BrAD NEWS OF THE DAY

MLK: America Reaping What It Sows

2011-01-17T15:03:00.009-06:00

I was lucky enough today that one of my friends posted this YouTube video.

I also found out that Obama and his family were celebrating MLK Day by participating in a community service project in Washington, DC. Now all of that sounds like a good thing for the ordinary person to do, but I have to say, it kinda irks me, especially after watching that MLK video.

MLK felt the 1954 Nobel Prize was "a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the Brotherhood of Man." and it convinced him to be openly opposed to the War in Vietnam and all wars. What has Obama done for the brotherhood of man since he won his Nobel Prize? Has he opposed the War on Terror, or just made it bigger? Has his actions really helped the poor get out of poverty, or made more people poor by funneling their money to the rich? What's the point in remembering someone if you don't even care about the stuff they said and did that made them important enough to be remembered? MLK's gift to Obama was making it so he could still get elected, despite the color of his skin. What's he doing to repay that? His day of service sound like a great photo opportunity, but does it really make that big of a difference when he keeps these wars going that's destroying the lives of people on the other side of the world and here in America?

MLK said, "It is estimated that we spend $322,000 for each enemy we kill (in Vietnam), while we spend in the so-called war on poverty in America only about $53 for each person classified as 'poor'. And much of that $53 goes for salaries of people who are not poor. We have escalated the war in Vietnam and de-escalated the skirmish against poverty. It challenges the imagination to contemplate what lives we could transform if we were to cease killing." That was back then in the 1960's. How much do you think we're spending now to kill each terrorist (or person we assume to be a terrorist) when there are people in America without jobs, or kids that are going hungry? How much do you think we spend on destroying bridges, homes, power plants, and other infrastructure when our own nation is crumbling because we lack the funds to fix it? MLK and I would have seen eye to eye on fixing poverty in this country being a top priority, but we probably wouldn't agree on how to do it. Still, we both had the same end goal. However, you can't see eye to eye on opposing war when you actually want to escalate it!

We currently look at the shooting in Arizona and ask, why did it happen. Why did Jared Loughner shoot Gabrielle Giffords and all those other people? Why do any of these mass shootings in the past few decades happen? People want to blame easy access to guns, or violent movies, music, drugs, bad parents, Sarah Palin's cross-hair map, and a million other things. Some of that might be partly to blame. However, I think MLK hit the nail on the head when he talked in this speech about trying to convince violent revolutionaries to use peace and "They ask if our nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted." They were justifying what they were doing by looking at what our government was doing. It's hard to convince someone who is mentally unstable that killing and other crimes are wrong when your own government you voted for are killing thousands of innocent people, locking peaceful people up for drugs, forcefully taking their money in the form of taxes, and doing all of this stuff on such a massive scale that you not only fail to complain about, you actually support. Nobody can learn from a hypocrite. Hypocrites don't lay out the right answer and the wrong answer. They just say the same answer is right and wrong. Some people might choose the right answer and some will choose the wrong one. Is violence the answer to problems? Most people will say no, but our actions will say yes and usually actions speak louder than words. What do you think would have sparked this guy more to violence, a map with cross-hairs, or the fact that Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and others politicians recently said that Julian Assange should be executed for what he did and that they support these war? It makes it even clearer for this unstable guy to come to the conclusion that violence is the answer to his problems. When we as a nation accept that some people can be killed for reasons other than the rare cases of self defense, we should not act surprised when people kill for reasons other than self defense. MLK went on in that speech to repeat the old phrase "You shall reap what you sow." Well, it doesn't take a gardener to realize that for every seed of violence America plants, we will be reaping the many fruits of violence in the days to come.

America's New Epidemic: Fear!

2010-11-28T11:42:00.008-06:00

America once had the distinction of being the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave". I'm not sure how accurate that label actually fit America back in those days (I'm only 27 years old), but it sure as hell doesn't seem to fit America today. Most Americans are scared shitless of every little thing the news, their church, friends, or parents tells them to be afraid of. They're afraid of terrorists, Muslims, child molesters, drugs, drug users, drinking from plastic bottles, trans fats, greenhouse gasses, global warming, global cooling, too much salt, high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified foods, rich people, poor people, racists, pit bulls, vaccinations, gay people, guns, lead paint, Hispanics, Blacks, atheists, swine flu, the year 2012, and a million other things (please feel free to add more in the comment section bellow). I'm not saying that some of these things aren't real and don't actually pose some threat, but the odds of you getting hurt, or killed by any of these people, or things are zero, or at least not enough for your average person to waste a minute of their time worrying about it.

I'll admit, I have my own fears, and some of them are just as irrational. I don't like spiders, scorpions, or centipedes (the video below shows how much I'm afraid of centipedes). Snakes don't really bug me that bad, as long as I know they aren't venomous. I fell out of a window as a kid and I think that's why I'm afraid of heights. Since I can't swim, I have always had a fear of being in a car crash where I end up in some body of water and drown. To be honest, these are some pretty common fears. Being that I'm a clumsy guy and I can't swim, being afraid of heights and being around bodies of water aren't really that irrational.

Now being afraid isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's what helps living organisms to survive, but your way of reacting to it can be a bad thing. If you let it get to you, you can ruin your life with worry, or react in a way that's much more harmful to you and others. The difference in my fear of things and a lot of Americans' fear of things is I don't ask the government to protect me.

There's a lot of talk about the new TSA body scanners and embarrassing pat-downs at airports lately. This country has been in constant fear of terrorism since 9-11 and it's been afraid of many other things even before that. The government feeds on fear and our fear is what has made our government grow to the horrendous size it is today. Some would say it got that way out of greed, laziness, or just people who have a different view of how government should be run. While some of that does contribute, I think at the main roots of big government is fear. People are afraid they have no way to protect themselves, and the politicians love to win votes by telling people how they plan to make them feel safe. You cannot have a free country when the citizens are afraid of everything to the point they want to trade their freedoms for some "feeling" of security. I think people who do advocate such an exchange should be labeled as nothing less than cowards. In fact, I think all liberty loving people should start using the term "coward" to describe any statist who wants government to protect them.

I have been in many discussions with people over this TSA travesty and the ones who support the TSA often suggest that people who don't want to go through this screening should just drive their car, take a train, or a bus to where they want to go. Why should the people who don't want this be the ones who have to take an alternate route? They aren't afraid of terrorists killing them, or at least not to the point they think these new things will stop one. Metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs, while their effectiveness against terrorist could be weighed by the cost it takes in operating them vs. the odds of a terrorist actually trying to blow up a plane, people don't care that much since it doesn't intrude too much into their lives. The new measures show them naked, or require that they be treated like guilty criminals and touched by a complete stranger until they are found not guilty. This is crossing the line for many people. It's costing tax payers more money for these measures, so even if you aren't flying you'll still have to pay for them.

If you're worried about terrorist blowing up your plane, why don't YOU take a car, train, or bus? You'd be saving us time and money on this fear based boondoggle that terrorists will just find some way around. I don't make you pay some government agency to kill all the spiders around my house, so why should I pay so you can fly at ease in an airplane that could still crash, or get blown up? If you are afraid of terrorist, then don't fly. I wouldn't take a train, or bus since they've hit those targets in the past also. Your best bet would be taking a car, or just staying at home hunkered in a closet. Of course, that doesn't always protect you from terrorists either...

I'm sorry, here I am talking about how Americans are too scared of everything and I'm probably spreading more fear. It's just that somehow, we think that the only way a terrorist can kill people is if he, or she gets a bomb on an airplane. It's not as if they couldn't just walk into any other crowded area, or get on some other kind of public transportation, and blow up a bomb. They couldn't just go on a shooting rampage in a church, school, or hospital. You're more likely to die in a plane crash from just mechanical problem, pilot error, or probably even geese flying into the engines than from terrorists blowing it up. I honestly don't think anyone could take over a huge plane like they did on 9-11 and fly it into a building. They locked the cockpit doors and they got guns on there now. Even if they did manage to try to take over, the passengers would fight back like on Flight 93. The plane might go down, but it would be very hard for them to successfully pilot one into a building. If you want to be safer, maybe we should spend more money checking out the planes for mechanical problem, instead of checking out passengers.

The truth is, if a terrorist wants to kill you, there is no way the government is going to protect you. The shoe bomber and underwear bomber were thwarted by passengers, not the TSA. While the TSA could stop some terrorists, it's not going to catch them by fondling the bodies of old women and little children. You're also not going to be saving lives by exposing frequent fliers to x-rays. When you're life is on the line, you stand a better chance of surviving if you just rely on protecting yourself instead of relying on someone else to protect you.

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Who could forget? Some could have got out of that area, but just thought that the government would protect them. Their reliance on government to protect them cost some people their lives. If they knew they would be on their own like they were, then maybe they would have got the hell outta Dodge, err New Orleans. What if we just allowed people to carry guns on board airplanes before 9-11? Do you think the terrorists would have still been able to run those planes into the buildings and killed thousands? Instead of box cutters, they might have taken it over with guns, but other passengers might have had guns, fought back, and prevented one of the worst tragedies of our time.

You just have to accept that someday, something is going to kill you. If I crash into water, there's no way the government is going to protect me. Hopefully I can find someway out of the wrecked car and find something that floats, or maybe someone else will come to my rescue. Maybe I might die. The odds are, it'll probably be your own actions that will lead to your own death, or your own survival. Weigh the risks for what they really are, be smart, and live your life the best way you can. You sometimes have to take risks in life. In a way, risks are what make life enjoyable. If we all lived in a world where we were 100% safe from every little thing, it would be so dull that I'd welcome someone to kill me.

