Free Healthcare!

We've gotten a taste of government healthcare in Selma.  Long lines formed through the doors where free dental, vision and health exams were being given.  Military doctors dressed in camoflage fatigues strolled about, giggling.  I suppose that means they have good bedside manners. 

Expensive cars rolled up and parked; their contents spilled out and into the lines.  Other cars with expensive-sounding stereos blasting did the same.  At one point, the line extended down the block.  Police patrolled on Segways, keeping the people in line.

All of this I watched from across the street where I work.  A co-worker decided to go over and see if they could get an eye exam.  They were told the wait was over an hour.  Around 40 people stood in the line at that time.

Again, today, the lines have formed.  The free healthcare started on the 1st and will go until the 10th of the month.  Three days in, and I don't see it letting up any.  If anything, more people are there today.  I guess word is getting out.

Watching the whole production, one can't help but imagine that this is what it will be like when mandated healthcare takes effect.  It reminds me of the lines I saw as a kid on the free cheese and butter handout days.

Snow in April

The temperature being 90 the other day got me to thinking about other unusual temperature fluctuations. Like the time it snowed in April.

It was April 3, 1987. I was in 6th grade. The school year was coming to a close and every kid was looking for an excuse to not go to school. It was a Friday and that made it even worse. The 2" of snow outside the window was quite an exciting sight because we just KNEW they'd call off school.

We were wrong. Our newly appointed Selma School Board Superintendent REFUSED to give us the day off! By the time we got home from school, only tiny patches of snow remained. What a bust... we didn't even get to play in it.

That was the only time in recorded history it has snowed here in April. I looked up the date to be certain. While I was looking in the records, I noticed that only a few days later, on April 21st, came the third hottest day ever recorded for Selma in April... 93 degrees!* Talk about fire and ice.

Ever since then, when winter seems to have given up the fight, I remind people about the snow in April.

* The record for temperature fluctuation in Selma was set in 1907, when the temperature fluctuated 79 degrees from 15 to 94. There was no snow, however. Second place goes to 1987, when the temperature fluctuated 63 degrees, and, of course, we got snow. The only other temperature in April to be hotter than it was in 1987 was 1925. The mercury reached 95 degrees.

Spinning like a 45 on a 78 Turntable

If you have been paying any attention at all to the Ron Paul campaign, you will have no doubt that the media is marginalizing him. He has consistently been first, second or third in most scientific polls, yet his face and name are often omitted from the results. Candidates with lower numbers are touted ad nauseum as 'rising', yet when Paul had the same momentum which carried him into the top tier, he was given little press, and that was almost all negative.

His face has been blacked out on televised poll reports, with no name and his percentage numbers displayed below the cameo, while other candidates, even those with lower numbers, have their name and full color face displayed. More often, he is omitted from results, altogether, with lower and higher polling candidates displayed. Almost every time he is mentioned at the top of a poll, some negative caveat is given as an adjective to describe him.

Here are a few examples that I found by simply typing "Ron Paul blacked out" into a search engine:






And that is just a few, easy to find examples. Most are way worse.

Talk radio, where a lot of people get their 'news', contains some of the worst spin. There is almost no accountability for radio talk shows. They can, and do, say almost anything with no fact-checking or attachment to reality. A lot of dirty work in smearing Paul is done at this level. Listening to talk radio is getting to be like listening to Tokyo Rose.

Poorly researched, debunked reports are repeatedly reported as fact about him, with no retractions or apologies. ALL of the news networks smear Paul. They can't even make up their mind what they want to smear him about. On CBS, he was called 'too far to the right to be electable' by Bob Schaffer. On the Fox News Debate, they accused him of being to the 'left of Obama'. They always follow that up with the 'unelectable' smear.

Technically, anyone is electable who meets the requirements laid out in the Constitution. But, if you want to get down to those issues most people claim to care about, Ron Paul is pretty much the only one that IS electable. They won't report on that, though.

