Wanna get high dude?!?!

Prison population hit an all time high.

Most of these people are in for drug offenses (I'd post a few links but why bother? It's available on a basic google search.) Why am I paying for this? These people hurt nobody except themselvs, right?

As a firm proproponent of darwinist methods of dealing with idiots and otherwise defective people, I'm completely in favor of eliminating all laws that serve to protect people from themselves. I mean, grow the hell up! If you can't make choices to save your own existence, you deserve to die. Really.

I'd take it even a step further. Give drug addicts free drugs. Free PURE drugs. Legalize all drugs, and send the drug truck into troubled city neighborhoods and trailer parks every Friday night. Then, since we're smart enough to refuse treatment on hospitals for ODs on Fridays, we can send in the morgue trucks every Saturday morning to collect the bodies.

It's a lot cheaper than jailing them, it cleans up the gene pool, and frees up valuable real-estate from people who are better off dead anyway.

There are some lingering arguments about how a stoned person is a danger to other people, like say getting violent (on PCP or acid, for example) and driving cars (on everything from alcohol to strichnine). There are also arguments that drug ODs would cost us money in increased insurance premiums.

This is easily addressed without controlling substances. First, violence is violence -- send addicts to prison for violence. Second, if you hurt or kill someone in a car while under the influence, automatic prison time with a manslaughter or mahem charge. Third, make it so that insurance companies don't have to pay out on ODs and people admitted for an OD can be refused treatment if they don't have assets to cover it (if they have a house, take it!).

You see, there is no solution to the drug problem because you can't solve biochemestry. Accept that fact. Believe it. Live it. The only solution to the drug problem is evolution -- embrace it.

Andy Rooney

I was compared to Andy Rooney today. I think Andy Rooney is a whiney puss and really wish people wouldn't say that anymore.

Where's My Damned Iraqi Oil?

You know, I spend how many damn billions ensuring my oil keeps flowing for the fifty or so years I have left. Well, where the hell is it? I'm pretty pissed about not getting it in a timely manner.

That being said, it occurs to me that the Iraqis have a problem with upstarts wanting control of all the wealth. It's not about God or Allah, or the Filthy Americans <spit> ®, it's about the big pile of cash that every little pissant warlard thinks he can get a piece of.

Well, screw 'em. Write a dividend into the Iraqi constitution. This will accomplish several things:

1. force every citizen to register in a big database to get his check.
2. give every registered citizen a vested interest in keeping the peace (his check)
3. encourage the Iraqis to close down their borders so as not to get more citizens.
4. encourage them to have fewer babies for the day when the oil is gone and the world will have to support them.
5. ENCOURAGE THEM TO PUMP MORE OF MY OIL SO I CAN FILL UP MY EXCURSION!

Good Money after Bad

Middle East hatred of the US comes down to one thing: Israel. So why do we continue?

The bottom line is that they have long since outlived their military and political usefulness. We have all the foothold we need there to protect our interests (oil, in case you're wondering – do you think we would care otherwise). So why Israel?

And politically, they've gone from an asset to a thorn in our side.

So why do we keep sending support? It's not like they can't take care of themselves and we can give ourselves a good hand-washing of the whole mess. There's no upside to our association.

Don't misunderstand me; they have as much a right to exist as a country as any other. By way of explanation, a nation is the consolidation of power by a group of people. A country is then what it can take and hold by force. Don't make the thinking error that there is rule of law amongst nations (countries), there is only power. Israel, under that doctrine has more than proven its right to exist. (On the other hand, the stated reasons that led to its formation was an enormous pile of, um, sophistry. I guess it sounded good at the time, though.)

We have so much to gain by waving goodbye and good-luck that one wonders why we don't get on with it already.

Squeeze 'em 'til it hurts.

You are being lied to and robbed.

I want you to think about corporate taxes. Most people think that it's a due and just and that corporations deserve to pay tax just like everyone else. They envision an amorphous blob sitting in a desk-like or office-like area counting money and paying out a tax bill.

The problem is, a corporation isn't a person -- it’s a business. That means it buys stuff, does stuff, and sells stuff. Money goes in and out pretty much continuously. Thing is, it is continuously pressured by other businesses to sell its stuff cheaper than the other company, or it goes out of business. (That would be the equivalent to a person dying.)

Don’t get caught up in the zeros. A successful company can make millions. In order to do that it has to move hundreds of millions of dollars through itself. That’s not much of a take in the long run and as our productive numbers (which really means automation) get pushed higher and higher, this percentage will get smaller still.

Now put a tax on both the company and it's competitors, what happens? Do you think their profits go down? No, they're already selling stuff as low as they can afford to keep competing against the other guy. If you tax them, the prices of both their services/products go up by the tax amount. The consumer pays. The little guy who has to buy a new microwave because his brats broke the old one pays.

