I found this article, Man says he's addicted to cable; wants to sue Charter

Cable TV made a West Bend man addicted to TV, caused his wife to be overweight and his kids to be lazy, he says.

And he's threatening to sue the cable company.

Timothy Dumouchel of West Bend wants $5,000 or three computers, and a lifetime supply of free Internet service from Charter Communications to settle what he says will be a small claims suit.The laughable thing about it is he wants to trade one sedimentary activity (TV) for another (Computers).

Actually, he's trying to pull a fast one, like the lady in Ohio who claims she lost the winning lottery ticket and it belongs to her instead of the lady who actually has the ticket.

The disgusting thing is that these people actually believe that they can get away with it. Usually they get tossed out of court on their ear and a bill for court costs in their pocket. The bad news is there are just enough times where they get a piece of the action to keep them filing.

I personally hope Mr. Dumouchel gets a bill for the four years he admits he stole cable. That's about $2,700 worth.

Can you tell who is the Liberal and who is the Conservative in this comic?

Here is an affront to everybody, no matter what your persuasion. The S factor explains Bush's popularity

It's the "Stupid factor," the S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.

It's not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren't the people I'm referring to. The people I'm referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They're perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don't have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all -- far above all -- they don't think.This is the standard Liberal visceral hatred of All Things Bush. And when I mean hate, I mean HATE. Liberals hate the fact that the man draws breath. They hate everything Bush stands for, believes in, does, says, thinks and so on. And so, by extension, they must hate everybody around him and everybody who supports him. Thus you, dear reader, if you believe in the war in Iraq, approve of the war against terrorism, like the tax cut because it puts your money back into your pocket, then you are stupid, only by virtue of not agreeing with the Liberal mindset.

Of course, to be loved by Liberals, all you have to do is surrender all thinking to them. They will spoon feed you the issues, tell you want to think and how to vote. They view themselves as philosopher-kings and rightful rulers of all they survey. You will be more stupid under the Liberals because they expect you to be. If you are not stupid and dependent upon them for everything, then why do Liberals exist? Liberals can only exist as long as there are people dependent upon them. If you can get everybody to be self-sufficient, then Liberals cannot exist.

Conservatives on the other hand, give you the issues and let you decide. For once we have a man in office who is not driven by polls. He has a systematic plan and is implementing it. I admit I don't fully agree with it, but the only way I would fully agree with the president would be if I was the president.

What is funny is how Liberals actually expect to win a majority of the electorate by telling them how stupid they are. They make no effort to explain why their policies (of which they have none) are superior to the Conservatives. In fact, some of the very policies that they have been running on for years have been dealt with by the Republicans. How about that for stealing their thunder?

Well, it seems like the word is spreading. Like the Marines say, "No better friend, no worse enemy. " N. Korea Offers to Halt Nuke Facilities shows a major caving in on their part.

North Korea has said before it is willing to freeze its "nuclear activities" in exchange for U.S. aid and being taken off Washington's roster of terrorism sponsoring nations.

On Tuesday it specified it was "set to refrain from testing and production of nuclear weapons and stop even operating (its) nuclear power industry for a peaceful purpose."It appears that any (or all) of these events are playing in our favor:

• Secret pressure from China to deescalate the situation;
• Internal pressure is building and Kim Jong Il is starting to lose control of the army;
• The caving of Libya on their WMD programs;
• The situation in Iraq is improving to the point that we can turn our attention (and military forces) elsewhere.

In any event, it appears that serious concessions are being made. As with all such people, "Trust, but verify." I doubt there is very little substance, but it is a start and once one side in a diplomatic fight gives in, it snowballs from there.

I found this today, You Say You Want a Resolution and found the points discussed very poignant.

I especially liked #2

"Violence only leads to more violence."

This one is so stupid you usually have to be the president of an Ivy League university to say it. Here's the truth, which you know in your heads and hearts already:

Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more violence. Limp, panicky, half-measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully-thought-through, professional, well-executed violence never leads to more violence because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead.

That's right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not "nurtured back into the bosom of love." Dead. D-E--Well, you get the idea.

Naked violence that wipes out the opponent has always finally solved problems. I hope it doesn't come to that. I really don't want to wipe out an entire religion. We are going to have to wipe out one wing of it, as there is no compromise with the violent fundamentalists, but I hope it goes no farther than that.

I found this article, Why more senior citizens are carrying guns and I thought it bears mentioning.

