"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
An antidote for the trials and tribulations we face today is… more trial and tribulation, as found in the “Three R’s”–Reading, Righting and Revolution.
One of the biggest barriers to good governance nowadays is the ignorance of the People. The answer to that is to teach the People to read. No, not just how to read but to read. And not to read just the poisonous pap they find in Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind rags but to read history. And not just to read history but to read the actual documents of history: the documents of our nation’s roots and its founding, extending at least as far back as the Magna Carta, first and foremost.
Then we need to be serious about righting the wrongs of a government grown bloated and overbearing, that neglects its principal duties and besets its citizens with oppression. A good pruning is sorely needed.
But those two steps will take a revolution, I fear, or rather, will be a revolution the like of which our political elites–in government, Mass Media Hivemind and Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries–will not easily allow.
Think: the generation that was inspired by the Boston Tea Party had not passed when George Washington–the Father of our country, as he is rightly styled–put down the Whiskey Rebellion, which was nothing but another “tea party” protesting oppressive and unfair government taxation. (Note that George Washington’s whiskey production was, like others of his class, taxed at only 2/3 the rate of poor Western farmers’ whiskey. Therein, and in the earlier shameful response to the so-called “Shay’s Rebellion”, I fear, was the seed of Elite Oppression of the People sown even in those early days of the republic… *sigh*)
It would be a Good Thing if we were able to effect the Three R’s by means of personal influence and see the real revolution take place at the polling booth, but even then, it may well take more than JUST personal influence and voting, the way the “community organizers” of the left have devised such slick ways to steal votes.
…in December the Thomas More Law Center filed a constitutional challenge to that portion of the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” that appropriated $40 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the federal government’s majority ownership in AIG. Spokesman Brian Rooney says his firm filed suit because AIG has a board that supervises insurance policies for Islamic customers so they will comply with Sharia law. That, says Rooney, violates the Establishment Clause.
The Thomas More Law Center isn’t backing down. Sauce for the goose. the ACLU (and various feddle gummint agencies through the years) have been steadily encroaching on the Free Exercise clause under the guise of enforcing the Establishment clause. Let’s see if stare decisis applies when the shoe is on the other foot.
N.B. I sent an email out last week mentioning this to some folks, but it bears repeating.
There’s a relatively new “botnet” called Psyb0t that is making the rounds mostly in Europe, South America and Asia, that attacks poorly-secured routers that use a specific Linux implementation. Infected routers experience the botnet as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. It is, at this time, not thought to have gotten much penetration into North America, but taking common sense steps to secure your router is easy and ought to be done in any case. ANY router/firewall that uses the specific Linux protocols this botnet targets is vulnerable UNLESS it is properly secured.
The good news is that proerly securing a router/firewall from infection by this botnet is a trivial task.
First, cycle any suspect router (unplug it and wait at least 30 seconds to up to a few minutes before plugging it in again). Apply the latest firmware updates available from the router manufacturer, make sure you have a strong admin password (see below) on the router, and if there’s an option for remote management, make sure it is NOT enabled, unless you have a VERY good reason and do have a strong password at the very least.
Never, never, NEVER install a router and leave it with the default password/logon. Never.
These simple, trivial steps will keep the Psyb0t malware from infecting your router(s). And even if your router doesn’t use the particular protocol this botnet attacks, these simple steps are a Very Good Thing in any case.
A partial list of potentially vulnerable routers/firewalls is available here. Do note I said “potentially vulnerable”. Some of these routers may not use the “little-endian” Linux protocol the botnet targets, and your particular routers/firewalls may already be properly secured.
A strong password will have a minimum of eight characters that are a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers and/or symbols that do NOT spell out a word in any language (as far as you can tell–who knows every language? :-)). ANYTHING based on your own personal history, preferences or that of family members is not a good idea, either, as a general practice. And if you must write down passwords, always write them in a notebook that is kept under lock and key, and maintain strict control of the key.
Never share a password without changing it after the reason for sharing it has passed. Indeed, changing passwords on a regular basis on critical devices is a Very Good Thing.
