Subject: Your View - Potpourri Archives
From: "Saved by Windows Internet Explorer 8"
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:26:17 -0500

Originally posted from 12-08-02
to 12-30-02
Why They Hate Jonathan Farley - In
America
by Lewis Goldberg

Vanderbilt Math Professor Jonathan
David Farley wrote a clever little article titled Why They Hate
America - in Britain, and so this equally clever-titled response is
similarly designated. Since Professor Farley was kind enough to
superimpose the views of a select group of individuals [Oxford students]
on a whole nation [England,] it seems meet to superimpose the views of
everyone in my living room [Mrs. Goldberg and several small children,]
on this nation.

Click here, and take
a good look at the man, and who is in the picture with him. I'm talking
about Marxist revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevarra [the other guy is
Farley.] That Vanderbilt allows this type of political statement may
come as a surprise to some, but shouldn't. Vandy is simply putting in
the open what most people know in their hearts - that America's entire
educational system can be summed up by this one picture, taken from a
faculty biography page on a major American university's website.
Farley's is, in essence, an official position supported by the school.

In
reply to a citizen who wrote Vanderbilt complaining of the 'art' in
Farley's picture, Vandy stated that they allow their professors to make
whatever statements they wish without interference. But do we really
think a professor posing with Hitler as backdrop would even make it back
from the photo studio to his office in time to retrieve the contents of
his desk before his dean had it emptied and burned? Don't be silly.
Vanderbilt...Farley...Che Guevarra - they all go together nicely.

Get
used to it.

The
aforementioned Oxford geniuses can't imagine why we were a little upset
at having two skyscrapers knocked down with 3,000 people in them. They
think we should exercise 'restraint,' and wonder to where our 'moral
leadership' has gone off. Well, in one sense, they're right...for if we
had true moral leadership, we'd have taken every step necessary to
protect our citizens, including expelling from our midst each and every
foreigner from every country known to support terrorism. But England
left its sanity behind much longer ago than we did, and to demand from
us that which their own Tony Blair cannot deliver is the height of gall.

But
there are other reasons to hate Jonathan Farley in my livin...er, in
America. Farley is undeniably racist against whites, but for a black
man, this is fashionable and acceptable. As a demonstration of his
bigotry and hatred, Farley exposes his complete ignorance of history in
his recent Tennessean editorial, in which he likens the South's
Confederate heroes to the Nazis, and states that "the Confederacy aimed
to destroy the United States." Were such the case, Lincoln would have
been dead much sooner, and the White House burned to the ground, as
Washington DC was left unprotected from Lee's Army most of the time. The
South wanted nothing of destroying the United States, but to be left
alone [a conclusion which a seventh-grader with a set of World Book
encyclopedias should be able to draw.]

And
now Southerners still want to be left alone...by the Farleys of the
world. And there are plenty of them. The entire parade of human refuse
from the 60's has moved into all the positions of power, influence, and
trust. As David Carr at Samizdata once wrote, "The fiery radicals of
yesteryear became the outreach workers, counsellors [sic,] legal-aid
lawyers, community activists, environmental campaigners, journalists,
professors, social workers, teachers and union delegates. Carlos the
Jackal became Charles the Educator and he lives next door to us now. He
wears a well-tailored suit, expensive shoes, drives a car, sends his
kids to private schools and writes a column in the Guardian..." To that
I would add they are training the Farleys in their footsteps.

Real
Americans, who have not yet bowed to the golden calf, reject Farley and
his fellow travelers. We hate everything they stand for [ and the word
hate is in the Bible, so get over it.] We will fight against their ideas
until they are shamed out of existence. In a more civilised era, their
treason would be dealt with by rope...we, being modern and 'with it,'
will settle for a paradigm shift.

Some
of Jonathan David Farley's other articles:

Where
next - Alabama?
Remnants
of the Confederacy glorifying a time of tyranny

Your
comments and questions are encouraged. [[email-masked]]

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Originally
posted from 11-24-02 to 12-01-02
Data
Strike!
by Jeffrey Quick

Well, they did it.
The Senate rammed through the whole Homeland Security bill, domestic
spying and all. The opposition was too little and too late. And even
now, it's too little. Somebody sent me this on a list I'm on, from the
ACLU:

To learn more
about this initiative and what you can do to defend your right to
privacy, please click
here.

Oh yeah, send a free
fax to President Bush. That's the ticket. "Please Massa, don' spy on
me!" How about $3 in dimes to every Senator who voted for it? At least
it would make the Post Office work.

Well, we certainly
didn't get any help from the Democrats, who couldn't get beyond, "But
the Republicans have filled this with pork" (which is basically what the
Republicans were accusing the Democrats of, pre-election), and were only
too happy to vote for the stinking mess. In fact it was a conservative
(Safire) who blew the whistle on Poindexter's Peek 'n' Pry.

Let's look at who
has created the working guts of Total Information Awareness (TIA). If
the government were to put together such a data system from scratch,
they'd fall on their faces. Government has seldom if ever created
anything really effective on its own. But private enterprise has already
done the heavy lifting for them; all they have to do is tap in. And the
IG Farbens of dem Amerikanischen Reich (scumbags like Larry Ellison)
will be only too happy to help. Unless we give them an incentive not
to.

