Government Gone Wild

With various things going on including a very demanding abandoned kitten to care for, I let things slide as far as blogging goes.  The links to interesting bits of news will stretch back into last week as a result.

Serves New London Right

At Hot Air, Ed has a post filled with immense irony.  After the idiocy that was the Kelo ruling , the original case has turned into a classic bad joke. Pfizer got New London, CT to use eminent domain to take homes away from residents and now won’t be developing the property.  To make it even more painful, the jobs lured there by the deal are being moved to another town!

The Supreme Court badly damaged private property rights in America with this ruling and the end results show why government having absolute control over who gets to own what is foolish. Makes me wish the founding fathers had put something in the Constitution or Bill of Rights about private property.

Big Guy Picks on Little Guy, Government Doesn’t Care

Back when SEIU member continued the proud union tradition of beating people during a tea party protest, most of the media yawned about it.  Kenneth Gladney was the recipient of the attack because he dared pass out “Don’t Tread On Me” items outside a Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-CT) forum.  The left spun the story by claiming Gladney started the fight, but the police report says otherwise. Interesting to read the behavior of the SEIU members present, including another assault, resisting arrest, and one who tripped and tried to claim the police beat him!  The district attorney in St. Lois has yet to do anything about it and no charges have been filed despite the video and police report on the incident. This smacks of corruption and favoritism. Thank you Big Government for posting the report.

This Message Will Be Controlled

One thing that sets dictatorships and totalitarian states apart is they insist on absolute control of the news media. Censorship abound and everything has to be in line with what they want.  It may surprise people that totalitarians will suppress even those of the same ideological or political persuasion, not just their obvious opponents. No criticism is to small to be allowed. More and more the Obama Administration is showing these tendencies. Besides attacking Fox News there is the curious case of Indymedia, a left wing website. The demand by the Justice Department for information on people who browsed the site is a privacy rights nightmare list with the following info demanded: Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and home addresses.  Read Ed’s post at Hot Air for the details of a truly bizarre story.

Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks

ACTA will affect Intellectual Property rights in the US and other countries beyond just dealing with counterfeit goods.  While this lecture at BoingBoing is a bit dry, it covers the concerns raised over this far reaching treaty. The idea of iPods being searched at the border is insane, but shows the reach of media companies into the government. Also, the ability to confiscate or destroy goods without compensating the owners is incredibly draconian. At around the 15 minute mark, the Internet provisions are discussed and I’ve touched on that before.

Orwell Predicted the Present

In Great Britain, phone companies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will be forced to keep every telephone call, web visit, email, and any other thing done on Internet on record for one year. Originally the ministers had wanted this stored on one central government database, but backed off from that. Even so, this quote is chilling to anyone who believes in privacy:

653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

It is rapidly getting to the point where the only private communications in the UK will be face to face, for Big Brother is watching. The British are lost and only people fighting for their freedom will keep it here in the United States.

Updated Movie Reviews

I’ve been experimenting with adding pictures to my movie reviews and took the opportunity to revise or expand them in the process. Here are the links to the revised reviews:

The Watcher in the Woods

Forbidden Planet

The Black Hole

Stargate: Continuum

Over time I’ll be adding more reviews, in fact I have several written in the pipeline.  Expect reviews of Gojira, Godzilla, and Howl’s Moving Castle soon.

Why reviews?  I get very tired of all the gloomy news out there and need to write about more positive things.  Most of the reviews will be out of my personal DVD collection, so don’t expect a lot of negativity!

Veterans Day

In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings, Veterans Day seems a little more immediate than usual.  That shouldn’t be the case for we always have men and women in the armed forces serving around the world protecting our country and way of life.  Less visible are those who have served honorably and returned to civilian life, but my gratitude is just as great for their service.

