Best Movies Of The Decade

Here's my list of the best movies of the past 10 years. I should say that there are some movies out there that I haven't seen, or haven't had a chance to see all the way through, so I guess these are the best movies to come out in the past decade that I have happened to see. Anyway, if you have not seen one of these movies, rent it, try to catch it on TV, or whatever.

10. The Pianist
09. Children of Men
08. Inglourious Basterds
07. No Country For Old Men
06. The Hurt Locker
05. Let The Right One In
04. Superbad
03. Thank You For Smoking
02. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
01. The Dark Knight

Review: The Hurt Locker

I know it is suppose to be Brad News of the "Day", but I've been taking a break from the blog for a while. Sorry for not posting in a while.

Anyway, I saw "The Hurt Locker" today and I loved it. This is a really great war movie and probably the best one I've seen on Iraq. I haven't really seen one like it before, but for the subject given, I think it was done right. It's not really that gore driven like most war movies nowadays. There is some gore in it, but it's nothing that's just shoved in your face as if to say, "Look at the horrors of war!" Instead, it relies on the suspense of disabling bombs and wondering where the enemy is to really draw you in. Some of the cinematic camera work I thought was really good, especially the slow motion, but they also had some shaky cam and quick cuts in parts that I think distracted a bit. The shaky cam was the only really part I hated about this movie, but it wasn't all over the place, so you can probably easily overlook it.

The story, which follows a U.S. Army bomb disposal unit in Iraq, is split up into mini stories about the same three guys during their tour instead of just one event they go through. I think it works pretty well given the subject. There are some gunfights and good action scenes, but it's not one of these films where you have a huge battle and people are shooting all the time and there's just total chaos and gore everywhere. Like I said, it's a lot more suspense driven. The acting was good. The main character, played by Jeremy Renner, is kind of a James Dean bad ass of guy that always seems to have a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He's like those old Hollywood cool guys, which I haven't really seen in a movie in a while.

As far as politics, it doesn't really take the pro war/anti war position, but takes the approach that war is a drug and some guys just want that Adrenalin rush, which I think makes sense. There are parts that remind me of something out of "Trainspotting", or some other movie about addicts. That whole pro war/anti war thing has been done a million times before anyway. If anyone's mind about war has to be made up by watching a movie about it, then I think they really shouldn't put themselves in a position to make a call on if it's right, or wrong. I like the whole "take it as it is" attitude when it comes to war movies.

I think this movie did a really great job of conveying the sense that you don't know where the enemy is at, or who the enemy is. Just about every place they stop to dismantle a bomb, there are onlookers, people with cameras, etc. and you kept getting the sense that one of those guys has the detonator and you're at the edge of your seat wondering if they'd shoot him in time. You really get a sense of paranoia that these guys must go through on a daily basis of not knowing who to trust. Over and over you find yourself almost positive some guy is the enemy and then come to find out they're not. Then you're left with kind of a sense of guilt that you wanted him to get shot when he wasn't guilty. A lot of movies have shown people what war looks like, but very few have really made the viewer make moral decisions that the soldiers themselves have to make. This movie did a great job of drawing you into making those decisions in your head.

Some of the Iraq War Vets might call BS on some of the stuff since this is a work of fiction and not based exactly on true events. I'd love to hear a review for this movie done by an actual Iraq War veteran, so if you are one and saw the movie, or found a link to one, please send one my way. I think if you're looking for that perfect cinematic masterpiece, you might be little disappointed, even though there are a few great visuals in the movie, it kind of has a B movie feel to it. On the other hand, I think it was a good action film, with good acting, was really well thought out, and the suspense really kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. I give "The Hurt Locker" a 9/10 and highly suggest checking it out.

Wisdom Tooth

I've kind of been taking a break from the blog a few days. Today, I got a wisdom tooth pulled, so I'm going to try to use this time to dig up something to talk about. Either that, or I'm going to do some art. I meant to post some pics of my recent trip to the Buffalo River, so I might get around to doing that. I think most people who visit my blog have already seen them though. Still, I'm going to post them anyway.

Normalizing Violence

I recently saw a video made by Penn Jillette about this Japanese Game called RapeLay. As far as I know, this game has only been released in Japan, but basically it's a video game about raping little girls. Naturally, a game like this has a lot of people upset. Some women groups are saying this game is normalizing rape and people have said similar stuff about violent video games that supposedly normalizes murder and stuff like that.

Personally, I don't buy it this "normalizing" argument. I don't think that playing a video game, reading a book, or watching a movie with violent acts in it will make a normal person do evil things. I think a person already prone to do these evil acts might be more likely to find entertainment in violent movies, or video games, but take those away and that person is still prone to do evil acts. Take away those fake forms a entertainment and they might even be more likely to find entertainment in real life victims. I think Penn makes one of the best cases I've heard against this normalizing violence argument.



He's basically making the point that normalizing the behavior is actually from trying to ban the video game, or denounce it, and saying that it's a video game's fault that a person might rape. It's not an object, or something someone sees simulated that makes them do bad things. A normal person can tell the difference in reality and fantasy. A person does bad things because they want to do bad things. Perhaps a person had horrible things done to them as a child to cause a mindset of revenge, or to seek out power over someone else, but entertainment like video games, or movies don't do anything to you. You're the one in control, not them. If anything, people could use those as an outlet to express aggression in a safe way instead of doing it in the real world. I think this same argument can be applied to many things people wish to ban, like guns, or drugs.

A lot of people state that drugs, like steroids, cause "roid rage", and some drugs do affect judgment, but when people talk about this, they seem to overlook the fact that a lot of already violent people might want to be the toughest and meanest dude on the block and take steroids. Which comes first; the chicken, or the egg? I don't think it's the steroids that make the guy mean, it's just that a mean guy is more likely to use steroids.

It's the same way with guns. I know lots of good people that own guns. Even I own guns. I don't look at a gun, or pick one up and all of a sudden get the urge to start mowing people down. I've played lots of violent video games and watched lots of violent movies and don't get the urge to mow people down. These objects hold no evil magic that can possess a normal human being and turn them into a murderer. People just do bad things because they want to, not because some object, or a form of entertainment takes over their mind.

Police Brutality 3: Oklahoma Highway Patrol vs. EMT

Classify this under bad judgment. So the ambulance is taking a woman to the hospital and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol pulls them over, and starts a big fuss. According to the EMT, the cops did this because they were flipped the bird, which the EMTs said they didn't do. Even if they had been flipped the bird, did that warrant the cops stopping an ambulance with a patient on board? Did it occur to these cops that the woman inside could be dying? This is some of the worst judgment from cops I've ever seen. Not only that, they choke the EMT. I think resisting arrest is a stupid idea, but still, there was a lady inside that needed help and the cops were preventing this. They were sworn to protect and serve and they did neither in this case. Instead of pulling the ambulance over, why not help it get to the hospital and then have a discussion with the EMTs there if they really had a problem? Eventually, they did do that, but after delaying the woman getting medical care. Seriously, what were they thinking? If this was in any way inside the law for the cops to do this, then the law needs to be changed. Here's an account (PDF document) of the whole situation according to one of the paramedics involved.