The only Americans that actually have a validated fear of being killed by a terrorist are the soldiers and contractors we've sent over to the Middle East. If you really want to protect Americans from terrorist, bring these people home. If you really want to end the war on terror, get this government to stop pissing off terrorists. If you smoke cigarettes, have already had a series of heart attacks, or speed to work every day without wearing a seat belt, terrorism shouldn't be anywhere on your list of things to worry about. Prioritize your fears. What's the most likely thing that's going to kill you? If you're going to worry, worry about that; not something that's never going to happen to you. Shit happens, so get on with your life and stop worrying about it.

U.S. Troops: The Real Illegal Immigrants

2010-11-09T16:44:00.009-06:00

I'm about to say something that a lot of people are not going to like. In fact, some people might be offended by it. I personally don't see anything wrong with illegal immigrants. I don't see them as a "lesser people". The whole point I'm writing this isn't to compare American soldiers to people some would consider less than human who deserve no rights. I'm writing this to show the blatant hypocrisy of those who oppose illegal immigration, while supporting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

So how exactly are the troops and illegal immigrants alike? Well, they both cross borders, but really, let's first take a look at the opposing arguments against illegal immigrants. Americans list a whole number of arguments for keeping them out of the country: they don't speak the language, they are a drain on the welfare system and the tax payer, they take jobs that Americans need/want, they're destroying our American culture, and they bring violence into this country. With all of that said now, let's take those arguments, assume we're civilians in Afghanistan, and apply those to the U.S. soldiers occupying our country.

The first opposition is not being able to speak the language. Now, there are some illegal immigrants who speak English and there are obviously some soldiers in these countries that speak the local languages, but most are just strangers in a strange land. There are big problems when people don't learn how to speak the local language. If someone tries to ask me a question in Spanish, they're going to have a big problem because I don't speak it. If a soldier in Afghanistan asks in English to a civilian where the enemy is, he's probably going to get nothing more than a puzzled look. The problem is much worse there because when people can't communicate in war, there's a big chance that people could die. If someone can't communicate in America, sometimes it might be life threatening, but more often, it's just going to lead to someone not getting the information about something they're buying, or some other trivial thing. If someone does come to America, they're probably going to stay a while and it would benefit them to learn English. If a soldier goes to Afghanistan for just a few years, there's no reason they should learn the language, besides maybe a few phrases.

While I don't like the idea of people living off of government welfare, just because you were born an American doesn't make that a better situation in my opinion. If you want to be against welfare, fine, but I don't think punishing one group who takes advantage of it is fair, or is the right way to go about doing it. If you are against government welfare, then don't discriminate against people and pick and choose who is allowed to get it. If you really want to talk about a drain on the tax payer, let's talk about military spending. Now, I don't have much faith in accurate figures of how much things in the government cost, but according to Wikipedia, the military budget for the U.S. in 2010 is around $685.1 billion. Even if it were hundreds of billions less than that, which I doubt, if anything it's likely a conservative estimate, it would still be a lot. Also, when you figure all money spent to care for physical and mental wounds these soldiers are going to have after they come back from war, that's going to cost us even more. I'm not saying we should cut funds to current troops, vets, or troops who need medical help, but we don't need to expand our military and fund new weapons for enemies that just aren't there. We don't need to put us in a situation where we have a bunch of wounded troops, or war widows that need caring for. Under the Cold War, defense spending like this to protect us from an invasion might have made some sense, but we are currently fighting goat farmers. I don't think spending billions on air craft carriers, or stealth fighters is really needed...unless the Taliban get some spider goats. Just kidding...I hope.

Some supporters of illegal immigrants say they do jobs that Americans won't do and those who oppose them will say they take jobs away that lower class Americans will be willing to do. I personally believe in the free market and if the job pays well enough, or you get a person willing to do a job that needs to be done, it'll get done by someone. Government shouldn't be making decisions over what ethnic group, or nationality is best capable, or only able to do whichever job. The argument the war supporters make for us still being in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Korea, Germany, Japan, and all of these other countries is because the people there don't have the capability, or the resources to defend themselves. They are basically saying that we need to be in Afghanistan because the Afghanistan people are not willing, or able to defend themselves. To me, anyone has the capability to defend themselves. Those people got plenty of guns and explosives that they're using against our troops. It doesn't seem like they're having a huge problem with the will to defend themselves, or the resources. The way I see it, if they want to defend themselves, that's their job and we shouldn't take that from them. If they want our help, then fine, have them pay for our soldiers and if our soldiers want to help them out, let them. I don't think we need to pay to defend them and force our soldiers to defend them when it's their own country. If you want to buy a burglar alarm for your house and put a pit bull in your back yard, that's your choice, but I shouldn't have to pay to install that alarm and be the one required to feed that dog every morning. If you think someone coming over here taking a roofing job, or a job picking fruit is bad, how would we like it if all of the police in this country was replaced by Spanish speaking illegal immigrants? That's pretty much what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, you don't hear much of the cultural destroying argument anymore, since it does sound racist, but I think it drives a lot of these fears people have against illegal immigration. Personally, I think culture changes all the time on it's own and there's nothing really bad that I can think about the Hispanic culture that I wouldn't mind mixing into our own. It's not like they're ripping hearts out of people's chests on the top of pyramids...anymore. I think the main fear is that we'll lose the English language, which doesn't really matter to me. Languages change too over time too. If you go back a hundred years in America, people used words that you wouldn't know about and you use words they wouldn't know about. In these wars, I think the main cultural fear is over religion. They're Muslim and we're mostly Christian. These people have a strict Muslim culture and one that barely knows much about the modern world. They're now being exposed to not only new technology and ideas, but to new religions. Forget Spanish speaking illegal immigrants taking over our police. Imagine if all of a sudden, Muslims were put in control of our entire country!

The last argument people make against illegal immigrants is probably the easiest for this country to fix and the most obviously hypocritical for those who also support these wars. They claim that illegal immigrants are a violent threat to Americans. Now I'm not saying that there are no violent illegal immigrants whatsoever. However, the reason you have violence associated with these people is overwhelmingly because of the war on drugs. If you ended the war on drugs, you end the majority of this violence. As far as troops being violent...well, they're troops. We don't train these people to go over to other countries to offer peace and love. They're over there for one main reason, and that's to kill people we want killed. I don't know the exact number of how many people on both sides of these wars have died, or been wounded and I'm not sure how many people have died because of the war on drugs, or because we have closed boarders. Hundreds of thousands, or millions? To me, one death is one too many. The important thing to know is that these deaths could have been avoided. Starting wars and banning substances are not natural disasters, they're human made disasters...government made disasters to be more exact. We have done both before and saw the damage that doing both have caused, yet we make these same mistakes over and over. There will always be murderers in the world and there will always be people wanting to use drugs, but the violence in the drug war and the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan could end tomorrow if we wanted it to. Not only are our troops dying because of our choice to have these wars, but illegal immigrants are dying because they can't legally cross the border. They're dying so much so that at one point in this year, more illegal immigrants died trying to come to the U.S. than our troops died in Afghanistan.

Now some could see this, call me a hypocrite, and ask, "Well, aren't illegal immigrants like an invading army? Why would you support one and oppose another?" Well, I don't believe that immigrants are taking all these jobs, or are a big violent threat, or are more of drain on our welfare system than any other "legal" American. A lot of these are claims that those opposing illegal immigrants try to use on them. I go further into all of that here. What I'm trying to point out in all of this is the arguments that the people use to oppose illegal immigrants, better matches up against occupying troops than it does against illegal immigrants. Even though, there are some valid similarities, I think it's quite obvious that occupying a nation with an armed army that's bombing and shooting everywhere and costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives is a lot worse situation than peaceful people coming to a country just to look for jobs.

Prop 19: A New Hope, or The Fed Strikes Back, or Return of the Red Eye?

2010-11-01T11:20:00.005-05:00

I love making predictions on stuff, whether it's on what someone is going to do, what a football game score is going to be, etc. It's a fun little test for my knowledge on a subject. It's part educated guess and part luck. I'd like to take this time to make some educated guesses towards Prop 19 passing in California, which would pretty much legalize recreational use of pot. Polls can always be tricky, or really just unreliable, but it seems to me that Prop 19 will likely pass. If it doesn't, well, the rest of this post is a huge waste of time.

The big question is: Will this even work if it's passed? Well, it's kind of like being around the Continental Congress and asking, "If we sign this Declaration of Independence, will we be free?" You might declare your freedom, but the big guys in power (the King George III, or the Federal Government) ain't just going to let you gain your freedom that easily without a fight. The Obama Administration is already warning to "Strike Back" if this thing passes. The Feds know that if this passes, it's going to be a huge domino effect. Their huge con game, based on convincing the public to be scared of pot use, that has gone on for decades, will finally be over.

They have plenty of good reason to be afraid of this passing, besides looking like liars. To be honest, looking like liars is the least thing politicians worry about. Lying and politicians go together like nudity and strippers and it's already expected. The thing they fear the most over this is losing government jobs. Right now we are in a recession with a double digit unemployment rate. That rate going up makes them look worse. If we start dismantling the war on drugs, that's going to mean we can no longer justify as many police officers, prison guards, or even private bail bondsmen. I don't think legalizing pot will make a huge dent in that since you'll still have other illegal drugs they can go after and it doesn't take a reason to have a government employee around for them to keep their job. Still, some of those people are going to be let go and law enforcement unions realize this. Of course if we keep paying taxes to keep these people in jail, that's less money being spent on jobs in the private sector. If people are in jail, they aren't out in public working at a job, making money, spending money, or producing tax dollars. Whenever the states want more regulation, it seems that the Federal Gov. doesn't try that hard to cut it down, but if they want to deregulate and it goes against them, watch your ass! The only exception I can think of is the Arizona illegal immigration thing, but I think that was only because so many people were in an uproar about it.

