Author Archives: Stephen VanDyke

New York City map of 2011 gun seizures

It’s the mothafuckin’ NYPD,
in the land of the mothafuckin’ unfree,
violating 685,000 of you me and… thee,
to get 770 dangerous guns off the streets.

Hit the baseline WNYC:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly argue the main purpose of stop-and-frisk is to get guns off the street. Out of more than 685,000 stops in 2011, about 770 guns were recovered. That means about one tenth of one percent of all stops result in the seizure of a gun.

But those guns are not showing up in the places where the police are devoting the most stop-and-frisk resources.

Using data from the New York City police department, WNYC mapped all street stops by police that resulted in the recovery of a gun last year. The digital map shows an interesting pattern. We located all the “hot spots” where stop and frisks are concentrated in the city, and found that most guns were recovered on people outside those hot spots—meaning police aren’t finding guns where they’re looking the hardest.

Hardest hit: the poorest areas of black and latino communities,
excuse my uncanny truth rhyming abilities,
I’m not an entitled man here to tax your facilities,
but fight this shit and I guarantee some tranquilities.

Prohibition does nothing but make a thing proliferate,
and so the net is clearly widening as we wait,
so why do we continue to vocally deliberate,
when all we need to do is re-liberate?

From Cleveland, with the Constitutional educate

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Kim Dotcom lays out ten “facts” about his case

From his twitter account, Kim Dotcom continues trying his legal battle in the court of public opinion by explaining the shams foisted upon him by the U.S. DOJ and their puppets in New Zealand:

Fact #1: All my assets are still frozen. I have no funds to pay lawyers & defend myself in the biggest copyright case in world history.

Fact #2: NZ courts ruled: Restraining order illegal. Search warrants illegal. But I still have no access to my files. Not even copies.

Fact #3: NZ court ruled: FBI removed my data from NZ illegally. But the FBI reviewed my hard drives anyway and didn’t send them back.

Fact #4: The DOJ argues in US court that I should not get a penny unfrozen for my defense cause I should be treated like a bank robber.

Fact #5: The DOJ argues in US court that I should not have the lawyers of my choosing because of a conflict of interest with rights holders.

Fact #6: There is no criminal statute for secondary copyright infringement in the US. The DOJ doesn’t care. Let’s just be creative.

Fact #7: Only 10% of our users and 15% of our revenue came from US users. Yet the DOJ argues in US court that all assets are tainted.

Fact #8: The DOJ told the Grand Jury that Megaupload employs 30 staff. In reality 220 jobs were lost because of the US actions.

Fact #9: The DOJ shut down several companies for alleged copyright infringement including N1 Limited – A fashion label making clothing.

Fact #10: The DOJ is charging us with Money Laundering and Racketeering cause Copyright Infringement isn’t enough for Extradition from NZ.

While it is very easily arguable that Megaupload and Megavideo were being used for copyright infringement at some level — something he’s acknowledged and had a response system in place to remove said infringing content — the DOJ’s response to the daily onslaught of Google/YouTube infringement claims in an entirely different manner can only explained as quid pro quo.

The unfortunate lesson: if you want to run a large internet company unmolested by Uncle Sam, you had better grease the right palms in DC.

UPDATE: According to a report last month from Stuff.co.nz, Dotcom is being denied access to evidence (except 40 pages of the prosecution’s “cherry-picked” items from over 22 million emails) as he fights the ongoing and financially exhaustive extradition battle, he has threatened to publish what little information has been released by the DOJ to his legal team to the public in a bid to win sympathy.

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Gary Johnson hits $1M Vegas jackpot

An unnamed donor had it announced on his behalf that a million dollars will be donated to a yet unnamed SuperPAC the Freedom and Liberty PAC. Strangely, the windfall news broke at a Wayne Allyn Root poolside dinner:

Judge Jim Gray, at the Gary Johnson fundraiser held at former VP Nominee and current LNC member Wayne Allyn Root’s home, before a crowd of about 80 donors gathered around the outdoor pool on an unusually cool and humid Las Vegas evening, announced that a generous Libertarian supporter had recently donated $1,000,000 to a super pac supporting the Gary Johnson 2012 campaign to “keep us going.”