Settlers of Catan (REVIEW)

(DISCLAIMER) This isn't really about a video game, but trust me, this is just as fun.

I read a friend's blog the other day and he was posting about this new, award-winning, board game he has been playing called "Settlers of Catan". He went on to tell how great it was. I'm usually not one to play board games. I sometimes get in the mood, but I'm not one of these people that plays them every weekend, or anything. Me and this guy used to play video games together, so I respect his opinions, especially when it comes to games.

So I did some research into it, decided it looked like fun, and ordered it off of Amazon (free shipping takes too long). I just can't get enough of it now. I never thought I'd have so much fun playing a board game, but this is almost like the perfect board game. It's kind of like a mix between "Risk" and "Monopoly" only it doesn't take all day to play, like they do. You can probably play a game in about an 1-2 hours. Like all games, it's kind of complicated at first, but you pretty much get it down in 1-2 games. It looks complicated because it's so different than what you're probably used to, but it's actually really simple. The best thing about it is you get to customize your own board and every game is different. People can't just rely on one strategy and you don't seem to have that one friend that is far superior than everyone else, like in "Scrabble". You pretty much have to have multiple strategies to win.

The point of the game is you are settling this island and have to roll dice for resources to buy up roads, settlements, and cities. You can also trade with other players. Settlements and cities are worth different victory points, along with some other stuff you can do, and the way you win is by getting 10 victory points. This is the reason it doesn't take so long is because you aren't eliminating players, just trying to beat them to 10 victory points.

There's an interactive online tutorial that I suggest checking out. You might also try the free online version here. If you like that, the actual board game is around $30-40 and is for 4 players, ages 10+. There's an expansion set that allows for 5-6 players and also a bunch of Catan spin-off games. This is sure to be one of those classic games in a few years that everyone will have in their closets to cure a boring weekend.

Modern Warfare 2 Trailer

GPS Tax

Have you ever wondered what would happen if all of a sudden the GPS satellites in space stopped working? Well, "Skynet" would fail and civilization would end as we know it. Well, maybe not...MAYBE.

Currently there are 31 GPS satellites in space, but there only needs to be 24 to keep the system going. However, they are nearing the end of their lifetime and Obama is cutting the funding on the GPS program. In fact, some people say that we could have less than 24 functioning satellites by 2010 (my money's on Dec. 21, 2012). That's is a little unnerving considering all the stuff that's around now that relies on this system.

Since the satellites were put into space by our government, funds will have to come from the taxpayers of course. So now there are rumors on a GPS tax to help fund new satellites to replace the old ones. Since it would be next to impossible to tax someone every time they used GPS, the plan will likely be to tax GPS devices. However, would this really be enough to launch satellites into space? Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of new GPS buyers out there, but it seems like more "regular taxes" will be required to really get these up and running.

Of course you have companies that make GPS systems for people, cars, airplanes, boats, etc., so why couldn't they get together and make their own private system that the military can use, or pitch in to replace the current satellites? It's obvious that if they don't do something to help fix this system, they're out of the business. Of course if the tax payers are going to pay their bills, why should they front the money? I'm sure they'll be opposed to a tax on their devices they sell and will get them some lobbyist in Washington to put a stop to that. Being that our current rulers, I mean representatives, aren't the type to just let the free market do its thing, I wouldn't doubt they'd use more taxes for this.

I should say that I've never actually used a GPS device personally. I like shinny, cool technology, but I'm more of a map, compass, moss on a tree kind of guy.

47 Million-Year-Old Primate Ancestor

A recent discovery at the Messel Shale Pit near Frankfurt, Germany might re-write human evolution. This beautiful and very well preserved fossil is of an early primate ancestor of modern day monkeys and humans. The fossil itself is about the size of a small monkey and despite missing its left leg, it's in remarkable condition. It's so detailed that they can make out the fur and even the stomach contents from its last meal (which appears to be the world's first fruit cake).

This discovery will hopefully solve a scientific debate over whether our we evolved from the branch known as tarsidae, which includes the modern day tarsiers in Asia, or the adapidae branch, whose modern descendant includes the lemurs in Madagascar. This discovery of this early adapid, appears to show that perhaps we evolved from from lemur branch instead of the currently more popular belief that we evolved from tarsier branch.

Fat Princess

For those that haven't heard about this new game coming out for the PS3, Fat Princess is a real-time-strategy game that's mixed with capture the flag. Instead of a flag, you got to capture a princess and the other team can feed that princess to make her fatter and harder for the other team to carry back to their base. It's a pretty simple concept, but something that I can't remember anyone else ever doing. The look of the game also stands out. You got this bright and cheerful environment and characters, yet it has blood and gore. This will be a day 1 buy for me and I can't hardly wait.

Jack Of All Trades Schooling

There are lots of problems with the current education system, but most people don't get beyond thinking that if you throw enough tax dollars at the problem, it will go away. I don't think that will help and while I do support some other solutions, I think there is a big picture everyone seems to be missing here and hopefully I can help shed some light on it. It might sound totally far out to a lot of people, but please, hear me out.

I think once you teach a kid the basics on how to read, how to write, basic math, etc. they should be set free to learn on their own. I feel most of my knowledge came from learning on my own. There were a few things I learned later on in school, like the fast way of typing on a keyboard and some techniques I learned in art, but those were really things I wanted to know how to do, so I took advantage of someone willing to teach me those things at that time. If you know how to read, you can teach yourself anything you have the determination to teach yourself. We’ve had this whole emphasis on making kids learn stuff they don’t want, or need. I think we need to emphasize kids learning what they want and advancing their natural talents. It’s their life, so it should be their choice.

I’m not saying we should do away with schools and teachers (public schools should be axed tough), but I think it’s a waste of time to force stuff on a kid that they have no interest in, isn’t going to help them down the road, while ignoring something they are good at. It’s like letting a perfectly good apple rot on the counter. It’s just a waste of time to make a kid learn advanced mathematics when they just aren’t gifted towards math, they aren’t interested in it, they’ll never use it, and will forget it in a few years. We try to make a Jack of all trades from each of these kids and wonder why all these test scores are down. We expect them to learn this, and this, and this and you got to be a master at all of them, but a Jack of all trade can’t be a master at anything. We get mad and frustrated when kids are failing all these things, but maybe the problem isn’t them, but rather the people trying to force it on them.