First of all, the sub-title on the piece is, "They're protecting themselves from what they see as a rise in violence, even if crime statistics say otherwise."

You may think this is a pro-gun article, but it's not. I'll admit that armed seniors suffering from Alzheimer's can pose a threat to those around them, but I don't think that it is as widespread that the article implies.

The article also infers that, "because crime is down, nobody needs to arm themselves." They are not looking at the fact that it is armed citizens who are lowering the crime rate. Crime rates have steadily dropped because now 45 of 50 states have concealed weapons licenses for ordinary citizens. Every state that licenses citizens to carry see a decrease in crime across the board.

A criminal will commit crimes until they are stopped, that's a fact. If they come up against an armed citizen, that's a pretty solid wall to run into. Seniors are the weakest amongst us with the exception of children and are easy pickings for an aggressive criminal. When you arm them, they become a wall against crime. Once a criminal faces down an armed citizen, they think twice about taking on their next victim.

In the end, "the best insurance seniors can have against violent crime is a well-armed citizenry," says Van Vibber, gripping his pistol. "Besides, it's a God-given right."

Amen.

Do you have a computer nerd in your life? From a family member to the not-quite-right guy at work, there are nerds all among us (Please do not confuse them with geeks. They are a whole different flavor).

Does your nerd use weird terminology? If so, you can use The Jargon Lexicon to decode what they are saying. From ABEND to zorkmid, you will likely find what you are looking for.

Good Luck. You'll need it.

In the spirit of "Left is really Right," I give you this Day By Day cartoon:

This is disturbing. Quarantining dissent: How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech

This smacks of Potemkin Villages and I as an American am offended by this. I realize and can understand that soldiers in proximity to the President have unloaded weapons, but this goes too far. At least let the pro- and con- forces line up on different sides of the street.

The media will always find the protesters and interview them rather than the pro-Bush people.

I don't like this at all, and I doubt that any explanation by the Secret Service will mollify me.

I include this article, Jersey's brave new world only because of its reference multiple times to the novel Brave New World.

For those of you who never read the book or seen the movie, I suggest you read the book. It talks about how everybody is grown in test tubes and conditioned as children. You have four groups of people, Alphas, Betas, Gammas and Deltas. Normal people today would be considered Alphas, while the IQ of the other groups go down in sequence. The Deltas are basically morons, enslaved to doing grunt work (assembly, floor sweeping, etc.) Everything about you, job, location, status, etc. is determined before you are even conceived. As you go through the assembly line, you are given vaccinations for what area of the world you'll be living in, be oxygen deprived just enough to make you stupid and so on. Such a wonderful world.

Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should do it.

I am reluctant to go into Rush Limbaugh's life at all, let alone his addiction and subsequent problems. But this story just kind of leapt out at me.

Geraldo Rivera and Susan Estrich have come to the defense of Rush and his being persecuted by the local DA in Palm Beach County.

This is so unusual that the Devil himself must be turning up the thermostat.

Estrich contends the real issue is that "a lot of people are mad at Rush Limbaugh because they think he is a hypocrite."

She continued: "Well you may or may not agree on that, but the last time I checked hypocrisy is not a federal or state offense. And I don't think that is a basis on which we should prosecute people."

Rush made one comment on drug users in 1993, long before he had back problems and years of untreatable pain. Even so, Rush was talking about the people who voluntarily choose to use drugs. His usage was based on a need to get rid of intolerable pain. I myself ruptured my L5S1 disk a few years ago and luckily the surgery was a complete success and I had no further pain. I can imagine myself hooked on opiates to get rid of the pain if I had to live with it. To live with the pain would take a Superman that I don't think anyone is.

I have a very good friend who is a recluse like me. He is one of my few regular readers. My family and I gave him one of our spare computers for Christmas a couple of years ago and it fits his needs perfectly, even though it's about 5 generations behind the current bleeding edge. He's running stable on Win 98 and has no plans to upgrade hardware or software.

Any how, I came across this article at Slashdot, Windows 98 Phased Out.

I wanted to give him (and anybody else who uses Win 98) a heads up to get whatever patches and updates there are before Bill pulls them.

John Lott has written another fine article, Why People Fear Guns. Read it. It's good.

... If these events [Defensive Gun Use] were really happening, wouldn't we hear about them on the news? Many people tell me that they have never heard of an incident of defensive gun use. There is a good reason for their confusion. In 2001, the three major television networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- ran 190,000 words' worth of gun-crime stories on their morning and evening national news broadcasts. But they ran not a single story mentioning a private citizen using a gun to stop a crime.