[...] Prior to Judge Gray’s announcement the Root family hosted a perfectly executed dinner party in their spacious Henderson NV home. BBQ Ribs, alcohol, fine desserts and all the extras flowed abundantly. LNC member Brett Pojunis introduced the first speaker who related a story of fishing in Alaska with a friend who was so (either fatigued, or inspired by) hearing stories about Gary Johnson that he eventually donated $2,500.00. Wayne was next, mentioning that he had never been fishing, but in what may have been his most adamant and passionate endorsement of the Johnson/Gray campaign urged everyone present to “give till it hurts” and to support the campaign because “while the Democrats are driving over the cliff at 180 mph, the Republicans are driving at that same cliff at 120 mph” and “we’re heading over the cliff either way” and “we can’t let that happen.” Wayne urged everyone present to support Gary Johnson.

[...] Brett then thanked everyone for coming. Wayne reminded everyone that this is Las Vegas, and there were “really people with baseball bats” and again asked everyone present to support the campaign. He also introduced a professional photographer who was present to take photos of anyone who wanted one with the Governor, Judge or anyone else.

In this reporter’s experience the event was perfectly executed, very well attended and an apparent unqualified success. The crowd seemed energized and was reluctant to leave. Several small buses were used to transport attendees from Freedom Fest to Wayne’s home and back. The bus ride back was, at least for the bus this reporter was on, highly energized with expressions of gratitude to the Roots, the million dollar donor and for the very real possibility that Gary Johnson and Judge Gray could actually be in the debates.

I doubt it’s mere coincidence to announce this kind of thing with scant details of where the money is going — at Root’s home (who’s basically endorsed Romney on multiple online comments) — so it’s probably best that Johnson’s business and political experience has prepared him to swim with party sharks.

And that baseball bats joke? Yeesh, we’re not the mafia, guys. We’re the ones who fight to end rackets of power-drunk republicans and democrats. But apparently politics is politics so Libertarian Party lordship rings are smartly being kissed in the process.

A just 9% peak polling and a stagnant economy wearing down small donors, Gary Johnson’s campaign desperately needed the financial support. More than that, Johnson’s team couldn’t hurt themselves by scouting out some Vegas-experienced publicists (even the ones with sharpened teeth). It’s no doubt he’ll have a lot to smile about this week.

Update: The name of the SuperPAC has been confirmed as the Freedom and Liberty PAC, a Johnson-specific PAC which had one other donation of $100K on June 28th.

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Not quite what we had in mind

When we recently opened up our registration on Hammer of Truth (Piwik is still broken to some degree so the deal stands, for now), a few trolls immediately crawled out from under their bridges and made trouble. Or at least they tried, and failed, and then we laughed at them.

With our super-secret troll and spammer detection system, we’ve already sent a few back under their bridges with some well deserved lumps and will continue to arm and teach our system to defend itself, like Skynet or something (not really).

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Jillette bests Hannity in debate of superfluous laws

It’s good to see Hannity has the man-stones to acknowledge Jillette’s appeal to reason in a recent interview on Fox:

HANNITY: You’ve never tried marijuana.

JILLETTE: Never.

HANNITY: You never had a drink.

JILLETTE: Never.

HANNITY: You’ve never had a cigarette that you smoked.

JILLETTE: I do fire eating, so I have to light a cigarette –

HANNITY: You never smoked a cigar.

JILLETTE: Never.

HANNITY: You’re the exception to the rule for libertarians. You know that, right?

JILLETTE: I do know that, but I also do know that the most important thing is for the government to allow more freedom than I want for myself. Morality has to be a subset — the most important thing is that people in this country feel like they are living legally. There’s nobody in this country right now that can say with complete confidence they are doing nothing illegal. We have too many laws. What you need to do, is if you are a good person, you should have no fear of the government. It comes back to the Al Capone thing that we busted him on income tax invasion. You don’t want to feel good about that. You don’t want to feel good that the government can bust anybody on anything they want. You want to be able to do good things. Much smaller laws. You know, my son, when he gets to be 12 years old, should be able to understand everything that’s illegal and everything that’s not. There shouldn’t be this huge amount of illegal things you can do. Someone who is a good person should have no fear of the government whatsoever.

HANNITY: All right, I lost this debate. I can’t win this debate. Go waste half your vote.

JILLETTE: I’ll waste my whole vote. That’s what I’m going to do.

Oh wait, he added that qualifier in there… so fuck him.