If you ever had any doubt that the media is spinning against Ron Paul, you need only look at the way they're trying to spin the recent sales boost that singer Kelly Clarkson received after tweeting that she loves the Republican from Texas. When a few 'fans' complained, Ron Paul supporters jumped on Amazon and bought all the albums they could afford. The spin doctors are claiming that her double digit ranking jump (triple digit percentage jump in sales, which had most industry people dropping their jaws), isn't from Ron Paul supporters buying her album, but from Christmas sales or people just wanting to 'fill up their new MP3 players.' What?

There is no doubt that Kelly Clarkson is a talented singer and is popular in her own right; She won American Idol and has a lot of fans. But no other artist had that massive a bump for 'Christmas sales'. It was a meteoric rise in sales. There is NO DOUBT that the Ron Paul bump jumped her ranking dramatically. To even imply that the Ron Paul people buying up her album had nothing to do with it is ridiculous and is blatant, unrepentant spin.

The old media is spinning in a dizzying, death spiral.

School Dazed

On my way to work this morning I passed a boy headed for school. A little bit further down the road I passed another. Neither of them was in a hurry, and neither of them looked happy.

As I drove by the school I realized that the kids must be headed there and would soon enter their classrooms. It triggered a knot in my gut... a familiar knot. Memory reminds me that this knot in my stomach once grew in intensity and remained with me all day until I was on my way home from school again in the afternoon.

When I was pre-school age, I was jealous that my older siblings were able to to go to school. That jealousy didn't last long. Any thoughts of envy went out the car window on the way to school the first day.

Nothing is as dreadful as the thought of school to a kid. There is just so much a kid has to deal with. Peer pressure, bad teachers, and the whole uncaring machine that makes this so-called education seem like a prison sentence. If you learn, it is largely by accident.

I remember joking with a friend when I was in 5th grade that we were released on furlough for Spring Break. The thought of that short time out of school was such a memorable pleasure. When I graduated from High School, it was like getting some sort of pardon from the governor. I don't think I'll ever feel that happy and free, again.

I used to have nightmares about being back in school. The sheer terror of having to be back in that situation made it seem worse than the scariest horror movie. And not just because kids got shot in my school. That never even plays into it.

It's always just the way it was in real life. And I'm back there... against my will, trudging through it... dreading the next class, avoiding those I avoided, trying to be noticed by those I want to notice me. I'm walking the stairs, going down the halls, being late for a class... Suddenly noticing that I'm in the wrong part of the school when I need to be in another class... not noticing until I'm sitting down at a desk that I grabbed the wrong book from my locker... and that I don't have a pen or pencil.

Even going to work as an adult you never feel the same level of dread as going to school. Your ability to feed and support yourself comes from keeping a job, yet the fear of losing that doesn't compare to the anxiety a kid has about going to school. Seeing the blank, hopeless gaze of those kids just reminded me how glad I am that I don't have to do that ever again.

Ixquick It

Just a decade or so ago, metasearch engines compiled search results from dozens of viable web search engines. Today, there are really only a handful of commonly used search engines. The dominant engines practice data-mining to turn a profit.

That's not cool.

Yahoo is struggling. Bing is a joke... sorry Microsoft. Google, although it offers so many other free services, has become a scary behemoth. Google probably knows more about me than I do. I try to use it as little as possible. We need another option.

Enter Ixquick. Ixquick doesn't log data about its users, so there's nothing to sell. It also provides a proxy to visit the sites you've searched in private.

It's a fast way to search, too. One of the things I once liked about searching with Google was the ability to type a word and search by hitting enter. The new autocomplete messes up my timing with searches. Sometimes it puts letters in front of the ones I've already typed. Boo! That takes time to correct. Ixquick is a type-and-enter search, making it faster than Google, now.

Ixquick is becoming what the other search engines wanted to be when they first started. Google and Yahoo have been killed by the perception that changing things creates progress. What inspired people to use Google was the no-frills search with decent results. That's becoming a thing of the past.

I've been Ixquick searching for a few years, now. The engine has become faster and results are getting better. I foresee the day when it eclipses some of the other engines.

Will I still use Google for email, blogging and reading newsfeeds? For now, yes. But if a company like Ixquick pops up offering the save services at a nominal cost, I might have to make that leap.

