I don’t have anything political to write about now so I’ll just post about what’s been going on in my life.
Last Thursday, March the 4th, Machina Infernus broke up, this time it’s for good. At least, if guitarist and founding member Rich Kovacs decides to start it up again, I will not be a part of it. I am disappointed in the way this was handled and it’s kind of knocked me off-kilter for the last few days, it preoccupies my thoughts and just bums me out. I think it’s caused me to have a writer’s block, as I haven’t been posting much at all anywhere these last few days.
I’ve been irritated at WordPress because I can’t get my embedded YouTube videos to show up in my posts, I have to go to Michael and beg him, PLEASE, will you help me embed this video. PLEEEEEEEEEEASE. And he does it for me, but we can’t figure out why it’s not working when I try to do it myself.
Washington DC now has legal same-sex marriage. The city council passed a bill and the mayor signed it, and Congress, who oversees the District’s laws, declined to review the law. They had 30 session days to do so and, as is typical of Congress, didn’t make the deadline. The response by residents has been largely positive. Catholic Charities, however, is now finding ways to cut services. They’re ending foster care outreach and spousal benefits for their employees. How Christ-like. Whatever, I’m just going to get pissed off again if I go down this road, maybe another day.
They say we’re in a recession, but people keep ordering take-out and going to the movies. I saw Alice in Wonderland (in 3-D) the other day, and my advice to Tim Burton is to stop trying to make Tim Burton movies. Other than that it was just okay, visually stunning but I am tired of Johnny Depp playing the same charatcer in every Burton flick. The 3-D was just aight, dawg. Felt like it was shoehorned in, whereas in Avatar, it was meant to be that way from the beginning. Oh, and the takeout- 34 deliveries today in 9 hours, I was busy from the time I clocked in until the time I left. Maybe this recession is completely media-driven because I don’t see people not spending money, just the opposite.
Why is Justin Bieber famous, and who wants to take bets on when he gets his first arrest, when he beats his first girl, and how long before they find him overdosed in a seedy hotel? Well, we can hope, right?
Speaking of pop-culture garbage, if you haven’t seen the new version of We Are the World, you have to search it and watch this abomination. It’s pure douche-chill theater, most notably Jamie Foxx impersonating Ray Charles and Kanye West’s line at the end, and the autotune… oh the autotune.
That’s all for me for now. This week I’ll be back on politics.
Up the independents. I am tired of people trying to put me into a box because they only see other people’s political views in relation to their own. If I am disagreeing with a liberal, that must mean I am a right-wing nutcase. If I am arguing with a conservative, then I am a bedwetting liberal moonbat. Stop already, you people who do this are embarrassing yourselves.
Recently, I had an exchange with someone on one of the message boards I post on. Someone complained that Republicans were abusing the filibuster and stonewalling Democrat-backed legislation in the Senate. When I mentioned that the Democrats did the same thing to President Bush’s judicial nominees, I got a world of shit for it. I was called an ‘apologist’ for the GOP, I was told that it was different since the Dems were filibustering nominees but the Republicans are just blocking everything. I was even called a “traitor” to who I am, since the Republicans generally oppose same-sex marriage and the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Oh man, did I get pissed. Here’s what I said:
“Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what my political ideology should be based on who I have sex with? Because I like smoking a pole or two, that means I have to support EVERY liberal tax me out the ass, welfare state-loving, illegal immigrant harboring, enviro-nazi chump-stain socialist douche nozzle who runs for office?
Again, fuck you, pal. I agree with what the Democrats SAY about marriage equality and ending DADT, now let’s see them actually DELIVER on it. Maybe then I’ll be more willing to put up with all the other bullshit that spews out of the DNC. Until then, I will support whomever the fuck I want and if you don’t like it, tough shit.”
I was slightly miffed.
The truth is that I can’t stand either major political party. I think they’re both full of incompetent and/or corrupt people out for their own gain and their own power. I don’t think they care one bit about average people. TS, who responds to many posts here, believes that conservatives are selfish and liberals are compassionate. Are they? Or is that what people been led to believe by those who are trying to pose as compassionate? Who or what defines compassion anyway, or selfishness for that matter? Doesn’t anyone ever think that maybe, just maybe, there isn’t that great of a divide between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to their votes and their actions? Put away the rhetoric and look at what they DO.
Both tend to favor big business over the individual.
Both supported bailouts and giveaways to failing industries.
Both were complicit in the signing of the Patriot Act and in sending our troops to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both parties used the filibuster as a cheap way to thwart the executive branch, and both parties even met to hammer out a compromise so they would be able to use the cloture process as a de-facto filibuster in the future.
Both support the massive confiscation and wasting of our tax dollars.
Both support, for the most part, the war on drugs.
Both supported NAFTA and all of the other so-called “free trade” agreements that only served to gut the American workforce and erode our national sovereignity.
Just because they pretend to be on polar opposites every election year doesn’t mean they really are. They’re simply trying to get themselves elected, and the American public buys it, thinking that there are real differences at play.
As George Carlin was fond of saying, “Bull-fucking-shit!”
Words of Wisdom:
Rest in peace, George. A shame you didn’t live to see the final freak show.
RUSH HOUR GOING INTO LOS ANGELES 3 PM, FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2009:
RUSH HOUR GOING INTO BUFFALO, WYOMING 9 AM, MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2009:
I’ve always been very anti-authority, since I was a little kid, got in trouble arguing with teachers, scout masters, etc. I basically voted Democrat until a few years ago because I didn’t understand politics, and thought that liberals were compassionate and conservatives were selfish.
My road to libertarian had a lot to do with my road to Wyoming. My wife and I had wanted to move out of California since soon after we met, but it had more to do with not having neighbors than anything in specific.
Then we bought a gun, and I bought some gun and legal books, one was “You and the Police”, that was a big influence. I’d never encountered anything by a non-leftie non-criminal that told you how to stay out of the way of the police. It kind of blew my mind. That book was also the first place I ever heard of legal open carry….I had no idea such a thing existed. At that time I was going nuts with the thought that I couldn’t get a carry permit in Los Angeles, and Wyoming was on our short list of states we wanted to move to…..(It was Washington, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Wyoming and Idaho, in no special order at that time).
I finished “You and the Police” in one night, got on this forum that night, and nine months later we were living in Casper.
we’ve lived here seven months now and LOVE IT! And I got my carry permit last week, but it was a little anti-climatic after open carrying so much!
I guess there were a lot of influences….my Republican/libertarian wife, my Republican dad, my Goldwater Republican father-in-law, Boston, this board, the Free State Project (NH) board, and just “if you’re young and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you’re middle-aged and not conservative, you have no brain.”
I am registered Libertarian Party, but vacillate between Republican, libertarian, minarchist and anarchist, depending on my mood (and how much Fox News is irking me that day.)
And there’s more on the spoken word thing called “Letter to a Young Me” on the Right Arm of Wyoming CD. It’s me reading a chapter from this book I wrote: http://www.lifeamp.org
I know that when I mention politics, some say “It’s all useless, all politicians are snakes”, but when I read older things by those people, some of those same people were involved in politics. Maybe I’ll get to where they are in a few years, but it’s new and hopeful to me now.
I got involved with the Republican party at a pretty hopeless time, and a couple months later, a Rep took Ted Kennedy’s seat, then all this cool stuff happening in the Wyoming state Gov, I feel excited about it.
Last week at CPAC, much to my delight, some little prick from California named Ryan Sorba got himself un-welcomed. I couldn’t be happier.
The back story. Last year, a number of Log Cabin Republicans split from the group and formed GOProud. Apparently, LCR was too liberal, too Washington establishment. Personally, I think gay Republicans are gluttons for punishment, but hey, that’s just me.
It seems that GOProud was invited to be a part of CPAC, and initially, many other participants threatened to back out. However, they didn’t, and all was going well until this douchebag Ryan Sorba took the podium and began trashing CPAC and going off on his silly rant about natural law. Look at his face. Go on. Look at that smug little kisser. Don’t you just want to punch him repeatedly? Now, I am not advocating that anyone do it, but oh does he have a punchable, arrogant puss.
What surprised me, though, is that CPAC booed him off the stage. I expected perhaps a tepid response, or nervous clapping, but no, they took him down, and it’s likely he won’t come back next year. It’s a faint glimmer of hope that perhaps some mainstream conservatives are getting over their tendency to reject anything LGBT. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
This slick piece, created by WorldNet Daily contributor Jason Mitchell (also known as ‘Molotov Mitch’) has created a bit of a stir. I can’t see why, I mean, he’s only coming out in support of a bill currently pending in Uganda’s parliament that would make homosexuality a capital offense. He seems irked that many people, including thousands of Christians, have called upon American religious and political leaders to condemn the people pushing this bill. If gay Ugandans don’t like the new law, should it take effect, they can just leave.
This bill, commonly referred to as the “Kill the Gays” bill, would make certain gay sex acts punishable by death and others by life imprisonment. It would also require Ugandans who know a gay person to report them to the police. Failure to do so will land them in jail. Perhaps Ugandans can leave, but where will they go? Africa is the New Christian Experiment, with Catholics on one side promoting starvation, famine, and AIDS by preaching against condoms and borth control, and Evangelicals pushing for draconian laws against homosexuality and agreeing, for once, with the Catholics on doing away with condoms. Christians have been fucking over Africa for centuries. Maybe King Mwanga II was right.