By about middle school, most kids realize what they’re good at, what they love, and more energy should be focused on making them better at those areas instead of trying to mold them into people they just aren’t. If a kid loves to write, then focus more on English. If the kid loves to draw, the focus them on art. If the kid likes to go exploring nature, focus them on science. If the kid loves to sing, or wants to learn to play the guitar, then focus on music classes. If a kid is gifted towards math, then focus them on math classes. We shouldn’t make them wait until they’re 18 and go to college before we let them start learning more about what they’re good at. Stuff like art and music are treated as a reward for learning all this other stuff instead of the main things we should be using to help these talented kids. Instead of getting angry when a kid doesn’t do well in one class, we should care less about that and focus more on getting the kid education in areas they are good at to make them excellent in it.

As some of you know, I like to play video games, so I’ll use those as an example. If you’ve ever played an RPG, you know that depending on what class you are, there are some skills you want to make higher and others that you just don’t need. If you try to just even everything out, you’re just going to suck at everything. You’re going to struggle fighting monsters because you aren’t using your character to its full potential. That’s what we’re dealing with here.

A lot of kids do learn on their own for whatever they’re good at, but instead of school helping them in those areas, it becomes more of a burden because it takes time away from that and devotes it to studying for tests, or doing homework in other areas they don’t need. I remember teachers got onto me for drawing in class, but that’s what I loved and that’s what I thought I was better off using my time towards than the stuff they were teaching.

As it is right now, they ask kids going into high school if they’re going college route, or non-college route and then set them on the classes based on that. I think that’s about as limited as only being able to vote Democrat, or Republican. Why does America only seem to get two choices on anything? Caffeinated, or Decaf? Can we not get more choices here?

Even at that, parents need to start asking their kids, "What did you learn today?" Not what they were taught in school, but what they learned on their own. We should be overjoyed when our kids go out of their way to find something out. Anyone could listen to someone and repeat it a few hours later. A parrot can do that. It takes effort to want to know something, go research it for yourself, and be able to use that knowledge. And that’s the point of education, to be able to use knowledge. What’s the point of teaching a kid something they will never use?

District 9

It looks like we're getting a sci-fi movie about illegal aliens. I'd laugh my ass off if it wasn't so damn cool looking.

Satellite Tracking With Orbitron

One of my hobbies is star gazing. I'll go out on the deck at night, either by myself, or with some family and friends and just gaze up at the stars, planets, moon, etc. Of of the exciting parts of this is spotting a satellite, or "mover" as I like to call them. These are faint lights in the sky, that look like stars, but they move slowly across the sky. Some are bright, some are very hard to see, and others fade in and out. Usually the best time to see them is within an hour of two right after it gets dark, or and hour, or two before the sun comes up. That way, you can see the night sky, but the sun is still reflecting off of the satellites, causing it to show up.

The picture shown is one I took of an object that went flying over a few weeks ago. It was a bright, moving light, but since I took it with a 15 second exposure, it shows up as a line instead of a dot. It's actually a Chinese rocket booster called CZ-2C. How do I know this? I use a free program called Orbitron. You can get it free here. It allows you to put in your coordinates and it will show what satellites are going over your area, when they can be seen, if they are visible, etc. You can even go forward, or backward in time to see when an object was there, or when it will be there. It's really a great program and if you do any kind of stargazing, you should really have it on hand.

When you're setting it up, go to Location tab below and put in your latitude, longitude, and altitude. If you don't know that information, here's a great map site that will show you. At the bottom of the map it will tell you're latitude and longitude where your crosshairs are at. Negative numbers are for South and West and positive numbers are used for North and East. So if it was 35.9149556 and -93.856242, you'd put it on there Longitude: 93.8562W and Latitude 35.9149N. I don't think altitude really matters that much, but if you want to be exact, and you know how to read a topo map, click the My Topo tab on that map and find out what the elevation is for your area. It should be in feet, so find a converter in Google, convert it to meters and then plug that number into Orbitron. Name your location and click Add to list.

It will have to update the files every few days to make sure all the tracking data is up to date. You can update this yourself by going to Main>Setup>TLE Updater. Also, while you're in the Setup area, go to where it says Time sync and click the globe with the lightning bolt on it to sync your time. In the main area, if you look over to the right, you can select which ones you want to show up and Load a new TLE group. I only stick with the visible group since that's what I can see.

Just play around with it for a while. You won't always see everything it says you can on there depending on the humidity, light pollution from cities, cloud cover, and other atmospheric disturbances. If you're in the city, I doubt you could see anything. Of course if you're out where you can see stars pretty good, you should be able to name all the little odd lights you see moving in the sky at night, with the exception of UFOs from other planets, or experimental aircraft from our government. In that case, be sure to go here.

Arkansas River/Dardanelle Rock

These are some pictures of the local scenery around here. This is the Arkansas River and a dam, along with Dardanelle Rock. The river is higher than usual since we've been getting rain just about every day for the past 2-3 weeks.

More Uncharted 2 Videos

I just can't get enough of these. Here's some singleplayer action this time. This thing looks intense. Thanks to PSU.com for showing these.


POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Police Brutality Part 2

Some of you might remember this topic and video about a Baptist Pastor getting bloodied up by the border patrol. At the time there wasn't actual footage of the incident, only witness testimony. Well, now there's video of the actual event. While it doesn't show anything violent up close, the sound of the guy screaming might be disturbing to some viewers. You have been warned.

FREE GAME...For PS3 Owners This Week

If you have a PS3, this news is for you. Sprint is sponsoring a free download of Rag Doll Kung Fu for a week (May 14, 2009-May 21, 2009) for U.S. residence. The game is a lot of fun and well worth getting. Just go to the PS Store > Sprint > Rag Doll Kung Fu. I'm not sure what it usually retails for on there, but I'm guessing somewhere between $5-10. That's a pretty sweet deal, so don't pass it up. Thanks Sprint!

Dehydration In Iraq

The big story coming out of Iraq right now isn't about insurgents, or road side bombs; it's about our soldiers not getting enough water. If you want a war in the desert, you can provide your guys with the best weapons and technology available, but if you can't get them clean water to drink and enough of it, you've got big problems. Apparently, we've got big problems.

In some instances, some soldiers in Iraq were forced to ration water to 2-3 liters a day. This was in a place where a human being can lose up to 15 liters a day. Do you think you could survive in 130 degree heat on less than a gallon of water a day? I wouldn't want to try.

In some cases, in desperation, soldiers took water from the civilian population and no, it wasn't clean. Lots of soldiers got dysentery and no telling what all kinds of other disease from doing that. Soldiers were getting sick from the contaminated water and also getting kidney stones from not drinking enough water. Some even found out that the sinks and showers were pouring out untreated wastewater that was 2-3 times more contaminated than untreated water directly out of the Euphrates River.