After Vietnam, a lot of people turned against our soldiers and I remember the slow turnaround of that attitude in the 1980’s under President Reagan. Lately it has been a mixed bag as the country has polarized over Iraq and Afghanistan.  But I hope I’m correct in feeling that the majority of the country at least respects our fine service personnel.  Reading about the strange mugging of an Army reservist gives me hope.

Misc. - the Useful Abbreviation

One has to love the ability to type “misc.” instead of miscellaneous(which is only correctly spelled here due to Windows Live Writer’s spellchecker).  It is such a useful term too – it covers everything!

Yes, I’m making an excuse to post random unconnected links to stories interesting me today:

Read about stocks jumping to new highs on Yahoo and once reading the reasons for it felt vindicated in thinking the “recovery” is all about banks and the political class – not the peons.  They love the dollar collapsing; such wonderful patriots they are.  They also love blowing bubbles and we are going to see more pop with this irresponsible behavior.  People invested in stocks don’t care about anything but reaping a quick profit and that cannot bring about any long term improvement.

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and the end of Communism in Europe had begun. Lech Walesa played a critical role in this and the former leader of Solidarity says some interesting things in an interview with Spiegal Online. His warning to the politicians is one that should be heeded.

At PajamasTV, Bob Owens has a nice rant only a gun nut will appreciate – so of course I enjoyed it a great deal.  It has to do with the “cop killer” label put on the FN Five-seveN (oy, the marketing gimmick) 5.7mm pistol in the reports on the Fort Hood shootings.  This is a pistol I would love to own as I’m a fan of velocity over mass, but Owens’ arguments are sound and I have a heavier caliber pistol for the same reasons.  I’m grateful Hasan fell for the hype, things could have been far worse.

People scoff at computer virus threats while disregarding the legitimate threat.  Frankly, the chance that your PC could be given a virus that downloads child pornography is frightening.  So if anyone reading this doesn’t have a firewall and antivirus program on their PC, please install one pronto!  Being framed for something as depraved as this should be motive enough to add some security.

Terrorism and Fort Hood

UPDATED

The media reaction to Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack on his fellow troops in Fort Hood has been disturbing to me.  Political correctness is acting like a lens distorting reality the way a funhouse mirror warps a reflection. As more facts emerge about Hasan, it is clear he was a jihadi. Someone just snapping from stress by proxy (what a ludicrous excuse) doesn’t try to contact al Qaeda months before shooting a bunch of American soldiers.  He doesn’t give away his belongings first and he doesn’t frequent strip joints like the 9/11 hijackers did.  Hasan did exactly that.


Many Islamic fundamentalists believe all your sins are forgiven on martyrdom, so they tend to party in forbidden ways.  That looks hypocritical to Western eyes, but it simply points out one of our cultural differences with the Islamic world.  Over at Forbes, Tunku Varadarajan has a must read piece on our problems facing what he dubs “going Muslim.”

UPDATED:
CNN proves the distorted lens by rearranging a wounded soldier's quote to make it look like he was unsure if Hasan yelled "Allhu akbar." Mudville Gazette has the details.

It isn’t like Hasan was the first to go on a killing spree in the name of Islam after 9/11. Next week on Tuesday the “D.C. Sniper” will be executed.  Seven years ago, John Allen Muhammad and his accomplice Lee Malvo  killed 10 people. Do people even remember this?  I wonder.

A big part of the problem is how the political left and their lapdogs in the media have depicted the war on terror.  J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker puts it better than I can.  I agree with him that relativism has done a great deal of damage:  allowing corruption to flourish and weakening our will to defend ourselves. Everything depends on the American people waking up.

I question whether another 9/11 would be enough.

Weekend Links: Around the World

The Nuclear Threat

The UN is wondering why they’ve found evidence that the Iranians have experimented with a radically more advanced nuclear warhead design than previously thought.  It is pretty clear they are playing for time to get weapons in production and the weak Obama administration is making it easier than ever. Not that President Bush was much better in dealing with them.  It will be up to Israel to defend themselves. There will be fallout one day, probably of the radioactive kind.