California is treading water right now. They're going to need much more than just legalizing pot to help them out. They have to start cutting spending and in some cases, destroying government jobs all across the board to stay alive. However, there really hasn't been a better time, or place to legalize pot in this country. Not only are the people more educated now on the stupidity behind this being kept illegal, but because of the bad economy, they can no longer support such stupid legislation. You add the word "tax" to this and it starts to win people over who don't want to smoke it, but want the stuff that tax dollars from it could give them. I don't like the idea of taxing anything since it just means that politicians will think they have more money and justify more spending. Also, taxing beer, cigarettes, TVs, or something that requires a lot of technical equipment to manufacture makes sense for those who want money, but if you can grow your own pot and only smoke a little bit of it a year, you can avoid paying taxes on it. Then again, if it's legalized, it might be much cheaper and easier to buy it and pay a tax, than growing your own, whereas you can make lots of money off of growing it while it's illegal. However, I don't know if you could get the public support to get it legalized without that dirty little "T" word.

Pot is no longer being seen as a scourge of society, but a money maker to help people get back on their feet financially. It's kind of ingrained in our society today that if you see someone who was raised poor, who doesn't really have a good education, talents, or anyway to make lots of money, yet are going around with flashy jewelry and a nice car, you're going to assume they sell drugs, or are doing some other illegal activity. Selling illegal drugs is seen as a quick way to get ahead in this world and Californians see this as their golden ticket. The problem with that belief is that the only reason they're making huge amounts of money off of it is because it's illegal and that drives prices up. If you make it legal, even if you tax it, prices are going to come down and trying to selling it legally isn't going to get you as much money as if you sold it illegally. Unless California can figure out a way to grow lots of pot and sell it to the rest of America where it's still illegal, I just don't think they're going to be making a lot of money off of it.

So here's basically what I think will, or could happen. Prop 19 will pass (hopefully). I've heard polls conducted by live people end up it being more against, but automated polls where when people feel more anonymous have it passing. Since the voting place will be anonymous, I think it will pass. Whatever it ends up being, I think it's going to be close. Now after it passes (if it passes), that's when the Fed is gonna take it to the courts and try to take it out. This is gonna be the freedom of the people vs. the iron fist of the Federal Government. This is when the real fight begins and when supporters really need to kick it in gear and voice their support and hope that it convinces enough people in power that this could cost them future votes to support knocking this down. The politicians trying to knock this down will have to be more afraid of the people wanting freedom than the law enforcement that might lose their jobs to change their minds. If it passes, and if the Federal Government loses their fight against it, I think it will be a huge domino effect after that. You have lots of governments in this country who are in the same shape as California, some might not be as bad, but they're getting there. Once the rest of America can see all the positive effects from legalizing pot, they're going to want do that too. They won't have to worry about angry voters as much and I think you'll have braver politicians that will push to legalize marijuana instead of cowardly leaving it up to voters to decide during elections. If Prop 19 passes, I think California will still be screwed financially, but the crime rate will go down (other drugs will still be illegal of course, so it might not be a dramatic drop), but they will have made some progress towards freedom and will probably help out their economy a bit. Whether this will be another failed attempt at legalization, or the beginning of the end for the drug war will be decided tomorrow by California voters.

Clint McCance, You Done Fucked Up Now!

2010-10-27T09:38:00.008-05:00

One of the best news I enjoy hearing is when one of the lowlifes of society are exposed for the scum they are...and they aren't here from Arkansas. Unfortunately for me, this time I could not enjoy the spotlight being shined on some other state, or country for harboring said scum. A Midland school board member, from Arkansas, by the name of Clint McCance, posted comments on Facebook the other day stating that... Well, I'll just post the screen capture since I don't feel like writing his entire ignorant rant...

This guy, a school board member, is saying that he would only wear a purple shirt in celebration of gay children killing themselves. Not only that, but he said he enjoys the fact that gay people give each other AIDs and die. He goes on to say that if his kids were gay , he would disown them and run them off. I'm assuming that by his first comment, if his kids were gay and killed themselves, it would make his day and he would wear a purple shirt to tell the world that he is happy that his child chose death before dishonor. I don't know what's worse, that he was a school board member in charge of the future of thousands of kids, or that this guy could have children living in his own house, hearing his hate filled messages on a daily basis. I could pick a number of words to describe this guy right now, but none would fully encompass his ignorance and lack of humanity.

If anyone wonders how someone could come to be filled with such hate and ignorance, not that most people don't know by now, I think the last two sentences tell it all. "My kids will have solid christian beliefs. See it infects everyone." Infected it has! Living in the Bible Belt all my life, I know that there's always a good chance that when someone says something hateful against gays, it's going to be be from here. I was once Christian, but have since become an agnostic. I came to the conclusion that religion has caused more hate, ignorance, and violence than any other force on earth. There are some Christians who say that Jesus is love and they don't believe that gays are evil, or believe in beating their kids to discipline them, that executing prisoners is okay, or many of the other things that Christians usually believe in, but they are the minority trying to save face and ignore what the Bible does say. If you disagree with the majority of what a group is saying, then you don't belong in that group. I didn't agree, so I left.

I hear preachers talk about people not coming to their God with their problems, but they fail to see why they aren't coming to their God. It's because the God they worship hates gays, it supports violence, and wants to take away people's freedoms. There are wars going on right now, people are out of the job, and there are starving and sick people all over the place. People go to church and want to hear how to make the world a better place. It seems like all they hear in return is "Gay people are evil." They go outside and it's not gay people bombing other people in other countries and making people starve. It's not gay people turning over cars and lighting buildings on fire. It's not a bunch of gay people destroying their jobs. Well, in a way, gay people might make Clint McCance lose his job, but only because he hated them.

Christianity and all religions are losing members. They're dying out. People no longer believe in them, or turn to them because they offer nothing of value. They are the 8-track player of our day. The internet and TV has introduced more people to scientific discoveries that offer more believable alternatives to explaining the universe than religion can. Not only that, but from a moral standpoint, many people see that religious morality does not make the world a better place and in fact, makes it worse. The reason 9-11 happened was because of religion. The reason Clint McCance wishes kids would commit suicide is because of religion. The reason for the crusades, witch trials, slavery, child abuse, spousal abuse, and even the Holocaust was because of, or supported by, RELIGION. The question religious people should ask isn't "Why don't anyone worship my God?", but "What's a good reason anyone should worship my God?"

If you wish to file a complaint to the superintendent of the Midland School District about this, call Superintendent Dean Stanley's office at 1-501-345-8844. I have heard that Dean Stanley is out until Friday, but maybe you should leave a message that he should come back to work and handle this matter right now.

How To Stop Breeding Bullies

2010-10-21T11:05:00.007-05:00

I'd like to dedicate this to Stefan Molyneux, who really opened my eyes to the huge role that child abuse has on many of the problems we face as a society today.

Due to bullying, many kids have killed themselves over the years. Some kids have even gone on shooting sprees and many kids have died because of it. A recent cause has developed in the past few weeks based on preventing kids from killing themselves. This has mainly been aimed at kids who have been bullied because they are gay, or are seen as gay, but bullying targets many kids, not just gay ones. The "It Gets Better Project" is encouraging people to post videos convincing gay kids that their lives will get better once they get out of school and away from the bullies that torment them. I think this is a great idea, but it is only really focused on helping gay kids get through bullying. It doesn't really stop the cause of bullying, or help non-gay kids survive it.

People are now wearing, or showing purple to mourn 6 recent gay, teen suicides. This however, will not stop the bullying. It might show that you're mourning these dead kids, but it won't stop more from dying, or being picked on. As long as people push the idea that God hates gay people just for being gay (even if you say you don't agree that what they're doing is right, but support their rights), they will still be looked at and treated like they're less than human and weaker than everyone else. Of course, gays aren't the only ones who are bullied. Instead of seeing gays killing themselves as the problem, we should see bullying as a whole as the problem.

Bullying will always be around, but we do have the power to control how common it is. We currently have a society that teaches kids on so many different levels that violence is the answer to most problems and that weak people should be beat up on, made fun of, abused, and treated like they have no value. Our own government will bomb, or invade weak, 3rd world countries, just because they do something we don't like. If Russia, or China does something we don't like, we don't bomb them because they aren't weak. If someone has a drug problem, we don't try to help them get treatment, we get the police to pull out their guns, arrest them, and throw them in jail. We like to think we don't teach kids these violent behaviors, but we allow too much of it to go in our own lives that it's impossible to keep them from learning it.

If a kid does something a parent doesn't like, some parents will spank them and yell at them. A parent is always more powerful than their kid, so it gives the impression that a powerful person has the right to beat up on the weak if the weak person does something they don't like. We send kids to school and the teachers will bully certain kids, just because a teacher is more powerful and can do it. Don't tell me it doesn't happen; I saw it with my own eyes. A kid with a learning problem, a problem paying attention, or one who already shows aggression will usually be the ones who are mostly exposed to this and it'll just teach them that violence and making weaker people feel bad about themselves is the way they should live their life. Bad people usually don't do bad thing because they just want to do bad things. Hitler didn't kill Jews because he wanted to be a bad guy; he did it because in his twisted mind, he thought he was saving the world. A parent will spank their kid and tell them, "I'm doing this for your own good". So whenever that kid becomes a bully and attacks a weaker kid, he's justifying it in his own mind by assuming that he's doing it for that kid's own good.