If you still feel like you just MUST get the results you'd get from Google, Ixquick has a sister site called Startpage.com which returns Google search results through a privacy proxy.

Search Ixquick at www.ixquick.com or StartPage at www.startpage.com.

What Cost Freedom

Hurt feelings are nothing. A few dollars? Nothing. Many have given so much more to merely gain the opportunity to DREAM of freedom. What will we have to deny to ourselves in order to obtain and retain freedom?

Honestly, very little. So much of the price has already been paid. We can see freedom standing at our door. The glimpse of freedom we have inspires us. Yet, for some reason, we refuse to fully open the door.

It must be understood that freedom is the move towards civilization and that civilization is the move towards individualism. For thousands of years, man has been forced into collectives to survive. Individual freedom is raped in the name of security in these collectives. Now, at the true dawn of the fulfillment of the dreams of mankind, we find ourselves bowing at the altar of the false god of collectivism.

This is the reason we hesitate at the door: We have yet to answer the question of whether or not the collective is worth sacrificing in order to be free.

Not only is it worth sacrificing, collectivism is the most antithetical obstacle to freedom; it is the abyss claiming many who seek to be free. Like the ancients before them, many are turned around. They begin to see the illusion of collective safety as some sort of surrogate for true freedom. The enticements into this abyss are the false freedoms... the freedoms FROM things... freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from hearing ideas that offend. These things are promised, yet never delivered by the collective.

This is not freedom at all, but enslavement of the mind and soul of the individual.

Until the individual will is recognized as the only force of civilization, man will not be free. And, although the cost we would have to pay is potentially very small, the reality is that the collective will protect itself until the bitter end. The collective sees the individual as meat to feed to collective, not as the objective of freedom. The individual is in for a fierce struggle.

Black Cat in the Driver's Seat

The security light in my garage just went on a few minutes ago, so I looked at the security camera for the garage. There was a black cat sitting on the seat of my tractor, like he was about to drive the thing. It started looking out the door towards the yard and craning its neck. It seemed to be looking for something.

I went to the door that opens into the garage and peeked out at the cat. It didn't see me. After a few seconds, it started cleaning itself. A minutre or so later, it climbed down the tractor tires, using the tread like steps, and disappeared.

It could have been sleeping on the trator and something came up and turned on the light, or it may have turned the light on climbing the tractor.

The light just went back off. I'm going to bed.

ENGLAND WINS!

I know, I know, I should probably be ashamed of my Cricket habit, but the England v. West Indies match was a classic. It came down to the last 5 overs... if the Windies had hit another boundary or made it another over or two, I would have probably had a heart attack. It was that close. 18 runs.

I'm not an England fan. If anything, I pull for Ireland, but they are already out of the later rounds, although they beat England earlier in the tournament (their only win).

When the Windies lbw gave them their 7th wicket, I knew they were in trouble. England would really go on the attack, looking for those last 3 wickets. But still, all they needed at one point were 2 runs an over.

It's been a good World Cup, so far, though I wish Ireland had done better.

Praying for Japan

About 10 years ago I had the pleasure of visiting Japan. The trip was only about 2 weeks, but I really liked it. The people were very gracious with a reserved, pleasant demeanor.

I even thought about staying to teach english. There was a guy from Canada there teaching. He tried to recruit me. Having just bought my house, I couldn't really consider it seriously.

The same nature I enjoyed on my trip to Japan is the unpredictable, brutal nature that laid waste to so much. It's so sad to see the destruction. All of those people taken so suddenly and brutally. 2 natural disasters and now the radiation threat.

My heart goes out to them.

Policing the World

Reminiscing about the things that happened in my life, thanks to the anniversary of the Challenger disaster, I started wondering how many countries US troops have fought in since I've been alive.

In my lifetime (since 1974), US Troops have engaged in combat in the following countries:

Cambodia, Iran, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, Honduras, Bolivia, Panama, Liberia, Kuwait, Somalia, Former Yugoslavian Republics, Congo, Albania, Afghanistan, Philippines, Columbia, Iraq, Georgia, and Syria.

That's over 22 nations. The only ones to which we were 'invited' were Kuwait and Georgia, although with Georgia, we were technically in South Ossetia, Russia, where we were definitely not invited.