Who was King Mwanga? According to Mitchell, he was a “Sodomite King” who passed a law that required any male he desired to yield to his sexual advances. There is no evidence that King Mwanga II was a homosexual or that he instituted such a law. In my readings on the subject, only Mitchell makes the claim. According to his summary on Wikipedia, he was a polygamist who had sixteen wives with whom he fathered seven sons and four daughters. While he might have enjoyed the company of men on the side, the claim that he was a “Sodomite” is ridiculous on it’s face. Mwanga II did, in fact, have 22 Catholic missionaries burned at the stake, but not because they refused his charming propositions. He had them killed because they had converted to Catholicism and wouldn’t renounce their new faith. These men became known as the Uganda Martyrs, but they died for their religious beliefs, not because they wouldn’t play with the king’s royal sceptre. Later in life, after being deposed and exiled to the Seychelles, Mwanga became an Anglican and spent his final days as a Christian man.
Mitchell also lies about the Founding Fathers, claiming they made homosexuality a capital offense, yet he only cites two examples where anything close to this was enforced. “Anti-buggery laws” were a default under English Common Law. This isn’t really a stretch. To say that they actively persecuted homosexuals, however, is. Very simply, homosexuality wasn’t defined as an orientation or attraction until 100 years after the Republic was founded. Of course, homosexuality existed- Washington did have a soldier drummed out. It didn’t stop him from having Baron Friederich von Steuben, a Prussian General and alleged lover of young boys, come and whip the Continental Army into shape. Without von Steuben, it’s likely the Revolutionary War would have been lost.
He ends his slick propaganda piece with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr, saying that “the moral arm of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. I don’t think Mitchell understands the context of that quote, but then again, he deliberately mischaracterized and outright falsified so much else in is video editorial, I don’t think one more lie will matter.
ANGRY PEASANT RECORDS will send CDs FREE to active military at US/ APO/FPO address. Will send to the first 70 who write us. (NO FAKERS. REMEMBER, STOLEN VALOR IS A CRIME AND WE WILL CHECK!)
Sending these free to our troops is our small way of saying THANK YOU!
YOU GET: TWO (yes, 2!) copies of the CD of feisty libertarian gun-nut punk rock/industrial music, CLING TO OUR GUNS by Right Arm of Wyoming. Check out the music at www.rightarmofwyoming.
Extra copy of the CD is to “spread the love”, makes a perfect gift for that leftie relative who needs some modern “school house rock” to educate them on the error of their ways!
STYLE: PUNK ROCK, HARDCORE PUNK ROCK, INDUSTRIAL ROCK, ROCK ‘N” ROLL
SONG LISTING:
1. GET OFF MY PROPERTY!
2. MY GUN KEEPS YOU HONEST
3. REDISTRIBUTION OF THEFT
4. GOVERNMENT IS A COLLECTIVE HALLUCINATION
5. GUN CONTROL GETS WOMEN RAPED
6. LIBERTY IN SHARDS
7. FREAKY LIBERAL MAMMAL SEX
8. FAKIN’ THE RACE CARD
9. SINGLE CRACKLING BLUE FLASH
10. WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS!
11. US Bill of Rights (read by Mrs. Dean)
12. LETTER TO A YOUNG ME (SPOKEN)
13. MY GUN KEEPS YOU HONEST – CLEAN VERSION FOR RADIO
REVIEWS:
—”Fox News – the band” – Bridge Nine punk forums
—”As refreshing as a gunshot to the head…” – children’s book author Eric B. Anderson
—”You rule! I listened to your CD. It’s AWESOME!” –Pat Kim (head honcho at ConservativePunk.com)
—”WOW, you do not pull any punches. Great! The movement needs music which will strike a cord with all different kinds of people. Thanks for all you are doing to preserve our freedoms, liberty and culture.”
– Patriotic singer Lloyd Marcus
—”I threw up watching this crap. Talk about trying to indoctrinate! Pure propaganda set to music.”
–Some Michael Moore fan, commenting about Right Arm of Wyoming on YouTube
CD is factory glass mastered (not burned at home), and packaged in nice cardboard sleeve with four-color printing.
Alaska Governor Sean Parnell is proposing a bill that will pay for a students schooling depending on grades (A=%100, B= %75, C=%50). I think this is bullshit. No one has the right to make you pay for another person’s college. And now while this is probably paid for by taxes from the oil companies and other corporation and not individuals, it’s still wrong. Taxation is theft, whether by a mugger in the street or a politician in DC. And what is a corporation but a group of individuals.
And the price of this?:
Parnell is proposing to pay for it by carving out $400 million of the state’s $8 billion Constitutional Budget Reserve Fund savings account as its own separate endowment, saying interest and investment profits from that would be used to pay for the scholarships. State Education Commissioner Larry LeDoux said it’s not clear how much the program would cost the state each year but he figures $20 million could be available annually for covering the costs of the scholarship program.
I would much rather struggle to pay for college and live off of ramen and live on a couch through my schooling than make others pay for my college.
My beloved Taurus 605 snub-nose revolver failed the other day. Really bummed me out, I had a “relationship” with that gun, and was counting on it if I needed it to save my life. I carried it everywhere.
My Taurus jammed while shooting .38 special plus P ammo. I got the spent shells out, but the gun won’t close easily now, and you can barely pull the trigger.
Fortunately, Taurus guns covered by a lifetime guarantee, not just lifetime of the owner, but the life of the GUN, so even if you buy one second-hand, it’s still covered.
I’ll carry my S&W 908 semi-auto until I get it back (could take Taurus a few months, I’ve heard) but I am going to ALWAYS carry at least the mouse gun (Ruger .380 LCP) as a backup. What if I’d needed the Taurus in a life-and-death situation and it failed, and I had no backup?
I got the gun new, and have fired maybe 1000 rd through it over a few months. Mostly .357, some .38.
FWIW, the brand of ammo I was firing when it jammed was Blazer, but I don’t think it’s an ammo issue. Those rounds have a lot less power than the .357s I usually use.
WHY REVOLVERS?
Someone asked me “why do people still buy revolvers”?
People buy revolvers for the reason people still buy hammers. Because it may be an old design, but they work (despite my exception, which is so rare it proves the rule).
They fail less than most semi-autos, they’re cheaper.
They’re actually great guns for people with no experience with guns. If you ever buy a gun for someone, like a girlfriend or wife, who’s willing to carry a gun, but not willing to really become a “gun person”, a revolver is great. No safety to forget to turn off, not mag disconnect to accidentally hit, just point, and pull trigger. The trigger is so hard it acts as a safety, but you can also cock the trigger with your thumb to get a shorter trigger pull. (Which also has the psychological effect on whoever you’re pointing it at,….think Dirty Harry).
And why snubbies? A .357 revolver is the most power you can pack in the smallest form. Someone described a .357 snubbie as being like the “Noisy Cricket” gun from Men in Black.
And Snubbies can be fired from inside the pocket if need be. A semi-auto, not so much, because the slide has to move. Also, revolvers do not engage a spring until you pull the trigger. You could probably leave a loaded revolver in a drawer for half a century, and it would still work when you pulled the trigger. A loaded semi-auto with a bullet in the chamber would probably seize up or the spring would break in that amount of time.
Plus all revolvers look and feel cool and retro, and have a lot of history. They were the first usable multi-shot handguns. “God mad man, but Sam Colt made them equal.”
Revolvers are much less affected by dust and dirt, require less cleaning and oiling, and are much easier to clean. (for what it’s worth, I cleaned mine often, and carried in a holster, which prevents pocket lint from getting in, but many people carry snubbies in a coat pocket. I don’t recommend that, for dirt, but also because in a holster, you KNOW what position it’s going to be in when you need to grab for it in an adrenaline situation.)
I’m psyched today. My concealed carry permit is waiting for me to pick up at the sheriff’’s office . Yay! I’ve wanted one for two years and more or less moved to Wyoming so I could get one!
Pro-Liberty legislation on Guns & Property Rights proposed by GOP legislators
by Michael W. Dean, Wyoming
Some interesting things going on here in the Rocky Mountain West…
There are three gun-rights bills going before the Wyoming legislature this month (as extra bills in a budget-only session), don’t know that they will pass, one will probably get tabled and considered later. two are 10th Amendment bills that would allow guns made and used only in the state to not come under federal purview (circumventing the Interstate Commerce Clause), but unlike the Montana bill, one of these actually allows the state to prosecute federal agents who violate it.
The other bill would allow Wyoming non-felons to carry a gun concealed without a permit, like Alaska and Vermont.
CHEYENNE — A proposal that would allow people in Wyoming to carry concealed weapons without permits passed an initial legislative hurdle on Thursday.
If the bill passes, Wyoming would become only the third state in the nation, after Vermont and Alaska, to allow conceal-carry without a permit.
Under House Bill 113, the only people not allowed to carry concealed weapons in the state would be people under the age of 21, convicted felons, those convicted of drug-related charges, alcoholics, those with physical disabilities that impair their ability to handle firearms, and people who have lived in the state less than six months.
Currently, Wyoming residents must apply every five years for concealed weapons permits.
Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, the Thermopolis Republican sponsoring the bill, said the legislation is meant simply to spell out rights that are already guaranteed under the Wyoming Constitution and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“I just believe people have the right to protect themselves and defend themselves,” Quarberg said. “And I want to make sure that we put it in statute and people know they can do it.”
There’s also the bill in session now to amend the state constitution to block federal demands that Wyomingites get health insurance if that federal health care debacle somehow passes.
http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2010/Digest/SJ0001.htm
SALT LAKE CITY — Conservative Utah lawmakers (photo of state capitol in SLC) want to spark a U.S. Supreme Court case that could ultimately allow states to develop resource-rich parcels of land that are now off limits where the federal government is the landlord.
The lawmakers said they will attempt to trigger an avalanche of legislation in the West through the use of eminent domain, which governments use to take private property for public use.
More than 60 percent of Utah is owned by the federal government, and policy makers here have long complained that federal ownership hinders their ability to generate tax revenue and adequately fund public schools.
Legislation was introduced in the Utah House on Thursday allowing the use of eminent domain on federal land. The effort has the full support of Republican Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who would have to defend the law.
I grew up in New England. Southeastern Connecticut to be precise. Winter was always a season of wonder and fascination for me. We always had snow in Winter, and it started around Thanksgiving and went well into March. Somehow, we survived those storms and made it to Summer. Summer was fun, with the beach nearby and all, but I always liked Winter best.
Fast-forward 30 years later. I’m not 7 anymore, I am 37. I live in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Prior to last week, we hadn’t seen a blizzard in 7 years, and in between that, we were pretty light on snowfall amounts. I would even dare to state that my town got more snow Saturday and Wednesday than we got total in the last 7 years since that last hefty storm. Man, did I love not having to go to work. I loved sitting on my ass in front of this computer all day, catching up on a bunch of stuff I had neglected. Tuesday night I sent my other half to the store to pick up some food and candles- just in case the power went out. It didn’t, but it was nice to know they were there. We didn’t have to do squat, and it felt good.
I don’t get people who complain about snow, about winter. These people, to me, think that they’re above nature, and they resent being inconvenienced by her whims. It’s true, these kind of storms do disrupt our everyday routines and interrupt our flow, but this is a valuable lesson to learn. We’re nothing- NOTHING- compared to what nature can do to us. George Carlin once mentioned, “The Earth can shake us off like a bad case of fleas”. How right he is, and how arrogant we humans are to think that nature, that our climate, should readjust itself so we can conduct our everyday business. Storms like this remind us of how vulnerable we are, especially if we are not prepared and stocked up to get through long periods of time without electricity or running water, and more importantly, if we’re not armed and ready to defend what is ours should there be a major natural event that renders government unable to maintain order (Katrina anyone?).
I am not a survivalist, but I am thinking, maybe I should be, at least a little bit. It can’t hurt to have things you may need in a pinch, stuff you can collect here and there. Flashlights. Batteries. Blankets. Sterno. Something to start a fire with. Knives and multi-function tools. Water purification tablets. A rifle or a bow, if you’re proficient, to hunt with, and/or compact fishing equipment. A small crank-operated radio. What would happen if, one day, our power grid went out? How would we survive without electricity? What if you live in a city or suburb and the Zombie Apocalype happens and you need to GTFO? Do you have your “bug-out” bag that you can toss in your car and go? Do you have a route to get out of dodge that helps you avoid the tangled masses of traffic that are bound to occur? What if you can’t get out on car, can you get out on motorcycle, bicycle, or foot? Or will you sit there and wait for the government to save you, or worse- for roving gangs to come by and violate you?
Of course, the media will always blow a snowstorm like what we just got out of proportion as if it were the Zombie Apocalypse, but despite their obsessive fearmongering and wolf-crying, we should remember that in the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, one day, the wolf really came.
On a lighter note, the nation’s capital was paralyzed and unable to do business due to these last couple storms. GOOD! We need more storms. The more blizzards we have, the less damage our federal government can do to our liberty.
Last Sunday, I was working around 3 PM, delivering food, when a bolt of inspiration struck me. I heard a melody in my head and I couldn’t get it out, but I knew if I didn’t do something I’d forget it eventually. I’ve lost so many ideas that way. So, I wrote down the first half of the first verse of what would become a new song in less than 24 hours’ time.
“And we march on through the frigid night,
In the shadow of our forefathers,
We brave the Winter’s might.”
I didn’t know if I would keep these at the time, or where the song would go from there, but it was enough so I remembered the melody. When I got home at midnight, I picked up my acoustic and fired up the drum program, and out came this song.
And we march on through the frigid night,
In the shadow of our forefathers,
We brave the Winter’s might
Soldiering across this barren lane
To where we’ll join out kin
And resist the invading warriors of
Christendom, who’re threatening
To destroy our very way of life
Lay siege to the cross
Don’t let them gain upon your ground
Fight to defend our clan
Cut every last one of them down-
Before they kill us all,
And put our women and children
To their swords and burning stakes
And raze our temples and destroy
Our lore, our tales of old
Traditions handed down for eons
From the bards, we were told
We must not let this be our fate
The next day, after mixing Not While I Draw Breath, Jay and I hammered out Heathen’s Lament in about six hours. While lyrically, this sounds like a gung-ho fight song, it’s intended to be a reflection on the history of what happened centuries ago, how vigorously our pre-Christian ancestors fought, and yet could not stem the spread of Christianity. At best, Christianity absorbed some of the heathen customs, holidays, and traditions, at worst, people were killed and the beliefs of our ancestors were stomped out. This song is written from the perspective of those who are marching off to fight to preserve their traditions, their culture, and their gods, who saw Christianity as a threat to their way of life and were willing to do whatever they had to do to stop it. Ultimately, they failed, and were either assimilated into Christendom, killed, or driven far from their ancestral homes and land.
Now that we live in a time of relative safety, we do battle mostly with words and images. We don’t go at each other with swords and axes, or guns for that matter. Instead, we mostly trade verbal slights and barbs. Non-Christians are subject to proselytizing by fervent believers, but that’s nothing new. We’ve learned to deal with that. However, there may be a time when the strife will become physical- maybe not- but the question remains, will we allow history to repeat itself? It probably won’t even be Christianity that threatens this time. Christians in Europe don’t seem to be willing to stand up to Islamists anymore and there aren’t enough Heathens to fight this battle. Even speaking out against Islam in Europe can be considered a hate crime, just ask Geert Wilders. So, basically, the song is saying, keep your swords sharp, your wits about you, and be prepared for anything. You never know when you may have to really fight for what you truly believe in. I sincerely hope and wish for peace and understanding between Christians, Muslims, and those of us who don’t follow any of the Middle Eastern Abrahamic faiths, but I still don’t think we’ve quite reached that level of ecumenicism.
And of course, enjoy the song. For all the layered meanings in the words, it’s a catchy number that’ll have you toe-tapping and singing along.
The most life-changing moments for me have always come by accident, it seems. When I was 15, I told a lie that ended up committing me to buying a drumset and started me on the path to becoming a musician. When I was 30, another flap of my big fat mouth put me in the gym and it’s kept me there, more or less, for the last 7 years. This bout of happenstance, however, was not my doing, at least, not directly, but it came about through my acquaintance with Michael W. Dean.
Michael and I met online at ConservativePunk.com, where our common love for music and passion of political discourse made us friends, at least online friends. When he was writing the first Right Arm of Wyoming album, I offered to send him some drum loops I had created in a program I have. Being a drummer for so long, I tend to try and make programmed drums sound as real as possible. Alas, I had no way of uploading the files to him, as none of the upload sites worked, but all of this was discussed openly on ConPunk.
After the RAW CD Cling to Our Guns was released, Michael would post reviews and comments on ConPunk, both positive and negative. One such post was a review posted on the Bridge Nine forums. The post, titled Fox News- The Band, was a scathing criticism of RAW’s music and themes. One user, however, seemed to have some inside knowledge, which could only have come from them being a lurker on ConPunk. They claimed that I was the drummer for RAW and that I was a “homosexual right-wing Odinist”. Sadly, the post has long since scrolled off the boards, but it did make me call out the person who posted such wrong information about me and RAW on the B9 boards. I also became a poster there as well.
It was shortly thereafter that I saw a post about organizing a compilation CD titled Enough is Enough, to benefit Freedom to Marry, an organization dedicated to promoting marriage equality and fighting anti-gay ballot initiatives. I contacted the organizer, Paul Blest, and offered a Frost Giant song, but none of the existing songs at the time fit topically except for Relic, which was just too long at 9 minutes to be included. So, I decided to record fresh. Initially, the plan was to do a 7 Seconds song called Regress No Way, which was arguably one of the first anti-homophobia songs out there, but the compilation started gaining ground, and soon, a lot of bigger names in punk & hardcore started signing on. I knew then that as much as I love that band, I couldn’t go out there with a 7 Seconds cover. I wanted to make my mark, so I decided to write a new song. It took me a long time to get a song in my head, as I do not do too well when I am forced up against a deadline, but soon enough I had something to work with and I went to my drum program and my trusty Les Paul and wrote it out. What came out of it was something I never imagined.