Humans have a natural desire for power and control. A kid who is made to feel weak at home and then goes to school and is made to feel weak by their teacher doesn't have any power in their life. They look for more power and control anywhere they can. The only way they can get that is by picking on kids they see as weak. Society mainly shows gay people in movies, books, TV, or whatever as physically and mentally weak pacifists. That's not always true, but to a bully, or a group of bullies, you couldn't ask for a better target. There's just too many things in society that not only fail to condemn what bullies are doing, but actually encourages it. A kid picks up on all of this stuff and it's garbage in and garbage out. We can tell kids that it's wrong to be bullies, but as long as we remain hypocritical, remain bullies ourselves, and refuse to change, we can't expect them to take that message seriously and more kids will die because of it.

Illegal Immigrants: The Free Market People

2010-09-20T17:06:00.005-05:00

Some Americans would think most illegal immigrants are socialists, wanting to come here and take over, and live off of welfare. While it might be politically true that their culture would tend to support big governments, they are living more of a free market lifestyle here in the U.S. than we Americans are. The ironic part about this whole immigration debate is that the Republicans, who often preach about the glories of a free market, have failed to see these people as an example of their principals and have instead reverted to socialism to punish them.

Some of you might be scratching your heads right now wondering how an illegal immigrants live in a free market. Well, it's not entirely Free Since they still must work around strict government rules, and it's more of a black market, but it is more free than what your typical American citizen lives in. Yes, they are breaking the law to do so, but ignoring the fact that they, or their employer, are breaking the law, or have to work around the laws, the image of a free market is still there. I'll give you some examples:

1. Illegal immigrants don't have to pay income taxes, pay into social security, or any of the other government mandated schemes. They still have to pay sales taxes when they buy something from a store, but overall, they'll be able to keep more percentage of what they earn than an American.

2. They can work bellow minimum wage. This is what makes it so hard for Americans to compete for lower paying jobs is because they will work for such low wages. Many of them will come here to work for a wage that no typical American could survive on, but they will take the money back home and thrive on it because it can go farther there.

3. They don't apply for government authorization documents. We get assigned a social security number, we get drivers licenses, and go through all of this government bureaucratic process just to carry out or daily lives. While many of them will obtain fake documents and break the law, they don't have to go through the same process we have to get these. The though that you have to get government approval to carry out the many things in your day to day life should anger anyone that loves the free market. However, many who say they support the free market, while supporting this war on illegal immigration, ignore the fact that this is what they are supporting.

4. They sell and transport drugs, weapons, and other banned items. Now, I'm not saying all illegal immigrants do this and certainly plenty of Americans do this, but I thought I would include this anyway. In a free market, you are allowed to buy, sell, use, or trade whatever you want as long as you aren't harming someone else without their consent. Everyone knows drugs are bad for you, but if you still want to take drugs, I think you should be free to do so. Government bans have no place in a free market. People against illegal immigrants will tell of horrible violence along the border, which is true, but it is from the war on drugs creating a black market, which is kind of like a free market, only it comes with many problems that a free market doesn't. A black market sells item x, which is banned, expensive, hard to obtain, and people live under the threat that government is going to lock them in jail. A free market sells item x, which isn't banned, cheap, easy to obtain, and there's no threat of going to jail. Black markets require the use of violence to stay in business. Free markets require peaceful competition to stay in business. Alcohol was banned at one time and we saw the black market explode and people killed each other over it all the time. It was then legalized and liquor store owners never kill each other to get ahead. I think later on I'll write a post devoted to comparing and contrasting the black market and the free market, but to stay on topic, I'll skip the long details.

5. Illegal immigrants are free to go as they please. When Americans want to cross into Mexico, we stop at a government check point, show papers, and get approval to cross over, or come back in. An illegal immigrant doesn't want to go through this process. Imaginary lines drawn on a map does not confine them to one area. The imaginary line that surrounds the area they came out of their mother in does not dictate what rights they have as a human being.

Now what I have just said is actually a black market instead of a free market. However, the only difference in the two is the presence of government rules. Most would think I'm crazy for making an argument to support the free market by using people that most think of as poor. However, they might be poor by American standards, but they are rich when compared to where they originally came from. The only reason they can't get rich here is because government rules won't allow it. It's harder for them to get an education without the right documents and it's harder for them to make lots of money without drawing attention and risk being deported. If we lifted government restrictions on them, they could flourish even more.

The main point I'm trying to make is that Republicans, Conservatives, and even some Libertarians that say they support a free market, but still support closed borders are missing a great opportunity. They see these people as a problem and want to punish them by making stricter government rules to prevent them from succeeding in life. I look at this see these free people not only surviving, but thriving under in a black market, which could easily be made a free market.

Americans against illegal immigration say they are a threat to jobs, so instead of doing away with minimum wage laws, income taxes, and other things that makes it hard for Americans to compete, they want to keep all that junk and spend more of our money to keep them out. If we were by some miraculous way able to keep them out, we would still be losing jobs in this country to countries overseas. I find it almost comical that the same people that want to use the government to protect their jobs from illegal immigrants will likely say how evil unions are and how much they hurt the economy. What bigger and more destructive union is there besides the United States Government? They see illegal immigrants as parasites on our welfare system, while ignoring the vast amount of American parasites who live on it. Instead of doing away with our welfare system and going to private organizations to help out people, we create more laws to discriminate who can and can't get help. They are afraid of all these violent illegal immigrants coming over hear and chopping people's heads off, so they want to put more money into border patrol and law enforcement to go after these people. They could end all the violence along the border and in most American cities overnight if they would end the war on drugs. Not only that, but they would be saving billions of dollars each year and freeing up jails for actual violent criminals like murderers, rapists, and thieves that threaten lives and property.

Instead of saying we should make these free people be more socialist like the rest of America, we should make America be more free like them. Bring ourselves to their level and let them be free and let ourselves be free from government rules. Let everyone compete on a level field for jobs. If we try to bring them to our level, we're going to spend billions, if not trillions more on border security and other government agencies to do so. Like the war on drugs, it will never be effective of stopping illegal immigrants. Besides that, we Americans will still be living under these same restrictive government rules. I say we make it easier for these people to come here by lifting the restrictions we ourselves live under. If we did that, the true supporters of free markets will be killing two birds with one stone.

9-11: The Tragedy That Keeps On Giving

2010-09-11T12:47:00.008-05:00

Today is the 9th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks and all of these people say "Never Forget". However, I don't see the point in remembering it if you don't actually think about it, as in think really hard about what happened and what it has given us since then. To me, this tragedy has not ended and is still going on. The terrorists had hatred in their hearts for us and used violence as a way to react to that hatred. Our response to that hatred was not love, but more hate and the use of violence. The result of which has created more death, destruction, and sadness than the original attacks. We can use the excuse that we are freeing people in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of just killing them out of hatred, but that still doesn't change the fact that those civilians and our soldiers are going through the same death and destruction that those victims had on 9-11, just spread out more over time. There are people in this country that hate all Muslims for what a few Muslims have done. The hatred and violence is still there, just in a new form.

It has been 9 years and we haven't even started rebuilding at Ground Zero and it's still just a big hole in the ground. The main man responsible for the attacks, Bin Laden, is still on the loose. Ground Zero workers and others who survived the attack are now getting sick and dying from the the dust they inhaled. We could not save many who died on September 11, 2001 and there is no way to bring those people back to life. However, we have the chance to prevent more people from dying by ending these wars and finding peaceful solutions to our problems, but many of us refuse this idea. We could choose to love our enemies instead of hate them and try to make them not hate us, but many of us refuse this.

This tragedy should have been a wake-up call that we should change our ways and we did, but not for the better. We are no longer as free as we once were because we are so afraid of another attack that security is now more important to us than freedom. We are now at constant war instead of trying harder to find peace. We should have all come together as Americans and worked to make this country and the world a better place. That seemed to have happened for the first few months after the event, but we are now more divided than ever and more people in the world hate what we're doing.

When someone dies, you try to find some kind of positive meaning to come out of it, no matter how small. People want to be organ donors so when they die, others might live. Nobody wants their death to be meaningless, and they surely don't want it to bring more hatred, death, and destruction to the world. I don't know what kind of pain and suffering those victims went through in the last minutes of their lives, but I'm sure they wouldn't want anyone else going through that. I don't believe the victims of 9-11 have been blessed with having anything positive brought out of their deaths. It's not their fault though, it's ours. We failed to bring anything positive out of their loss and have used their deaths only as an excuse to cause more deaths. To me, that's the saddest thing of all about 9-11.

Review: Waltz With Bashir

2010-09-02T19:26:00.010-05:00

Some people would say that war is beautiful. In an artistic sense, this can be true. It can offer some of the best colors, compositions, and subject matters for an artist, story teller, or photographer. The reason war is so beautiful is because it is so ugly and when you're talking about art, usually the ugliest of subjects are the most beautiful.

"Waltz With Bashir" has taken art and war and combined them into one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. It's an animated documentary, based on the stories of actual soldiers who were in the Lebanon War of 1982. The plot revolves around the film maker, Ari, not being able to remember what he did as a soldier during this war. He then sets off to question other soldiers who were there with him to try to regain his memory and mainly try to remember what he saw and did at the Sabra and Shatila Massacre.

The movie is mainly comprised of a number of flashbacks, dreams, and interviews, with some live action footage at the end. The animation is very unique, but I didn't find overly distracting. As you can see from the video, it kind of looks like a cross between 3D, cell shading, and rotoscoping. However, from what I understand, is actually done with Adobe Flash. The music in the movie was well done and actually fits well with telling the story instead of just being a backdrop for mood, or the setting.