There is an actual phobia for the abnormal, irrational fear of guns, Hoplophobia.

Guns are power over life and death. As with all such powers, they are a final and irrevocable power. A lot of people are not prepared to make those kind of choices. They haven't had the experience in their lives to even think about such a decision.

Even for those people who have done the work and resolved themselves to take a life that threatens them or their family, it isn't as easily shaken off as they do in the action movies. PTSD can occur. While that is the bad news, the good news is you're still alive.

Over 2,000,000 crimes are prevented every year by armed citizens. You don't hear about 99% of them because nobody got hurt. Bad guy threatens, good guy shows firearm, bad guy runs away. Not a very exciting news report. That's why you only hear of the ones where somebody (usually the criminal) gets killed. As they say in the newspaper business, "If it bleeds, it leads." And when they do get reported, it's usually a small blurb on the back of the A section of the newspaper.

Defensive gun use makes the TV news only when it crosses into the spectacular. Here in Memphis last summer, we had a burglar running rampant in the city. It led the evening news whenever a new burglary was reported. He had over 20 homes to his credit when he finally broke into the home of an armed citizen who shot him dead. That led the TV news, but only because it had already been making the news for a couple of weeks. If (and I mean if) the TV news carries a regular DGU, it's a 15 second blurb after the weather. While gun murders lead the news. Too bad it can't be the other way around.

The two publications of the NRA, American Rifleman and American Sportsman, Each present a page of "The Armed Citizen," filled with a dozen or so DGU's every month. Most of them are small blurbs of only a couple of sentences long.

Of course, the blatant Liberal bias against guns doesn't help either. The rank-and-file Liberal has a solid case of hoplophobia and thinks everybody should not have a gun. The leaders of the anti-gun movement just don't want you to have a gun. They have a socialist agenda and the first step in order to institute it is the disarming of America. The Second Amendment was put there specifically so the citizen has the power to resist an overbearing government. But I digress.

Defensive gun uses are prevalent, and for the vast majority of incidents, non-violent. That doesn't mean you can't be prepared to kill to defend your life and the lives of your family. It took me several months to answer that question before I applied for my CCW license. It wasn't easy, let me tell you.

If you decide to arm yourself in whatever way for self defense, make sure you can pull that trigger before you buy the gun. Otherwise it will be taken away from you, with all of the negative results possible.

I just got back from work and decided to check out a news site or two. Don't you know, this one just jumped out at me. 'EU could have averted war' Yeah, right.

Another foreign politician sticks his foot in his mouth and shows his incompetence.

The views expressed by Mr. Prodi is purely delusional. Short of the armies of Europe rushing to the rescue of Iraq there was nothing anybody other than Saddam Hussein could do to stop it.

Everybody seems to forget the last time we got stabbed in the back we nuked those responsible. Sure, Saddam was not directly related to 9/11, but he has supplied money and offered training to terrorists. More important, Iraq is a linchpin to changing the entire middle east. We can (and will) wipe out Al Queda to the last fanatic. The problem is there is another 10-20 terrorist organizations willing to take their place. We must do more than kill kill kill. We must transform the middle east away from the hotbed of fundamentalism that it currently is. And our plan is working. We are making inroads in Libya, Iran and even North Korea. Despots around the world are beginning to realize that when we smile towards them, it is only to bare our teeth in preparation of ripping their throats out.

We have a man in office who is willing to do anything to protect this country. When it is necessary, he does not send letters of protest. He does not request UN resolutions. He does not lob a few token Tomahawks. He makes war. The rest of the world does not realize yet that we as Americans have displayed the greatest amount of restraint. So far.

There will be a WMD "event" in the next few years. Hopefully we will catch it before anything bad happens. If an event does occur, the rest of the world will come to realize there is no such thing as a "limited" nuclear strike. At that point all of the gloves are off and those on the other side of the issue will be lucky to live through it. Those that do survive should be down right friendly.

Let's hope it never come to that. I for one would not like to see multiple nuclear strikes anywhere.

It would be nice if politicians behaved this way (and were caught more often like this).

Cox and Forkum have a new panel out today. While it isn't spectacular, the write-up is the important part. Here is the panel: The Moderate Mahdis.

And that is precisely what makes Mahathir and his ilk all the more dangerous. The "extremists" like the Taliban doom themselves to insignificance by the very fact of their consistent adherence to their religious philosophy. But those who can make compromises with the demands of this world -- those who embrace the same moral and religious precepts, but implement them in a more reasonable, practical form -- are much more dangerous. They give their irrationalist philosophy some degree of power in the world.