The song Not While I Draw Breath is probably the most angriest, pissed off, intense and in-your-face Frost Giant song to date. The lyrics deal with standing up to oppression and tyranny, of not caving in and backing down, and with being willing to hurt, suffer, and even die for the sake of your principles. It speaks of defending yourself and not going out meekly without a fight. On one hand, it could refer to the fight for marriage equality and is thus in line with the message of the compilation, but it’s written to be far more universal than that. Complacency, apathy, and willful ignorance abound in music and in pop culture in general. We are easily distracted by trivial things and made to focus on those as if they were important while we’re taken for a ride on the things that really matter. I intend this song to be a wake-up call to anyone that will hear it, but I leave it to the listener to apply it to their own lives however they see fit. I will not tell you what to think or what you should stand for, only that you should think, and that you should stand for something.
Not While I Draw Breath
by Matt Frost, January 2010. All rights reserved.
Will you stand with me
Fight and die if need be
Hold against the hordes until
The last man falls
Will you sacrifice all
You have gained in life
Reject your comfort
For a greater end
Stand together
And never waver
Brave in the face of
Overwhelming odds
For our future,
And our freedom
We unite in
Liberty or death
The evil stirs from its sleep
And no one will be safe from its reach
For we shall fight to be free
And never will we bend our knee
Forever clawing
Fight like a demon
Taking it to
The very bitter end
Swords are drawing
Battle lines forming
Storm clouds are churning
Soon there will be war
The earth will be fed
With blood
And the skies will weep
Unto the dead
Never give up,
Never back down,
We unite in
Liberty or death
Tonight, we lay down our lives
In the path of those who would oppress
And enslave us to their god
And trod us under until we are no more
Not while I draw breath
Will I submit, will I accept
Not while I draw breath
Will I bow down, nor will I live
With empty regrets
Now feel the sting of a thousand swords
Vanquish the hordes drive them away
To the darkness from whence they came
Obliterate they are no more
Overrun them all
Take what is ours.
Crush the wretched enemy
Bring victory
To our hearth and home
I recently asked my friends’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, ‘If you were President what would be the first thing you would do? ‘
She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’
Her parents beamed with pride.
‘Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ‘But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house. ‘
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘ Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50? ‘
f I get inspired I may finish these five songs and release as a free download-only five-song EP.
I pressed 1000 of the first ten-song CD, sold about 100, which made me break even, but sales have gone down since I put it online. But I don’t want to NOT put it online, everything always gets more downloads than sales.
And it’s a lot of work to mail CDs around, and most people burn ‘em to MP3s these days anyway. And I like the immediacy of just doing it and getting it out there. And I’m not doing this for money. It’s a hobby and a mission.
I like the idea of doing EP-size releases from now on too….why wait nine or 12 months between releases…..just bang out a new EP every four or five months. Might work better from a promotional stance too, more chances to have people blog it….I’d rather release a five-song EP every five months than a ten-song LP-length batch every ten months.
I was opposed to this, as were many American’s who don’t tow the line and blindly follow what the gub’mint tells us. But I think the census folk have listened to the complaints from citizens (and Congresswoman Michelle Bachman) and made the census really short (ten not-very-obtrusive questions) and eliminated the practice of previous decades of having some people get a long-form version with a lot of questions, some obtrusive.
The Constitution only allows for counting of people, so really any questions more than “how many people live here” are overkill, but the ten questions they’re asking are just
name
number of people at residence
Did anyone here live anywhere else this year
Do you rent or own?
phone number
race
if Hispanic, what national derivation
sex
age
Is it a house or a trailer
Basically, any of these are all matters of public record for my household, or easy to find elsewhere. The gub’mint’s actually got all this info on me. So I guess I’ll send in the filled-out form when it arrives, mainly because I don’t want some idiot knocking on my door.
Intersting are some of the questions on the gub’mint FAQ for the census, apparently, they’ve been listening to people’s complaints:
Just a fun post for today. I’m going to visit my childhood and list a few movies that fostered my distrust of government and authority, with some brief reviews and comments. Some will be well-known and obvious, but others might be a little more obscure.
I saw this in theaters twice and I own it on VHS. Sadly, I don’t think that it’s been released on DVD, and Blu-Ray? Come on. Yet, this movie, based loosely on the legend of the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash, made a huge impression on me as a kid. It fed my budding sense of outrage that our government would keep such a secret from the people, and that they would be willing to kill to keep the secret from getting out. I haven’t watched it in years so I have no idea if it holds up. Chances are it doesn’t, but if you can find it, it’s worth a viewing, especially if you were 10 to 13 years old in ‘83, it’ll bring back some memories.
I think I read this book too. Loosely based on a true story, this 1984 movie stars Scott Schwartz (A Christmas Story, The Toy, and several adult feature films in the 1990’s) as a young entrepreneur who starts a successful fertilizer/pest control business only to have the government come in and shut them down. As usual, the government ruins all the fun. In recent years, life imitates art as school bake sales become banned and don’t you even think of having a lemonade stand, or the Board of Health will land on you like a ten ton hammer.
I was angry from the minute the cop confiscated Wren’s Quiet Riot tape. I mean, yelling ‘No!’ at the screen. I was pissed. This movie, I have to give credit, it inoculated me against the bullshit that is organized religion, and for all the evangelical types like to bitch about Hollywood indoctrinating audiences against Christians, look, it wasn’t that far off the mark for what the evangelicals and Moral Majority members were actually doing. There were towns where dancing was not allowed. There was a big push to ban all kinds of popular music of the time. The Dead Kennedys were put on trial for their music (it was never about the H.R. Giger insert, the authorities had a hard-on for that band since they started). The infamous PMRC hearings followed a couple years after this movie. After failing to get record labels to censor their rock music, the censorship movement shifted to rap and hip-hop in the 90’s because it was easier to scare lily-white Christians with gangsta rap than it was to scare them with Twisted Sister (who had since jumped the shark). Looking back, the movie is a bit dated. OK, it’s really dated. Chris Penn is not only alive, he’s skinny. And Bacon’s solo dance number/montage is hysterical, but the emotion of it still resonates with me, the influence that a majority of religious people can have in a small town to the point of outlawing dancing (or anything else) is something we see repeated on a bigger scale when majorities vote for state constitutional amendments that strip gay & lesbian couples of their right to marry, for example.
This goes without saying. I mean, you have a kid who discovers an alien, a government that is spying on people trying to find said alien, and trying to capture the creature for their own designs. It’s classic kid vs. government, I loved those movies back in the day. Only watch the original, though, do NOT watch the altered and mutilated anniversary edition where the guns the government agents were pointing at the kids were replaced by hand-held radios. When the feds bust in your door they will NOT be carrying walkie-talkies. Plus, this movie got snubbed at the Oscars for Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire was fucking terrible.
This one was late 80’s, I was a little older. Goes like this. Government builds a cyborg prototype that for all outward appearances, is a teenage boy. Government decides to scrap the program, and that means that the robot-boy will be killed. A great tale that asks some good questions. When is a life a life? If a person creates a life artificially, through inventing a sentient, self-aware android, does that android then assume individual liberty by virtue of his own free will, or is he a disposable slave to his creator? It was a well-made movie and a good story as well, but it definitely made me think.
So… this is your homework assignment. If you haven’t seen these movies, you must watch them. See if they affect you the same way they affected me. And ask yourself, what modern movies out there portray government as the villain against the protagonist who wants to be free these days? Is there any film in the last 10 years or so where you feel incensed and angry with authority that steamrolls the individual, or do movies seem to be pushing the glory of the collective?
With the economy still in peril, troops still on the ground in two theaters, and rogue nations developing nuclear weapons, we would think that our federal government would have a lot to occupy their time. Apparently, nothing can be more important than getting involved in matters that should never be discussed by the Legislative or the Executive. The most pressing issue of the day is the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) for college football.
Of course we all hate the BCS. A playoff series would be more fair, and exponentially easier to understand. We shouldn’t have to have a degree in Statistics to understand the ranking system, but is this how senior members of the Senate and the Obama administration need to be spending their time? Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has requested a review by the Justice Department concerning the matter. Apparently he agrees with President Obama that the BCS ranking system is just too much to bear. Obama stated before his inauguration that he disagreed with the system in place for determining a National Champion football team. I believe the direct quote was “Throw my weight around” to nudge the BCS into a playoff system. Now we have the Justice Department reviewing whether an Anti-Trust investigation is needed. Now I suppose we must sit back and wait for the Justice Department to find a law that would invade into college football. Statist intervention at its finest.
On a positive note, when the issue is big enough, Republicans and Democrats can work together in a beautiful demonstration of bi-partisanship to accomplish far reaching goals. Economy, health care reform, and war are just trivial issues that should be politicized, but college football…
JD Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, died yesterday. He was 91. Catcher has been my favorite book since I first read it in the 8th grade, he’s even why I started calling myself JD instead of Jeff. Well hey, maybe they can finally make Catcher into a movie, but if it sucks, I’m gonna kill a Beatle.
Paul Shirley, the former NBA player who still plays pro basketball, penned a long letter today about Haiti and the consequences of its earthquake, in which he seems to hold most Haitians accountable for the dire state of the nation.
He begins the letter by stating that he has not donated to relief efforts in Haiti and “probably will not… for the same reason that I don’t give money to homeless men on the street.” Shirley proceeds to criticize the country and its citizens, before pausing to ask, “Shouldn’t much of the responsibility for the disaster lie with the victims of that disaster?”