I’m very much glad that Jillette had the sense to bitch slap some sense into him on the half-vote mockery he was attempting on everyone who would dare to vote for Gary Johnson or anything other than the pre-approved corporate-backed duopoly. It’s smug bootlickers like Hannity who are ultimately giving Americans a bad name by this kind of “blind” deference to power. We the people of all political stripes control the reins of this country, not with half-votes — whatever the shit that meant — but with full angry votes, backed by full angry mobs. I dare Hannity to keep pretending otherwise and ignore history.

Side note: Penn Jillette had a prior libertarian outburst speaking out against Obama’s drug use hypocrisy and is probably most beloved among libertarians for his infamous standoff against a TSA screener’s physical assault. Hammer of Truth reached out to Jillette for further comment on the matter and was rebuffed because of some bad manners (on twitter, no less). Do feel free to let him know what a silly mistake that was, seeing as we’re not his damn enemy.

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Sign of the times: Ohio man gives Barry the bird


[photo credit: Chronicle Telegram]

The Libertarian Party of Ohio is was hilariously treading out there by posting this on their facebook wall (see update). With the context and the great framing, I am certain this man’s symbolic discontent will ultimately haunt us over and over.

Taken by Bruce Bishop at the Chronicle Telegram during president Barack Obama’s July 5th visit to Amherst, the newspaper for some reason decided not to post it in their own website’s photo gallery of the visit. The photo — which was apparently only posted to facebook and now technically now belongs to them as well — had the following caption:

What do you think of this picture Bruce snapped yesterday? Clearly not everyone was happy with the president coming through Lorain County.

This Elyria man said that “I’m not against Republicans or Democrats, I don’t like any of them.” When the President’s motorcade made the short jaunt through Elyria he raised both arms over his head and gave the presidential bus the finger.

This is one time where I’d ask Barry to autograph something.

UPDATE: Thanks to reader Marty Readling for the heads up, Hammer of Truth brings you news that the LPO decided to pull the photo.

According to the page’s account holder, it was removed after “a string of vulgar comments” was posted in the comments.

They added, “It was a very popular image to share all well as opened people up to a bunch of comments. I didn’t do it for publicity per se. It was a provoking image to stimulate thought and discussion. Unfortunately it allowed a forum for nasty comments. Sometimes it’s best to just move on.”

Why they couldn’t just remove those comments is beyond me, but I’ve included the original photo they posted below to show that there was a major difference between the unedited version we posted on Hammer of Truth and what the LPO put out there.

A word of advice to the LPO: when it comes to getting egg on your face, you can’t delete shit on the internet — especially this clumsily — without having said shit end up all over you in the process. What started as a somewhat cool, hip move on the LPO’s part now leaves us wondering what kind of vulgarity necessitated the entire facebook photo’s removal.

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And don’t replace

Mitt Romney will ultimately go down as a contender who was running against himself.

Romney’s campaign sloganeers have firmly established that they don’t even understand how the left/right paradigm even works on this podium placard. We leave it to Gary Johnson to hit him from the right, as he promised.

UPDATE: I agree with most everything Tim Brown says here:

In my opinion, today’s ruling will give ammunition to the GOP for good campaign rhetoric, but will it produce anything of substance when it comes to actually repealing Obamacare? That is the issue. We’ve heard enough rhetoric. Let’s see some action on it that the Constitution affords and leave people alone to make their own choices when it comes to health care, insurance and any other thing that involves their private property. Just get government out of our lives and don’t replace it with anything.

I know it’s hard to wake up. I know how it feels to be safe in our dreamland, but reality is crashing in. What real solution is being pushed forward here? There really is only one, full repeal and don’t replace Obamacare with anything. The American people don’t want it. It isn’t demanded in the Constitution and people should be left to their own pursuits of healthcare should they desire it.

If the Republican Party falls in lockstep with Romney on the replacing rhetoric, that “ammunition” will end up in their own feet.

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Some changes in the matrix

I’m switching a few things around in the Hammer of Truth control tower (see our dev log), so while we figure out how long it takes to fix our hilariously broken Piwik stats server (which was awesome until we did some migration stuff and then kablooey), enjoy the open registration here. If you know someone who knows someone who has libertarian tendencies and hasn’t already won the somewhat coveted login ability at our online pillow fort then tell them all about it with your ESP or whatever kids have these days.

As for me, I’ll keep doing what I can around here to keep you informed, while at the same time wearing a lot of other professional(-ish) hats and attempting to drive the liberty sucker empire of information nodules into the sun. Wish me luck.

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Bad cops, bad cops: watchoo gonna do when we come for you?