What I am proposing
is a data strike....something that really should have happened years
ago, but which must happen now. This strike can consist of several "job
actions", which people can participate in as they feel able. Here are
some concrete ideas:

1. No more
customer cards.

Store customer
cards are one of the most gratuitous forms of data mining. If you have
a card, shred it and send them the bits, and a letter telling them
that you are protecting your data from the Office of Information
Awareness. If you don't have a card, quit patronizing stores that
offer them...and send them a letter telling them why. Of course,
stores that require cards (warehouse clubs) are right out. If one
wants to be a real activist about this, one can stand near stores and
pass out flyers encouraging the people to strike.

2. Minimal credit
card use

If possible, don't
use credit cards at all. If enough people deal in cash, not only will
banks lose cash flow, but the government will have to print more of
it, or see the money supply contract, which is bad for business. A
further advantage would be to reduce personal debt and thus increase
personal freedom. Much credit card usage comes from laziness; it's
easier to slip the plastic into the gas pump than to come in and pay
the cashier. I am sympathetic to the need for credit cards in online
transactions. But there are sometimes ways around direct use of cards
(PayPal, eGold). And if the strike impacts Amazon et al, so much the
better. An additional twist to the cash strategy would be to stamp all
your paper money with a slogan such as "spent to avoid Total
Information Awareness". Or paste informational ("Simon Jester")
stickers on gas pumps.

One possible
government response to this might be to phase out cash so that one
MUST use an electronic system. If this happens, I might just
re-evaluate my religious affiliation, because the Mark of the Beast
will be here.

3. Use
encryption.

People have been
resistant to this for awhile, partly because it hasn't been an
AOL/WebTV kind of tech, partly because they figure they will make
themselves a suspect by using it. Well, we're all suspects already, so
we'd might as well act like it. If more people use encryption, it will
no longer arouse suspicion. For that matter, one could send encrypted
Spam to government offices, just to confuse
people.

The Left has been
saying for years that the multinational corporations call the shots.
Here's a chance to put the theory to the test. If enough people withhold
their money from data-mining companies, they will fight to keep the
government out of their data, or perhaps stop collecting it at
all.

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Originally posted from 10-13-02 to
11-07-02
Chet Rollins' Dixie

by Lewis J. Goldberg

Chet Rollins, a Baton Rouge
writer for TheInsiders.
com [an LSU publication] on 9 October penned an article entitled Dixie
has no place in Death Valley. Having never been to LSU, or
Louisiana, for that matter, I am having a hard time figuring out what
Death Valley has to do with Dixie [having been raised in Southern
California, the only Death Valley of which I know is far away from the
deep South.] Besides that point, due to my ignorance, there is much to
critique in Mr. Rollins screed. And while he fends off any attempt at
response from the inevitable "great chorus of rednecks, " I cannot, in
good conscience, allow Mr. Rollins lies and stupidity to stand
unanswered. Since Mr. Rollins admonishes respondents to write with
"cogent thought and lucid, intelligible language, " I will go one step
further and try to keep the number of syllables down for him, as well.

For
purposes of introduction, this redneck works in the high tech
industry as a consultant, has six children [all of whom are well-fed,
adequately clothed and shod,] and cares enough about their education to
do it at home [whilst simultaneously paying the taxes to school other
people's children.] This redneck has been writing political commentary
for almost four years, and has been published in a number of commentary
websites and a couple of magazines. This redneck has been around long
enough to figure out that there are more righteous men wearing greasy
coveralls than business suits.. .don't know why that is, but the
observation bears out well. This redneck wears the label proudly - it is
the highest complement in light of most of the alternatives.

From
the first sentence, Mr. Rollins establishes that his article is based
upon personal sentiment and emotions, rather than the facts of history.
Mr. Rollins places not a shred of historical evidence in his work, which
is, in essence, a critique of history itself. He would not dare break
the spine on a book of true record, instead relying on the mush he has
been fed through the prevailing culture of Lincolnolatry, which seeps
into the brains of our children through television, radio, print media,
and the popular maxims and folk sayings of an imprisoned and conquered
people.

The
tune of Dixie is neither an "horrid screech" nor a reveling in
the "darkest, most evil chapter in this great country's history." It is
a reveling in the same spirit of freedom that won this country's
independence from Britain, and if Mr. Rollins enjoys the freedoms
secured by the veterans of WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet-Nam, and the latest
conflicts, he might check the home states of those veterans...he may be
surprised to find out that the Sons of the South overwhelmingly turned
out to made it possible for him to comfortably watch LSU football whilst
imbibing enough lager to float the QE-II [note: I know nothing of Mr.
Rollins' drinking habits, but it seemed a clever phrase...]

Mr.
Rollins expresses gratitude for LSU's shedding of its "curious and
macabre preoccupation ... with romanticizing the institution of
slavery," yet fails to make the case that such is what they were ever
trying to do. Mr. Rollins, you cannot make it so just by writing the
words. Do today's post-9/11 flag wavers engage in a curious and macabre
romaticization of the institution of Indian Massacre? If not, then why
do you make the same connection for Southern sympathisers?

Mr.
Rollins next tries his hand at race baiting, wondering if the white
athletes might feel "even a splinter of shame at Ole Miss when Rebel
fans wave their cute, little rebel flag sticks, yelling, 'Go, Rebels!'"
By this, he assumes that all people must think like he does, else they
must suffer from defective consciences. Your self-righteous, freebase
moralizing falls on tired, deaf ears, Mr. Rollins. If you want to talk
facts and history, there's a thousand of us rednecks out here waiting to
test your 'Civil War' smarts. My guess is you're too yellow to take the
challenge. Why don't you talk your buddies at the LSU website into
running a debate series between you and me...six articles, three from
each of us - and I'll let you have the final word. What say ye?