However beautiful and entertaining this movie might be, at its heart is a serious message about a serious subject matter. Most war movies, at least nowadays, show the horrors of war, which this movie does show and it does show a lot of stuff that is not suitable for younger viewers. Besides gore, there are sex scenes and nudity. This is an R rated movie after all. However, unlike most other war movies, this doesn't go out to show how soldiers are heroes, to glorify battle, show the brotherhood of war, or to make it seem like some kind of test of manhood. This shows the opposite of that. It takes you into the lives of different soldiers as individuals and into their thoughts and feelings about the war they were in. What it shows instead of a group of soldiers bonding, is a single soldier alone with himself and his thoughts. In each of the stories is a sense of being alone and not belonging in a group. It shatters the whole notion of a band of brothers. This movie has successfully boiled war down to it's purest form, the individual soldier, and showed what he went through and what he was thinking. It shows the horrors that they saw that still haunt them, the actions that the still regret, and the fear that they went through.

I can see how many people would dismiss this movie just because it's a cartoon, because it might seem like Israeli propaganda, or just because it's a foreign movie with subtitles, but they'd really be missing out on a great and unique movie. I think the word "unique" really describes this movie since I really haven't seen anything like it before, and yet I just felt so comfortable watching it.

My only complaint was that some of the non-flashback scenes and interviews seemed kind of dull. It didn't look like a lot of effort was put into the background areas of these scenes, like they wanted to show them in a studio like a real documentary. It helped give the documentary feel to the film, but it also gave it a slight dull feeling one gets from watching documentaries sometimes. However, the film is mostly filled with eye catching visuals that will hold your attention.

It's hard to rate this movie since it's so original and there's nothing else out there to really compare it to. While this isn't exactly an anime, if your a fan of anime, or adult animated films, this ranks up there with "Akira" and "Princess Mononoke". If you're a fan of war movies, I think this ranks up there with "Apocalypse Now", or "Full Metal Jacket". "Apocalypse Now" is my favorite movie of all time, mainly because of the dark story and the beautiful visuals. To me, this was like an animated version of that. I loved the story, artwork, music, and everything so much that I have to give this movie a 10/10. There's always a few good movies that come out that everyone should see, that most people probably don't know about, and this is definitely one of them.

War Is Over! Just Kidding

2010-08-31T17:46:00.006-05:00

At 5pm today, the combat mission in Iraq was officially declared over. This is great news, right? Actually, not really. We'll still have 50,000 American troops staying in the country until the end of 2011, or at least that's the current plan, so it's not really over.

To me, this is nothing but a sick PR stunt to make the Democrats look good for elections. As long as we got guys over in Iraq, the Iraq War is not over and combat sure as hell ain't over. We might have less troops in Iraq than when Bush was president, but just saying they are no longer combat troops doesn't change the fact that the remaining troops there aren't in harms way, or won't be used for combat. You can call an apple and orange, but it's still an apple. I would be somewhat happy if a lot did get to come home and stayed out of harms way, but I bet most will probably be used to fight in Afghanistan. Which in case you missed it, more U.S. soldiers have now died in the War in Afghanistan under Obama so far than during all of Bush's presidency.

The Democrats said they were all for ending the war when George Bush was in office (despite many of them actually voting for it) and they conned people into thinking they were the anti-war party. However, I knew that once they got into power, they wouldn't really end the wars in Iraq, or Afghanistan. I wish now I had bet all the Democrats I knew that by the end of Obama's second year, we'd still have troops in Iraq. It would have been a sick thing to bet on, but I really could have made a fortune off of all the gullible people who voted for him thinking he was going to end the wars. We'll probably have guys there for the rest of the century, just like we got in Germany, Japan, and Korea. Do they still look like the anti-war party? I guess the fact that you never see any huge anti-war rallies anymore since Obama become president says it all.

The Democrats were out marching on the streets, yelling all the time how we needed to bring the troops home and how Bush was a war criminal, but now that they got their guys in there, they're silent. They aren't telling Obama to bring all the troops home. They aren't calling Obama a war criminal. Are the Democrats all pro war now? I don't think so. I think the real problem with them is that they know it's wrong, but they stay silent about it. They think if they speak up against their own side, it'll make their side look weak and they're willing to sacrifice soldiers if they think it'll help them stay in power. Republicans are just as much to blame for these wars, but they aren't in power anymore. It's the Democrats turn and they have nobody to blame, but themselves at this point.

The main reason you have more and more people like me who are becoming either libertarians, independents, siding with some other third party, or don't even bother voting is because the two main parties in this country are neck deep in hypocrisy. There's no principle behind either one besides lie as much as you can to get more power. They'll whisper sweet things in your ear around election time, but when they get into power they'll do the exact opposite of what they promised. That's the only thing you can really trust them on.

More Arkansas Liquor Laws...Really?

2010-08-24T12:48:00.004-05:00

City politicians in Little Rock, AR are currently contemplating putting more limits on what size liquor can be sold and what hours liquor stores can be open. You can read more about it here. Unfortunately, this is another case of the politicians wanting to look like they're doing some good, but actually doing more harm.

I don't want people getting on the road drunk, but if people want to buy alcohol and enjoy it at home, they should be able to buy it anywhere that wants to sell it, any time of the week. I live in Yell County, which is a dry county. For those lucky souls who don't know what a dry county is, it's a county where it's illegal to sell liquor (you can still drink it here though). However, it doesn't stop people in this county from getting liquor. They just burn a bunch of gas and take their money to other counties, or out of the state, where it is legal to buy it. Liquor stores in the state are also now allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays. These religious blue laws, first off, shouldn't be allowed since they're RELIGIOUS LAWS! Besides that, they aren't really stopping people from getting drunk on Sundays. None of these laws are going to make people who drink stop drinking, or drinking and driving.

Not only do these laws not prevent drinking and drunk driving, but they can actually make it worse. Dry counties make drunk drivers drive further to get more liquor, increasing the risk of an accident. I'm not defending people who drink and drive and there's no safe distance to drive while drunk. However, some people are going to be stupid enough to do it and the longer they are at the wheel, the higher the odds get that they're gonna get in an accident. While the stores in LR might close down, stores outside the city will still be open, making people drive further to get their liquor. Instead of staggering down the sidewalk to the store, they'll get in a car, drunk, and try to drive to another county.

It's time Arkansas wakes up to reality and start saving some lives instead of living in a fantasy world. If you're an Arkie like me, ask yourself the following questions. How many of our friends and neighbors have been killed because some drunk guy had to drive 30 miles to get more liquor when he could have just walked to the store to get it, if it were legal to buy it there at that time? Are the current laws really stopping people who want to drink, or get drunk?

And with that, I give you one of the greatest songs ever wrote...

The Place where RFK And Public Education Died

2010-08-24T10:49:00.012-05:00

Los Angeles has just spent $578 million on the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, which is really just one big honkin' public school. It's the most expensive public school in the nation. This isn't a school for 50,000 students. Oh no, only about 4,200 students will be able to go there, which means it will cost about $135,000 per student for the first year alone. At that rate, they could have provided a regular education to these kids, paid for their college, and probably got them a down payment on a house. The voters voted on it before the economic collapse, but even in regular times, this was an insane waste of money. The money isn't going to get better teachers, or books. No, the main cost is on architectural features. As you can see in the video on this page (sorry, I tried to find a YouTube video), the inside is pretty damn snazzy.

This was once the location of the The Ambassador Hotel, the hostel where Robert F. Kennedy was shot in (hence the name). They designed it based on the old hotel, but does the environment really matter for teaching kids? Will this school produce doctors and scientists that will cure cancer and other diseases? It damn well better! Of course anyone with half a brain can see that's not going to be the case. If you stick a kid in a barn with a good teacher and access to good books and the internet, you're going to end up with a better educated kid than one who goes to a school with magnificent architectural details and swimming pools and lacks good teachers. When you have dropout rates like this, it's hard to imagine the thinking behind funding such a building.

This isn't just a one time thing either. There are many schools around the country that are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to build. This video from CATO explains how school districts are hiding a lot of the costs of educating our kids. Even without these added expenses, they seem like a waste of money. More people need to wake up and realize that more money and fancier classrooms do not always equal better educated students.

It's time that money stops going to buildings and finally starts going to the students. If we are going to be publicly funding education, we must have school choice for students and parents and get rid of this bloated public educational system as it currently is. If we don't, there will be a country with nobody smart enough to run it. This doesn't mean we have to abandon the old schools and fire all the teachers. All we need to do is go to a voucher system where the students get the money and spend it on the best school for them. The schools are then required to operate like a private business and use the money they get from students to run it, and expand it in a way that makes sense, instead of a way that exploits the taxpayers and does nothing to help the students learn.

Lots of parents already support this, but a lot of teachers and their unions don't. However, building this school should be a wake-up call to teachers. Building these new schools will only put your jobs in danger. California and all of these other states are cutting back on education spending. They aren't going to sell their buildings they spent millions to build, they'll just get rid of teachers and staff. If you're a teacher, would you rather work in a regular building and have job security, or an expensive, new building to work in that will probably cost you your job? If parents had the choice, most wouldn't give a damn about the building, but what kind of education their kids get. That comes down to how well the teachers actually teach their kids. If you truly are a good teacher, then you'll not only have job security, but you'll probably get paid more for doing a good job instead of having that money spent on a school swimming pool, or Tiki themed auditorium. If you're just in it for the government benefits, then how long do you think the taxpayers are going to bend to your demand?

