But I can’t seem to get excited about being Conservative right now. Instead of scrutinizing every article that crossed my screen, I have been just flashing right by them. I don’t know if my depression is coming back, I’m approaching a burnout stage, or a combination of both. Even Warhammer has lost some of its appeal. Or that could be that I’ve really caught the Epic bug, I don’t know.
Even writing this post is causing a lot of consternation within me, as I know what I want to say, but getting it out is like pulling taffy.
You are not going to see me stop, just slow down and a change of focus for a while. I’ve got to take care of me and find a way to wind myself back up again.

Thankfully, somebody changed their mind. Co. Pulls Out of Deal to Track Students.
As I have always said, you start with the children. If you can get the children to accept something, a new language, a surrendering of freedom, etc., then as they grow into adults they don’t even miss what was taken away from them. And you can do more with the next generation.
What really appalls me is the parents supported this measure. While the school touted this would cut down on vandalism, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, whenever a character was about to do something against orders, the first thing they did was take off their comm badge that tracked them wherever they went. Kids are at least as smart. Or you’ll have one kid “borrow” another kids badge to do the dirty work.
This is a bad idea and should not be implemented.

I don’t read the blogs on my blogroll as often as I should. I just got a refer from LG’s blog, and followed it back to see if she had written about me.
Well, lo and behold, Libertarian Girl is actually a guy. Outed by Catallarchy, it seems that the downfall was his use of a Russian Brides picture. What someone was doing there I have no idea, but the cat is out of the bag.
I shall continue to link to the “Libertarian Man of Mystery,” as I was more impressed with the politics than the face. Read the applicable posts before he deletes them and puts up another female picture.

Fount at Slashdot: Straczynski Offers To Re-Boot Star Trek.
It seems that J. Michael Straczynski, creator and primary writer for Babylon 5, has written a series bible for a new version of Star Trek. Now all that needs to happen is Nick Berg to get out of the way and let a master do his work. If it gets pulled off, this one will be great, possibly even better than ST:DS9, considered to be the best of the universe. Write Paramount and ask them to make this happen.

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! It seems that one of my hobbies has been officially noticed by the New York Times. Painted Armies, Tabletop Battles.
There are actually two “flavors” of Warhammer, Fantasy and 40K. Talking about Hive Tyrants and stuff, I believe the author was at a 40K event.
I am pleased. A positive piece, portraying us as normal people with just another interesting hobby. Which, we more or less are. Read it, it will give you an insight into the hobby and your host here at The Zone.

This breaks very close to my heart. As someone who has been suicidal, I’m a lot better now and I’m glad for it.
But Clint Eastwood and his Million Dollar Baby has forever changed my opinion of the man. And not for the better. ‘Million Dollar Baby’ Is a Neo-Nazi Movie. I don’t go to movies anymore, so I had to look the plot up on The Movie Spoiler and find out what was going on.
As one who has been there, done that and got the t-shirt, suicide is a serious matter. Most people try suicide when they are so crushed by circumstances that they can’t think of any other way out. They don’t see other avenues open to them, and think ending themselves will end the pain. It might end theirs, but it will never end the pain of those around the person. One of the few things holding me back from pulling the trigger, jumping off the chair, taking the last pill, et. al., was the image of my son and what would become of him without me. That’s what kept me alive. And now I’m glad I didn’t carry my suicides out.
This movie, glorifying assisted suicide, suicide of the physically handicapped, whatever, brings a desensitization of the subject to the general public. The next step after that is acceptance, which is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany. We don’t want that happening here and movies like this are dropping it on our doorstep. We will soon start to see other movies like this, followed by more Dr. Kevorkians.
And that is not who we are. We are a people of life, who hang on just that one minute longer, because that is how heroes are made. We don’t put people to sleep like pets.
Never let it happen here.

In a related story, it had to happen. A participant in a reality show has committed suicide. NBC Reality Show Contestant Kills Himself.
This shows the dark underpinnings of these reality shows that bring peoples lives into our own living rooms, every agonizing second as they come so close to winning, only to fall off at the last second. These shows are disgusting in my opinion. I have watched a few reality shows, like The Next Action Hero, where the winners got to star in a cheesy third-rate “action” movie. I couldn’t watch the movie more than half-way before turning it off, it was so bad. The other was Last Comic Standing. In both cases, you were always treated to the faces of people when they weren’t the ones called to move on to the next level.
The crushing disgrace on the losers faces must excite a lot of people, because that is the money shot for these reality shows. I don’t plan on watching any more of them.
This suicide only punctuates this feeling of hopelessness these contestants feel. As one who has had the muzzle of a gun in my mouth on several occasions, I know what it feels like and I hope you never have to feel the same way.
I don’t plan on watching another “reality” show.

I found this feedback in my entry about National ID Cards:

I can’t wait to have my implants so I don’t have to use cash or credit or ID anymore. If I can design and understand the electronics and RFID technology, how exactly, would some “beast” be involved? Your fear of technology is unfortunate and it’s philosophically unsound. Just like taking other “bible scripture” literally.