Every encounter between police and moral law abiding citizens has devolved into a Mexican standoff. They have the power to inconvenience most of us, and we have that same power… to what end?

Here’s a funny story about the latter end of that equation for one unfriendly cop:

Despite an impressive criminal record and his latest suspension, Bosque maintains that he’s on the positive end of the good cop/bad cop spectrum. “I’m an excellent police officer but I break the rules,” he told The Herald. Hard to argue with that coming from a man who in August 2000 told a teenager, “I am the law, if I feel like it right now I can fuck you up and no one will say anything about it.” Charming.

Here’s a few of Bosque’s greatest hits, as reported by The Herald:

May 22, 1998: Bosque calls in sick for work, claiming food poisioning. Takes a vacation in Cancun, Mexico.

Sept. 5, 1999: Excessive force accusations filed against Bosque by a man who claims the officer kicked and punched him repeatedly while handcuff. Police authorities reportedly took no action on the case.

Jan. 19, 2004: Suspended for 45 days after beating a handcuffed suspect into a pulp. According to The Herald, “The victim was beaten until bloody and there was blood spilled all over the station house floor.”

July 22, 2004: The Herald reports that Bosque was “accused of fondling a corrections officer in his squad car.” But he was not punished. Why? According to investigators, “the woman involved admitted she refused to say ‘no.’”

Jan. 24, 2011: Promoted to sergeant.

July 2012: Internet Shitstorm as his career of underachieving is exposed.

Think about how hard it’s going to be for Sgt. German Bosque, “the South Florida cop who won’t can’t stay fired” after this series of stories is permanently attached to his digital dossier? I’m sure the increased insurance premiums a city or county must now fork over for hiring rogue cops can make it less attractive should he receive even the slightest further investigation (which could lead to even more corruption, if the department is willing to overlook citizen complaints).

Even now, the mayor of Opa-Lock appears to be a willing player in the power trip tale — someone who Bosque had driven around as a personal cheufer — as he’s still pulling in a paycheck and “sleeping late and watching telenovelas and Cops reruns,” according to his lawyer. I’ve seen plenty of Cops reruns, I would not encourage anyone who is seeking a healthy respect for humanity to look to them for guidance.

I’m not glad he’s got free time to sit around on his duff on the taxpayer’s dime, so I heartily laughed at his comeuppance to him via facebook.

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Report: Drones could be hijacked by $1000 ‘GPS spoofing’

UPDATE: The research comes from the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. It’s evident from the publication listing that they are pretty much the authority on GPS spoofing and spoof detection techniques, for anyone who wants to dive into the technical side. /UPDATE

Fox News:

A small surveillance drone flies over an Austin stadium, diligently following a series of GPS waypoints that have been programmed into its flight computer. By all appearances, the mission is routine.

Suddenly, the drone veers dramatically off course, careering eastward from its intended flight path. A few moments later, it is clear something is seriously wrong as the drone makes a hard right turn, streaking toward the south. Then, as if some phantom has given the drone a self-destruct order, it hurtles toward the ground. Just a few feet from certain catastrophe, a safety pilot with a radio control saves the drone from crashing into the field.

From the sidelines, there are smiles all around over this near-disaster. Professor Todd Humphreys and his team at the University of Texas at Austin’s Radionavigation Laboratory have just completed a successful experiment: illuminating a gaping hole in the government’s plan to open US airspace to thousands of drones.

They could be turned into weapons. see more…

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Gary Johnson anti-bipartisan ad has subliminal message

Libertarian candidate for president Gary Johnson’s campaign have now twice — and we expect more — inserted subliminal statements into a lightning strike b-roll of DC’s Washington monument. Previously, the words “1776 KICKS 1984′s ASS” were blipped by, but now this time Johnson’s message is that he’s taking no duff from the other major parties on the “wasted vote” syndrome invoked every four years against third party contenders.

In the video, Johnson tells voters, “For those of you worried I’ll take votes away from the Democrat and to those of you worried I’ll take votes away from he Republican, I say good.”

“They deserve to lose your vote. Take as many votes as possible away from the people in both parties keeping us in a state of perpetual war, increasing unsustainable debt, record joblessness, and a bipartisan economic death wish ruining America for 330,000,000 of us.” That’s some pretty powerful rhetoric.

Added to the end of the latest one, “Obamney is the new Bradgelina.” I of course deduct points for getting it wrong, but it’s a great pop culture shot across the bow of The Obamney: Failboat 2012.