If we can't get teachers to agree, then another option that we really should look into is online learning. One of my favorite sites is The Khan Academy, which is a totally free, and probably better, way of learning the same stuff we pay tens of thousands of dollars for each year. Whatever choice we make for the future education of this country, we have to make some kind of choice now, because the status quo is not working and we can't afford to put this off any longer.

FM Radio On Cell Phones By Law

2010-08-22T14:56:00.009-05:00

I came across this article the other day. Basically, the music industry is in a dispute for more money from radio stations. To counter this, radio broadcasters are willing to agree if they get help to pressure the government to force cell phones makers to build FM receivers into their phones.

This is a clear example of how regulation really works. Regulation isn't about protecting the consumer, but rather, making money for businesses. FM radio and the music industry in general have been on the decline since the internet and cell phones became popular. They see cell phones as competition for business, so they naturally want to take control over cell phones and force their product on it. They can't do this using free market principals (since they suck and fewer people really want them hanging around), so they want to use the government to force it on them with laws. Using the force of government is the only way they can keep making money. I wonder if telegraph operators were this annoying back in the day when telephones came around to drive them into extinction.

If people actually wanted this in all of their phones, it would already be in place. There is no need to require this to be on all phones. It's not like millions of people are dying because their cell phones don't get FM radio. Most people's phones can play MP3s, Pandora, and access to the internet. Any information, or music they want, or need is already there. I don't know about you, but it's been years since I've tuned in to a local radio station. With all of this new stuff around us, who needs to? I'm not saying do away with FM radio, since there's some people that can only afford, or know how to use a radio, but if you're able to buy a cell phone, you really don't need an FM radio in it. It's like forcing you to buy a horse just because you own a car.

It's just a tiny radio receiver, so what's the big problem? Well, first off it's not right when people who aren't harming anyone are forced to by the government to do something, especially just so someone (the music industry and radio stations) who refuse to adapt to new technologies can be kept on life support, or just get more money than they're already getting. One regulation doesn't kill an inustry and free market, but where there is one regulation, there will be more...LOTS MORE. All those regulations can kill companies, prevent newer companies from starting up. Worst of all, they will create huge corporate monopolies that thrive in an ocean of regulation by drowning other companies in those same regulations. While I doubt requiring FM radios would actually make a cell phone company go under, it does put them under more pressure to have to comply with regulations.

Most people don't care that much about companies surviving(even though they should), but their main concern is how can it hurt them the consumer. Well, if it's mandated they have to put FM radios in their phones, then that will either add to the cost of the phone. It could make them design a phone with less features to fit an FM radio into it physically and economically. Adding an FM radio feature might drain your battery life faster. Besides, there are already phones out there with FM radio features if you want one. It's not like FM radio is some precious resource that cell phone companies are keeping you from enjoying. FM radio is like a dinosaur and should just go extinct already. Actually, now that I think about it, they aren't, since dinosaurs are still cool and popular. FM radio is like a dodo bird...

Outrage At Ground Zero

2010-08-21T08:41:00.005-05:00

As most of you are probably aware, there are plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero. This has sparked outrage throughout the country among some people who think that it's offensive and some people even think they shouldn't be allowed to build there. A lot of people might be asking themselves if we have a Muslim problem in America. To that, I would say no.

However, it is far too clear that America has a hate problem and an ignoring real issues for ones that don't really matter problem. I find it outrageous that it's been 9 years since 9-11 and billions of dollars spent there and nothing has been built at Ground Zero! That's the story that should be making people angry. Oh, and while this story is the major headline, a Florida church is planning on burning Korans on 9-11. How about stop worrying about Muslims for a second and start worrying about this country making Hitler's Thousand Year Reich a reality. I'm not saying they don't have a right to burn Korans, but if you're going to be protesting people for doing something, this seems like something more important than building a mosque. If anybody is going to help terrorists recruit others, don't you think these book burners would be doing so? Terrorists are going to look at these stories and say to new recruits, "They burned your Koran and took away the freedoms of your fellow Muslims in New York. They hate your people and your Mosques. Here's your proof that America is evil and hates you. Now go kill them!"

I think a lot of the individuals who are opposed to this Mosque are so swept up in their own anger that they are too blind to see themselves for what they are. It doesn't matter if it's gays, Muslims, illegal immigrants, or whatever, as long as you aren't similar to them, they automatically hate you. There are Americans out there that don't judge people as individuals, but as a group. They will group together people based on the negative actions of a few individuals, or more often, what they think those people are like without really meeting with them. Human beings who aren't like they are will always be seen as nothing more than cattle that need to be rounded up and sent to the slaughter house. A lot probably wouldn't be willing to go that far, but if it did happen, they wouldn't feel any remorse about it. These individuals ignore, or are just ignorant to, the fact that innocent American Muslims died on 9-11; some even trying to rescue people.

With these haters, there is no "turn the other cheek". There is no, "Americans embrace freedom". Yes, we should speak out against radical Muslims that kill people and use their governments to oppress people, but these are those Muslims. If we don't change our ways and speak out against our people who want to do the same things the radical Muslims are doing, their hatred is going to spread and the only thing left in America anymore will be a bunch of crybabies that get offended over the littlest thing, or worse. I've studied history enough to know that America is looking a lot like pre-Nazi Germany right now. The economic crash and all of this anger and blame placed on minority groups for "causing our problems" is just like it. If we don't change, we will no longer deserve this Republic. We will no longer be the land of the free, or the home of the brave. We will have become cowards, scared of a few people wanting to build a mosque, or like Germany did, we'll become something much more horrible than just cowards.

Best Movies Of The Decade

2009-12-31T20:41:00.001-06:00

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

2009-06-25T02:35:00.006-05:00

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

2009-06-08T15:20:00.002-05:00

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

2009-05-30T10:48:00.004-05:00

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

2009-05-28T04:52:00.004-05:00

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)

2009-05-26T01:01:00.005-05:00

(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

2009-05-25T14:21:00.001-05:00

GPS Tax

2009-05-20T22:05:00.010-05:00

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

2009-05-19T19:09:00.008-05:00

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

2009-05-19T11:56:00.001-05:00

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

2009-05-19T10:49:00.002-05:00

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

2009-05-19T08:17:00.005-05:00

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

2009-05-16T17:11:00.006-05:00

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

2009-05-16T10:57:00.006-05:00

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.

Police Brutality Part 2

2009-05-15T13:59:00.004-05:00

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

2009-05-15T06:53:00.003-05:00

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

2009-05-14T17:17:00.008-05:00

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

2009-05-12T04:20:00.000-05:00

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

2009-05-11T16:30:00.005-05:00

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

2009-05-11T07:10:00.003-05:00

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

2009-05-09T04:13:00.002-05:00

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

2009-05-09T03:13:00.007-05:00

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

2009-05-08T23:36:00.003-05:00

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

2009-05-07T21:40:00.008-05:00

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

2009-05-06T00:44:00.005-05:00

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

2009-05-05T00:45:00.006-05:00

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.

Marijuana Freedom Wins This Round!

2009-05-04T23:43:00.005-05:00

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

2009-05-03T22:04:00.004-05:00

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

2009-04-30T21:18:00.004-05:00

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.

2009-04-30T05:02:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-29T01:25:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-27T16:07:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-27T15:50:00.006-05:00

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?

2009-04-23T21:55:00.004-05:00

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

2009-04-20T22:45:00.007-05:00

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?

2009-04-20T22:36:00.004-05:00

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

2009-04-20T00:12:00.006-05:00

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!

2009-04-19T17:07:00.003-05:00

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.

CNN Cover-Up

2009-04-18T00:14:00.003-05:00

Remember that post before last called "I Was Libertarian Before It Was Cool"? If you do, you'll probably remember that video I posted about CNN making the tea party protesters out to be a bunch of angry Republicans and then it shows a protester made video that tells a whole other story and makes CNN look bad. It was pretty funny and I hope you got to see it.

The bad news is YouTube took it down and now when you try to view it, it says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Cable News Network, Inc.." Now I guess they should not have included this copyrighted video from CNN in the YouTube video they made. However, there are videos up on YouTube that just show the CNN footage by itself, without the other video exposing the truth and making CNN look bad, THAT ARE STILL UP! In fact, there are probably CNN videos all over the place that haven't got taken down. Now, maybe they haven't got around to taking those other Copyright violations down. Then again, maybe CNN really doesn't care about people spreading their news stories around, just that they don't like it when people expose the truth about their shitty news reporting. Think I'm bullshittin' ya? Here's the proof.

Here's the CNN video...

Here's the video of the CNN video with the footage from the protesters that exposes their lie. As you can see, it's been taken down.

I'm not one to call out conspiracy theories, but I think CNN is trying to hide something here. What do you think?

Moon

2009-04-17T23:16:00.008-05:00

When's the last time a decent sci-fi movie has been done about the moon, not like a little bit about the moon, not some stupid cartoon, but a whole 2 hour, serious, live-action movie devoted to it? 2001...not the year, but the movie? Even then it just had a short amount devoted to it. Okay, so anyway, there's now a movie coming out called "Moon" that actually looks a lot like "2001: A Space Odyssey", but not so realistically slow and dull (let's hope). It actually looked pretty decent. I haven't seen it yet, but I have to admit that the trailer peaked my interest.

"Moon" stars Sam Rockwell (Wild Bill from "Green Mile") and has Kevin Spacy doing the voice for Robot. So from the look of the trailer, Sam Rockwell's character is stuck by himself on the moon overseeing a mining mission that's gathering fuel for earth. His only companion is this computer/robot thing that reminds me a lot of Hal-9000 crossed with the personality of Wall-E. Then Sam Rockewell's character (Sam Bell) gets the SPACE MADNESS, or something, and starts hallucinating. Of course there will likely be some twist and he'll turn out to be sane and something really weird is happening, like aliens are doing something, at least that's usually how these things go. Anyway, here's the trailer and there will be a limited release for June 12, 2009 for the U.S. I hate limited releases for good movies!