That iconic phrase raises a whole constellation of memes for those of us who lived through the 1960s with even the slightest degree of consciousness (that’s a significant distinction: many ’60s & 70s stoners can’t claim to have been conscious during that era). If you have even an echo of that consciousness ringing in your being, let me encourage you to sing instead, “Where has all the money gone… ” with that same sense of questioning.
Let me suggest some places where Americans’ money has gone and how, perhaps, having less of that fluid stuff might even be a good thing. I’ll just throw out some unsubstantiated assertions and let the interested (or concerned) perform their own googling to confirm or deny the assertions.
One example: Around 90% of Americans’ spending on food is spent on pre-processed, pre-packaged or “fast” food. What’s really in that (those!) soda(s) you drank today? Assuming a soda to be a typical 12-oz can, each one contains about 40 grams of High Fructose Corn Syrup per can. Setting aside the lies from industry ads that HFCS is the same as sucrose (table sugar), just that much–one soda can’s worth–of HFCS is more than the AMA’s total recommended daily caloric sweetener intake. One can. And HFCS hides in the majority of pre-processed, pre-packaged foods. Major studies by independent researchers highlight the many ways that HFCS is different to sucrose, as well as the many ways it has a deleterious effect upon human health in large amounts (like 2-3 cans of soda a day). A 90% increase in diabetes among Americans in the last 10 years alone can be laid largely at the feet of stupid Americans participating in chemical warfare upon their own bodies… and paying a premium for the HFCS-laden processed foods that are the prime culprits.
Stupid. Spend more for stuff that degrades ones health. But that seems to be the idea behind modern American life. It’s not just Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and AIG that have been wasteful and stupid with money. Darned near ALL of us have wasted our resources to obtain things that we do not need, that are detrimental to our physical, mental, emotional, financial and spiritual health. Of course we have. Those things we’ve wasted our substance on are bright and shiny and new; they are easy, convenient and comfortable. Whether we need them or whether they actually do anything good for us is largely unimportant… or has been.
Scale back. Stop, look, listen and… think. Do you really need that box of instant mashed potatoes when you can buy a five pound bag of the real thing for the same price? How hard is it, really, to clean a few potatoes, cut ’em up and boil ’em then mash ’em? Well, not hard at all, really. And I defy you to make ANY mashed potatoes that taste as good using box taters. Buy a pizza? Why? Do you really know what’s in that pizza you bought? Making a pizza from scratch does take a wee tad more time than ordering one delivered, but not necessarily all that much. Just more advance thought and planning. And a bit more work.
Do you really need that new car (made by either an American company that will use the money to featherbed jobs or a foreign company that exports your money away from our economy)? Probably not. I’ve only had one car that wasn’t good for 250,000 miles, with proper care, and that one was one I bought for all the wrong reasons. (“It’s a really fast luxury car. Oh, joy! Sure, all the parts are priced as though they were gold plated–or solid gold–and it needs constant maintenance, but boy it goes fast when it works! And I just want it. So there.” *sigh* I used to just sit in the thing and drink in the ambiance. Usually cos it needed more maintenance, and I had to wait for a mechanic. Or parts. *heh*)
Really need to “move up” to a larger house? When the kids leave in a few years, four bedrooms are going to look like an awful lot of extra room…
I could go on. Where has all the money gone? For many everyday Americans, it’s gone down the same wasteful, bad spending choices drain that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG sent money down. The mom in the grocery store buying gourmet chocolate because with hubby’s job gone the family just needs a treat. The kid with his first job spending every dime of his paycheck on a flashy new car. The mid-level drone who buys a house that’s beyond his means: all are just making stupid spending choices, not thinking beyond “shiny, new, tasty, convenient” to something beyond tomorrow.
Speaking of irresponsible, greedy businessmen whose greed and incompetence have been instrumental in causing the recession, Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA, has infamously said,
“They need to do one of two things. The Japanese do it best. You either apologize, or you commit suicide.”