Later in the letter, Shirley dedicates a special address specifically to Haitians:
================================================== ==================================================
Dear Haitians -
First of all, kudos on developing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Your commitment to human rights, infrastructure, and birth control should be applauded.
As we prepare to assist you in this difficult time, a polite request: If it’s possible, could you not re-build your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?
Sincerely,
The Rest of the World
(Paul Shirley)
This is totally dickish.
I’m all for not putting all of Haiti on welfare forever, and I’m not personally flying there to volunteer. I haven’t even texted a ten-dollar donation. But passive-aggressively poking fun of them while they’re down (further down than most people will ever be) is a total dick move.
Fortunately, most of them will never see this letter. How many Haitians do you think had radio/TV/internet before the earthquake? And how many of them have it now, after the earthquake?
The per-capita income in Haiti before the earthquake was $790 per year.
If you were born into that, I don’t care how forward-thinking and visionary and smart you are, there isn’t much you could do to improve your personal station, let alone your country’s station.
Especially under an extremely corrupt government where if you made more money the soldiers and police would steal it at gunpoint. (And there is no legal ownership of guns for the citizens of Haiti. And the UN came in and took away most of the illegal ones a few years back.)
And if you made a lot of noise as any kind of activist to try to organize people to make things better, you’d likely disappear from the face of the Earth in the middle of the night.
I don’t think there’s any plausible “blaming the people of Haiti” for their country’s shitty situation, pre- or post-earthquake. At all.
You can make FAR more money than $790 per year in America picking up soda cans on the street and taking them to the recycling center. I used to know people who did that for a living. You can easily make $790 per month in America doing that.
America really is “the healthiest patient in the cancer ward.” I’m grateful I was born here.
So, someone asked me today about “sensible” gun control. I maintain that no such thing exists.
First…
Most people who want to regulate guns don’t know much about them.
This comment on another post on this blog is typical:
I do believe that we do have the right to protect ourselves with a firearm like a shotgun or a rifle. The thing that I’m not convinced on is the need to own assault weapons like an AK-47 or an Uzi.
Here’s the thing: an AK-47 IS a rifle. And a pretty anemic one at that. Any .30 cal deer rifle has MUCH more destructive power. And range. And with a scope, it’s pretty much a sniper rifle that could kill a man at a quarter mile. (And most deer rifles are .30 cal, it’s pretty cruel to hunt deer with anything smaller, you need to kill deer in one shot, or they suffer.) An AK-47 cannot kill effectively at a quarter mile.
Not that any of that is reassuring to anyone who likes gun control, but you will NEVER get guns out of the hands of the millions of deer hunters in America. Never.
Gun control is immoral because all honest, free men have an innate right to self-defense, on a one-to-one level, like a violent mugger, but also on a larger, “opposing tyranny” level.
The Second Amendment has nothing to do with shooting deer. The right to shoot deer was a given in the rural community of early America. If you couldn’t shoot deer, you’d starve.
The Second Amendment has to do with being able to make sure that the government doesn’t get too large. To protect yourself from government. Though even uttering these words today gets you put on a watch list. Fedzilla has grown to the point that it wants to remove the Second Amendment. And they do it slowly, in bits and pieces. Give ‘em an inch and they take a mile.
Because of the Second Amendment, politicians cannot outright ban guns. So they go after them incrementally, and each bit of gun control (or ammo control, lately) legislation is a step toward the unstated goal of the government having all the guns and the people having none. Once that happens, they can cram anything down your throat, and there is nothing you can do about it.
America was founded by guys who were really pissed.
But if you quote the Founding Fathers now, you’re called a terrorist!
–”Liberty in Shards” by Right Arm of Wyoming
Most politicians who want to outlaw guns don’t do so for love of the public safety. They only do it for power: the power of having the government have the only guns, and the power of getting votes. Politicians love votes, and promising to be “tough on guns” (instead of being tough on actual crime, which is harder) usually gets a few votes with the “think of the children!” parrots.
Back to the original reason for the Second Amendment: you don’t have to use your guns to prevent encroaching tyranny, you only have to have them. And maybe be willing to use them if things get bad enough. And have the skill to do so.
By the way, you need rifles to oppose tyranny. No revolutions were ever won with pistols, and tyranny is not opposed with a shotgun.
“Progressive” leftists tend to be into banning guns, because leftists think that they know what’s best for everyone. People on the right have more trust in people. They don’t need to “nanny” everyone.
But most leftist gun grabbers have never held a gun, so why should they be in charge of regulating them? Here’s a typical gun grabbing leftist, trying to explain the random indicators that defined an “assault weapon” under the “assault weapon ban” that she helped create.
Would you trust someone who is that stupid about pharmaceuticals to regulate medicine? (Never mind, that’s what the Democrats are trying to do with health care.)
Note that she also uses the incorrect term “clip” (should be “mag” or “magazine”) Also, “assault weapon” is a made-up, meaningless term. As is the specious indicators that “defined” one under that law. A pistol grip on a rifle never killed anyone, nor does it help anyone kill anyone. There is something called an “assault rifle” (a full-auto, select fire AK-47 would qualify, so do the guns our boys carry in Iraq, but both of those are already illegal for private citizens in America), but gun grabboids’ definition of “assault weapon” often includes many shotguns and hand guns too. Basically, it banned anything that looked like a military weapon, was black, and looked scary. They banned some very underpowered guns, and didn’t ban some very powerful guns, based entirely on cosmetics. Some gun lovers even called the “assault weapons ban” the “scary looking ugly black gun ban.”
Obama’s boy Eric Holder tried to reinstate the “Assault Weapon” ban last year, and said it was to help Mexico in their War on Drugs! Trying to limit our Constitutional rights to help a foreign country is treasonous, in my opinion.
Gun control and gun registration does not prevent crime. There are thousands of gun laws on the books, and not one of them has made anyone safer. They have only made criminals out of law-abiding citizens. Gun control simply disarms citizens. If your daughter were being stalked, would you want her to have to wait ten days to get a gun, when the criminal stalking her likely already has a gun? And while we’re on the subject of waiting periods: if you think they’re a good idea, keep people from buying a gun when they’re enraged, why should there be a waiting periods on your second gun? And your third, fourth, fifth, etc. ?
A lot of places are going after ammo, since they think that’s more Constitutional than going after guns. But limiting the amount of ammo people can get, and requiring paperwork on ammo, will have some dark unintended consequences: criminals breaking into honest follks’ homes to get ammo, and honest folks not being able to practice much. I think people who shoot should practice often, and with a lot of rounds. If someone is having to use a gun in a self-defense situation, the more practice they’ve had, the less likely they are to hit an innocent bystander.
And when asked why I should be able to have a military-pattern semi-auto gun, I say why not? I’m an honest person. Should you be limited to a slow computer with little memory because hackers can work faster on fast computers? I have a military-pattern rifle because who the fuck knows what’s going to come to my door or my neighborhood? If there were an earthquake and people were looting and trying to kill me, en mass, a shotgun and a handgun (which I also have) wouldn’t save me.
Why should my handgun be limited to a ten-round mag? If a criminal (who, by definition, does not respect the law and does not follow it) tries to mug me, starts shooting, why should I have to stop to reload? That could get me killed. (And anyone who says “If ten rounds isn’t enough, you’re not a good shoot” knows nothing about guns or self-defense. Especially when trying to fend off more than one bad guy, and they’re not standing still.)
A common chirp of gun grabboids is “The Founding Fathers didn’t imagine Uzis and AK-47s when they wrote the Second Amendment.” Well, I can guarantee if they did, they would have included that. They had the cutting edge of battle technology at the time.
A good response I’ve heard to “The Founding Fathers didn’t imagine Uzis and AK-47s when they wrote the Second Amendment” is a response about the First Amendment: “I’m willing to only carry a brace of muskets if the New York Times is willing to only publish on hand-run presses and only deliver papers by horseback.”
A lot of people confuse Uzis and AK-47s with machine guns, because both are also available in full-auto (machine gun). Only criminals have those in America. I know people with AK-47s, but they’re legal semi-auto versions.
By the way, I have several semi-auto rifles that are FAR more powerful than an AK-47.
Which brings me to the “Why do you need so many guns?” question. Well, why do you need so many shoes? I have different guns for different things. Plus, I just like guns. I like the history of them (which is why I own a 1943 gun that was actually used to kill actual Nazis), I like the feel of them, the mechanics and the science of them. Why does a stamp collector have so many damn stamps?
My guns in Wyoming don’t effect you in your state. My guns don’t even affect you if you’re my next-door neighbor. Like most gun owners, I’m an honest person. Assault and murder are illegal, and rightfully so. I will not do those things, I wouldn’t do them even if they were legal. So lay off my guns.
Guns hurt far less people than cars and swimming pools. And you don’t need a gun to hurt people. You can kill someone with a rock or a hammer. So keep your immoral desire to control my guns to yourself, and go after actual criminals instead of trying to make me into a criminal.
Look upon this face. This is the face that will steal your liberty every single time. Do you know why? I’ll tell you.
Your freedom is harmful to children, therefore it must be curtailed. The ideal nanny state would reduce us all to this crying child, helpless to do anything without government help or better yet, permission.