But the biggest threat to the West is not the moderate Mahdis. It is the failure of our leaders to identify the malevolence of the Muslim "moderates" and see them as a threat.Read the whole thing.

I've already talked about Khaddafi here in my blog, where I summed it up with "Trust, but verify."

Well, it seems that Khaddafi was caught red-handed trying to sneak nuclear weapons technology into Libya a few months ago and we seized the vessel. This probably has something significant to do with his "conversion." You can read about it here, Suspicion Still Surrounds Libyan Leader Qadhafi.

That decision followed a bust two months earlier of Qadhafi as he tried secretly to import components for nuclear weapons. The ship with the hidden instruments was interdicted by the United States and United Kingdom. U.S. officials said Wednesday that it was diverted to Italy in October, where authorities found its secret cargo of nuclear weapons equipment.

Khaddafi realized he got put very high on the shit list of the US and UK after getting his hand caught in the nuclear cookie jar. That is probably a very large part about why he is scared. He put himself on the 'Axis of Evil' and he is doing everything he can to get himself off of that list.

Good Luck. It ain't gonna happen.

As usual, the BBC is displaying its' bias by reporting stuff that is certain to be inflammatory. Case in point: Brazil to fingerprint US citizens.

This story is about how the US is requiring fingerprints of all people coming into the country and are using a visa. Reasonable in our post 9/11 world. Well, Brazil got huffy about it and is requiring that US citizens reciprocate.

Here's the money quote:

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis [emphasis mine]"

What can you say to this? We do a stateside background check to supplement the one done in the country of origin and all of a sudden we're Nazis? I also like the "absolutely brutal" bit as well, like we bludgeon people for good measure before we take their fingerprints.

This is, of course, the standard overstatement and smear to make us the bad guys. Like Dennis Miller said, "We're so busy calling everybody a Nazi that we ignore the guy with the funny mustache who tosses people he doesn't like into plastic shredders."

Save the term Nazi for the people who systematically murder thousands of people, would you please? Thanks.

My mother had a tradition of eating sauerkraut for good luck to start the new year.

To me, eating sauerkraut was just about #1 on my do-not-do list. If I ate sauerkraut to start the year, that was the worst thing that could happen. From a start like that, things could only get better.I am going to do what I normally do for New Years: Sleep through it. It's no big thing for me any more.If you're partying tonight, take care, use a designated driver and watch out for the amateur drunks.

I have read many quotes from all of those people capping off 2003. Right Wing News has a top 10 list of his favorite feedbacks from the Democratic Underground. This one is my favorite.

"What we MUST realize in order to win - Americans are stupid and uninformed. This is very important because in order to win we must understand the way the average American thinks. I'm afraid WE have nothing in common with them.

I came to the two following conclusions when I saw the large number of people who voted for Bush back in 2000.

#1 - I would dare to assume that most of us here are in the upper 1%-20% of the population intelligence-wise. We must come to the realization that the majority of the population is in the lower 80% to 99% percent of the bell-curve. WE are not the norm. The Republicans understand that the average American is not very bright. They cater and pander to the masses. The Democratic Party tries to appeal to the population about "issues" that these people just don't understand.

I've heard it said that the reason that Clinton's sex scandal resonated so strongly among "the people" was because it was a scandal that the average American understood. The average person can't understand a financial scandal.

In addition, people of average or lower intelligence tend to not be as logical or reasoned as those of higher intelligence - they deal with emotion. Therefore they are more likely to get riled up about someone burning a flag rather than a illogical tax cut.

#2 - The majority of people do not read the newspaper OR listen to the news, CNN, etc. Therefore -they get their news from the Tonight Show, Letterman, Oprah and Saturday Night Live. Or, they get their news from talking to their co-workers at the water cooler.

Also, for the few people who DO listen to the news - who do they hear it from? Fox News and Bill O'Reilly are the most popular. Most newspapers and media outlets are owned by Republicans.

THIS is what we are fighting against people. In order to win we will need to start pandering to the masses." -- Janekat

This is the fringe that is presently control of the Democrat party. I'm glad. As long as the rabid zealots run the house, they will scare away the moderate swing voters that will make the difference.