So what was the problem? The army has water trucks that are used to supply soldiers with water. However, they are in short supply and even when they are around, the chemicals used to treat the water makes it hard to drink. In other cases, military contractor, KBR, was in charge of supplying our troops with water and just failed to do so.

(SOURCE)

This war has been a big, dumb mistake from the start. They should never have went, or at least should have been home long ago. We all know that soldiers have a horribly tough job and it's not comfortable, or safe. However, as long as our chicken hawk politicians want to keep these men and women over there, can we at least make sure we get them some clean fucking water?

PS3 Post

Today, I got up to find my computer not working. I eventually got it going, but just in case, I'm testing out posting stuff from my PS3.

Dead Snow

I'm not usually a fan of horror movies...with the exception of ones about zombies. When I heard there was a new zombie movie coming out about Nazi zombies...that really caught my interest. I haven't seen "Dead Snow" yet, but I really want to. When I do, I'll try to get a review up.



Here's an insane, goriffic fight scene from the movie I found.

(SPOILER ALERT)



By the way, if you haven't seen the vampire movie, "Let The Right One In", check it out. I don't have a review up yet, but trust me, it's good. I don't even like vampire movies that much, but this one rocked!

Flying Cars

If you are like me, you were probably a little bummed out when you realized that car technology was going more towards fuel efficiency instead of taking to the air...in the form of a flying car. I still have my doubts I'll be seeing any on the road, or flying above it, anytime soon. However, I just found a video that has perked my interest. Now I don't think this is the kind of thing every family is going to own. Still, I thought it was a cool piece of machinery and hope this turns out to be more than just a sweet concept.

Pixel Junk 1-4

I'm a fan of Pixel Junk Monsters and big fan of Pixel Junk Eden. I was happy to find out the other day about their new game. So far it doesn't have an official title, but they do have a contest asking some lucky fan to name it for them.

In this new game, you pilot this vehicle around in caverns and rescue people. The cool thing about it is you can blast rocks to move water and lava to help complete your mission. It looks really cool and I can't wait for this to come out. So check out the videos and feel free to let me know what you think in the comments section below. BTW, I don't know who made the music for the first video, but I love how they included lines from the most awesome commercial ever made.

Honoring Flight 93...By Stealing People's Land

On September 11, 2001, some passengers aboard Flight 93 fought back against hijackers, which eventually crashed the jet into a field in Pennsylvania. Their brave sacrifice saved countless others. Because of this, our government now plans to build a memorial and national park near Shanksville, PA dedicated to the passengers and crew of Flight 93. It sounds innocent enough, until you found out they are trying to use eminent domain to take land from people that don't want to give it up.

(SOURCE)

The plan is to set aside a 2,200-acres, and spend $58 million dollars to build the national park and memorial...by the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. Of course if it's like the 9/11 memorial in New York, they'll probably take the land and won't get it built for decades.

The people who died on 9/11 had their lives taken away and they should be remembered, but is taking away someones property the way to go about remembering them? I don't think that's the way they would have wanted to be remembered. I'm sure these families will be compensated and some might be fine with that. However, for some that have grown up on that property and have family memories there, how can you put a price on that?

If the government wants to use my money to buy land off of willing people to build a memorial to Flight 93, I wouldn't really mind that much. I think it could be spent on better things, especially now that we're in an economic mess. However, I think it's a dishonor and a disgrace to force somebody off of their land just to build this thing. If they cannot get it done with people voluntarily turning over their property, then I would rather not see a memorial at all than see a memorial tarnished by the use of force by our own government to get it built.

T-Rex

I haven't got around to doing any art, until recently. This is my first attempt at coloring in a line drawing. The lineart was actually done by Richard Bonk and I'm just using this to study. Hopefully, sometime soon I'll get around to doing my own lineart and coloring it in. For more art and a look at some of my photographs, please check out my page over at DeviantArt.

How To Really Piss Off A Libertarian

There are a lot of things that piss off libertarians. Most of it involves wasteful government spending, income taxes, starting wars, and generally just stepping over people's personal rights. However, there are two things that libertarians like myself take personal offense to. I'd like to take this time to set the record straight on a few things.

One thing that really pisses me off is libertarian posers. These are usually people associated with the Republican Party that "claim" to be libertarian, while not actually practicing anything libertarian. There are a few liberals who are libertarian posers, like Bill Maher, who only seem to identify libertarianism with free speech and legalizing drugs, but for the most part, it's the Republicans who seem to be doing this. About the only thing they seem to have in common with libertarians is their belief that taxes are bad. While I agree taxes are bad, if you're for big spending, like the kind you have to support a certain war we're fighting right now, you have no reason to open your yapper on the matter. If you're going to increase spending, at least have the guts to raise taxes to support your stupid plan so we don't borrow money and go into debt. The reason they don't do this is because they know their plans are stupid, will never work, and Americans won't support them because they would feel the pain in their pockets and would wake up to the fact they're being swindled.

Also, if you supported bailouts for big corporations, you have no reason to talk against taxes. Just because you read a few Ayn Rand novels, that does not make you a libertarian. Just because you hate Democrats, that does not make you a libertarian. If you support bans on firearms, the continuation of the War on Drugs (even for pot), the use of torture on prisoners, the Patriot Act, all these wasteful spending programs, are against gays, think there needs to be more religion in government, and have any other anti-freedom positions, YOU ARE NOT A LIBERTARIAN! I know you want to be cool like us, but you just aren't. You are nothing more than a big government loving groupie that's in the closet. If you want wars, bailouts for your corporate friends, and all of this stuff, just come out and say it already, "I'm for big government and am not a libertarian."

Now the other thing that raises my blood pressure, and I've heard it a lot lately, especially on the news, is the use of the term "free market" in a way it wasn't intended to be used. Perhaps libertarians need to get another term for free market, like laissez-faire economics, but free market sounds much better and is easier to spell. I think "open market" might be better, but I think I heard a Republican use that term the other day, so there goes that idea. However, it still seems like our term has been hijacked. This has happened a lot here recently as bad politicians have tried to improve their image by using terms to describe their policies that really have nothing to do with the original meanings of those words. I really wouldn't consider Democrats to be liberal, and I really wouldn't consider Republicans to be conservative. Democrats want government to control everything and that's not a new, or "liberal" idea, and Republicans aren't conserving freedom.

As it is right now, lots of people believe that we have had a free market for a long time now where companies have ran loose and our government hasn't done anything to regulate them. This is not the case since there was, is, and will continue to be more government regulation. Lots of people think regulation is only stuff that holds back companies, but I think it can work both ways and harm and help companies. America has never had a free market, or anything close to one, especially here recently.