About a year and a half ago, Colorado passed a law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in such areas as employment, housing, credit, public accommodations, and so on. While I am opposed to anti-discrimination laws on principle and believe them to be relics, the response from the social conservatives on the right was to try and scare people by saying that their children would be preyed upon by cross-dressers in public bathrooms. Listen to this ad by Focus on the Family. Try not to laugh, because although it is comical and absurd, a lot of people fall for shit like this.
Here’s another spot by the lovely kooks at the National Organization for Marriage, the lovely bunch who brought you the hysterical “Gathering Storm” ads.
Notice how they use children to make parents afraid, scared that they will learn that gay people exist, that they’re even your neighbors and relatives, with the underlying, unstated threat being that acceptance of same-sex marriage will make your kids gay.
Lest you think I am a one-trick pony with this gay issue, look to other nanny-state laws that were put into effect initially to protect children, but were soon extended to all of us. Seat belt laws are a prime example. Used to be that if someone under 12 was in a car they had to be buckled in, but now we all have to wear them regardless. It doesn’t matter that seat belts can kill by trapping someone in a burning car, strangling a motorist or passenger in a wreck, or holding them firmly to a seat that careens into a tree whereas an impact without a seat belt may have knocked them aside, the government is going to force you for your alleged own good to wear a seat belt, and it all started with the grand, noble idea of protecting the children.
Video games are a favorite target of censors who claim that they make children violent, or turn them into lethargic slugs who shun fresh air and grow obese. Yes, it’s the video game, not the lack of parenting, that makes a child stay indoors on beautiful days. It’s Grand Theft Auto that makes a kid steal a car or shoot someone. Has to be, because the parents in these cases are all in utter denial that their special little zygote would do something so terrible. It’s the same kind of denial that allowed Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to stockpile guns and grenades and pipe bombs and pull off the Columbine Massacre. Not my kids, not my fault, must be Marilyn Manson’s fault.
The most damaging instance, however, came following the halftime performance at the 2004 Super Bowl, when Justin Timberlake grabbed Janet Jackson’s blouse and tugged, exposing for a mere half a second, one saggy, flappy brown breast that had a gold star over the nipple. You would have thought that she was masturbating with a crucifix in front of Catholic school kindergartners by the outrage, but in reality it was so fast that few people even saw it. Cameras cut away and Janet quickly covered up her, ah, “wardrobe malfunction”. If I remember correctly, this was tame compared to some of the other performances where raunchy bump and grinds were being performed by Nelly and the suggestive lyrics coming from him and Sean Combs (I have no idea what the fuck he calls himself these days). In the aftermath of this event, the FCC increased their fines for indecency tenfold and began going after broadcasters in television and radio for things that wouldn’t have merited a second listen or look. Howard Stern was chased off of terrestrial radio, and many morning “shock jocks” either lost their gigs or were forced to water down their shows to the point where they weren’t funny or engaging anymore. The panic also had a chill factor on what networks and stations were willing to allow, and many programming decisions were now put in the hands of worrywart lawyers and middle management whose job was to insulate the company from fines and possible lawsuits. The television networks are dying dinosaurs, giant carcasses being strangled by regulation, while cable thrives. Terrestrial radio is a dead medium for all but political talk on the AM waves, satellite radio is ascendant. The internet is blowing them all away, it’s truly the last frontier of free speech.
If you think the government and the FCC don’t want to stick their noses into cable, satellite, and internet, think again. Bet you dollars to donuts the rationale they will use is “protecting the children”, because apparently, being a parent is hard and we need our government to help us out.
Think long and hard before you offer up everyone’s liberty as a sacrifice to protect your children. Those of us who are over 30 grew up with very little of these restrictions and protections and we’re just fine. You’re simply being groomed to accept more and more government intrusion into your everyday life, and they’re getting at you by preying on the fear that parents naturally have for their offspring. Don’t fall for it, whether it comes from a liberal or a conservative, the government does not have your best interests at heart. The leviathan is only after power and can never have enough.
I mean it that way- this election was Martha Coakley’s to lose. She was running for a seat that was held by a Democrat since 1962. She couldn’t have gotten a better chance if the ghost of Ted Kennedy had anointed her himself. Yet, she blew it. Scott Brown did not win as much as Martha Coakley lost, and the reason is because Coakley simply didn’t believe that any Republican could pose a serious challenge to her. Arrogance and pride have been the downfall of many people, and will continue to be so as long as we’re human.
Let me put one thing out there right now- I don’t like Scott Brown. I would not have voted for him if I were a resident of Massachusetts. Scott Brown is a man who posed as a moderate while having the National Organization for Marriage run his anti-gay stealth campaign by placing robocalls urging voters to “defeat “radical” Martha Coakley because of her support of same-sex marriage.” Scott Brown was not happy that same-sex marriage became the law in Massachusetts and voted for a state amendment to ban gays & lesbians from marrying their partners. The damage he can do in the Senate to the pursuit of true LGBT equality is palpable.
However, I tend to take a less fearful look at this, because Scott Brown does not have a full term coming up, he’s got three years. When he runs for re-election he will also be running during a presidential election year. The Democrats will regroup in Massachusetts and put forth a serious candidate- possibly even another Kennedy- in opposition, so Brown shouldn’t feel too comfortable with that prospect. It’s a shame, really, that he has such good positions on other issues that I completely agree with, such as his support for Second Amendment rights, sensible environment policies, and how we treat our veterans , but his support of anti-gay marriage amendments and his hobnobbing with the NOM is something I find personally offensive. This isn’t politics to me, Scott, this is my life, and my relationship that you’re saying should be held up and judged by mob rule. Martha Coakley, meanwhile, is fighting as the Massachusetts state attorney general against the Defense of Marriage Act that forbids the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages that are legitimate in any given state. You know, the case that the Obama administration is vigorously defending against even though it doesn’t really have to, but I digress.
The one thing I will say is that Scott Brown does know what the Obama healthcare plan will do to the country, because it’s very similar to the plan that Scott Brown voted for in 2006 while he was a Massachusetts state senator. Brown claims that the two programs are completely different, but both plans have at their core a giant giveaway to private insurance companies. Both plans force people without insurance to purchase it and penalize those who the government deems “able” to afford it with fines and higher taxes. To me, Brown’s semantics fall flat. He voted for the bill in Massachusetts because he’s a party-line guy. Regardless, he is right that Obama’s plan is a bad one, but I have the feeling that if McCain had been elected and he was pushing the same thing, we’d see a different song coming from Scott Brown.
I’ll also give the guy credit for running a campaign. Clearly he is a hard worker who was effective in communicating with voters and getting his message out. If you read his website he actually sounds reasonable. He wouldn’t be a bad candidate if he wasn’t such a homophobe and hypocrite, and he certainly looks better naked than Martha Coakley.
OMFG I know you’re not being sarcastic to me. I don’t know who you think you are or where you’re from but around here we don’t tolerate bullshit like that. If this were on the streets where I’m from, you’d get a cap in your ass, son!
I used to be a nigga on the street tryin’ to kick a beat and now I’ve got a great job as a manager, despite rednecks like yo self trying to keep me down.
We need hate crime laws, but no one needs a god damn bumpkin band putting out anti Obama music.
Peace out.
It was a response to this video:
I don’t know where the guy lives, but I’ll bet he’s posting from his mother’s paneled rec room.
While getting my daily dose of latest rehash of no new news from Haiti, I was turned onto a blog that directly blamed Bush for the fact that Haiti is a corrupt, chaotic country. It was enough to make my head want to explode. The argument presented was that Bush was busy “building democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article was critical of this aspect of the Bush Administration foreign policy, but in the next paragraph blames the same administration for not taking action in Haiti. WTF???
What I really took from the entire article is that the earthquake is being used as a excuse to point to Haiti and, once again blame Bush. Perhaps Bush should have been busy in the Caribbean rather than the Middle East. Instead of war in Iraq, he should have been toppling dictators on third world islands?? I hardly see how that line of logic works.
Let’s see…
Haiti sucks… blame Bush.
Haiti is in chaos after a HUGE natural disaster… sure, we can blame Bush. I’m certain that if Bush had gotten involved in the local politics of Haiti, then the country would have been immune from the effects of earthquakes.
It gives me comfort to know that if we are all killed by a giant meteor or cosmic radiation or nuclear holocaust, at least we have someone to blame for our mess.
Here we go again with the fake apologies and half-truths. Can’t we get through one year without some blubbering ex-jock wiping away crocodile tears saying that using steroids was the biggest mistake they ever made? Can’t we dispense with the fake apologies and the covering up for your coaches and team managers who knew all along that you were burying testosterone-filled needles into your backside? Stop it already.
Just once, I would love to see one of these guys say, “Yes, I used steroids under the supervision of a doctor and it yielded me the greatest results of my career and the best physical condition of my life”. Wouldn’t that shut up some of these self-righteous jerkoffs who are so quick to point a finger at these guys and call them “cheaters” and “bad role models”? I want someone who is completely unapologetic about it to come out, so to say, and admit that they used steroids, and would use them again if they had to do it all over. But no, we’re not that lucky, because we live in a spineless culture of constant fucking apology.