Mr.
Rollins states that he's glad he's not in the Land of Cotton, which is a
good thing, because the Land of Cotton doesn't need him. He can only see
a "plutocratic antebellum South, where the institution of slavery
poisoned every aspect of culture," because he's too afraid to look
beyond the brainwashing rhetoric and see the chains that were forged for
his own bondage during, and in those years following, the War. Mr.
Rollins only dares speak what he is allowed, else he would be punished
by the 'polite society' he relies on for his artificial status.

"At's
a good boy, Chet."

Arf.

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Originally posted from 09-22-02 to
10-12-02
Let Us Pray
by Jeffrey Quick

Liberty has faced
dark times before. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, the witches of
England gathered, as they had for Bonaparte and for the Armada, and
worked their spell, chanting "Can't cross the sea! Not able to come!"
After that, the weather got bad for flying. Goering got stupid and
rerouted the Luftwaffe from RAF bases (which they were close to knocking
out ) to civilian targets, the German Naval Staff got cold feet, and
Hitler decided to pick on his fellow mass-murderer Stalin instead.
Coincidence?

In 1787 as the
Constitutional Convention bogged down, Benjamin Franklin suggested that
each session should open with a prayer, as had the Continental Congress.
Hamilton said that the Convention was not in need of foreign aid;
Williamson observed that there were no funds to pay a clergyman. Only 4
of 55 delegates showed any interest, and the proposal was never acted
on. We see now just how badly that Constitution has protected our
liberties. Coincidence?

In 1918, the English
magician Aleister Crowley had his students meditate on the number 11.
The Armistice was signed on November 11 at 11 AM.
Coincidence?

All creation begins
with thought, and thought in itself is creative. One can believe in the
power of prayer, meditation, magick or whatever you wish to call it,
without believing in a Higher Power, though many of us do. To ignore the
spiritual dimension of the battle for liberty is to fight with one hand
tied behind one's back. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
(Ephesians 6:12) It follows logically of course that to only
focus on the spiritual dimension is also to fight with one hand (and
both feet) tied behind one's back. But it is possible for everyone to
set aside a regular time for prayer, without taking energy from mundane
activism.

What to create with
our thoughts and how to create it is a complex question. Those of us who
accept the Non-Aggression Principle (and I hope all readers here
do), will apply that to our prayer life, seeking as little harm to
others as possible; visualizing colorful and fitting ways for our
enemies to be smitten does not help us. Our work will be based on what
we believe is possible; some of us think that it's too late to work
within the system, that catastrophe is inevitable, and will pray for a
soft landing. We should not specify the mechanism by which our prayers
should be answered; the universe has possibilities beyond our imagining,
and why should we limit it?

There are people who
focus on praying for peace. Often their God is the guy who said, "I came
not to send peace, but a sword."(Matthew 10:34) To pray for peace
without freedom is to pray for exactly what the enemies of freedom want.
As the neo-pagans say,"Be careful what you ask for; you might get
it."

The best reason for
a regular spiritual practice is to preserve your own sanity. When the
cause appears hopeless, prayer affirms hope, either in the power of your
own mind or in the power of God. Most religions believe that God wants
us to live like God. And God, by definition, is not a slave.

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Originally posted from 07-24-02 to
08-01-02
A Modest Proposal for Slave
Reparations
by Jeffrey Quick

OK, accept that
we're going to have some form of reparations for the descendents of
slaves. Not because their cause is just, but because American thinking
has been thoroughly collectivized through the press and public schools,
and because most Americans can't tell the difference between paying off
living Japanese-Americans who survived government internment camps and
paying off the multi-great-grandchildren of privately-owned slaves with
the incomes of the multi-great-grandchildren of people who were nowhere
near the scene of the crime. So how do we have reparations in a way that
avoids race war and maximizes justice for all concerned?

Black slaves were
unjustly bought and sold by African slavers, unjustly and cruelly
transported to this country, and unjustly deprived of the fruits of
their labor. Any reparations program should deal with all of these
injustices.

The last is the easy
part, the part most reparations activists are fixated on. "Give us 40
acres and a mule, or their cash equivalent". That was an emergency
measure by General Sherman, and not an official government promise. But
it's a talking point. They want 42 grand each; I have no problem with
this, or even more, as long as all the injustices are
corrected.

One of those was
bringing them to America to begin with, ripping them away from their
culture. To make them whole requires returning them to Africa. One of
the conditions of accepting any reparations settlement must be to
renounce US citizenship for yourself and for any minor children, and to
leave for Africa within 90 days of the check being cashed. Any children
born in Africa would be eligible to immigrate under whatever limits
currently apply, but former US citizens would be permanently
excluded.

The advantages to
both America and Africa would be many. We'd be rid of a bunch of whiners
who think that the world owes them something, while retaining black
Americans who want to contribute to their country. The skills and
capital of the émigrés might go far to improve the economies of the host
countries. $42,000 is 191 times the annual per capita gross national
income of Burkina Faso. Even the average gangsta drop-out has more
schooling than the typical African, and often has experience retailing
agricultural commodities, and in free-market contract enforcement. The
émigrés might even foster democratic institutions, though that's a more
questionable assumption; the difference between Jesse Jackson and Robert
Mugabe is largely one of opportunity. The development of Africa would
help foster world peace, and give us a reason to quit shipping foreign
aid over there.