I Was Libertarian Before It Was Cool

2009-04-16T22:29:00.010-05:00

I've been watching a lot about these ant-tax tea parties lately and I got some steam to let off (for those who only buy their tea already made, that was a really horrible tea joke). Anyway, I guess some of these neo-con Republicans couldn't swallow defeat and had to wash it down with some tea (slightly better joke). Only problem is, THEY'RE CRASHIN' THE LIBERTARIAN'S TEA PARTY! That's right, by right, it's our party and we didn't invite them. Why aren't Republicans and Libertarians both against taxes and spending. Well, sort of. See the thing is that Libertarians ARE against taxes and spending, but Republicans JUST SAY they're against taxes and spending.

Before Obama was elected, all these Republicans that are now jumping on the anti-tax and anti-spend bandwagons were supporting big spending Republicans. Why? It was because these big spending Republicans were for "family values" and were for "defeating terrorists" and to most of these people, that was their main concern at the time. I'm sure that some of the people who supported them didn't like all that spending, but the thought of leaving Iraq, not securing an impossible to secure border, and not supporting a Christian nation was far more important that not ruining their kids' financial future. Sure, they cut taxes for the rich, but THEY INCREASED SPENDING! Spending is the big issue here. Taxes suck, but they aren't near as bad as they could be; however, spending is digging our grave. The real problem is we're going to have to pay off all this insane debt we've collected...because BOTH the Democrats and Republicans became corrupt with power and didn't know when to stop. They would spend our tax dollars on everything from bridges to nowhere, to (two) wars, to researching how global warming affects squirrels fucking.

Some of these people saying that the major issue now is cutting spending and reducing taxes actually laughed at Ron Paul when he was running for president and brought up these issues over a year ago. He saw this stuff coming from years back and tried to bring it to everyone's attention while the rest of Washington spent like they had an endless supply of cash. For God's sake, they're still spending like they got an endless supply! Now, the Republicans realize they were wrong. I'll be damned if any of them admit it, but I know, that they know, they fucked up. Do they do the responsible and smart thing and rally around the only guy among them that saw this disaster coming? Did any of them suggest that maybe Ron Paul should lead their party from now on. No, they just change their tune and make it seem like they were all libertarians all along. They're just the same, stupid, big spending leaders they always were, just now they're disguised in libertarian clothing. It makes me sick!

If you're trying to suck up and get the libertarian vote next time around, think again. You'll have to do better than that. The first thing you need to do is repent for your sins. I want to hear you say, "I was wrong. Ron Paul and the libertarians were right. We aren't going to waste time on wars and keeping gays from getting married. There are more important things and really, those were stupid things anyway. We aren't going to try to build an expensive wall along the border that will never work. We will stop the drug war that never works. We aren't going to give money to every company coming along looking for a handout. We're not just going to lower taxes for the rich, but for everybody. We're going to acknowledge that not everyone in this country is a Christian that thinks like we do and they deserve to live free from forced religious beliefs, just like everyone else. Christians don't need a country that supports their religion to believe in God and Jesus and practice good morals and raise a good family. All we need is a country to let us all be free to practice what we will as long as we aren't harming someone else without their consent. We're going to end the federal reserve and end the income tax. Most of all, we're not going to spend anything. Sure, we'll have to pay off that mess we helped create, but I'm going to take all my campaign contributions and prove that I'm a true patriot and pay off this debt that my political party has helped create over the years."

After you say that, I still won't vote for you, but I will forgive you. Oh, and one more thing; don't show up at a tea party waving your neo-con signs and spout off some stupid rant that makes you sound like a whiny loser because you lost the election. Unless you're comfortable bashing both Democrats AND Republicans for this spending spree, just stay at home. Any true libertarians there will know who you are and know you're just as responsible for this mess as the people in Washington. I'm not saying they'll beat you up, because libertarians don't use force to get their way, but you don't want to get verbally abused and heckled by the people you're protesting with. It would be rather embarrassing and a waste of your time to even show up. If there are any libertarians out there that see neo-cons around, please feel free to humiliate them! In fact, I would say it would be your duty to distance libertarians from these people by doing so. If you're still a neo-con and want to protest, instead of having a tea party, go have a baby shower so you can go whine like one.

I would like to remind people that not all these tea party protests are organized and attended by the neo-con Republicans and Fox News. I'm sure some hypocrites are there, but there are LOTS of Americans that aren't affiliated with any party, or group and are genuinely pissed off their money has been stolen from them and given to these big corporations. Taxation without representation is the real reason for a tea party and I think most people that are there get that. There's a lot of talk that these tea parties are organized by big political groups, backed by corporate interests. However, I bet AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, nor any of those other corporations that got government bailouts (handouts) are sponsoring these tea parties. The American people didn't need some group to organize and back them with corporate funds to make a big fuss about this huge mess. All they have to do is get man, get some cardboard, make a sign, and stand out in public. It's not that hard to do; especially if you don't have a job to go to because you got laid off.

Besides me being mad at hypocritical neo-cons, I'm pretty pissed off right now about the mainstream media. Of course they aren't going to do a non-biased story on this to get the true feelings of the general protesters. I'm not really surprised though, because at any protest, they're going to go after the most insanely, radical looking guy there and use that one guy for ratings. Chances are, that crazy guy was planted there by an opposing group to make the protesters look bad. I give you video from CNN...who just earned the same reliability rating as Fox News. Congratulations CNN, you just got exposed for the big government propaganda spin machine you are!

Police Brutality Part 1

2009-04-16T19:54:00.008-05:00

I'm going to post a "Police Brutality" topic every time I come across a story about our government using excessive force against our fellow citizens. I don't want to give the impression that all law officers are bad people, because some are doing their best to carry out a very stressful, and dangerous job, while not harming innocent citizens. However, for the safety and rights of the U.S. citizens and to ensure that law enforcement get rid of the bad apples, stuff like this must be brought to the attention of everyone. I know it's hard for some law enforcement not to take the side of their fellow officers when stuff like this comes up, but bad cops make good cops' job much more harder and more dangerous. If a guy sees his local cops beating up on some innocent guy on TV and nothing is done to get rid of these cops, then the next time he gets pulled over, he might decide to try to run away, or fight back, instead of being peaceful. It doesn't matter if you're wearing a badge, if you use unnecessary violence against someone else, you're a criminal.

The video below speaks for itself. There will probably be more videos of this surfacing in a couple of days since the guy said there were cameras there when the event took place. At least, I hope we get to see those videos.

(UPDATE): The video of the actual incident can be seen here.

Dressed To Kill

2009-04-15T14:23:00.006-05:00

There are a lot of crazy/evil leaders and dictators in the world right now. Each generation has its own brand of villains. Now, I usually don't really care what people wear, but when it comes to evil leaders I think someone needs to give these guys a makeover. Have you noticed the way they dress lately? Seriously, most of these guys don't look evil. Maybe they don't want to, but how are you going to put fear into your enemies and be taken seriously if you don't look scary?

Let's start off with what's wrong with the current cadre of villainy...

Osama Bin Laden dresses like some 3rd world beggar. I know the guy has a bunch of money and clothes probably have some kind of religious meaning, but he could do much better.
Iran's president,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, looks like a guy who works for Microsoft that got lost in the woods for a few weeks without a razor to shave with.
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il looks just plain goofy. If tomorrow I heard North Korea built a time machine, I would believe it. Why? Because their leader looks like he's gone back to a 1970's Salvation Army to get his clothes.
Fidel Castro used to dress in military uniforms, which is kind of scary, but just doesn't really cut it. Lots of military dictators do this, but there's just no originality; however, that's not the worst thing he's done. He's recently been sporting a windbreaker outfit. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Windbreakers don't make me think of evil dictators, just old people...breaking wind. It even has "Castro" written on it, as if somebody is going to forget he's Fidel Castro. Maybe he's afraid he'll forget. The guy is old, but he doesn't need to dress like he's in some retirement community.
I wouldn't really consider Venuzela's president, Hugo Chavez, as an evil dictator...YET. He's probably getting there though. He looks like a typical, laid back poltician, but you can't do that, talk smack about the United States, and be taken seriously. This guy dresses like he works at Ace Hardware.

So what should a villain look like? Well, Hollywood and comic books have done a good job of creating villains, so I would look there for your look. G.I. Joe's Cobra Commander has a great look for a terrorist. He dresses in dark colors, like blacks and blues. Also, red is a nice color to use for emblems because it reminds people of blood and violence. Note that he's wearing a hood. This hides his face, creating mystery. This will get people talking about what exactly you look like. You will find that a lot of great villains have some kind of mask, or hood hiding their face. If your face is disfigured with scars, or burns, that's even better. Darth Vader is a good example of this and his outfit is equipped with equipment to help him breathe, giving him a creepy breathing noise. I'm surprised with all those cigars that Fidel Castro smoked, he doesn't need at least some kind of mask to help him breathe.

Hannibal Lecter is a great villain because he's charming and very intelligent and that is what's so creepy about him. He also has a mask, but he doesn't really need it. He is able to project fear by just the way he talks about things. He can say the most horrible things and not out of anger, but with joy in an almost poetic way. It's important to not only dress the part, but also act the part.