Look, I get that steroids are illegal, but this is a libertarian site and I think I am safe to say that nobody here supports the continued criminalization of steroids. The fact that this nanny-state law needs to be abolished is not in dispute, it absolutely needs to go. Don’t give me the excuse that steroids shouldn’t be in professional sports because they’re illegal. Ask yourself why they are illegal and do a little research. You will find that, as with all controlled substances, the reasons for their illegality have little to do with the reasons you’re told by the government. In the case of steroids, the law exists not to protect people’s health, but to protect sports on all levels from becoming unbalanced by athletes who use steroids. The question is, should it be a proper function of government to protect the integrity of sporting events? I think not.
The illegality of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs allows the leagues to wash their hands of the responsibility of enacting and enforcing strict policies. Major League Baseball, for example, has always had a no-steroid policy, but it was vague, outdated, and rarely enforced. As a result, many athletes in the 1990’s and earlier part of the 2000’s took lots of performance enhancers. Coincidentally, or so it would appear, MLB enjoyed a resurgence in the late 90’s after a debilitating player’s strike a couple years earlier. People had stopped watching baseball because they couldn’t relate to a bunch of crybabies whining about only being paid a million or two a year. Then comes Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s epic contest to break Roger Maris’ home run record. People began to care about baseball again thanks to these two cheating steakheads hopped up on roids blasting balls out of the park. Then came Barry Bonds and his Jack-O-Lantern head, and the same thing happened again. People may have been saying things about how he gained 100 pounds of muscle, but they still cheered when he sent them over the fence. MLB did nothing to these players until well after they had reaped the benefits of their illegal and supposedly against-the-league-rules doping, and even then the response to their transgressions from the league was tepid at best.
Enter the federal government. See, this is the kind of shit we don’t need. Our congressmen grilling baseball players and league officials at hearings is such a complete and utter waste of time and resources. I guess if you’re a politician it makes you look like you care about the chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren by beating up on these horrible role models. After all, who would defend steroids or people who use them? Certainly not the leagues who allegedly ban them and apparently not the people boo-hooing about having used them while it made them wealthy beyond measure and put their names in the record books. There is just so much dishonesty regarding this, and I find that to be more repugnant than using steroids in the first place.
Steroids should absolutely be legal, and it should be up to the sporting leagues to decide whether or not they will allow their athletes to use them. The government stepping in and making them illegal only exacerbates the problem by allowing the leagues to be more lenient. Put responsibility where it belongs. I personally don’t care if someone else chooses to use steroids, it doesn’t harm me or make one iota of difference in my life whatsoever. And if you’re one of these people who thinks that pro athletes should be role models for children, do me a favor and don’t have kids until you realize that YOU are the most prominent role model for them, not some overpaid jock who plays what is essentially a meaningless game for the entertainment of the distracted and fucked-over masses.
Go ahead and hate me. You have plenty of reasons why, but I will give you one that will probably fill my e-mail box with letters of frothing hatred and disgust from many of you.
I voted for Barack Obama.
Stunned? Shocked? Go ahead, I was too. I didn’t plan on doing so. Up until about 6 weeks before the election, I was undecided and probably looking towards not voting because I really couldn’t stomach either major candidate and Bob Barr… well, come on, it’s Bob Barr, and we all know that the LP doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell on the national stage because we don’t even have the patience or gumption to win smaller offices first. But that’s a topic for another post. I want to say that I voted for Barack Obama not because I believed in his “hope and change” platform, but because I believed that the Republican Party abandoned their principles, abandoned anything close to libertarianism a long time ago, and it no longer deserves my vote or support. I am not going to vote for the lesser of two evils, I will vote for the most evil until the alternative runs something GOOD. Don’t you get it? Voting for John McCain and Sarah Palin would have been like rearranging the deck lounges on the Titanic. I didn’t, and still do not believe, that there’s that much of a difference anyway, and that is evidenced by Obama’s constant caving to the center.
I laugh at the people who thought that Barack Obama was going to sweep into office and change the face of this country overnight. Truth is, he’s not. As president he is constrained, because his actions and what he chooses to do can affect whether or not Democrats maintain the Congress at the end of this year. That’s why he isn’t spending any political capital to make many of the changes that he promised during his campaign. Notice the conflicting messages all over the place- Nancy Pelosi says we’re at war against private health insurers, while the Obama plan creates a giant giveaway to private insurers backed by government gunpoint. Obama says he’s going to end the war and bring the troops home, and then we see him sending more to Afghanistan using a McCain-endorsed surge strategy. Michael’s right in his analysis that liberals are becoming disillusioned with Obama. I wonder when conservatives will be likewise.
When are we going to stop pointing the finger at Barack Obama and start pointing it at the people who betrayed the principles of limited government that they once stood for? It’s easy to look at Obama as the next Mao, Stalin, Castro, but Barack Obama never denied he was a liberal. He embraced it and for a while, even reclaimed it, until he became skittish about delivering on his ‘change’ and settled for ‘compromise’ instead. And yet, he was recently blamed for everything under the sun just a few posts down from this one. The truth, however, is a lot more complex and alarming, and that is that statism and tyranny knows no party affiliation. This country ceased being truly free decades ago, and will become less free as the years go by, as we are constantly on a war footing, and as our decisions are motivated not by principle but by fear. As long as we believe that something is out to get us and our children, we will flock to politicians and throw our liberty at their feet and demand that they save us from the bogeymen- sorry, bogeypersons.
So, I did vote for Obama, in part because I believe that a country gets the government it deserves, and also because I am not afraid of him or his policies. If they’re good policies then they will work and people will be happy, if they’re lousy policies then they will fail and someone else will come in and the process repeats. All of this talk about Obama becoming some kind of mega-dictator and having megalomaniacal aspirations is just paranoia and lunacy. It’s the same thing many on the far left said about President Bush, that he would find a way to stay in office past his two terms and suspend the Bill of Rights. Fuck people, they don’t have to suspend the Bill of Rights when most of us would be willing to give it away for the illusion of safety and security.
I also voted for Obama in hopes that maybe, just maybe, Republicans will think long and hard before saddling us with someone like the Alaskan Quitbull. We don’t need any more imperialist neo-cons drunk on Jesus appealing to the stupidest and most short-sighted among us. We need principled, liberty-minded conservatives who believe in protecting individual rights, who believe in not handing over the reins of power to unaccountable giant corporations who are selling out the American people to pelase their stockholders. We need people who believe that IF WE CAN’T AFFORD IT THEN WE JUST HAVE TO DO WITHOUT. There were no tea parties when Bush was spending hand over fist (I called for them but nobody listened), no protest at the fact that he waited until 2006 to veto his first bill which was a pointless fucking ban on embryonic stem cell research funding. Yes, his first veto wasn’t a bloated omnibus bill or Ted Kennedy’s medicare expansion, no, it was a piece of red meat to the lunatic Christian Right who thinks that frozen zygotes that will just be discarded are PEOPLE. The wars we’re fighting now in Iraq and Afghanistan are being funded by borrowed money, our nations’ credit rating is in the crapper, and it’s all because George W. Bush thought we could fight two wars without any kind of sacrifice on the part of the citizens. Let our soldiers fight and die, and keep the rest of us distracted, fat, and stupid. How dare anyone suggest I vote for a Republican when this is the best they have to offer.
Barack Obama has done lots of things worthy of criticism, of that there is no doubt. But I ask, what good is voting for a Republican if he’s simply going to take the gun from Obama, smile, pat him on the shoulder, and point it at us all over again?
When I work out, I almost reach a state of Zen. I am thinking about the exercises I am doing, but also about a hundred other things that fly through my mind simultaneously. Most often, though, I think of the discipline that weightlifting requires, and how the weight will accept no excuses and give you no ‘A’ for effort. You will either lift the weight or not. The bar is not going to help lift itself because you, the lifter, did not put in the training and work necessary to build the strength to lift it.
I admit, in my younger days, I was no fan of athletics or organized team sports. They have a way of separating you out really quick as a kid. If you show no natural prowess as an athlete, no attempt is really made to try and spark that interest. I can remember my parents trying to push me into sports for a while because they felt that it would be good for character development. First it was soccer, and this is a sport I loathe to this day. While I can respect the athleticism it takes to play soccer, I was simply uninterested in it. Yet my parents kept me on that team for a whole agonizing season. We won only one out of twelve games and I consider it a complete waste of my time.
The next sport my parents tried to get me into was baseball. I tried out for a little league team and would have probably made it, as I was good with a bat, but something else came along that I fell in love with- karate. I was maybe 10 years old and I was a natural. I became a quick study and advanced several belts in that first year. Consider that I was this small, weakish kid who was mercilessly picked on by bullies, especially jocks who thought I brought down their “team” in gym class, and you can understand why I took to martial arts so quickly. Unfortunately for me, I sabotaged that by misusing my skills. An older boy in my neighborhood was standing on my porch telling my parents that I had shot him with a pea shooter, and my response was to deliver a flying side kick right to his ribs that knocked him clean off the porch and into the courtyard. After that, no more karate lessons, but now that I remember that incident, I can recall the expression on Roger Gray’s face as he looked up at me from the sidewalk. I haven’t seen such a surprised look since.