You pay.

You can be assured that the stockholders don't pay, nor do the CEOs. Possibly, it means that the company has to operate with fewer employees, though, so they pay too.

But what about all the government services that the government provides to business? Shouldn't they have to pay for that? Sure. It can be paid with usage fees as they go. If they need fire protection (perhaps it's required by their insurance), they can pay a monthly fee to the county. If they need police protection, the same applies. If they need roads built, they can pay the fee. But make no mistake, they still will pass their costs on to the consumer, so in essence it's no different than the consumer sending in the check.

This is important: The government knows this perfectly well. There are certain realities to raising a trillion dollars from a population of 125 million workers. The big one is that you just can't do it if you go after the top earners. Sure you can collect a lot of money, but we're talking about a million million dollars -- you just can't come close that way. You HAVE to tax everyone to get the math to work, and you have to tax them a LOT.

Politicians will preach that they're going to reduce the tax burden on the middle class and the poor. It's a lie. They know it's a lie because you can't get trillions any other way.

So we have Corporate Tax. It allows the government to squeeze the highest numbers of people for the most amount of money.

Go to a grocery store and buy a loaf of (cheap) bread for $1.00. If your state doesn't have sales tax on groceries, you pay how much in tax? (Don't say zero.) A full 50% of that dollar makes its way back to the government in terms of corporate taxes on all the suppliers by way of their taxes and by way of the tax on the labor involved. The ovens require electricity, which is taxed. The bread requires flour, transportation, inspection, insurance, and a million other sundry items that are all taxed.

So even the poorest of the poor (in the 0% tax bracket) pay 50% taxes. And it's all so the politicians can play stupid promise games and get votes. And it's all a lie.

The sane approach is to simplify it, tax the poor schmuck his 50%, tell him to suck it up, and eliminate the mountain of paperwork. But that would put lots of accountants and politicians out of business.

Darn.

Assembly and the Wire Tap

Humans have a built in need for sovereignty over their person. This is possibly derived from the way we evolved as pack animals and our need to climb the hierarchy. We call it Freedom in our political system. Philosophy and Theology call it free will.

In order to feel sovereignty over my person, I require privacy. I want to be able to do what I want within the walls of my home, away from the prying eyes of anyone who might judge me. And I want it to be simple. I want the fact that I close a shutter to be a signal to others that they are not allowed to look inside, even accidentally through a crack or keyhole.

I want a simple popup notice on my computer to inform people that it is my private property and they are not legally entitled to look at anything on it without my permission. I want this to apply even if they surreptitiously gain access to my passwords. And if they look, I want the option to have them punished.

And I consider privacy to be a basic right -- a human right derived of a biological need, not one that can be abridged by any court or action. I'm not alone -- lots of people want privacy. Lots of people want complete and utter privacy. People want it so much so, that they've derived this right from one of the amendments to the US Constitution. In some cases this has become quite controversial: One has led to a perennial public debate (about which I don't give a damn one way or the other as it happens.)

Hell, I even want privacy in my home so strong that I can set up an illegal operation, like say a pot farm, in my basement with absolute surety that the only way I'll be exposed is if I let the information out. (Which would surely happen if I did something stupid like sell it or tell someone.) Maybe I want to set up a particle collider to create a pocket universe over which I rule as a God. And that's my right too. Many people (especially law enforcement folk and nosey busybodies who should mind their own damned business) think this is a justification to reduce privacy rights. They're wrong.

I also want complete and utter privacy in my conversations with other people on the phone. I want to be able to pick up a phone and call someone without any thought at all, and know that it is a point-to-point communication. And if it is not, I want a little indicator on my phone to light up telling me that the far end has a second line picked up or that the far end has a really good speaker phone that I can't hear the echo in.

Unfortunately, the bad guys won this one outright. They argue that privacy cannot exist in this medium. They also argue by some severely tortured logic that they have a right to tap your calls if they think you're a bad guy (they're the bad guys because they're nosey bastards).

But there is hope! The way I see it, a phone call is an assembly of two people, possibly for political purposes. And while the founding fathers hadn't a clue that there would some day be a telephone network, I'm sure they would agree that having a phone call or a conference call is in essence the same thing as getting together to have a meeting.

Well if you have a meeting, you can see who is there. You have full disclosure. And you can post guards to catch eavesdroppers. If I even think that the NSA might tap into my meeting, it changes what I feel free to say. That's a Bad Thing.

If some twisty bastard (lawyer) can think up a way to warp an amendment against unwarranted searches into the right to abort a baby (again, I don't give a shit one way or the other), surely he can think up a way to strengthen the right to have a phone call.