I agree wholeheartedly, Senator Grassley. Now, will you and your fellow congresscritters simply lead by example? Show ’em how it’s done! After all, it is YOU and your ilk–Dhimmicraps and wannabe Dhimmicrap Repugnican’ts–who were PRIMARILY responsible for causing this recession. I’d buy a ticket to watch you and your fellow congresscritters commit sepuku. Heck, I’d buy a few tickets and hand ’em out to local pols, pour encourager les autres, as it were.
Go and read Bobby Jindal’s response to The Obamassiah’s most recent pack of lies, hand waving and subtle deceptions (known in other circles as a “State of the Union Address”). Here’s a sample:
To strengthen our economy, we must promote confidence in America by ensuring ours is the most ethical and transparent system in the world. In my home state, there used to be saying: At any given time, half of Louisiana was said to be half under water, and the other half is under indictment. No one says that anymore. Last year, we passed some of the strongest ethics laws in the nation and today, Louisiana has turned her back on the corruption of the past. We need to bring transparency to Washington, D.C., so we can rid our Capitol of corruption and ensure we never see the passage of another trillion dollar spending bill that Congress has not even read and the American people haven’t even seen.[emphasis added]
I said in 2004 that Jindal was a strong future presidential candidate. After his performance since then–both in Congress and as Louisiana’s governor–I’d be perfectly happy to see a 2012 presidential slate that included two highly effective governors: Jindal and Palin, and though I’d prefer Jindal at the top of the ticket, I would be happy with Palin there, as long as someone of Jindal’s character were backstopping her.
I’ve been emulating the phony meme, “Ostrich Hiding Head in Sand,” this week, mostly avoiding news (it’s all bad) and just getting on with life. It occurred to me that one of the biggest problems in our society today is that we’ve placed far, far too much power in the hands of folks who are far, far removed from our lives, power to directly affect our lives that the “feddle gimmint” (“feddle” rhymes with “meddle” you notice) ought not have and was never meant–at least by the Founders–to have.
WE, the People, have ceded our rights to liberty–freedom from governmental meddling–to people who do not have our best interests at heart. Let me repeat that: anyone who says, “I’m from the government; I’m here to help,” is lying–to you at the very least, and, if they’re stupid enough to be sincere, to themselves as well. Our political masters do NOT sincerely want to solve the problems they’ve created (with our help–we elected these bastards, didn’t we?), because any problem genuinely solved equals less power for the politicians *spit* and bureaucraps *puke* to exercise over us.
So, I’ve been hiding out this week. But that hasn’t stopped the little wheels from turning (be they ever so slowly turning). What if… what if just 10% of taxpayers said, “Enough! No more!” and simply… opted out. What if… just 100 people in every major city banded together and (after first purchasing body armor *heh*) simply drove V E R Y S L O W L Y on their city’s major arteries during rush hour. Every day for as long as they still had a car, in protest against civil governments doing everything possible to screw us blue. (Yeh, pay the tickets, but keep up the Good Work.) What if… people of good conscience (and at least half a brain–100% more than the average Mass Media Podperson) simply banded together and said, “No!” loudly, consistently, without fail, every time politicians lied to us, stole from us, lined their own pockets at our expense?
$0.00002X35893 (the kb use cited in the video above)=$0.71786
It’s very, very, very simple arithmetic. “Do-it-in-your-head” arithmetic. Doesn’t even qualify as “math,” IMO.
Why did the two Verizon reps just not get it? Well, not only is adult literacy on the decline in these (dis)United States, but a growing number of folks just can’t count… largely because they’ve not been compelled by education and experience to do so. Heck, even this otherwise thoughtful article at Money Instructor.com uses a model that is part of the problem, a big part.
There is nothing wrong with using a calculator, of course. Calculators are useful in that they save time on arithmetical computations. But in a modern society where most citizens have graduated from an advanced system of formal education, one would expect that educated people would have an understanding of what the calculator is doing. To be sure, the four basic operations are well understood by people who consider themselves educated, but recent studies show that a majority begin to have difficulty when faced with such concepts as square roots, simple algebraic terms, and grade school geometry.