What exactly is a free market then? By libertarian standards, a free market is where you have no government intervention into the markets. The government does not give businesses money to support them and they don't pass overbearing laws to hurt them. Companies live and die based on how they treat their customers and their workers. If a company makes an inferior product that is harming people, they change their ways and survive, or nobody will buy from them and they'll go under. If a company is harming their workers, or not giving them enough pay for the job, they should have a hard time finding workers and if nobody is working for them, or they have cheap, unskilled workers, they aren't producing a good product, or a product in enough quantity to survive.

As of right now we basically have something close to a fascist economic system, where the government allows people to run their businesses, but the government is really the one who can call the shots and is there to help them out if they get in trouble. Now when I say fascism, I'm not talking about the racist, social positions that the Nazis took, but right now I'm just talking about the economic beliefs, which are still bad and do harm. Some people think what we have now is socialism, but that would be where everything would be ran by the government and you wouldn't have private property and so forth. Of course fascism is basically socialism with this false sense that people actually own property and control their own lives. In this system, some bad businesses aren't allowed to fail, while overbearing regulations hurt good businesses. This has become more apparent in the recent economic collapse and bailouts and both Democrats and Republicans are supporting this fascist system of economics. They have shown no problem in spending trillions of of our tax dollars in bailing out big corporations like AIG, CitiBank, Bank of America, GM, and other failures. The ones that do show disgust at this spending, tend to be the ones that still support other bailouts on smaller scales, or for the War in Iraq, War on Drugs, etc.

If you look at some of the economic regulations, some are introduced, or supported by big corporations. Why? It's because regulations can help them get rid of their smaller rivals. Back in 2005, Wal-Mart's CEO supported higher minimum wage laws (I'll post more on minimum wage laws sometime soon). Some people would think this would be a generous thing on his part, until you realize that this would cause a lot of smaller mom and pop stores to go out of business while Wal-Mart could easily survive. A lot of Wal-Mart's business is done in other countries and they have the resources to fund an increase while smaller stores can't.

You CAN NOT and DO NOT have free markets when you have governments bailing out companies and industries, handing out big government contracts, passing legislation that hurts small businesses, and basically requiring that government choose a side between a company, or their customers. It creates an unbalance in a natural economic system where good ideas should be allowed to flourish and bad ideas die out. Just like cane toads in Australia, or kudzu vines in the southern United States, whenever humans try to control nature, or use it to our advantage, we usually end up messing up the natural balance. A free market is just like natural selection with evolution, but considering that most Republicans now don't even believe in evolution, I don't know why they keep going around saying their practicing free market capitalism.

I can understand why the Republicans and Democrats wouldn't want to tell the truth and call what we have a fascist economic system. However, they don't have to take the libertarians' term. They should just make up a totally new term. Better yet, I'll just make one up for them. How about cane toad economics?

Obama Letting D.C. School Voucher Program Die

I only went to public schools during my youth and ended up dropping out at the end of the 11th grade. I guess I'm one of those children "left behind". I did take a GED test and aced it, so I got my diploma. I didn't drop out because I was dumb. I dropped out because I was bored and uninspired. The only reason I was going was because I had to go and the majority of stuff they were teaching, I already knew. I didn't care anymore and nobody seemed to care that I didn't care.

Dropping out of high school has been one of the most important parts of my life, but I still don't regret it. It has changed my views on the educational system here in America. Because I dropped out, education has become an issue that's really close to my heart. I found out during the time I was getting my GED that most high school graduates can't even pass a GED test. It's only now that I can look back and realize that things are much different than what I was lead to believe back then. I do not want other kids to have to go through what I went through and I can only hope that they get a better quality of education than what I did.

I honestly believe that the majority of my public education was a huge waste of time. Based on what I saw while I was in school, I think that applies to most children. I'm not saying that some public schools can't educate some kids, I'm just saying that we are not getting what we're paying for. I am against public education, in the sense that our governments run the schools. I think that private education is much better than public education and instead of funding the the schools, I think voucher programs would work much better by funding the kids directly. I think the money should follow the child instead of taking the child to where the money is. This creates competition for schools to do better on educating children. Good schools flourish and get better funding while bad schools either change their ways and do what's right, or go out of business. We should not feel sad whenever a bad school goes out of business because they are not doing the job we're paying them for and are greatly harming our children.

I'm usually against government taxing people to give the money to others and vouchers aren't perfect. I would much rather see it all based on people's own money and funded by private charities. However, vouchers are a lot better than the current public school system and for right now, they seem to be the only choice this country would be in favor of supporting. I would much rather give money to be used to send a kid where they and their parents want to send them and have them get a decent education, than to be wasted on funding a failing public school that kids are forced to go to.

So what does all of this have to do with Obama? In 2004, Congress authorized the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which is a school voucher program to help D.C. kids in poverty be able to go to private schools. Well, Barack Obama is letting this program, one of the few that actually works, go under. I think I'll just let the ReasonTV video speak for itself...

Swine Flu 1976/ Swine Flu Video Games

The U.S. had a swine flu outbreak in Feb. of 1976 that infected 5 soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey, in which one of the soldiers died. So people panicked and the government decided that every American needed to be vaccinated against swine flu ASAP, so they started providing vaccinations to the public in October of that year. The only problem was that the swine flu vaccine that they were giving out made a bunch of people sick and killed 25 people. So the swine flu only infected those 5 soldiers, killed one, and never even got beyond Fort Dix. The flu vaccine that was given out caused about 500 people to get Guillain-Barré syndrome and killed 25. So if you weren't freaked out about swine flu enough already, here's some scary propaganda ads from around that time, urging people to get a shot for it.



As far as I know, there's not a video game about swine flu, yet. However, there are two flash games that I have played that you might enjoy. I'll let you know if I come across any other ones. Yes, it is possible to kill everyone on Pandemic 2. I've done it, but it all depends on infecting Madagascar, and that can be a real pain in the ass.

• Killer Flu
• Pandemic 2

Marijuana Freedom Wins This Round!

A court in Visalia, CA returned over 12 lbs. of marijuana back to its owner, Richard Daleman. He was arrested on charges of growing and selling marijuana, but was acquitted on March 27 because he had a medical marijuana card. Even though he claimed there were 3 ounces missing from what he got back, he said the police took good care of it and didn't let it get moldy and it should be good for his pain treatment. Kind of makes you wonder where those 3 ounces went *uhem* oooohhhh cops? Anyway, congratulations Mr. Daleman and best of luck on getting those guns back.

(SOURCE)

You Know We're Screwed When Marion Barry Is The "Moral" one

This Tuesday, former D.C. Mayor, Marion Barry, told a group of church leaders and other people opposed to gay rights that he opposed the city council's decision to recognize same sex marriages that were performed outside of the the D.C. area. It's not that really big of a deal that he took this side since lots of politicians do, but the really crazy thing was that he had the audacity to say that he was, "a politician who's moral." You can see his speech in the video below and it starts around 3:30.