More, please!

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Gary Johnson’s headache for the GOP

He’s peeling voters away left and right, but especially right:

There hasn’t been a single poll out of Colorado this year that’s shown Mitt Romney ahead of Barack Obama. Tuesday’s Public Policy Polling poll is no exception: Obama leads Romney in a head-to-head matchup by 49 percent to 42 percent.

But add libertarian Gary Johnson to the mix and the numbers are slightly different: Obama leads 47-39, with 7 percent going to Johnson, according to the PPP poll.

At that level of support, if Johnson qualifies for the ballot, he could end up having a significant impact in a three-way matchup — not only in Colorado but across the Mountain West, where he figures to run strongest.

And it’s clear from a recent NPR interview that Johnson is intent on picking up the Ron Paul revolution torch:

“You know, I think that the message that I’m delivering is really identical to that of Ron Paul and Ron Paul, being a messenger, this would be coming out of his mouth, I’m the same thing. I’m a messenger here of the whole freedom/liberty agenda and the fact that I don’t think Ron Paul’s going to be the nominee – that would be by his own admission.”

“So this message comes to an end, unless I switch parties, become a Libertarian and, yeah, I get to continue this message. And I think it’s really important.”

If Johnson were to put on his political hat and seriously offer Ron Paul the Treasury Secretary position beforehand, it would be just due course for the Paul campaign organism to veer into the Johnson camp. At this point though, it remains to be seen if he’ll be able to meet the 15% threshold requirement for admission into the dreaded Commission on Presidential Debates (the corporate outfit that’s been keeping it two-party only since Perot’s 1992 bid nearly derailed the duopoly).

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Google’s 16,000 cluster bot: It’s all about cats

It’s a neural network developed by “X laboratory” (which is an awesome sounding secret lab and they also are working on self-driven cars in Nevada, fuck yeah) that is one step closer to constructing artificial intelligence in computers. They turned it on, gave it very little direction except to recognize faces and pointed it in the direction of the YouTube thumbnail archives to feed on input — the “answer” it spit out was that it also recognized the composite face of a cat, in addition to humans.

Originally reported by the NYT:

And then, of course, there are the cats.

To find them, the Google research team, led by the Stanford University computer scientist Andrew Y. Ng and the Google fellow Jeff Dean, used an array of 16,000 processors to create a neural network with more than one billion connections. They then fed it random thumbnails of images, one each extracted from 10 million YouTube videos.

The videos were selected randomly and that in itself is an interesting comment on what interests humans in the Internet age. However, the research is also striking. That is because the software-based neural network created by the researchers appeared to closely mirror theories developed by biologists that suggest individual neurons are trained inside the brain to detect significant objects.

Currently much commercial machine vision technology is done by having humans “supervise” the learning process by labeling specific features. In the Google research, the machine was given no help in identifying features.

“The idea is that instead of having teams of researchers trying to find out how to find edges, you instead throw a ton of data at the algorithm and you let the data speak and have the software automatically learn from the data,” Dr. Ng said.

“We never told it during the training, ‘This is a cat,’ ” said Dr. Dean, who originally helped Google design the software that lets it easily break programs into many tasks that can be computed simultaneously. “It basically invented the concept of a cat. We probably have other ones that are side views of cats.”

There’s a long and rich history of cat worship dating back to the Egyptians and further so correlation is obviously something to consider.

Still, I suspect this could go down as the first undeniable “42″ moment in AI computer science, where the answer once again ends up baffling researchers more than the initial question.

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Obama should keep his big mouth shut on baseball

If you or I were to talk smack about the Red Sox in Boston, we’d get what we’d deserve from die-hard fans. A lot of grumbling and a Bawstin accent-laden tongue-lashing, or worse. Well Obama is clearly no better:

Being booed was probably the last thing President Barack Obama expected from the crowd at a Symphony Hall fundraiser Monday night, but that happened when the president “thanked” Boston for Kevin Youkilis, who was just traded to the Chicago White Sox.

“I’m just saying, he’s going to have to change the color of his socks,” the president said laughing.

Youkilis was traded from the Red Sox, to Obama’s favorite team on Sunday for infielder Brent Lillibridge and pitcher Zach Stewart.

“I didn’t think I was going to get any boos out of here,” he said. “I should not have brought up baseball, I understand, my mistake, you got to know your crowd.”