We really have been the 'policemen of the world'. No wonder we're so deep in debt.

Lost Comments

A while back, a particularly idiotic piece ran on HuffingtonPost.com that seemed to require a comment. To comment required joining the site. Thinking there would be a notification in my email if someone replied to my comment, the story was soon forgotten.

Since joining the site, they've been sending daily spam-type emails. Today, I clicked on one and went to the the site. Logging in, I found out that my comment had been attacked, and I never even knew about it!

The first instinct was to reply, but comments had been closed for the story. The replies were long, and were really the typical attempts to brand anyone who disagrees with groupthink as 'racists'. I feel sorry for them. They seem to almost demand tyranny.

Yes, being able to reply would have made me feel better, but I don't think it would have swayed their opinion. When people are told to believe that the world is either right or left, good or evil - us or them, they tend to take a side and never look back.

It's sad, really.

Bad First Week

This isn't a good way to start a New Year... the violent murder of innocent people.

Both sides of the left-right argument are making valid points about the shooting in Arizona, but their points are pretty much moot. The guy wasn't right in the head, that's obvious enough, so I don't think motives or books he read mean anything.

I don't think this horrific incident makes any kind of political statement, other than the fact that the right to life of a bunch of people was tragically and terminally violated by a mentally disturbed man.

I guess if the shooter had been a police officer serving a no-knock warrant, and if none of the victims were politicians, the story probably wouldn't be as big. That might be the statement it makes, but I'm reaching a little.

It really sucks, though. Especially the little kid getting killed. Little kids are killed everyday, however, and that's what really sucks. Life is just totally senseless and terrible, sometimes.

Sorry, Folks

I'd like to apologize for the quality of my posts, recently. They are poorly written and not very cohesive. I'm not a good writer, but I'm better than that.

And the reader deserves better. The time has simply not been there to proofread and edit, not that I'm very good at either, but it does make the writing more readable. I'm sorry if you have made an effort to read his thing, only to find the verbal vomit I've been posting.

There will be a conscious effort from this blogger to do better.

Again, sorry... and thanks for taking the time to visit.

OLD SCHOOL FILMS!

http://www.avgeeks.com/our-films-online/
Ah, yes, the good old days of falling asleep in the dimly lit classroom to the whirring, chattering sound of a film projector.

Sometimes I purposely find these on Netflix or the free documentary sites just to help me take a nap on the couch.

Myspace

I logged on to my almost-forgotten myspace page a few minutes ago. I log on every once in a while to see if there is some relic decaying in my inbox. I was just looking through all the old pics, and realized there are pictures on there, taken the better part of a decade ago, that seemed recent to my memory. That is, until I noticed how YOUNG I looked in them. Strangely, I was hit with a tiny twinge of nostalgia.

Everyone thinks of the internet as a newish technology, but I can remember coding HTML in notepad 15 years ago, and the 'net wasn't new then.

I pretty much quit Myspace back in 2007. I also forgot my Facebook password then, too. I made a new account, but it wasn't the same. I've barely done anything with it, since then, either. It's weird that you can be nostalgic about something that's still pretty new.

Blue Sky

Around 1989 or 1990, a movie crew came to Selma to film a movie about nuclear weapons testing called BLUE SKY. Tommy Lee Jones, Powers Boothe and Jessica Lange all rolled into town to star in the movie. Perhaps most forgettable, and completely uncredited, I made my major motion picture debut in that film.


This is the closest I'll ever get to winning an Oscar (or any other award for that matter); that blurry, big-nosed skinny kid in the background is me:

At 1:17:45 into the film, the announcer says, "The Selma High School Drum and Bugle Corps"... that was us. At around 1:18:30 Jessica Lange drives her car right through our band, chasing us off the road. When she pulled up to the grandstand, where Powers Boothe was seated, she stopped and jumped out. The first time she did it, her dress came up over her head. A couple of guys said, "She doesn't have on panties!" I didn't see that, but it definitely got my attention.

Of course, they had to re-shoot it, and when they did, I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything like that again. That's why I'm all standing on my tiptoes straining to see what's going on. That's probably why I barely made the cut... being a pervo.