Now I'm not usually to point out a person's personal morality. If a person gets divorced, or cheats on their spouse, I'm not saying that's the grounds for them to lose a job. However, when they say they're a moral person and use that excuse to validate their position on opposing the moral behavior of others, I think that leaves them open to investigation.

In the case of Marion Barry, he has been married 4 times, has been in trouble for tax evasion, arrested for drug possession, and served 6 months in jail. If you remember, there was a famous sting operation that caught him in possession and use of crack cocaine. Besides that, this guy has been surrounded with corruption charges. If corrupt politicians wanted to have a poster child, Marion Barry would probably be a good choice.

As far as gay marriage goes, let people do whatever they want if it's not harming anyone else. This is not a moral issue of life and death, or something that affects other people's lives, besides the gay people. This is a religious issue and religion and government should not mix. The only reason people oppose this is because the Bible says it's wrong. There's no non-religious opposition to this issue.

If you don't think it's right for two people of the same sex to marry each other, then don't marry a person the same sex as you. Not everyone in America is of the same religion as you are and you shouldn't force your beliefs on them just as they shouldn't force their beliefs on you. Look at the countries in the world where religion mixes with the law. The people there are not free and there is a lot of violence. Just because your government has no stand on religion, that shouldn't make you less of a religious person. Our soldiers are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now and just because those countries are based around Islam, does that make the majority of our soldiers there less Christian?

If our law was based on religious beliefs, then people would likely not be able to even get a divorce today. If you really want to preserve marriage, then why not at least make a deal where gay people can't get married and straight people can't get divorced and you can all suffer equally? Of course nobody is going to do that because they want to be free, so just let gay people enjoy the same freedoms that you have to get married, adopt kids, get divorced, and be able to share the same benefits that heterosexuals have with marriage.

We'll All Die From Swine Flu When Pigs Fly

Get it? Pigs fly...swine flu! Okay, I shouldn't be joking about this, but it's hard not to with a name like that. Actually, they've stopped using the name, swine flu, and are now using the name, influenza A/H1N1. Still, I think it's a little too late for the pork industry. From what I hear, you can't even catch it from pigs, yet that hasn't stopped countries like Russia and China from banning imports of pork and I just read that Egypt is slaughtering pigs to stop the spread of the virus.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't take something like this serious, but like any disaster, this can be made lots worse if we panic and I think people are panicked. In 1976, the United States was faced with a swine flu scare. The government's response was to inoculate people and save us all from dying. In the end, it wasn't as bad as they feared and only 1 person died from the actual swine flu here. On the other hand, people got sick from the flu shot the government was giving them and eventually, 25 people died from the vaccination!

The flu is serious and can spread very fast, but other germs are serious too. Last year there were 13,000 cases of tuberculosis in the United States. Now in 2006, there were 644 deaths from this. (SOURCE) I don't remember any news conference for that. People die all the time from the regular flu that comes around every year. Now this is a much more deadly strain since it supposedly is killing healthy people instead of sick ones. It's a concern, but I think we're going about this way too crazy.

There's a bunch of dead people from this in Mexico, and there is one 2-year-old boy from Mexico that died here in the U.S., but pretty much all the people here are recovering rather well on their own. So to me, it seems a bit early to say this is a serious threat here. Maybe the people in Mexico didn't have the proper access to medical treatment and medicines to help them pull through. Maybe they didn't drink enough water and dehydrated.

During any disaster, the news media will usually make things sound much worse than what they are. Fear sells, and the best thing is to not buy into it. It's good to know that there is a dangerous flu virus out there and we should take caution, but unless you've traveled to Mexico lately, or people in your town are getting it, I wouldn't worry too much, yet. This could turn really bad, but if it's not that bad and we panic, we could make a human disaster worse than this natural disaster, like in 1976. That's really the only point I wanted to make.

M.A.G.

If you've haven't heard about M.A.G. (Massive Action Gaming), well, you should have. M.A.G. is a first-person-shooter, being developed for the PS3. Usually that's not that big of a deal because we've all played, or seen FPS games and they're pretty much all the same, except none have had 256 players playing online at the same time, UNTIL NOW! I cannot wait for this thing. Check out some of the new in-game video.

Uncharted 2 Multiplayer

If you haven't heard the good news, "Uncharted 2" will be coming with a multiplayer. I loved the first "Uncharted" game and think it was one of the most beautiful games I've ever played and it was really the first game that made me feel like I was playing in a movie. The voice acting was great and I cannot get enough of video games set in the jungle. Seriously, if you have a PS3 and have not played "Uncharted", then get off your butt and go rent it RIGHT NOW! The only drawback is that it didn't have a multiplayer mode. Well, now we'll be getting multiplayer.

I think it's a little early to tell if this will be good, or bad. I love Metal Gear Solid games, but Metal Gear Online just wasn't fun for me. To make a good multiplayer game, it has to be balanced right and it's sometimes hard to make a game that's made for a single player campaign and turn it into a multiplayer game. Still, I'll admit that I am exited about this. Here's some video from the Playstation Blog to wet your whistle.

Sorry For The Few Posts Lately

I'm currently working on creating some BNOTD and libertarian themed clothing/apparel on CafePress to sell on here. Hopefully, the Brad News Store will be up sometime later this week.

Konami Ain't Doin' Six Days In Fallujah

According to Game Politics, the Iraq War game, "Six Days in Fallujah" was dropped by Konami. Personally, I've kind of got mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I would have liked to see a realistic take on the current War in Iraq. On the other hand, I do think it would be hard on the veterans and their families. It sparked quite a bit of controversy, especially when it was found out they had interviewed insurgents to help the game.

In the end, I think Konami did the right thing, at least for them. It's a very sensitive topic and there was a lot of room for them to really make themselves look bad. Controversy does sell, but you don't want a bunch of people boycotting your other games and I'm afraid that might have actually happened. Usually, I think most people that get mad at games wouldn't buy video games in the first place, but I think this time there were some that played video games that were offended. I'm glad that it was their decision and not some government's decision to not release this game. If you don't like what a company is doing, voice your opinions and if there is enough of people that feel the same as you do, they will cave in. The customer is always right and money talks. It sucks for people that wanted to play this game, but I think a system where companies cancel their own projects and censor themselves is MUCH better than government run censors. It would be better if we lived in a world where nobody could get offended, but I think we're far from that.

I'm not sure of the entire details about this game being dropped and maybe someone else will pick it up. I doubt it, but if they do, I'll let you know. You can read more about my earlier take on the game here.

Land Of The Free, Home Of The Brave...Really?