I am going to do my best not to sound like Pat Robertson, et.al., because I am not. While I haven’t been to church in years, I still consider myself an evangelical Christian. That means I consider every word in the Bible to be direct from God.
I could go off on an Evangelical digression, but I won’t. Let me just say that the “Beast” I refer to is Satan himself, and leave it at that. You put the mark of the Beast on your hand as described in Revelations 13:16-17 and your soul will be damned forever. If you believe in that kind of stuff. I could even go into how “666″ is already part of the UPC coding, but I won’t.
But let’s get to the practical side of the matter. Watching assignment:Enemy of the State, starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman. Why this movie? Because it details what the government can do right now technology wise as far as watching you.
Why would the government want to insert such an anal probe into your life? Good question. The answer is, “Why not?” When you surrender your privacy to them (and you will when you implant that chip) then it will matter a great deal.
When the technology is in place to scan you every time you enter or leave a store, every time you buy something with a credit card, you create a record of everything about that transaction. Right now the data is diversified throughout several databases and it would take some “data mining” to get all of the associated information about that transaction.
Now, if all that data were gathered together (and it will be sooner than you think) then the authorities could look at you whenever they wanted. Big deal, you have nothing to hide. But let’s say for the sake of discussion that you set off a “red flag.” That being a specific activity that is being monitored. Let’s say you have a bad sinus problem and you buy some Sudafed. You lose the box, buy another, lose that one and buy a third, all in a weeks time. That could be a red flag to the authorities that you might be making Meth. You aren’t, but appearances can be deceiving. All of a sudden a warning flag is put on your credit card. Oops, you lost another pack of Sudafed so you buy a fourth box. This is getting expensive in more ways than one. You make a cell phone call home, but you dial a wrong number instead. You’ve accidently called a drug dealer. And even though you hang up after just a few seconds, you set off another red flag.
Now you are flagged in the police system as a “person of interest.” A police officer pulls up behind you at a stop light. As a matter of routine he runs the tag of whomever is in front of him (I’ve been in patrol cars and have seen them do this) and gets the flag. He follows you and waits for you to make a traffic infraction (and believe me, you make them all the time, just driving down the street) so he has probable cause to pull you over. He searches your car, because of the flag. He finds that half-empty Rum bottle that you threw in the car after that party last week but never brought in the house. Or maybe that bag of meth your kids friend bought and left in the car. Now you’re in for it.
The two red flags and the bag of meth have now built a circumstantial case of manufacturing drugs against you. Now you’re looking at 10 years because you can’t keep track of things and don’t have home on a speed dial.
Do you see where I’m going? With extensive data mining and coordinated databases, with technology that can track you wherever you go, any activity, no matter how innocent, can have drastic consequences on the rest of your life.
With that amount of monitoring going on in your life, are you truly free? Or does your “freedom” exist at the disinterest of the government? You would be just one red flag away from a living hell.
I am not afraid of the technology, I am afraid of what people in authority will do with it. Tagging your pets with an RFID chip in case they get stolen is not that far of a leap to tagging your children. In fact, if you care about your pets that much, why not your children? But then you surrender their ability to go when and where they want without monitoring. Their freedom dies without a whimper of complaint.
We are supposed to be living in a society of maximum freedom, where the restrictions are placed on the government. People with RFID chips implanted in them only have the illusion of freedom, because that freedom exists only while the government allows it. That’s not how it should be.
I weep for you Scott, not just for your soul, but for your freedom as well. You freely give up both without a fight.

Ward Churchill, the infamous professor who called the people who worked at the WTC “Little Eichmanns” and the terrorist killers “brave Combat Teams” has really stepped in it. He’s accused of [gasp!] plagiarism. Is 9-11 prof a plagiarist?
It seems that at least some of his writings are “almost identical” to other works, including his ex-wife.
Wow. This tells you something about the academic world. You can bash America (nay, that is expected), you can lie about your heritage or qualifications (he claims to be, but is not Native American), but stealing words from your fellow intellectuals, this cannot be permitted! That, in and of itself, is a crime against everything they stand for!
Feh.

Neal Boortz had a rather interesting run in with the TSA the other day. I’ll let him explain it:

I don’t want to identify the airport … but here’s my latest TSA adventure. It happened over the weekend. As I approached the screening machine I was wearing a colored t-shirt (t-shirt of color, if you will) with an unbuttoned long sleeve sports shirt. The lady shoving the luggage into the machine told me I had to remove my jacket.
“It isn’t a jacket. It’s my shirt.”
“Well you have something on under it.”
“That’s my undershirt.”
“Well, you’re wearing it like a jacket, so you’ll have to take it off.”
“What if I just button it?”
“That would be OK”.
So .. I buttoned it up and went on through …. wondering just where they get some of these people, During that flight I couldn’t help but think that my safety was dependent on a woman who couldn’t tell a sports shirt from a jacket and who thought that by somehow buttoning it up all threats were removed.