This leaves us the
problem of how to pay for it, without creating a parallel injustice to
those not responsible for slavery. Lo, the solution of the first
injustice solves this problem. Since there is no right to sell human
beings, the Africans who sold their brothers into slavery took the white
man's money under false pretenses, and owe us reparations for having
cheated us. The coastal sub-Saharan countries from which most slaves
were sent have many natural resources, and could be occupied and looted
for several years, long enough to cover the slave reparations as well as
reparations for tragedies subsequent to slavery (such as both sides'
expenses in the War for Southern Independence, costs of race riots,
etc.) It might be argued that the current inhabitants of those countries
had nothing to do with the slave trade, but then, neither did the
current US government. And it's our right, as a wronged race, to collect
what we are owed. Isn't it?

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Originally posted from 07-17-02 to
07-24-02
Pretending Not to
Notice
by
Louis J. Goldberg

The debate over
racism cannot be put to bed because the debate is inherently dishonest.
Economics are at the heart of the racism issue, but not in the way one
would think. We are told that racism causes poverty, yet it would seem,
from a greater perspective, that the opposite is the case. Racism tends
to be inflicted on those minorities who are in poverty and spared from
those who are not. Case in point being Asians, who, in general, arrive
in this country ready to apply themselves to get ahead as fast as they
can. Their perspective is entirely different from native minorities.
Escaping the bonds of affliction in the present tense gives one a
tenacity for freedom when they get a shot at it, while those who have
freedom from birth don't have the first idea what it can do, or has done
for them.

The predominant
liberal academic culture plays on the collective shame and guilt of the
nation's mostly white Christian population. We don't like to be
perceived as being on the wrong side of social issues. Such an image
presumably leads to lack of acceptance by conscientious peers, which
thereby may limit career and social progression. The power of shame and
guilt is such that it masks truth, preventing it from reaching open
debate. Matters of truth are discounted out of hand, and the lie becomes
policy.

Shame and guilt mask
the truth behind so-called hate-crimes. When was the last time someone
killed or assaulted someone they truly liked? All violent crimes are
hate-based because they reflect a basic disdain for civility and order.
In remembering an assault, which took place a few years ago, of a white
couple and their son in front of a downtown restaurant, it was not
billed as a hate crime, because in that case the law functioned as it
ought to have. The perpetrators were brought to justice, which is the
best result anyone could have expected. During that same month, there
were other cases of violence, of the white-on-black variety, and they
were immediately billed as a hate-crime. The media and judicial circus
then kicked in, thereby ensuring that fair and impartial justice would
not be served.

Shame and guilt
cover up the reason that whites, in general [and Jesse Jackson, in
particular,] fear black male youths walking down the street. There is a
greater percentage of blacks in the prisons than whites [in relation to
total population by race] because more blacks turn to crime to solve
their problems, not because the police pick on them unfairly. Racial
profiling stems from real police experience, not bigotry. A police
officer would be incompetent if he did not apply previous experience to
his police work.

Shame and guilt
prevent us from confronting race-card dealers like The NAACP. This
organisation, more than save perhaps Jesse Jackson's syndicate, is
responsible for more racial strife and misery in the last decade than
the last century of Klansmen. Outrageous statement, you say? "Hey, like,
didn't the Klan lynch people, man?" Well, yes they did...maybe a handful
in the early part of the last century. How many hundreds of thousands of
blacks have died due to violence and drug addiction - the product of
marginal lifestyles supported by the NAACP and other organisations that
profit from keeping a good percentage of their people poor, illiterate,
and stupid? I'd take my chances with the Klan, thank you.

Our nation's
government and institutions try to play along with the feel-good,
multi-cultural rhetoric and policies that dominate public discourse on
matters of race. Our elected representatives are committed to this
strategy, despite the fact that it has never been shown to improve race
relations for anybody, anywhere, at any time. In fact, the more
attention we call to race, the more racism we create. How can we ever be
a color-blind society if we don't stop counting people by the shade of
their hide? How can Dr. King's dream of his children being 'judged by
the content of their character and not the color of their skin' ever
occur if we avoid honest assessments of character when discussing race
relations?

The best and
brightest minds have worked to combat racism for the last 35 years or
longer, all with little or no success. We can set up all the
'sensitivity training seminars' and 'race-relation task forces' in the
world, but it will not make a bit of difference as long as racism is
treated exclusively as a 'white problem.' People can and do change, but
they have to be won over one at a time, and on an interpersonal level.
That means that if black people want to be treated better by employers,
police, and Denny's™ managers, they need to present their best image to
the public and work with their enslaved brothers to bring them out of
their hatred for whites. Maybe some sensitivity training is needed on
the other side?

Lewis J. Goldberg
is an internet columnist and editor of The
Patriotist.

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Originally posted from 05-24-02 to
05-30-02
On Pork
Patrol
by
DracoDei

I'm
chubby, and I know it. I have been so most of my life, including in high
school when I played soccer, running my ass off chasing the ball (not to
mention the daily practices, etc.) Even with all that caloric-burning
exuberance I had a bit of a pot-belly, and was always soft on the edges.
I've gotten a little older now, and admittedly am not in as good a shape
as I was then.

I try to
eat right but it doesn't always happen. I also know that I need to
exercise. I have the best intentions to lose weight and get in shape,
but they haven't happened yet. And whose fault is it? Mine. Not
society's, not the food industry’s, not anybody's fault but my
own.