I don't want to point the finger of blame at all Americans because there are always brave people out there doing great things, but I think we need to take time and reflect on what we're doing. Now lots of people don't give a second thought to the phrase, "America: Land of the Free and Home of the Brave." Maybe it's about time we did and ask ourselves if this is true, or if this is just some lie that we want to believe.

Now I'm not saying I'm the bravest person in the world. I have a fear of spiders and of heights and usually I avoid those things if I can. They're typical fears I guess. Being afraid doesn't make you a coward, because everyone has fears and it's not being fearless that makes someone brave. Being brave is when you face your fears and overcome them on your own. However, we're living in a culture of fear as of lately and I don't think we're really facing them, or overcoming them, at least not on our own.

Every time you turn on the news, it's a new epidemic. You got your terrorism, your global warming, bird flu, childhood obesity, school shootings, out of control crime, a broken health care system, nuclear armament, drug addictions, teenage pregnancy, the bees are dying, child predators, your food is poisoned, your water is polluted, your teens are sexting, the economy is shit, 2012 is right around the corner...oh yeah, and now WE HAVE PIRATES! Holy shit, we're all doomed! Well it seems pretty bad, but I think the majority of the people in America are taking it rather well. Maybe they're staying calm, or maybe they just don't really care. I think they're just overwhelmed and really don't know what to do. Anyway, it's mainly the media and our politicians that are going crazy over this stuff, probably since they have the most to gain from scary epidemics.

Let's start off with one fear we can easily get rid of; drug addictions. Actually, we can get rid of a lot of violent crime with this solution too. Our government's current "solution" for fighting drug addictions in this country has been prohibition a.k.a. The War on Drugs. We ban drugs and anyone caught selling them, or in possession of drugs, gets sent to jail and fined. This action has made the problem much worse by costing tax payers around $60,000,000,000 each year (yes, that's $60 billion). Not only that, but it has incarcerated non-violent criminals that have done nothing to harm others. Also, it has created a black market for illegal drugs that real violent criminals exploit to get rich quick. As a result of drug prohibition, violence has spilled over into the streets because criminals outside of the law are in the big business of selling drugs. There are no legit business practices for these guys. If they have competition, they don't lower prices, or release a better product to get ahead, they just kill their rivals.

So what's the real solution to the problem of drug addiction and violence on the streets of America? Well, you have to admit that there's no way to 100% cure society of drug addicts and violent criminals, but we can reduce the problem. Just think about being free and brave. If you legalized all drugs, and I'm talking about ALL drugs; not just pot, but coke, heroin, meth, etc., then you could fix a lot of problems.

Now part of your brain is saying that you couldn't just let someone do this to themselves, but what good thing are you doing to help them out? Why is throwing a person in jail with violent criminals a kinder act than just letting them be free to destroy their own body? Chances are, they won't stop doing drugs because they're in jail and might pick up some new bad habits from their jail buddies. I'll admit, it's a strange and scary thought that someone could just go down to the store and buy heroin if they wanted to, but hear me out. As of right now, anyone could go down to a street corner and get these drugs, just off of some criminal instead of a drug store shelf. Anyone, including your own kids, can go buy illegal drugs. If you legalize it all, that means you can regulate it. You can set age limits. You can keep sanitary standards. You can allow people to be free to sell drugs and destroy their own bodies without harming others in the process. It's not the perfect solution, but it's a lot better than the current one. Best of all, you cut down on crime.

You don't have criminals out here in the street right now shooting each other because one guy is selling corndogs in another man's turf, because corndogs are legal and usually legit people sell legal stuff while criminals sell illegal stuff. If you legalize drugs and don't lock up drug users that aren't harming others, you don't have your jails overloaded with non-violent criminals, so you can have all the space you want to lock away the thieves, rapists, and murders for as long as you want. It frees up cops and courts to work on more important cases. America needs to start thinking about being brave enough to let people be free.

Now making drugs legal wouldn't end drug addiction. I think it would help stop a lot of it, but more would probably need to be done. To do that, we must change our view and treat it as a medical problem instead of a criminal problem. We have to get serious about treating people with addictions instead of just locking them away in some jail. We have to be brave enough to look at these people on drugs, not as crazy people that might harm us, but as sick people that need our help. Instead of spending our time and money to lock these people out of sight and out of mind, maybe we should try to get them the help they need.

As of right now, I would not say we are the land of the free. We might not be the most oppressive country on earth. We might not lock you up and torture you...umm, well, according to some recent documents, we might do that, but generally we're just a country with a bunch of stupid laws. According to this study, there are more prisoners locked up in the United States of America than in any other country in the world, including China. That's too much in my opinion for a country to be considered "The Land of the Free." Why so many? It's because of the War on Drugs and our determination over the years to keep fighting it. Other countries might have similar drug laws, but they don't have the resources and use $60 billion dollars a year that we do to lock up all of our criminals.

It's not just the reaction to drugs that has caused us to give up our freedom in exchange for security. We become afraid of any small, 3rd World Country that flexes its military, or political muscles. Everyone is worried about North Korea and Iran. It's one thing to oppose a huge empire like Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia, but talking about invading a country that poses no real threat to us is just insane. We've also given up lots of freedoms for the security of our children. We ban guns, we censor entertainment, we've put the government in charge of their education, we've banned lawn darts, etc. It's time parents get brave with their kids and tell them what the world is really like and start being parents again. If you want your kid to survive in this world, you can't hide him, or her from it. You have to make them tough and let them know the real dangers they face. Eventually, they'll get old enough that they'll start learning things on their own and begin making their own choices. You just have to accept that it's out of your hands and hope you made them smart and tough enough to survive. Leaving your kid's future up to some teacher, or politician does not make you a good parent.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that every new fear that is brought to our attention, the reaction seems to be to panic and assume it's a problem that only politicians can solve. If the government can't solve it, then we figure we just need to give them more money and power until eventually they succeed. Basically, we chicken out and turn over total control to a few people in power. It's time the American people show how brave they are by saying they want freedom. It's time we look more towards freedom as a solution to our problems and less of government as a solution to our problems.

Freedom is a great thing, but you can't be a wimp and want freedom. You have to fight and face hardships for it. You have to be willing to face problems that pop up because you are free. You have to be willing to find new solutions to those new problems without giving up your freedoms to do so. You can't just have freedoms you want, you have to have freedoms for everybody to do things you don't even like. If you resort to the government to control others for your safety then you aren't brave and you aren't free. I'm not saying that America is filled with a bunch of cowards, but when you look around at our policies, it sure does look that way. Nobody said freedom is easy, because it's not. When faced with problems, we should not ignore them, throw up our hands, and try to pass the problems on for the American government to solve. We should look to the meaning of America itself for the answers we need. When we start doing that, then we can truly consider ourselves the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

We Shall Remain

If you haven't heard, there's a great new mini-series documentary about Native Americans on PBS called "We Shall Remain". It comes on at 8:00 CST every Monday night. So far, they've shown 2 parts of the 5 part series.