It really makes you wonder, eh?

I’ve been jumping up and down about this Social Security privatization business, and I have been telling you about the stock market returns. Well, here it is from an expert. The Least of Our Worries.
From a guy who wrote mutual fund copy, comes a wonderful analysis of the rate of return on the stock market.

Figure 1-1 of Stocks for the Long Run (p. 6) tells the bald story. A “total return index” (meaning all returns reinvested, not spent) for U.S. stocks, starting at $1, ends in the early 1990s at $3.05 million. A dollar invested in corporate bonds grows to $6,620; a T-bill investment to $2,934. A dollar in gold would have increased to $13.40, while the Consumer Price Index rose to $11.80. Factor in that CPI rise and the stocks are worth $260,000, post-inflation. Still.

That’s one dollar invested in the beginning of the stock market, in the equivalent of a good growth stock mutual fund.
Any prudent investor is always tuned to the risk in stocks, but when the risk is diversified among 200 stocks, the risk becomes very low. If you’re concerned about investing your retirement in the stock market rather than the governments Ponzi scheme, just remember, if the stock market tanks, the government will be in trouble of it’s own supporting those on Social Security with a big reduction of tax revenues due to all of those companies going out of business.
You would be stupid not to invest your retirement in a good mutual fund with a 10+ year track record. $1,200 a year from 20 to 65 will net you several million dollars, way more than you are going to get from Social Security. It’s too late for me, I would have to get a job today and invest about $12,000 a year to catch up, and I do not have that ability on disability. I’m going to retire eating dog food, simply because I have no other choice. My disability has destroyed any chance for me to catch up. Don’t let it happen to you.

This entry contains two related stories, House approves electronic ID cards and Objections Against Verifiable ID Cards Now Moot.
I’ve spoken on data mining before, but just to recap, you are in so many databases and tracked so many ways it is scary. Visa can tell you where you like to shop, buy gas, eat out, any time you use that card, an entry is made under your name. Couple that with the barcoded receipt you now get at Wal-Mart, Target, et. al., we can see just want you purchased. We can determine if you like the big labels or just store brands. The “Shopping discount card” is even worse. And so on, and so on, and so on.
So the people in favor of a national ID card (or its defacto counterpart, state ID done to a federal standard) say, “You are already tracked out the wazoo, why not just a little bit more?” But there is a difference between being tracked by private companies and the Federal Government. Your data is spread across many databases, hard to see completely. A National ID card would consolidate this data into just a couple of Federal databases, where it can easily be seen.
And of course, submitting yourself to this increased scrutiny gives you “benefits” like less time at the security check line at the airport.
I am not sure, but I believe we are very close to, if not already, at the point of wearing the Mark of the Beast. The law of the land says we must carry ID with us at all times, and that the ID hold up to a particular standard. We already have the scanable rice-sized data chip which can be implanted anywhere in your body.
We may yet find ourselves in the Age of the Beast without the rapture.

Oh, boy. The last two days have been something. I started coming down with symptoms right after finishing my posting, and it’s been down hill ever since. I won’t go into details, but it’s not pretty.
This is the first time in like 5 years that I’ve come down with something like this, and it sucks big time. I’m going to finish my hot tea and take it easy and hope I feel better by tonight. I’ve got a 40K meeting to go to and I don’t want to miss that.

Ward Churchill remains in the news. 9/11 Prof Tells Crowd: ‘I’m Not Backing Up’.
While I want this man to lose his position, I don’t want him to shut up. I want him to keep spouting his idiot nonsense so America can see just how nutty the Left is. And by identifying those who agree with him, we can determine just who they are. These people must be encountered and reasoned with.
It is most likely that a large portion of this guys “supporters” are along for the ride simply because they take what is on the MSM as gospel and do nothing on their own to check out the facts.
I was told once that a conclusion is merely the point where you got tired of thinking. These people didn’t even get to the first turn of the track they are on. The should be shown the full facts, not just what the MSM or the Left wants us to see. We must save those who can be saved.
It should be clear that Mr. Churchill is an anti-Capitalist, pro-Socialist, pro-Terrorist kind of guy. He wants more 9/11′s to happen, as many as possible. I’d sure he would do a little jig if one or several cities were to disappear under mushroom clouds, provided his wasn’t one of them, of course. I’ll even bet he’s rooting for the Terrorists to win on 24.
This kind of person is a threat to our society. He gives aid and comfort to our enemies in a time of war. He spreads the idea that it is the US who is the bad guy, while Saddam was misunderstood.
He should be isolated, ridiculed and harassed, but never shut up. We need him to lead us to the roaches den so we can get them all.

I missed Ronald Reagans birthday on Sunday, but now I’m glad I did. Today they unveiled a stamp to commemorate ‘The Great Communicator.’