My
employer - indeed, most full-time employers these days - have fitness
centers for people who want to work out at lunch, or before or after
work. Many employers have health fairs, devoted to giving dietary and
other health-related advice. Healthy workers are better workers; they
take fewer sick days, and though I don't know if there's proof, I'd
suspect there's a study somewhere showing that a fit worker is more
productive. But obesity lurks, fat nightmares stalk the streets of our
communities, just waiting to pounce on unsuspecting persons deciding to
finish off the last french fry or contemplating dessert. To save me from
this horrible nightmare, anti-fat crusaders want to reach into my life
to make sure I do what they know is best for me. After all, we're in an
"obesity crisis", an epidemic of porkers, pot-bellies, and cellulite
thighs.

We know
this because of a new method of calculation, called the Body Mass
Indicator (BMI) released in 1998. This method of calculation has
resulted in making "...30 million Americans fat overnight," according to
Mike Burita of The Center for Consumer Freedom. But the newfangled
obesity crisis is caused by a standard few can meet. Burita adds that
the BMI is so misleading that actors like Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise
are considered obese, while sports stars Cal Ripken Jr. and Michael
Jordan are classified overweight. But because of the “crisis”, doctors
and others who are concerned about this alleged epidemic have decided
they must take action for my own good, and are planning to
act.

Because
being overweight is a health issue, there are calls for adding a "fat
tax" to foods they deem unworthy. They want to see soda machines ripped
from their locations, menus downsized rather than supersized, and some
have even proposed making sure exercise walkways and other things are
built into communities. This is the issue of the day, the rescuing of
the fattening America.

But there
is a deeper issue - the for-your-own-gooders completely miss the fact
that most problems are a matter of personal responsibility. If I fail to
exercise, eat right, etc., I accept the greater health risk. That's my
choice. Nobody forces me to have a bacon double cheeseburger or to
finish the piled-high portion at a restaurant. Nobody bars me from the
exercise room. I'm sick and tired of do-gooders constantly on the
lookout to protect me from myself.

Heaven
forbid I make that decision the wrong way! After all, if I choose poorly
there is a chance that the public might be forced to spend more money;
thus is the basis for intrusion into my life formed. And this rationale
is truly insidious, for there are few things not touched by it.
Overweight? Let’s enact “fat taxes” and other incentives to make sure
people eat better. Coming soon: mandated diets and doctor-approved and
supervised exercise plans. Too tired due to lack of sleep? Monitored
sleep periods to make sure you get the requisite eight hours, and
enforced nap times besides (wait, come to think of it, I might go for
this one). Even sex would not be immune, for the “Protection Police”
would be authorized to check to make sure you and partner are properly
equipped. After all, diseases or unwanted children could cost public
money!

Some will
laugh at my examples, but only a few years ago the idea of a "fat tax"
topped the giggle scale. And there will doubtless be more to come. The
for-your-own-good nazis will never stop, for they justify their
anti-freedom lunacy with the noblest of intentions, soothed by their own
conscience that their unprecedented - and likely unending - meddling
with peoples' lives is the right thing to do, freedom and personal
responsibility be damned.

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Originally posted from
05-16-02 to 05-24-02
Chief Wahoo on the Trail of
Tears?
by
Jeffrey Quick

On April
30, the Anaheim Angels slaughtered the Cleveland Indians 21-2. The next
day, I read that the legislature of the People's Republic of California
is considering a bill to ban mascots and team names deemed derogatory to
any racial or ethnic group from all K-12 schools and colleges (click here for the story). While the bill would not
affect professional teams, it's still interesting timing.

And it
suggests a thought: the real problem behind Native American names of
sports teams is not that they are ethnically insulting, but that they
idealize Indians as some kind of big fierce savage unbeatable fighting
machine. I mean, come on, the Indians got creamed. Not even the Jews or
blacks were so thoroughly subjugated. And with both the Cleveland
Indians and Atlanta Braves in freefall, it might be time for baseball to
embrace the true reality of native life.

We can
start with promotions. Why not offer free blankets and smallpox
vaccinations to the first 1000 purchasers of season tickets? (I mean we
can't offer the smallpox on the blankets... there are terrorists out
there.) Or genuine Sand Creek-style tobacco pouches for dipping snuff.
Let's redo Chief Wahoo's teeth, to reflect the change from a
hunter-gatherer diet to the crappy sugar and starch meals on the rez. A
couple nice black cavities ought to do it. Maybe a antique Gatling gun
in the Atlanta stadium to hose down the fans when they start that
tomahawk chop. After all, it's what we did the last time.

And let's
redo the concessions. Why is it you can't get a good chunk of pemmican
or bowl of succotash in any major-league ballpark? Hell, you can't even
get fry bread. Get rid of that yuppie food like sushi. And forget beer.
What chief ever traded land for beer? Good cheap rotgut whiskey, that's
the stuff, with fans puking all over each other and being even more
abusive than they are now. Anything that encourages fan alcoholism will
foster identification with the team mascot.

Let's
change the names of some of the other teams. We can leave the Yankees
and the Mariners alone; they did their part to kill Indians. But the
National League really needs help. The Cincinnati Custers, the
Pittsburgh Firewater, the Montreal Mounties could all keep the Braves in
their place.Get rid of modern technological safety equipment. Make the
batters swing wearing a Plains war bonnet. Let the guy with the highest
batting average call the pitches. Let the strategy of the game reflect
the strategies of the Indian wars. And ditch the organ and accompany the
national anthem with a drum.

If the
Indian teams do their best to act like Indians, they'll lose like
Indians. And when fans realize that Indians are losers, they'll desert
their teams. The owners will have to switch names and image voluntarily,
without government coercion, not because it's politically correct, but
because nobody wants to be on a losing team. And the Atlanta Shermans
will again claim their place in the sun.