I then presume he had the wherewithal to put on his trusty White Sox hat and strut out, flipping the crowd the bird. Haters gonna hate and whatnot.

Now ironically, as much as Obama claims to love his beloved White Sox, he’s actually terrible at throwing a baseball. He’s not just terrible, mind you, he literally throws like a girl.

At the July 2009 All Stars game in St. Louis, Obama was loudly booed before anyone could possibly have noticed what he was wearing (a White Sox Jacket). He of course threw the ball into the dirt after a pitifully high arc: see more…

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For Obama, almost a free lunch

A Father’s Day photo op for President Barack Obama went sour after the tab had to be settled. Here’s the flowery notice by ABC pre-fiasco:

The “Fatherhood Buzz” campaign is designed to “reach out to dads with positive information through barbers and barber shops as a part of the administration’s longstanding Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative,” according to the White House.

“The more information we’re getting out there to folks about how they could take responsibility for their kids, make sure that they’re in their child’s lives, help support their mother even if they’re not living with the mother, makes a huge difference,” the president told the men over heaping plates of barbecue.

Explaining his administration’s efforts to support families, the president said that children with involved fathers are “are less likely to do drugs… girls are less likely to get pregnant.”

“That message is something that we want to make sure gets out there,” he said.

The president delivered brief remarks to the press before diving into a platter of ribs, collard greens, black eyed peas and rice and a corn muffin.

“We’re going to eat in peace now,” Obama said as the cameras were escorted out.

Aww, make sure you get the good political parts on camera before the one-on-one pandering gets going. Such a great politician we should all emulate.

Later ABC posts a new story that between Obama and at least those two (not to mention the entourage of security, government staffers and press) they managed to leave behind an unpaid bill of $55.58.

Apparently Obama keeps trying to prove that he actually can eat a free lunch.:

Amid the bustle of President Obama’s surprise stop for barbecue Wednesday the White House apparently overlooked one key detail: the bill.

[...] The bill for the president and his four guests was $55.58, but was left unpaid at the point of sale, according to pool reports.

The White House corrected the oversight and settled up the tab by the end of the business day.

Which means the owner probably called the White House and press to complain. I imagine it was a bit awkward.

“YEESH OBAMA, THIS IS HOW YOU TREAT A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER IN THIS ECONOMY?” Or something along those lines. After all it’s a BBQ joint, we know they work hard for every dollar and have to look at ugly fat customers with sauce on their faces all day long.

I would have called to confirm a quote like this, but I have no idea which one of the Google results is the actual restaurant. If you’re bored, feel free to call them all and ask them for free food and see how that works out.

Well, no free lunch for you on Father’s Day or any other day Obama. Please stop trying to steal from hardworking small businesses.

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Joe Scarborough on why he voted for Ron Paul

If the Libertarian Party doesn’t capitalize on this, oh my gosh I’ll be disappoint:

It was the first “protest” vote I’ve ever cast, and it felt … well, it felt good. Suddenly I understood a bit better why the Ross Perot or the Pat Buchanan or the Ralph Nader voters did what they did.

They thought the system was so broken that they couldn’t sit out but also couldn’t stomach voting for a conventional candidate at a time of unconventional problems.

Do I think a Ron Paul presidency is ever possible? No, I don’t. But I do want some of the Pauline virtues of candor and non-poll-tested conviction to play a larger role in our politics.

So now I’ve cast my protest vote. It felt good.

What I really want, though, is a party and a politics that’s commensurate with the problems and possibilities of the country. We’ll get there one day — and then we can focus on progress, not protest.

With Ron Paul semi-officially out of contention, the only credible third party or independent candidate left is going to be Gary Johnson. The only question is if everyone on the fence will once again wait until it’s too late to breathe life into his “brand awareness” campaign either financially or in-kind volunteering.

The tsunamis of voter discontent with the two-party system have been slamming higher and higher into public life on a regular basis every four years since Perot proved it could almost be done (you still need ridiculous amounts of money to be a threat to the party establishment). Around the world this is playing out with regularity as the masses discard their old political parties.

Maybe this is the year the tsunami of discontent topples a U.S. presidential election.

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Rand Paul’s Romney endorsement

It’s, how shall we say…

It’s going over like a hot turd in the punch bowl.

Here’s a compilation of shit people on the internet are saying, with the Ron Paul campaign issuing one, two, three separate blog posts on our rootin’ tootin’ internet tubes trying their best to tell everyone the punch is still fine. There’s more smatterings of Rand Paul in other releases.

