uploaded by mnmus.

Oh, and while you’re going, go here and listen to Stephen Fearing sing/play “Beguiling Eyes.”

Loop it. Listen to it again and again. A real male voice. Real guitar. Really GOOD guitar. A real tune. Lyrics to listen to.

Go on. Get outa here.

(Thanks, Kat, for introducing me to Stephen Fearing’s artistry.)

Concerning the recent Grokster decision, this comment from Robert A. Heinlein (ironically, the coiner of the work “grok”—Stranger in a Strange Land), written in 1939 in the short story, “Lifeline,” seems appropriate:

“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

Interesting observation, that: “Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

Well, it seems they have that right now…

See: SCOTUSblog

“We’ll see a careful campaign of litigation against peer-to-peer services, trying to gradually stretch the noose of inducement liability until it fits around BitTorrent’s neck. Failing that, we’ll see a push to get Congress to codify (the industries’ interepretation of) the Grokster rule…”

OK, we’ve seen what purports to be the three pages of Jean Fraud sKerry’s SF-180, but…

“Again, still and forever we’re going to be hammering on this simple request: Release your full military and medical files -and don’t release them to your biographer or the Boston Globe, ok? Release them to the American people who deserve to see them in their entirety. Or release them to ME and I’ll make sure everyone knows what’s there. After all, you have nothing to hide, right?”

Don’t just sit on your heinie griping, moaning and complaining about tax forms next year. Get off your duff and write your congresscritters.

“Simply put, HR25 would provide for the repeal of the 16th Amendment (the income tax amendment) and the dismantling of the IRS. All personal and corporate income taxes would end, as would all payroll taxes. There would not be one cent of federal taxes of any nature taken out of your paychecks. No more Social Security taxes. No more Medicare taxes. You earn $2,000 a payday; you get $2,000 a payday. The federal government would be funded through a national sales tax on goods and services sold at the retail level. No taxes on investments. No taxes on savings. You only get taxed on what you spend at the retail level. Store your earnings in a shoebox if you wish. They won’t be taxed.”

Scrapplecace’s Scott Ott gives the Supreme Communists a well-deserved kick in the pants

Court Allows 10 Commandments on Seized Land
by Scott Ott

(2005-06-27) — In a pair of rulings on the constitutionality of the 10 Commandments on government property, the Supreme Court today said the commandments may be displayed on public land if that property has been seized from private owners for ‘public purposes’ under eminent domain.

The 5-4 decision comes on the heels of last week’s court declaration that so-called “private” property is actually government land temporarily under private management until its eventual seizure…

Natural Theology

Rudyard Kipling

Primitive

I ate my fill of a whale that died

And stranded after a month at sea…

There is a pain in my inside.

Why have the Gods afflicted me?

Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!

Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!

What is the sense of Religion and Faith :

Look how the Gods have afflicted me!

Pagan

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold

Anything more than a harmless flea?…

The burning plague has taken my household.

Why have my Gods afflicted me?

All my kith and kin are deceased,

Though they were as good as good could be,

I will out and batter the family priest,

Because my Gods have afflicted me!

Medi/Eval

My privy and well drain into each other

After the custom of Christendie…

Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.

Why has the Lord afflicted me?

The Saints are helpless for all I offer–

So are the clergy I used to fee.

Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,

Because the Lord has afflicted me.

Material

I run eight hundred hens to the acre

They die by dozens mysteriously…

I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,

Why has the Lord afflicted me?

What a return for all my endeavour–

Not to mention the L. S. D!

I am an atheist now and for ever,

Because this God has afflicted me!

Progressive

Money spent on an Army or Fleet

Is homicidal lunacy…

My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,

Why is the Lord afflicting me?

Why are murder, pillage and arson

And rape allowed by the Deity?

I will write to the Times, deriding our parson

Because my God has afflicted me.

Chorus

We had a kettle: we let it leak:

Our not repairing it made it worse.

We haven’t had any tea for a week. . .

The bottom is out of the Universe!

Conclusion

This was none of the good Lord’s pleasure,

For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;

But what comes after is measure for measure,

And not a God that afflicteth thee.

As was the sowing so the reaping

Is now and evermore shall be.

Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.

Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!

Recommended Reading between now and the 2006 elections

People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil

I’ve actually met some of the people that fit M. Scott Peck’s criteria for a diagnosis of “human evil,” so I’m not as hopeful as he is that they can be healed… Still, perhaps his book could be useful in helping people avoid electing people to office who have the personality disorder he describes.

A very shorthand (and admittedly misleading and hugely inadequate) description of a part of the problem of human evil is that people who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. You know, kinda like politicians who insist that solutions to problems (real or imagined) involves simply throwing more money at programs (which means taking more from the taxpayers to do it) that have alrady proven harmful, are themselves a major cause of problems pols want to solve by blaming others for their failures.

Yes, it’s more complex than that. But I’ve become convinced that it’s not just liars, thieves, buffoons, poltroons and mountbanks who run for office. Along with the (supposed but not yet proven) sprinkling of honest and capable politicians—I assume there are at least two, somewhere—I believe one can likely find a relatively high concentration of people with the egocentric personality disorder Peck describes as human evil.

Let’s see if we can’t avoid sending them to our State capitols and to Washington, OK?

James Taranto comments on the obscenity and depravity of the Islamic jihadists

Fundamentalist Muslim mythology has it that terrorist “martyrs” are greeted in heaven by 72 virgins. With Palestinian Arabs increasingly making use of female suicide bombers, we’ve often wondered what they get in heaven. Now we have the answer, thanks to a report in London’s Sunday Telegraph from an Israeli prison:

*** QUOTE ***

One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: “Because of my religion. I’m very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there’s no difference between men and women shaid [martyrs].”

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr “will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair.”

*** END QUOTE ***

That is to say, the highest aspiration for a fundamentalist Palestinian girl is murder, suicide and prostitution. Has there ever been a more depraved culture?

crossposted at Cathouse Chat