Did you catch that? “To be sure, the four basic operations are well understood by people who consider themselves educated… ”
It doesn’t matter one bit whether people “consider themselves educated” or not. Those who cannot tell the difference between $0.002 and $0.00002 can’t perform “the four basic operations” and indeed do NOT understand them. They are innumerate. And their numbers are legion. And it is they who combine their illiteracy (“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”–Twain) with their innumeracy and thus allow the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind, politicians, illiterate and innumerate Academia Nut Fruitcakes, so-called educators and all their ilk to fill their minds with illiterate, innumerate, toxic sludge.
When a people cannot measure the impacts of public policies in clear and meaningful ways, then that people can fall prey to all kinds of flim-flammery. And such is the American public becoming.
Millions of Americans engage the services of income tax accountants every year because they are unable to perform the simple calculations themselves. Many others have difficulty interpreting statistical information, percentages, or any kind of information expressed in terms of graphs and charts. When it comes to calculating areas, capacity, or weights and measures, the average North American is not sure where to begin. For a modern society, this should be an intolerable situation, yet it seems that for most people it is quite normal and acceptable.
In short, millions of Americans are enstupiated sheeple, ripe for shearing. Worse, these same people cannot really blame the failures of “public education” (AKA “prisons for kids”), because almost anyone who wants to, who puts in a little effort, can become literate and numerate. Well more than half the population of enstupiated American sheeple are self-made enstupiated American sheeple.
In a representative republic, such is a recipe for disaster. In an ever more democratic (rule by mob) representative republic, we are beginning to reap many of the ills feared by the Founders, largely because a lazy, illiterate, innumerate electorate enables the obscene autoeriticism of politicians who gain almost orgasmic pleasure from misusing tax monies as yet uncollected from future generations.
I met a woman in her 60s the other day who declaimed that “We older people will lose all our benefits if the Republicans gain power.” *huh*?!? What benefits? Social Security has long been bankrupt, stealing from younger generations to buy older folks’ votes. Medicare and other “benefits” are likewise nothing but Ponzi schemes writ large. “Benefits” that steal from my children and grandchildren (and yours) to pay me are beyond obscene; they are simply wrong. Dhimmicraps/Repugnican’ts: makes not one bit of difference. The Ponzi scheme remains. And people who can’t or won’t do the math to see behind the smokescreen are the problem–or at least a large part of it–that keeps the government’s shameful Ponzi schemes going. For now. But someday, numbers will force an accounting, and when that happens, katie bar the door.
“There are three kinds of people in the world: those who count and those who don’t.”
UPDATE: Yeh, Daschle withdrew his name, but based on his own words and deeds, he needs to be put to work making little rocks out of big ones PDQ (along with Geithner and whatsername), or The Obamassiah and his cronies in Congress are revealed as lying dirtbag scum of the earth. Oops. Too late for that, because it’s already clear that this administration (and its cronies in Congress) are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Anyone keeping tally of the tax cheats that Obama wants in his cabinet and staff? Anyone want to tally that against eight years of the Bush administration? (Yeh, yeh, I still hold that Bush should have been impeached for failure to faithfully execute the office of the president, in violation of his oath–based on his evisceration of immigration enforcement–but that’s another issue… )
Via The Corner, h.t. Adam’s Blog, The One’s nomination to be secretary of Health and Human speaks from the time capsule:
“Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.” Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, 5/7/98, p. S4507
As it happens, I agree with Tom Daschle on this point. Heck, let’s see some prison time, on top of taxes and penalties, for the guy who cheated on over $146,000 in taxes: Tom Daschle. If tax fraud was good enough to send Al Capone to jail, then it’s barely good enough for politicians who are tax cheats.
“petard”–small bomb; “hoist by his own petard”–lifted by his own bomb, blown up by his own action, sat on his own grenade if you will. I say, therefore, let’s sit Daschle on his own grenade, hold him to his own words, rigorously, firmly, without mercy. Jackass.