Their blog’s main page tell the story well enough as a visual:

Of course with clockwork predictability, an angry internet mob has formed and are now dropping additional turds in the punchbowl as they switch parties to the official Gary Johnson individual served libertarian weed and snacks party (The GOP could be stomping on Obama’s nuts over the war on freedom, but everyone high in the ranks of party life is too much of a professionalism pussy to acknowledge these wars are over when We the people say they are, but I digress). You fuckers still over at that popped collar debauchery lovin’ GOP party can quote me on that.

The punch is of course the GOP party, and the turd is… well let’s say replacing the turds isn’t what’s going to get this country out of it’s corporate überhomeland mode super wartime fun games xbox financial meltdown any time soon. The technocrats already have their starbucks residential compounds built in plain sight. It’s called La Jolla.

Okay, enough of my shit, on with the turd fiesta a bunch of other people plopped. see more…

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Gary Johnson ad: “Be Libertarian with me” one election

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson released a very well done web ad this week which has a distinctly Anonymous influence in its delivery and content, minus the usual voice synthesis. In the ad, he implores everyone with a pair of eyes smart enough to see the craptastic view of America as it is today to switch from the two major parties, but for just one election. And if it doesn’t work out, phooey on all of it you can have your tyranny back.

Here’s a transcript of the megaphone driven audio:

My name is Gary Johnson. Today I reach out to you: members of all political parties.

I reach out to everyone with a vote and an axe to grind.

From the Tea Party to the Constitution Party, Green and Libertarian Parties: I call out to all of you. Including the disaffected and disillusioned among the Republicans and Democrats.

Today, there’s a handful of people in Washington ruining America for three hundred and thirty million of us. They’ve kept our nation in a state of perpetual war; and increasing, unsustainable debt. This small group has presided over the elimination of our Bill of Rights, and the systematic dismantling of our freedoms guaranteed us under our constitution.

It is them we should be fighting, not each other. We the people will never agree on the small things, but let’s agree on the big things.

Our leaders have blown it. if we don’t get control of this ship together, and fix it together, we all go down with it together. see more…

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Life after a total hack

Life After A Total Hack is a short sci-fi story where everyone (yes everyone, on the entire planet) has their personal data and identities hacked and their habits posted online to a site called Schadenfreude.

Originally posted at BuzzFeed, here’s the fallout after six months:

Molly Newton began taking anti-depressants after it grew obvious Facebook would never be the same again. No one could ever trust that what they clicked and spied on would not be made public. Most of her other friends were already taking medication; she knew because she had read through the purchases on their bank accounts. The past several months had been difficult to maintain friendships at all. Everyone had secrets and no one had wanted them exposed. Since the hack, everyone was nervous and suspicious.

Molly missed her online communities: Facebook, SoundCloud, MyLife, Goodreads (though she hated to read), Twitter, Google+, Meetup, Foursquare, Pinterest, CafeMom (even though she did not like children), StumbleUpon, Flickr and LinkedIn, all of which she used to visit daily. When the hack occurred, she was nervous about visiting any of the sites lest more of her personal life get leaked online. She had been spending her time instead reading books and exercising; she had lost eighteen pounds and was in the best shape of her life. She had never looked better and could not feel good about it, because what she really wanted more than anything – more than being healthy and well-read and attractive – was to go on Pinterest and pin beautiful things to boards. The world was so much prettier and less cluttered on Pinterest, and she preferred it to the alternative of real life. see more…

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Charlie Sheen, winning chemical freedom his way

Charlie Sheen, apex of winning and launcher of verbal torpedoes of truth, has issued a statement about his alleged relapse into illicit substance use. Oddly enough, it’s in a pseudo ee cummings style, because apparently that’s just how the words flow for him:

I can’t speak to anyone’s opinion or judgement.
I was there
they were not.
their tepid
hearsay is a baseless
static drone.
a mantra.
their theme.
I refuse to be held hostage by their ‘constitutional’
privelidge,
to judge those
who can and who do.

nabobs.
CS

Walking the walk, and holding the throne as the Malibu Messiah, Sheen apologizes for nothing (not even the atrocious misspelling of privilege). see more…

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Ron Paul wins inflation bet, makes estimated $300K in one day

Buried at the end of this Nasdaq.com hosted Benzinga article on Ron Paul’s winning stock strategy is the announcement that he may have made a cool $300,000 on Friday, when the rest of the market was running for the exits. Incidentally, this is the most liked article of the day (110 votes and counting), in stark contrast to the second closest article about Apple, which has a mere nine likes.