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Originally posted from 04-26-02 to
05-03-02
An Open Letter to Elton
John
from
Morgan Freeberg

My dear
Sir Elton John,

Congratulations on a successful
appearance on your part, by all accounts, before my United States Senate
last week, during which you demanded
"the richest nation" immediately end the AIDS epidemic.

I’d like
to discuss with you your purpose in doing this, whether it was to make
impassioned arguments that would resonate with the American people, or
force our hands by using your celebrity status to pressure our
lawmakers. You appear to have thought you were meeting with a slice of
Americana under the Capitol Dome. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Generally, when a senator is re-elected, he has convinced his
constituents that their problems are caused by some among the other
ninety-nine senators; he himself is blameless. We have a tough time
relating to senators. No senator has successfully completed a
presidential election campaign since 1968.

No, you
did not see Americana at our nation’s capitol. Americana is what you are
reading now. If you are interested in explaining to us why we should
spend more money on AIDS, instead of simply forcing us to do so, you
should keep reading.

America
is the most generous nation on earth. We believe in charity by choice,
not by mandate. To our way of thinking, the height of human existence is
to willingly sacrifice what we have salted away, to help someone less
fortunate. Simultaneously, the nadir of human failure is to require such
a thing through statute. To Americans, charity is voluntary, or it is
nothing.

Must we
prove our generosity? While Ground Zero was burning in Manhattan,
America flew over to the country from where the attack originated, and
dropped – food! Food and money! Have you ever heard the like? If I were
you, I wouldn’t bother checking English history for a
precedent.

To your
credit, before asking us to eradicate AIDS, you established a $35
million foundation to do likewise. Some American celebrities could learn
a thing or two from this. I respect that. At the same time, examples
abound of your penchant for lavish and frivolous spending. They are not
consistent with someone overly concerned about funding a health crisis:
£293,000 for flowers, £357,353 for a picture, £120,000 for your own
birthday. "I could find a shop in the Sahara desert," you boasted in a
BBC
Times article.

When you
sued your former manager and accountants a year-and-a-half ago, it was
revealed that you whittled through $43 million in 20 months from 1996 to
1997. That works out to half a million every week of lavish, needless,
excessive personal spending. You seem to be cognizant that this is your
right. You were quoted
as saying, "I have no one to leave the money to. I'm a single man. I
like spending my money."

Sir
Elton, the spirit of America champions your defiant defense. It is the
one place on earth where such an argument will enjoy the greatest
momentum. In our culture, individual choice is what life is all about.
People here are expected to prosper and to suffer from the efforts they
put out, and the decisions that they make.

My beef
with you concerns your inconsistency. You emerged from your mountain of
clothes, jewels, flowers – and lawsuits you started once you belatedly
realized your purse was getting light. Living large by personal choice,
you came to the place where personal choice is most-treasured, and
evacuated your bowels on that concept of personal choice. You infer we
have these obligations because we’re so "rich," "nobody else comes
close," etc. Well, that offends the hell out of me.

Where is
all this money? Our state governments are, with few exceptions, awash in
red ink year after year. Our federal government would be bankrupt, were
it not exempt from accounting standards incumbent on everyone else. Some
say if you want to get technical about it, our country has been
voluntarily bankrupt since March 9, 1933.

Do our
richest citizens possess this money? We have the most generous rich
people on the planet. They set up foundations just like you do. They
donate to AIDS research, Cancer research, at-risk youth programs. They
"gave at the office," as it were. Do you know of any wealthy Americans
who do not contribute to charity? Point them out. I’d be interested in
seeing such a "miser" list, but I doubt it will be very long.

I hope
you don’t have the cojones to infer that this wealth is in the
standard-of-living of our more modest citizens. If you do, I must be
part of this; there are more Americans making less than me, than those
who make more. My head spins when I compare my weekly personal expenses
to your $537 thousand. What I spent in the seven days before you showed
up at my nation’s capitol, is dwarfed by your own weekly budget by a
factor of, oh, where’s my calculator – Twenty-Three Thousand Six Hundred
Fifty-Eight Times! No flowers or pictures that week. A little gas to get
to work, some Kleenex and eye-drops, a co-pay for my doctor’s visit,
that’s about it.

America
spends enough money on AIDS, as it is, to match 500 Elton John clones
shopping 'til they drop. On a per-patient basis, that blows all other
disease research away. I believe more lives could be saved, not with
more cash, but with better oversight from your new friends in the Senate
regarding where
the money goes. Seminars on masturbation, flirting classes for gay
men, tickets to Disneyland, luxurious hotel rooms at $329 apiece – it
sounds more like a page from Elton John’s diary than extirpation of an
epidemic.

Your
speech came days before American tax returns were due. Could you
enlighten me on the mindset? Brighter minds
than mine have already pounced on you for spending half a mil a week on
bull-squeeze, boasting about it, and then haughtily intoning to my
country that it’s our job to end AIDS because we’re rich. Did you not
see the criticism coming or did you simply not care?

Regards,
Morgan K
Freeberg
AMERICAN TAXPAYER

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Originally posted from 04-19-02 to
04-26-02
Witch Hunt
2002
by Jeffrey Quick

I and my sweetie,
She Who Is Not Fooled (SWINF), were discussing the latest local
eruption of the Catholic sexual abuse scandal. A priest was put on
furlough because he was accused of giving a 12-year old a bare bottom
spanking, even though he wasn't even serving in that parish in that
year. I don't think spanking is a priestly function, myself. But
officials of my public school were giving out bare-bottom spankings in
the 60s, and nobody considered it sexual abuse then. And anyone now who
thinks that corporal punishment of children is a sexual act is twisted
beyond any help.