• Episode 1: "After The Mayflower" is about the 1621 treaty between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrim settlers and the problems it caused.
  
• Episode 2: "Tecumseh's Vision" follows the life of Tecumseh and is attempt to create an Indian homeland in what is now mostly Ohio and Indiana. The amazing thing is how close he came to making this a reality.
  
• Episode 3: "Trail of Tears" follows the tragic story of the Cherokee as they adopt European culture, but are later betrayed and sent on a forced march from their homes in the Eastern United States to Oklahoma, resulting in the deaths of nearly 4,000.
• Episode 4: "Geronimo" tells the story of the last Native American leader to lead a fighting force against the United States government.
  
• Episode 5: "Wounded Knee" brings us to modern times and details the protests that took place in 1973 by the American Indian Movement that helped bring about rights to Native Americans.

As someone whose own ancestors were on the Trail of Tears, I have been waiting for something like this for a long time. I do not think that there has been an accurate depiction of Native Americans in American history. I would think that in about the past few years we have only begun to scratch the surface of what really happened and there is a lot that people need to learn.

From what I gathered from my days in school, they were depicted as stupid savages that got drunk and gave their land away for nothing and all died off from disease. Those that resisted were never well organized and had no chance of winning. As far as the Trail of Tears goes, even though it went through Arkansas, I was never told the details of it. All I knew is that they were made to march out to Oklahoma. That was about it. What I'm getting from this series is telling a much different story from what I was told in school. I hope this show and others will spark new interest in the history of Native Americans and make people show them in a more accurate light and talk about them more often when discussing history.

Is Ghetto Golf Racist?

So there's a new game coming out called "Ghetto Golf". What's it about? Well, playing golf in the ghetto, DUH! The thing that I'm wondering about is how did they come up with this game? Were there just a bunch of people sitting around a meeting table trying to come up with a good idea for a golf game? They realized that they wanted to make a really exciting golf game, but it's not easy making a boring game like golf exciting. So what do they do? They add some violent minorities to the game and call it Ghetto Golf. I'm not one usually calling people racist, but to me, this seems kind of along those lines. What do you think?

Let's Go Waterboarding

It almost sounds like a fun thing to do on one of those hot, summer days, until you realize what it is. So Obama recently released some CIA torture memos. GOOD FOR HIM! I can't stress that enough. Now what I want to stress is that America should do everything in its power to bring to justice, the people who were responsible for authorizing this. I'm not talking about the low ranking guys who were taking orders. No, I want the high up guys to go to jail for a long time. There is no excuse for what they did. It's an abomination that we allowed this to happen and it will be an even bigger abomination if we let the people responsible for it get away with it.

It was revealed that the CIA use the waterboarding technique on Khalid Sheik Mohammed up to 183 times. He was the planner of the 9/11 attacks. Seriously, this guy had it done to him 183 times! After about 5 times, don't you think if he was going to give in, he would have by then? I bet any normal person after 10 times would be telling horrible stuff about themselves, and even making up stuff they never did. Another prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, had it done to him 83 times.

Now I don't give a flying fuck about the feelings of terrorists as long as they're found guilty in a court of law, but that's another topic. For all I care these guys can rot in prison the rest of their lives. However, if we resort to torture then we're not much better than them. America was created so people wouldn't have to go through this stuff when they were accused on a crime, or even after they were convicted of a crime. Just because these people are our enemies and aren't necessarily from America, doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated the same. I would hope that any American accused of a crime in another country would get a fair trial and not be tortured.

It's unfortunate that there are people in this country that justify doing evil acts by saying they are protecting us. If the only way you can protect me is by harming an unarmed human being, then I don't want your protection. If you can't come up with any better way of doing things, then you're not smart enough to do your job. Did the people who authorized this ever think that's what the enemy wanted them to do? Maybe by killing thousands of people on 9/11, their real goal was to make us mad to the point we change our laws, make us more barbaric like them, and make mistakes. Boy, did we make some mistakes.

This really isn't a war about taking land and racking up body counts. This isn't about beating tyrants and going home after some country surrenders. This is a war about morality. Which culture will win; ours, or the terrorists'? We might be doing a good job killing the enemy and we might have won some military battles, but that's not how we're going to win. We lost one of the most important battle in the war when we decided to torture prisoners. We are becoming more like them instead of them becoming more like us. Our goal is to make these people not want to kill us anymore. There are few things we can do to make them love us, but there are lots of ways we can make them hate us worse than they already do and torturing their people is one sure way to make sure they'll never love us.

Some might be wondering why it's such a big deal to torture some evil person that's responsible for the deaths of thousands. Well, in the culture of the Taliban and Al Quaeda, they believe in torture, executions, and that their culture and political beliefs are superior to ours. If they can get us to resort to their level, that would give them proof that our current system is inferior and that we had to adopt their methods. Not only that, but don't you think it's easier for them to recruit more terrorists when they get angry because we tortured their people? You might get some information that saves a few dozen people by torturing, but you end up creating a hundred angry suicide bombers in the process that will kill hundreds more people. That's not helping. Torture information, while sometimes helpful, can also end up being total BS. If you're in pain, or are really scared, you'll say anything if you think they'll let you go.

Besides waterboarding, there were other tortures outlined that included the use of scary insects, depriving prisoners of sleep, stripping them naked in front of members of the opposite sex, locking people in confined spaces, slapping prisoners on the face and stomach, and making them stand in odd positions for long times. To the average person, it doesn't seem as bad as something the Nazis, or Japanese would use in W.W.II, or perhaps something used in the U.S.S.R, but these techniques we were using were actually used in those evil regimes. We might not be using the worst tortures they came up with, but we're still using THEIR ideas. What kind of country are we when we are taking ideas from the worst cultures in human history? Are we still America: land of the free and home of the brave? Are we still free and are we still a brave country when we do things like this? I think those are all good questions we should often ask ourselves.

Selling Mature Games to Kids...OH THE HUMANITY!

An undercover operation in Dundee, Scotland used a 14-year-old boy to go into 16 shops to see if he could buy M rated games. Well, 12 of the shops sold him the games. The sad news is these people could face fines and even jail time for selling these games to kids.

SOURCE

Come on, give me a break. Why do people leave this stuff up to the government? Is it really that hard to keep stuff like this away from your kid? What ever happened to good ol' parents that like to complain? If you don't want stores selling stuff to your kid, don't give them money and turn them loose in a store. If you do give them money and they come back with something you don't like, complain to the store about changing their policy. If a store feels it's going to lose a valuable customer, they'll change their policy. I bet someone working there didn't even know the law existed and will now get in trouble because of this. I just hope that fine they'll have to pay doesn't take food from their own kids.