These people actually remind me of schizophrenics. People who suffer from untreated schizophrenia are in their own world, responding to things that the rest of us don't see, hear or understand. Schizophrenics are easy to spot, however. They hear the TV talking to them, schizophrenic believe that computers are beaming thoughts into their brains and the like.Now you tell me. Re-read the quote I have up there again and tell me this person does not have a serious disconnect from reality. Janekat does not imply, she says it in plain English that she thinks most Americans are stupid. They have to be not to see how right she is. It doesn't even occur to Janekat that she might be wrong. That is simply not possible. She's too smart to be wrong. Her stance on "The Democratic Party tries to appeal to the population about "issues" that these people just don't understand" doesn't even consider that the majority of people have already looked at their issues and just don't agree with them. She doesn't think that these people have the right to disagree with her. After all, she's right.Yeah, right.

God bless the ACLU is a rather scary look into our possible future. Do your best not to let it happen.

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union was finally successful in getting Ten Commandments plaques removed from public buildings in all fifty states. In addition:
1. They forced the Ten Commandments to be expunged from the Supreme Court building;
2. They obliged the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to fire their chaplains;
3. They won a ban on official chaplains in the military;
4. They removed "In God We Trust" from all currency and public documents;
5. They removed "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance;
6. They removed all crosses, Stars of David and crescents from the gravestones of American soldiers in military cemeteries around the world.

The last part that I didn't quote is the scariest of all.

Read on.

While I am felling better than yesterday, it's not by much. Getting to have lunch with my family yesterday and do some shopping with them helped with my mood. My family still loves me. We are apart because of my condition and lack of emotional control. That's it. If I could handle normal stress, If I could be a positive asset for my wife and her struggles, I would be home today. But that's not going to happen for a long time, if ever.

This time of year has been very rough with me ever since I got sick. Most of my hospitalizations have been in the winter months. My wife thinks I have Seasonal Affective Disorder on top of everything else.

I'll shoot for a 7 tomorrow to start off the new year.

Another great article by Victor Davis Hanson. The Western Disease goes into the why some of us are ashamed of our success.

Our Western intellectuals are sheltered orchids who are naïve about the world beyond their upscale hothouses. The Western disease of deductive fury at everything the West does provides a sort of psychological relief (without costs) for apparent guilt over privileged circumstances. It is such a strange mixture of faux-populism and aristocratic snobbery. They believe only a blessed few such as themselves have the requisite education or breeding to understand the "real" world of Western pathologies and its victims.

Read on. It's good for you.

I found this in The Washington Times, about the BATF and their quest to be the secret police. Bill limits gun-buyer database means they are trying to keep records on those who buy guns legally.

And if they get away with a 90 day record keeping, then they will go for 6 months, then a year, and so on until it becomes permanent. They are already permanently digitizing and archiving all of the 4473's from gun shops that have gone out of business. A 4473 is the ATF form that you fill out when you buy a gun from a gun shop or someone who owns a Federal Firearms License.

This is not an aberration because the BATF is trying to do the same thing for rocketry as well. Years ago, they decided to add Ammonium Perchlorate to their explosives list, without checking to see if it really was an explosive or not. AP is the major propellant used in high power rocketry. In fact, it's the same stuff used in the two boosters used on the space shuttle. Now the BATF wants to regulate it out of the hands of rocketeers. You need to have a license for it, you need to store it in such a way, you must record when you use it and so on.

And my mental illness precludes me from obtaining a license for AP, just like a firearm.

The BATF is an enormously aggressive force, grabbing everything they can, never letting go and always hungry for more. It needs to be given close oversight control and be reined in severely. You can find hundreds of anecdotal incidents out there that range from destroying law-abiding citizens lives all the way down to killing kittens.

This article, Criminals Owe Debt to Victims, Not Society has been bandied about for years. I myself wrote about this subject in an earlier version of The Conservative Zone.

Most people realize that the court and penal systems in North America are seriously broken and must be fixed. With the possible exception of China, the United States currently imprisons more of its population than any other nation: the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports 2,033,331 imprisoned as of December 31, 2002.

I wrote that upon conviction, a fine should be assessed the convictee, to cover court costs, victims re-compensation and enough so that the criminal, upon release, has a substantial nest egg (~$10,000) to help start a new life.

A large portion of those behind bars today are there for drug related crimes. While drugs have many parallels to alcohol and prohibition, there are many important differences. To get into them would be a digression I am unwilling to take right now, maybe later.

Suffice it to say our judicial system needs a capitalistic overhaul. Most of us have to pay our way through life, I see no reason for those who break the rules to do any different.