Before they started shooting, they got us all into a line and informed us that we were about to get haircuts. I had shoulder-length hair at the time, and I wasn't about to get my hair cut. I slipped out of the line, probably the only person who did, and hid until everyone had their hair cut. I then put my plumed hat back on and rejoined my band mates. With my hair up in my hat, no one was the wiser. When it was over, I pulled my hat off, and a few of the crew members gave me a good natured hard time.

I was 14 or 15 years old at the time, too young to drive. When the filming was over for the day, it was several hours before I could get a ride to take me home. While waiting, I talked to some of the crew folks. I didn't get to talk to the big stars, but not because they didn't talk to anyone, I was just too shy. There were other people who hung out with them while they were living in town.

Jessica Lange would go on to win numerous awards for her performance in the movie, including an Oscar. I went on in complete obscurity. Having been that close to that kind of thing, even just for a day, was pretty cool, though.

The movie wasn't released until 5 years after filming ended. The director died before it's release. Although, in some ways, it plays like a Lifetime movie, it's really a lot darker and has a strange vibe.

Modern Man: Liberty? Kill 'em All!

What is happening to the men of America? We're weak and emasculated where we should be strong, and we're all full of blood lust and violence when we should be calm and deliberative. It's like we've adopted some serial killer mentality.

Savagery and blood lust have no place in America. They are the product of a wicked, vain society. The replacement of a respect for life with the amusement at seeing suffering and death is disappointing to say the least.

The founders of our nation wouldn't have thought it amusing to torture anything. Killing was reserved for food, nuisance creatures and criminals who had actually committed a serious crime. Perhaps what they perceived as a nuisance is a little different today, but bloodsport killing wasn't a common M.O. Bloodsports were the pastime of the wealthy with nothing better to do, (inbred nutjobs) or the savages who somehow attached religious significance to the activity, neither of which imply the common sense ethics of the founders.

No, I'm not talking about hunting. Hunting for food has always been a vital part of life. It is perfectly normal and sporting, unless you're hunting just to kill something with no other motives, like Jeffrey Dahmer or something. I'm talking about people who kick dogs for fun, the guys who shoot things just to see them die. Even just a few years ago that would have been looked upon as a mental disorder at best, but now it's treated as a form of amusement, even MASCULINE.

Yeah, all kids go through phases. I'm not talking about that... I'm talking about grown men who have no real masculinity and make up for it by being amused at seeing death and torture or by actually doing it themselves.

It really looks like these people just had bad parents or something. I'm certain it started with kids raised back around WWII, because a lot of people born back then seem to have this defect, although there are a lot more closer to my age who have it, too. Even I had the peer pressure as a kid to laugh at the distress of the vulnerable. But I was a kid, and you outgrow those things. At least, you SHOULD.

I'm not talking about war, either. War is a necessary evil. It shouldn't be looked upon as a GOOD thing, ever, but sometimes you have to defend yourself.

It just seems like we don't care about life, anymore. This has to contribute somehow to our lack of real compassion. We don't really want to respect life, because we're becoming conditioned to think it makes us less of a man.

Then, we make up for it by authorizing government to take care of the poor, or the sick, because it would be somehow WEAK of us to even CARE. Or maybe we're just too lazy to care. Either way, we give up some of our liberty just to seem tough or manly.

Freedom?

What does freedom mean? I think (as did the founders) that freedom is the respect of life, liberty and property. Jefferson posited in the Declaration of Independence that it was also 'the pursuit of happiness', which covers more than property. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Freedom includes the right to delegate certain powers to others. However, if we did not possess a power to begin with, we can't delegate that power. We do not have the power to take property from someone, so we aren't able to delegate that power. All powers of government being delegated by the people, the government has no power to take someone's property.

The Fifth Amendment states that if government should ever take property, it should be for public use, and the person should be justly compensated. This doesn't authorize government to take private property, it only states that if private property is needed for use by the public, the government should, like all individuals from which it's power is derived, be required to compensate the individual from which the property is purchased.