"But what about this
one?" I asked. "This woman said she was spanked for something she said
in confession, when she was in her early 20s. That's not discipline;
that's kink."

"A 20 year old
let herself be spanked?!" SWINF said. "That's consensual. Or more
likely, she's just nuts, and wants her 15 minutes of fame." Later in the
day, I read about accusations in LA, brought by a paranoid
schizophrenic, and knew she was right, and Hell was out for
recess.

As a Wiccan, I must
admit to a touch of Schadenfreud that the sponsors of Sprenger and
Kramer are getting a dose of their own medicine. But witch hunts are
destructive and wrong, no matter whose foot the shoe is on. The gay
community may be breathing a little easier now that it seems that not
all priestly pedophiles are queer. Still, mass hysteria is
unpredictable, and nobody knows where this generation's version of the
McMartin
Preschool case will lead.

But it might be
worth asking "Qui bono?" and "Why now?" It's not like priests have
suddenly developed itches in their britches, after all. They've been
regularly falling from grace for two millennia, and the Church, like any
other major political institution, has always engaged in damage control.
Granted, that's not moral leadership, but it's to be
expected.

In the Satanic
ritual abuse scandals of the 80s, it was the Evangelical Right and
psychologists with dubious theories who were the pushers and chief
beneficiaries of the myth. The goal was to defame the newly resurgent
and competitive pagan religions, as well as scaring mothers away from
rejoining the workforce and keeping them home with the kids. There was
also fame, money and glory for a few Christian hucksters, of which the
most notorious was Mike
Warnke, finally exposed as a fraud by his own co-religionists. In
this round of scandal, the chief agents seem to be the news media and
trial lawyers, both practically arms of the Democratic Party.

How does the Left
benefit from damaging the Catholic church? Painting the church as a
dangerous place for children drives a further wedge between ethnic
Catholics (who traditionally vote Democratic but have been drifting
right) and the Church which has been leading them Right, largely through
the abortion issue. But more importantly, the Church is a threat to the
New World Order, in spite of the Marxism which infects it, because it is
a separate power base. John Paul II is to the Church what Reagan was to
America: one who put the brakes on the downward spiral and pulled the
organization back to traditional values, through force of charisma and
will. In either case, it may have been too little, too late, but it has
definitely thrown off the timetable. And now that the old Pole is too
feeble to boldly combat the scandal, there's an opportunity for the Left
to influence the church. It would be interesting to analyze the politics
of those priests and bishops who have been discredited or driven from
office, in comparison to those of the church as a whole, and the effect
on the next conclave.

"Do you think this
will bring down the Church?" SWINF asked me. No. An egregore that old
and central to Western civilization isn't going to just blow away. Even
financially, the wealth of the Church is the wealth of its believers,
and largely beyond lawyers' grasp. And the legal reasoning behind making
the Pope a defendant in a civil suit is tenuous at best, and the burden
of proof near-insurmountable. These nuisance suits and scandals are
distractions. The Left is too smart to fight the church head-on. All
they need to do is weaken it enough to grab temporal power; after that
it will be largely irrelevant to their design. While it's clear that the
Church should make amends in the cases where it enabled abuse, it must
resist bending over. And no matter how deep our contempt for religion
might be, there's no point in scapegoating the priesthood.

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Originally posted from 04-09-02 to
04-19-02
Andrea Yates and the
Legally-Mandated Calgon Moment
by Morgan Freeberg

Unless my eyes and
ears deceive me, Andrea Yates is back in the news again. She's locked up
for life, but now we have to figure out how culpable her husband,
Russell, is in the deaths of their five children. The ones she held
underwater with her own two hands until they all drowned.

I don't understand
how this is possible. I thought we lived in a culture that despises
excessive news coverage. Three years later, my ears still ring from
"censure and move on!" Poll after poll, I was told, revealed that we
didn't care if the President lied to us and was ready to lie to us about
anything else that suited his purposes. News anchors condescendingly
explained to me that current events, both domestic and foreign, had only
a few minutes in the spotlight before people grew fatigued. Blockbuster
awaited, after all. Triple-fudge frapaccinos were waiting to be brewed,
sprinkled with vanilla flakes for $6.75 a cup. The real things in life
mattered, and we were tired of the news.

Never mind that by
consuming air-time to explain this to me, the anchors were practically
contradicting themselves. I got the message: News is for nerds. Why
then, three years hence, this perpetual thirst for more updates on the
Yates chronicle?

Because we're a
nation of selfish bastards, that's why.

Clinton and Lewinsky
don't hit home; Yates does. Lazy, selfish men are waiting out there to
see how much they can ignore the daily maintenance of their young
children while their wives handle everything, before those men are
criminally culpable. Self-pitying, teary-eyed women, weary of keeping
the home fires burning like grandma used to do, want their husbands to
pitch in and help - with the force of law. They want a legally-mandated
Calgon moment. They want to say to him: If I'm stressed out, you better
notice it and pitch in, pal. You are responsible for my sanity. The
Russell Yates conviction, or lawsuit, proved it.

For however little
it is worth, the men have a better case here. If a woman is on the edge
of a nervous breakdown or is legally insane, and someone else is
responsible for her, that someone-else has to be as competent as any of
the rest of us if not more so. People who have been through such a
family crisis know this. They need to have both oars in the water, to
make up for the other person's weakness. Russell may be a lot of things,
but he is not that. I've followed the case as close as anyone else. He's
a matchstick short of a cord.