As it happens, we have the technology right now to circumvent wire taps built into every digital phone. A simple firmware change to the DSP could implement guaranteed end-to-end military grade encryption and it would even work with a conference call. Selling these phones would enable the public to tell the Justice Department to shove CALEA right up its ass and would give us back our right to Assemble Freely.

Would it make police work harder? Sure. They'd have to go back to co-opting one of the parties in the conversation and do undercover work rather than sift through digitized recordings. Would it make it more dangerous? Probably.

Does this matter?

No.

Strap in, shell out.

Let me preface this with a bold statement: Laws requiring an 80 lb kid be in a booster seat is just plain stupid.

I was driving through Ontario a few weeks ago and caught news broadcasts touting their new law requiring that kids up to 36 kg (80 lb). The parent groups were saying things like "even if we save just one child, the cost is worth it," and "it's obviously necessary in today's world". A police officer came on with, "It's a great stride forward in protecting our kids." This mirrors a bunch of laws popping up in the states requiring the same stupid thing.

Let's go to justification? From an engineering standpoint, why the hell would anyone see a need to put a kid in a booster seat? Apparently kids are getting hurt by existing restraints. The only possible reason to elevate the level of the kid is to change where the shoulder belt crosses the kid's chest.

So, the argument goes, this is obviously a problem with the fact that parents haven't shelled out enough money on this mass marketed "safety" crap, rather than properly designed restraints in cars. And the fact that kids take first opportunity to loosen their seat belts as soon as parents start driving has nothing to do with it either. It's also obvious that they will sit still in a confining booster seat way better than in an un-boosted seat because they mind better when parents pay 60 bucks for a booster seat.

Face facts, these laws are nothing more than a lobbying effort on the part of the booster seat manufacturers to sell more stuff. Any government really serious about kid safety in cars would mandate five point harnesses adjustable over the entire range of human development. Then they would mandate key-locks to defeat uncooperative brats.

And what about this argument that "even if we save one life it's worth it?" That too is crap. Wake up people, we put dollar values on human life all the time. Every auto manufacturer weighs the cost of potential lawsuits for design flaws against the cost of implementing fixes. If you run about saying silly things like "life is priceless" you start thinking that "life has infinite value". Well it doesn't. Get over it. Saving one kid’s life isn’t worth a 500 million dollar blackmail scheme.

My prediction is that those same manufacturers will next “recommend” that booster seats be replaced every year and imply that you’re abusing your kids if you don’t.

And what business is it of the government stepping in and circumventing evolution anyway? If stupid parents don't take proper steps to protect their kids, it's just that many fewer of their defective stupid genes making it into the world.

But hey, who’d be left to vote for crooked politicians if they all died off?

University of Where Exactly?

My neighbor’s son was just rejected by the University of Michigan, which as it happens is an excellent school. While my normal instincts of Darwinism and survival of the fittest would tend to pass this off as simply not being able to compete, I know for a fact that it's not true. He had outstanding grades and near perfect (I did better, but then again, I'm a genius) SAT scores. Why was he rejected? The school claimed that "due to the large number of excellently qualified applicants and a limited number of students, they regretfully ..." Yadda Yadda blah blah

I checked the admission stats. It's a who's who of Indian and Chinese students, out-of-state students, and a few Michigan students.

Why then are they called the "University of Michigan", and not the "University of Manhattan" or the "University of Bombay"? Presumably the social justification for using my tax money for general education is that everyone benefits from an educated populace. So my state taxes fund the school. So my federal taxes fund the school. And it goes on throughout my entire adult income-earning life, not the mere four to seventeen years my kid is in school. Now how do I benefit from an educated Chineese and Indian populace? Outsourcing, perhaps? They'd be less likely to nuke me? I'm struggling here - give me some ideas.

Yeah, sure they pay a higher tuition at first, until they get residency requirements fufilled. Some are smart and establish residency before enrolling in school (this is especially easy for out-of-staters). I say to myself, "Something's wrong here."

That would be my greedy bastard instincts taking over. I've decided: they exist first to serve Michigan students, then US students, then everyone else, if they get the money together. If India and China want their kids educated in the US, they can cut loose their billions and fund our education system. Or send them to a non-publicly funded college of their choice. (I suggest Yale and Harvard -- it would serve them right.)

We're better than they are.

I know we are better than they are. Briefly I thought we weren't, but they proved it today. They're barbarians. They pretend to God and in their hearts is only greed and power lust. Like animals, they lack the veneer of civilization that would quench the bloodshed.

Of course, I'm only talking about the vermin who would cut off a man's head screaming, "Allah is Great." While Allah may be great, I expect he won't get to spend much time with Allah. He can probably kiss those hundred virgins goodbye too.