Over in Poland, nuclear fears are rising as well.  Russia practiced an invasion and nuclear missile strike on Poland back in September.  They even gamed out a pretext based on ethnic Poles rising up in Belarus.  Nothing is subtle with the Russians and this is clearly a threat being made to Poland. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a repeat of the false flag operation used by the Nazis to justify invading Poland.  A weak US president make previously unthinkable objectives possible, unfortunately.

Rising Up Against Oppression

Over at Gateway Pundit, a collection of reports on continuing protests in Iran against their rulers.  This should have been bigger news, but the media isn’t interested in the story. Iran is not a stable country and that should be of concern to everyone. We need to be on the right side of this if things are to be kept from blowing up in the Middle East.  Sucking up to dictators in hopes they will become accommodating doesn’t work.

Call of Duty Set to Overwhelm the Gaming World

I have to say Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a brilliant and disturbing video game.  Brilliant in execution and disturbing in plausibility, it put the player in the midst of an international crisis involving a nightmarish scenario of nukes, Russian civil war, and Middle East fundamentalism.  So it is no surprise the sequel is eagerly awaited, but the sales expectations of half a billion dollars worldwide in the first week is a shock.

I don’t play multiplayer so I can’t comment on the latter half of the article.  Still, if the single player experience is as good as the first one, I’ll get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -- when it gets very cheap.  It means a wait of several years, but I can afford to be patient. I literally can’t afford impatience in these cash strapped times.

Political Shenanigans

With Cap & Trade and ObamaCare unpopular with the voters, a lot of games are being played to ram them through before the recess.  Pelosi & Reid can’t afford to have Democrats go home and face their constituents before voting on the bills as they might get swayed to vote “No.”

One thing they don’t want out is the penalty for not buying mandatory health care under the House version of the health care bill.  It is freaking totalitarian, that’s all.

The campaign to neuter Fox News is still underway at the White House.  This has been denied, but with the previous actions by the Obama administration I think it is legit. They are determined to control the news at all costs, but I think they are making a huge mistake.  This kind of thing wouldn’t be leaked if it weren’t seriously resented.  The Chicago way is as blunt and heavy handed as the Russians actions in Eastern Europe. Totalitarians never tolerate criticism or the truth well.

Governing the Internet

Intellectual property rights are all the rage in governance right now.  Having been pushed by media conglomerates for some time now as their faltering products fail to earn enough moola, governments are moving to halt piracy of music on the Net.  The latest attempt is a stealth move under the guise of an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA).  Basically, the idea is to force the internet service providers (ISP’s) to be held responsible when someone downloads an illegal copy of a tune or movie.  Before this the individual was held responsible and the ISP’s were immune to prosecution. 

Why is this a bad thing?  Well, the US government hid the details of what is in the treaty and the countries that actually counterfeit music and movies aren’t involved in the treaty.  So it does nothing about counterfeiting and is all about snooping into the contents of people’s computers.  The ISP’s will have to do that to keep from being sued. That’s a big civil rights issue and once the ability to do that is granted, it won’t go away and will be abused.

IP rights are okay for a limited time, I personally believe 15 years is good enough with an exception made on religious materials.  If people aren’t allowed to rest on their laurels, it will encourage them to come up with new material.  I’m a big fan of intellectual ferment and the marketplace of ideas, so limiting IP to a shorter span would be a true stimulus of creativity.  Right now it feels like the whole world is going through the motions and repeating itself.  Be nice to break free of that stagnation, wouldn’t it?

The secrecy involved is the real deal breaker.  They wouldn’t be secretive unless they were up to something illegal.  Though what is legal is becoming more of a “we say so” kind of thing rather than true application of jurisprudence.  I think we are seeing the money out of Hollywood and the music industry behind all this as they are losing money due to inferior products.  They won’t admit this and have to blame something for their failure. However, the consequences of this push may much bigger than they understand.