Are we really to
believe that impregnating your wife time after time after time, against
a doctor's advice, is evidence of negligence - and therefore competence
- and then the extinguishing of those young lives is indicative of
insanity, and therefore innocence? In John Marshall's words, this is too
extravagant to be maintained.

Besides, this is a
misguided and counterproductive way to rejuvenate the carcass of
feminism. Such a supervisory capacity would effectively make every
husband his wife's boss. The teary-eyed bitchy women evidently haven't
thought that all the way through. You put legal responsibilities on
someone, you have to give them the authority to back that up. I doubt
that's what they want to do.

But it really
doesn't matter. Three years ago, the Lewinsky scandal was universally
regarded of having overstayed its welcome. That is much more true of the
Yates case, which is more important than many other domestic tragedies
only because several of the spectators figure they have a stake in

the outcome.

I say, a pox on both
their houses, the men and the ladies. This is more selfishness than our
society can stand for long. Somewhere out there, someone is thinking "I
care more about stories that impact me, and people like me, than stories
that impact how the entire nation is governed and affect the lives of
millions of other people." And then there are millions of more people,
who think like that person. This appears to be a value system held by a
majority. If it lasts for long, we, as a free society, will
not.

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Originally posted
from 03-14-02 to 03-24-02
Big Mother's Breasts Give
Pasteurized Milk
by Jeffrey Quick

It's
contraband. Crack cocaine is easier to find. It's been fed to children
for thousands of years, but it's too dangerous to give them now. It's
milk. Raw milk.

Eww, yuck. That
germy stuff. Why would anybody want to drink it? Raw milk has a lot
going for it over store milk: enzymes, probiotic bacteria, Vitamins B6,
and B-12, and an antistiffness factor, all of which are destroyed by
heating. The Weston A. Price
Foundation can tell you all about it. But those germs? Yes, clean raw milk
has germs, but not dangerous ones. Just like clean meat.

Even if raw milk
were worse than pasteurized, you'd have a right to drink it, right? I
mean, Twinkies aren't so good for you either, and they're legal. Well,
Twinkies are a product of Big Business. And it's Big Business that
agitated for pasteurization laws in the 1930s. Why? Pasteurized milk
lasts longer. Raw milk contains lactobacilli (related to yogurt culture)
and will sour and clabber, forming perfectly edible curds. Pasteurized
milk just spoils and becomes undrinkable. Plus, since the milk was to be
processed anyway, it was easier to add homogenization. Since the cream
doesn't rise to the top in homo milk, the consumer can't tell butterfat
content, which means that the legal 3.5% minimum for butterfat is also
the de facto
maximum. This is great for farmers who raise breeds
producing large amounts of watery milk. Also, they figure they don't
have to be quite as careful about milkhouse cleanliness...even though
most cases of milkborne disease come from pasteurized milk.

A summary of the
laws of the 50 states, Canada, and Britain can be found posted at the Campaign for Real Milk website on
its What's Happening
with Real Milk? page.The good news (such as it is) is that raw milk
is still legal in just over half of all states, but what that means in
practice can be illustrated by the Ohio statute:

Ohio Revised Code
§ 917.04 Sale and labeling of raw milk

No raw milk
retailer shall sell, offer for sale, or expose for sale raw milk to
the ultimate consumer except a raw milk retailer who, prior to October
31, 1965, was engaged continuously in the business of selling or
offering for sale raw milk directly to ultimate consumers, holds a
valid raw milk retailer license issued under section 917.09 of the
Revised Code, and is subject to the rules regulating the sale of raw
milk adopted under this chapter.

How nice! There is
one such producer in Ohio, in Yellow Springs. And there's no need
to issue new raw milk retailer licences, because under this ordinance,
they wouldn't be allowed to sell anyway. And without a licence, it's a
2nd degree misdemeanor the first time, a first degree misdemeanor each
succeeding time, and each day counts as a separate charge.

Federal
law states:

Uniformity and
adequacy of State milk production regulations is obtained through a
model Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) developed and revised under FDA
leadership. The PMO is the basis for the milk sanitation laws and
regulations of 49 States, the District of Columbia, and over 2,000
local communities.

This is SOP for
bureaucrats who want to override the 10th Amendment: design a model
ordinance and then use some combination of carrot and stick to get local
jurisdictions to adopt it:

Pasteurization is
mandatory for all milk and milk products, in final package form,
intended for direct human consumption after distribution in interstate
commerce. The regulation (21 CFR 1240.61) defines pasteurization as
heating and holding every particle of milk or milk product in properly
designed and operated equipment at times and temperatures specified in
the regulation. Exemptions are provided for acceptable alternative
methods, such as the aging of certain cheeses.

This ban on raw milk
in interstate commerce was instituted by executive order of Mr. Limited
Government, President Ronald Reagan.

People who wish to
buy and sell raw milk have tried doing runs around the law. The most
common is for the farm to sell the cows or shares thereof to the
customers. It is legal to milk your own cow and drink the milk.
But The State inflicts its usual warped views of ownership here too. For
an example of persecution in Wisconsin, read the story told by Midvalleyvu
Farms.

The other path is to
fight legislatively. The Campaign for
Real Milk, patterned after Britain's successful Campaign for Real
Ale, is the most visible such organization. RawMilk.org: A Right to Choose Healthy
Food Site is another.

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