The Shredder from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and Lord Humongous from "The Road Warrior" both have masks, but they also keep in shape. They are built for the part of villains. They aren't afraid to display their muscular physique. It's sad that most dictators today are in such bad shape. I'm sure that it's got to be hard to keep active and stay in shape when you aren't the kind of person to take orders from a personal trainer, or anyone else for that matter. These guys should at least work on their arms a bit and show them off. Another thing I'd like to note is that The Shredder has some weaponry built into his armor. This is a nice touch and shows that he is not afraid to get up close and personal and cause damage. Another thing to add to the look is a cape. You can't go wrong with a good looking cape.

This is all fine, but were there any real life people that dress like villains? Yes, as a matter of fact, there was. Blackbeard the pirate was awesome because he used to grow long hair and a beard and then when he was going into battle, he'd put slow-burning hemp ropes in his hair, under his hat, and light them on fire. The effect was that it looked like his head was on fire. Now that's just badass. What would you do if you saw a guy coming at you with a sword in his hand and his head was on fire? You'd piss your pants, that's what you'd do!

There is one leader today that would hands down win if I were giving out a trophy for the best looking evil villain. That guy is Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin. He dresses and acts like a James Bond villain. The guy was in the KGB! Like Lord Humongous, he isn't afraid to show off some of his muscles. In the picture I've included, he kind of reminds me of some evil poacher killing endangered animals for their hides. He also has this weird thing for tigers and even got a tiger cub for his birthday. I can just picture him sitting at his desk, petting a tiger cub, and plotting to take over the world. Plus, he practices the martial art of judo, so you know he can kick some ass. He might not be as evil as Kim Jong Il, Osama Bin Laden, or some of the other guys on here, but he sure looks like one evil SOB.

Six Days in Fallujah

2009-04-15T12:18:00.008-05:00

There have been a lot of controversial games over the years. When most people think about controversial games they think of Grand Theft Auto and other games that show sexual and violent content. With shooter type games, violence is surely going to be there. However, it's not the typical controversy that has got people up in arms about Konami's new game "Six Days in Fallujah". They are taking an accurate, historical approach to telling the story of the Battle of Fallujah, which happened only a few years ago. Some might say it's a little too soon for something like this. As open minded as I am about controvercial games, I can somewhat sympothise with the people who oppose this.

The developers are getting the support of some of the soldiers and civilians that were in the Battle of Fallujah, but according to a recent interview with Joystiq, they also interviewed insurgents that were at the battle also. This is likely to be the most controvercial aspect of the game. I don't know how they got interviews with insurgents that were there and I guess that's a story in and of itself. I have yet to really see the game, but the impression I get is this isn't meant to be an action packed fun game, but rather a historical simulation. From the sound of the interview, you might go on a mission, not find anyone to kill, and just find a puppy to adopt. What kind of game is this exactly? Is it even a game?

My main concern is with war vets and their families. While I would hope that they wouldn't pick this up out of fears it might bring about some kind of emotional reaction they aren't prepared for, I suppose it could happen. It's one thing to see a movie, or documentary about war, but a video game is very close to re-living the situation. I'm not saying it shouldn't be made though. People should understand what these people went through over there and if this video game can help put people in the shoes of Marines who fought there, maybe it can influence people and change some minds about the War in Iraq. I hope this will be a well done game that pays homage to those that were at Fallujah and inspires thought on the subject; not just some quick way to make a buck.

Arm Ships With Ninjas And Buckets Full Of Jellyfish

2009-04-15T00:04:00.007-05:00

Obviously Somalia has gone apeshit over all of those Pirates of the Caribbean movies and now they feel they got to act out their movie fantasies in real life. After Navy Seals kicked their ass and saved Capt. Richard Phillips, these pirates have been pissed. They're now working overtime to seize ships left and right and do as much damage as possible if they can't get on board. You have to hand it to them; when they say they're gonna retaliate, they do, and they don't waste time about it.

So how exactly should we combat these pirates? Well, we could spend a bunch of money to send our Navy over there, patrol around, piss more people off, just to give protection, or we could tell these companies that they can arm their ships with weapons from now on if they'd like to, like .50 caliber machine guns and and grenade launchers. Then again, they could arm themselves with the natural enemy of the pirate...THE NINJA! That's right, and if ninjas don't stop them, get some buckets full of jellyfish and dump on their heads as they're boarding. That'll learn 'em. Got any other anti-pirate ideas? Post them in the comments section below.

Cuba's Embargo Limbo

2009-04-14T11:28:00.003-05:00

Fidel Castro said today that the U.S. has done nothing to lift the decades old trade embargo on Cuba and will not beg for it to be lifted.

Source

As much as I disagree with communist leaders like Castro, he's telling the truth here. While President Obama has recently lifted some travel restrictions on Cuba, there is still a lot of progress that's left to be made. Embargoes are counterproductive to the goals we say we want. We use them to try to put pressure on foreign dictators and regimes we don't like in hopes that their people will overthrow them. However, this only gives them political ammunition to use against us.

The U.S. government has had an embargo on Cuba since 1962 and have tried numerous times to assassinate Fidel Castro in hopes that his regime would fall and a more modern democracy would take over. The funny/sad part about it is Fidel Castro had been the leader of Cuba for almost half a century before stepping down in 2008 due to health reasons. He's been in power longer than John F. Kennedy lived. If that's not an epic failure, I don't know what is.

There's a good reason why Castro does not want Cuba to beg for the U.S. to lift the embargo. The U.S. embargo is one of the main things that has helped people like Castro stay in power. If there's a shortage of food, or medical supplies, people don't have to look towards their flawed communist system, or their corrupt, "glorious" leader, to place the blame. Castro can simply blame it on the capitalists in the U.S. and their embargo. People in these countries suffer from lack of trade goods, but these embargoes end up helping the ones in power. We currently have sanctions against Iran, denying them airplane parts. The result is that civilian Iranian aircraft are crashing due to poor maintenance, killing innocent civilians. Iran is still going forward on building nuclear technology. How is relations with North Korea? They're probably the worst out of any country right now.

If a regime is so bad, why not just leave them alone to fail on their own? There's no sense in us aiding in the suffering of the people in hopes they'll rise up and overthrow the regime. It only builds more hatred for the U.S. and gains more support for the evil dictators of the world. Just about everyone hated George W. Bush, but if China and other countries had decided to stop trading with us and people in this country started suffering from lack of food and medical supplies, we would have all rallied behind George W. Bush. Bush would have said we need to bomb these countries, that we would never give into their demands, declare emergency powers for himself, and he'd might even still be in power for a third term as president today.

If we want to promote democracy and capitalism, then the best way to do it is to trade. I'm not saying trade weapons to crazy dictators, but food, medicine, and other goods build friendships and promote the exchange of ideas. If the people could see first hand what can be done under a capitalist and free society, then that's what they'd want. The problem with embargoes is it denies them of seeing that first hand. They only know of what capitalism is from what their government tells them and the only thing they know first hand is that capitalists Americans are denying them of the stuff they need to live. Let's not forget that this also hurts American businesses by denying them customers. Embargoes are just all around a bad idea and I hope that we'll see an end to them soon.

Welcome To The Blog

2009-04-13T16:10:00.008-05:00

For those that don't know me, my name is Brad Cossey and this is my blog. I'm 26 years old and am a native of Arkansas. You might be wondering what all is in this blog. It's gonna be pretty much whatever is on my mind at the time. Even though "BrAD NEWS OF THE DAY" is a play on "BAD NEWS", I'll post some good news every now and then and maybe some reviews. There are about four main things I like to talk about and that's politics, video games, movies, and art.

I'm a libertarian, so anything political on here will likely be from a libertarian point of view. What's a libertarian? Well, it's a person who believes strongly in individual freedoms, economic freedoms, and little government controls. As long as nobody is harming anyone else, they should be allowed to do what they want. I was once a Democrat and then later switched to be a Republican and neither party seemed to have the exact same beliefs I had. Eventually I gave up, but later found out what libertarians were and discovered that fit perfectly with my beliefs. If you think you might be a libertarian, or would like to see what politicial category you might fall in, take The World's Smallest Political Quiz.

I love video games. I mostly play on my Playstation 3, but used to play a lot of stuff on the PC. I play mostly first person shooters (COD5 and Killzone 2), but also play RPGs (Oblivion and Fallout 3) and strategy games (Command & Conquer). I really like games where you can build your own levels, like in "LittleBigPlanet". That's the main thing I miss about gaming on the PC, is nearly every game came with a map maker. Few console games let you do that. As a gamer and a libertarian, I'm opposed to censorship and laws aimed at video games. I'll be sure to post my thoughts and keep you informed on the latest assaults on gamer and developer rights.

I do find time to watch some movies now and then. I've been burned out on most of the huge summer blockbusters I use to like as a kid. It takes more than a bunch of CGI thrown up on the screen to make me want to see something. I'll try to write a few movie reviews if I see something I like. I don't get a lot of time to read actual books, but if I come across one that I really like, I'll try to give it a review also. I might give a review of any new music I come across also. Although, most of the music I like is classic rock and country.

Besides playing video games, watching movies, and posting on this blog, I also do some artwork now and then. I draw, paint, and sculpt. As far as painting goes, I did a few acrylic paintings, but I really like using oils now. I also do a few watercolors. I've done a little bit of figure sculpting a while back, but haven't picked up some Sculpey in a while. I'm also into photography and like to take photos of nature type stuff. Maybe I might get around to posting some of my artwork, or photos on here. I'm the same way on art as I am on video games. If anyone is trying to censor art, I'll be on here writing about it.

Anyway, that's pretty much what's gonna be covered here. I might have a hard time coming up with a topic, so if you have something you'd like for me to talk about, or have some news you'd like for me to pass along, or comment about, please feel free to e-mail me and I'll try to do something with it.