The writers of the Bill of Rights were attempting to protect themselves and future Americans from the unjust stealing of private property in the name of government. Today, court cases and legislation have whittled away at the rights of individuals to make it seem as if the government owns all the land and property. Modern interpretations imply that We, the people, merely rent it via property taxes, etc., but that was never the intention of the last line in the 5th Amendment.

Taxes were never meant to be direct, either, without apportionment. The taxes the Constitution allowed for were not theft, in that theft is a violation of the people's property. Taxes on goods and services are taxes that are legal, and not theft, because they require a person to willingly engage in a legally taxable activity. If you choose to drive a car on a public highway, you will pay the excise tax on gasoline in order to pay for the highway.

Direct taxes on a person's income are direct theft, and violate the very freedom our nation was founded upon. The income tax, as written, is a direct tax on income and therefore violates our right to property. One way to make the income tax less-tyrannical would be to apportion it. This way everyone would pay the exact same amount. Provisions for those who are unable to afford the amount to pay less, instead of higher tax rates for those who have a higher income, would be closer to freedom, as well.

Still, unless the end use of the tax were stated and supported by bids and other proof of the use of the money, the direct tax is less-than-ideal solution to revenue generation. Income taxes have been a tool used by tyrants, and are concepts put forth by those who do not respect the right to private property, such as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the authors of the Communist Manifesto, who included a graduated income tax as one of the 10 core principles of Communism.

I don't think many people want freedom, anymore. I think they see government as freedom, and protecting some lame concept loosely associated with democracy. Democracy, which can be defined as the tyranny of the many over the few, is never a focus of the founding documents. A Free-Republic is, however. The Constitution guarantees a 'Republican form of government'. A republic is based on rules and guarantees. A democracy only follows the whim of a majority. If we weren't a republic, the majority could have long ago voted away all the rights of the minority. While it has happened a few times, the republican ideals have eventually prevailed.

So, if we really don't define freedom as freedom, what is it? Freedom from being free?

Happy New Year, Roll Tide!, and the most honest statement I've heard so far this year...

Another year is here, already. 2010... wow, it really snuck up on me. I remember talking, not too long ago, to someone about how quickly the year 2001 got here, and how, when I first saw the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, it seemed impossibly far away. Now the sequel has already arrived. No human missions to Jupiter, yet, and no moon obelisks, either.

A few minutes ago, while watching a documentary entitled Definition of Stupid, I heard someone say, "Modern universities are a placebo for intelligence." That totally hit the nail on the head to me. It seems the time and money wasted in college is what earns a degree, these days, not actual intellectual pursuits.

'Bama has another National Title to add to the 12 previous. Lucky number 13. I guess 13 was an unlucky number for Colt McCoy. Roll Tide! At least college is good for something.

3 Months In!

I've put in over 3 months, now, at my new job. I'm still learning. Probably will be for a while. I hope to have a long future, there, so I want to know as much as I can.

Heard from an old co-worker, Don Green, last night. Called me up, out of the blue. Talked to him for a long time. He left the plant a long time before I did, leaving back in 2004 or 5. It was good to catch up with him.

I'm so glad I don't have to make that long drive every day, anymore. I've driven 1/3 of a million miles getting to that place. It's so nice to be home within a few minutes of leaving work. I was at that plant for over half of it's existence. I worked with people that were there since before it was built. I drove 90 miles a day, round trip, for over 12 years.

I have had a dream or two that I'm still working there. It's kinda like everybody in the dream keeps asking where I've been for the last few months. I go back into my office and it looks the same way it did. I flop down in the seat, turn on the radio and hit my mouse. But instead of it being my wireless laser-mouse, it's the mouse from where I work, now. I'm trying to figure out who stole my mouse while I was gone when I realize I DON'T WORK THERE ANYMORE!

Then, I realize I'm late for work at my new job, and I jump up and run out. For some reason, I parked behind the building at Stores, so I run out of the back door of the warehouse. Richard is laughing, asking me what I was thinking driving all the way to the plant.

I used to dream that I still worked at the radio station. Haven't had that dream in a while, but I still have variations of it. I guess I'll probably have dreams about the plant for a while, too.