After that, sports and athletics took a back seat for a long time. I wanted to wrestle in high school, but I was disappointed when I showed up at the first practice and saw that there was no ring. I’m not even joking about that. I was a huge WWF fan in the late 80’s and I thought I’d be putting the figure four on some fool from across the river in no time. When I was 27 I actually went to a wrestling school where they teach you to bump and fall properly, call spots, and execute horrific looking moves without crippling each other too much, but after two days, my body hurt in spots I didn’t even know existed.
I didn’t start lifting weights until I was 30 years old. I actually met an ex-WWF wrestler named Jim the Messenger (that was his stage name, but everyone just called him Big Jim). I delivered a pizza to this mountain of a man, who stood 6′ 5″ tall and was a solid 330 pounds. As usual, my big fucking mouth got me into a situation I couldn’t back out of. I asked him if he still lifted, and he said ‘yes’. I then made an empty boast about how I “used” to lift and I want to get back into it, but, you know-
“Cool! Meet me here Monday at 8 AM, I’ll take you to the gym.”
Oh no. Oh, no no no. I had just gone and done it. I mean, I had written that check with my mouth that my body was about to cash in a very painful way. I could have backed out, or done a no-show, but something in me just said, just do it and see if you like it. May not be all that bad. So, on a chilly March morning, I started something that I haven’t really stopped doing since. There was a point in that first workout where I could have quit. Halfway in, I made a dash for the bathroom and prompty threw my breakfast up into the toilet. I sat on that cold floor with the smell and sting of stomach acid in my nostrils and tendrils of vomit streaking down my chin, and I thought to myself, I could walk away now. I could say I tried, and I didn’t like it. And then, something in me just completely snapped.
Yeah, the other side said, you could quit, like you’ve been doing your whole life. Running away from any challenge you couldn’t easily overcome. You can get by on your smarts and your size but you will never have any real sense of accomplishment because you never stick out the difficult battles. So you’re going to just pack it in like a coward, or are you going to go back out there and finish your fucking workout?
He- I mean, I- was right. I do tend to take the path of least resistance. I do tend to lack discipline. So, I picked myself up, washed myself off, and went back out. Big Jim asked me if I wanted to stop, and I said, no, let’s finish. And so we did, and for almost a year we trained together three times a week. I lost 55 pounds of fat and fell in love with strength training. I went on to compete in amateur strongman contests and train alongside pro strongmen and hardcore powerlifters. I became a certified personal trainer. I then crossed over into Olympic-style weightlifting which is the discipline which I focus mostly on today. And so, the circle is complete, and you’re asking me:
What the FUCK does this have to do with being Libertarian, punk, or both?
It comes down to pulling your own weight in this world, whether it’s on a platform in the gym, or in real life. It’s about achievement and pride, about being able to respect the person in the mirror. It’s about self-reliance and discipline, doing what you have to do even if you don’t like it because the reward at the end is worth it. You can’t get these feelings if you’re mooching off of someone else, living on the alms of others or on the money confiscated by the government from people who do contribute, who do pull their own weight and then some. If you’re not striving for something, then you’re not really living. As far as punk goes, I think it’s time that punx and jocks knocked off the enmity, there’s a lot we can learn from each other, and being a little bit of both, I should know.
A shooting at a federal building this morning has left a court security officer dead and another seriously wounded while the gunman himself was killed. I would like to start by saying that my thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the slain officer and to the officer who will now begin recovery from this horrific event.
The left wing blogoshere is starting to come alive with gun grabbers claiming it must have been a “Teabagger” or an “NRA Weenie.” No information has been released about the gunman, but there are already calls for banning guns. A human tragedy turned into political capital within 8 hours. It sickens me that there are those that would start making political hay so soon after a tragic event. I’m certain I will have plenty of comments on the matter once I have enough information to come up with a logical opinion. I wish I could say the same for my political opponents. Baseless accusation seems to be the order of the day. How can one logically pass judgement with no information?
Going to keep it short today. I just found out that a friend of mine had passed away. His name was Reggie Barton, and he lived in Idaho. For one year, he lived in Pennsylvania with his wife, where he was a strength coach at Temple University, and then at Viillanova University, and during that time he was a regular at Iron Sport Gym, where I was training at the time. I learned a lot by training with him, and there were several times where it was his coaching that helped me break through to new levels. I watched him clean and press a 409-lb log twice in one workout, and this was before 400+ pound log presses were common. He was monstrously strong and he had a good heart to go with it. He moved back to Idaho and I never saw him again, though he would send me the occasional text message. Last I had heard he was working in law enforcement until this morning, when my friend who owns Iron Sport sent me that text message.
He was only 29 years old.
So… I don’t know. I don’t want to be cliche, but remember that nobody knows when your number is up, so please, don’t get so involved in all of these battles that you forget to live your life. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be around tomorrow. Whatever you do, do it with a smile, and for fuck’s sake if you don’t like doing something, then don’t waste your time doing it.
That’s right, I said it. It’s the truth. I deliver pizza. Not part time, either. This is my full-time job that pays my bills, and I am proud of it.
I’m not saying it’s the best job, or that there’s loads of opportunity for advancement, but it’s a job that I don’t wake up and dread going to. It’s a job I don’t hate. I’m not inside with a boss breathing down my neck all the time, and I can listen to my Sirius radio while I am on the road. I also make enough money to support my modest lifestyle, and I never have a problem getting a night off to play a gig. It’s good, honest work for good, honest pay.
But you know, it gets to be tiring when you go back home to family functions, or worse- a school reunion, and people ask you what you are doing. I don’t feel bad about telling them, I just don’t need the aggravation of having to defend my occupation, and I don’t want to deal with pontificating sermons about how I should be doing something else with my life. Excuse me, it’s MY life. Knock off the condescending attitude.
I am proud because I work for a living and I am not asking anyone else- mom, dad, or the government- to float me while I “find myself”. I think it’s funny that most people consider the job I do beneath them, when I know that most people who attempt to deliver food even part time fail at it. It’s not an “easy” job. I’m not going to go through the laundry list because the point of this post is not to vent about my job, but if you want to know what the job is really like and what we endure, hop on over to the TipThePizzaGuy.com site. Read some of the delivery stories, look at what some of the pitfalls of this job is, and check out the forums.
The point is, I work for a living. I don’t see how someone who is of sound mind and able body can just sit back and demand that those like me provide them, through our taxes, such things as food, housing, and subsidized utilities. It infuriates me beyond reason when I deliver to these houses, and they have expensive appliances and furniture, and they’re trying to pay for their food with a welfare card. It aggravates me even more when I see giant corporations looting the United States Treasury for bailout money, only to turn and give millions to executives for bonuses they should not have earned. I mean, how does one get a bonus if the company fails?
Most people would agree that some taxation is necessary, but I don’t see how anyone can look at the tax burden we have now and say that it’s justified. That’s what you get, though, when you allow the government to write blank checks drawn on all of our bank accounts and those of our children and grandchildren. That’s what we got when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was rammed through, giving Congress the power to tax income. Originally it was only for the very ultra-wealthy, and now it’s a cattle prod that steals from us all, that redistributes our hard-earned money into the pockets of those who did nothing to earn it. I don’t care if you’re Octo-Mom with 14 kids on welfare or the CEO of AIG, you don’t deserve one red cent of anyone else’s money.
On December 25th, a 23-year-old Nigerian attempted to detonate an explosive that was sewn into his underwear on NWA Flight 253. The only thing that saved the 278 passengers aboard is the fact that the explosive mixture was not detonated completely. To make matters even worse, the would-be bomber was known to our Intelligence community. It looks to me like the systems put in place to prevent terrorist attacks did not work. Unfortunately, the person in charge of Homeland Security thought otherwise. Janet Napolitano stated on CNN that “the system worked” as evidenced by the fact that the bomb was not detonated. Is it the official position of the DHS that allowing bombs carried by known extremists onto our planes is a working system for security? Are we to rely on the incompetence of the bomb makers to keep our airliners safe?
Maybe Napolitano should reevaluate what her job title is and quit expending resources on demonizing peaceful gatherings of political dissenters within the United States. We have had a major failure in Homeland Security, and if that does not reflect poorly on those running this department, I can’t imagine what would. It sounds like Napolitano has her priorities mixed up, and that is not something we can afford. Perhaps this position should be filled with someone who understands that threats to security mainly lie with extremists that are willing to die to cause us harm, rather than families gathering in town squares to voice peaceful opposition to legislation.
Last Sunday, I was working around 3 PM, delivering food, when a bolt of inspiration struck me. I heard a melody in my head and I couldn’t get it out, but I knew if I didn’t do something I’d forget it eventually. I’ve lost so many ideas that way. So, I wrote down the first half of the first verse of what would become a new song in less than 24 hours’ time.
Look upon this face. This is the face that will steal your liberty every single time. Do you know why? I’ll tell you.
I mean it that way- this election was Martha Coakley’s to lose. She was running for a seat that was held by a Democrat since 1962. She couldn’t have gotten a better chance if the ghost of Ted Kennedy had anointed her himself. Yet, she blew it. Scott Brown did not win as much as Martha Coakley lost, and the reason is because Coakley simply didn’t believe that any Republican could pose a serious challenge to her. Arrogance and pride have been the downfall of many people, and will continue to be so as long as we’re human. 
Subscribe!