Given the “max value” of each position and holding it constant to today’s prices, Paul’s portfolio submitted to the Office of the Clerks was potentially worth over $3.5 million. With massive increase in gold prices, gold and silver mining stocks and funds have been performing very well today.

According to the stocks and funds Paul owned back in 2010, his dollar-weighted return today is 7.11%. Increasing his portfolio from yesterday’s close of about $3.5 million to over $3.8 million today. Currently, the S&P 500 is down 1.9%. So, Ron Paul’s portfolio is outperforming the S&P 500 by over 9.0% today.

For the sake of perspective, the most recent “Rise for Liberty” money bomb that began on May 17th managed to net $750K over the course of several days.

An article covering Paul’s portfolio was posted over at The Wall Street Journal last December, where an expert gave a great quotable:

At our request, William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors in Eastford, Conn., reviewed Rep. Paul’s portfolio as set out in the annual disclosure statement. Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe. ”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he says.

There are many possible doomsday scenarios for the U.S. economy and financial markets, explains Mr. Bernstein, and Rep. Paul’s portfolio protects against only one of them: unexpected inflation accompanied by a collapse in the value of the dollar. If deflation (to name one other possibility) occurs instead, “this portfolio is at great risk” because of its lack of bonds and high exposure to gold.

Unexpected? Huh.

Mitt Romney may have clenched the Republican Party presidential nomination and now spreads platitudes, but when the curtain closes on who truly understood monetary issues in 2012, it’s going to be Ron Paul who is (once again) in the position of simply being able to point to his record and say “I told you so.”

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Benevolent boy *really* doesn’t want to go to Disney World

That’s because he’s too busy giving away the trips to families of fallen soldiers. Which is a weirdly macabre “prize” for having your parents die in a fucked up war, but let’s commercialize tragedy because that’s the American way or something.

Anyways, I admire the moxie on this kid:

Brendan Haas, the 9-year-old Kingston, Mass., boy who gave a fallen soldier’s family a trip to Disney World, has done it again.

During an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday, anchor Robin Roberts told Brendan that the Walt Disney Co., ABC’s parent company, would award him and his family an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World. Plus, she said, Disney would provide VIP treatment not only for Brendan’s family, but also for the family of 2-year-old Liberty Hope Steele, whose name Brendan pulled out of a hat to award the first trip. Her father was killed in Afghanistan.

Brendan responded to Roberts in a Skype interview: “We can’t accept a trip to Disney but we have many more people who would like to have an all-expenses paid [trip] through the raffle, so we can do another raffle.”

There’s video of Brendan being offered, and deferring a second trip package on live television during an interview with Good Morning America. It is downright creepy how the hostess chuckles after asking whether Brendan “really gets a lot of joy out of helping others.”

Who answers “no” to that question?

Brendan rebuffs the offer of a second VIP package from ABC, instead he thanks them and explains how they’ll hold another raffle. I’m positive his parents are coaching him to some degree, but that’s what good parenting is about: to hypothetically discuss these possible new offers in advance of the interview.

Will ABC/Disney be so bold as to call the kid’s bluff on a third and fourth trip package? I certainly hope they have deep pockets to find out the limits of Brendan’s and his parents benevolence.

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Who gives a shit about foreign policy? Madonna does

Madonna — the reigning queen of pop — launched her latest tour in Tel Aviv, Israel. In the midst of performances steeped in blatant symbolism, she gave a political statement to the packed arena of 32,000.

“It’s easy to say, ‘I want peace in the world.’” Pausing before adding, “But, it’s another thing to do it.”

“If we can all rise above our egos, and our titles, and the names of our countries and the names of our religions.”

Flanked by a squad of sleeveless dancers in berets, the 53-year-old singer’s voice frequently quivered as she spoke of the fundamental ground roots needed for peace.” If we can rise above all of that and treat everyone around us, every human being with dignity and respect, then we are on the road to peace.”

“No matter how many laws we change, no matter how many percentages of land we give back, no matter how many talks, no matter how many wars. If we don’t treat every human being with dignity and respect, we will never have peace,” she said to loud cheers.

Madonna did not name names during the impromptu speech, leaving it anyone’s guess whether she’ll eventually expound upon her latest blond ambitions.

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