January, 2014

1/10 - Why hasn't the Wolf of Wall St been hung yet?

July 2013

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Some real American history 
Neuro-scientists able to create false memories in mice.
Game over for Zynga? Firm loses 25 percent of daily active users in one quarter 
 Doctor Who actor warns against using social media. It makes you into a phony he says.

Det News critic: Bob Dylan's voice is shot, performances lackluster.  I found this out back in '07 myself. 

"Smart guns" not selling: Who wants one that can be hacked, won't work if the battery is dead, or that can be remotely tracked. disabled? 
More collateral damage from the drug war: Local idiot blows up his house trying to make hash oil via the butane extraction method.
Nate Silver leaving NYT for ESPN: Called Times style political reporting "useless". 
Pentagon discovers that buying weaponry from your enemies is a bad idea, even if it's cheaper.   
Book review: This Town dissects the ecosystem of America's gilded capitol city and its haughty in-crowd
Goodyear to replace its blimps with zeppelins 

 

The Bottom Line: It’s Not Dark Yet, But It’s Getting There

[Published at Strike-the-Root.com on January 24, 2013]

The way that America’s political situation is playing out right now has me perplexed. At my own “side” most of all. Not that the president and his ruling party would slam us with more intrusive laws, gun control, financial restrictions, domestic spying, illegal wars, and increased taxes as soon as his election was won that is. No, that was no surprise to me. Who the hell among us didn't see this anti-liberty agenda coming as soon as he was safely re-elected? Bottom line: If you honestly didn’t see this coming then you need to develop a better sense of situational awareness.

So what do I make of Obama’s Great Repression agenda? This short list is what I see happening and what to do about it. Take it for what it’s worth to you.

As things stand today I'd rather have an old, heavily used bolt action rifle and a half box of crusty ammo for it stashed away that the feds/local cops/private data bases have no record of than a brand new M1A and cases of ammo for it stacked to the ceiling if it came via an FFL licensee who has all my information on an ATF Form 4473 in his files. A dinged and scratched “store brand” pump action 12 gauge under the bed that was bought at a garage sale years ago for cash might not impress the guys at the range club with their fancy Benelli trap guns but it is still quite serviceable and well-worth having these days though isn’t it? I sure think so. A clunky old four-inch wheel gun is seen as obsolete by some but it'll still put a hunk of [lead] anywhere you want it with a little practice. And bonus points if you bought it from some friend of a friend for cash. Bottom line: Stop looking at firearms as precious collectables or recreational adult toys and look at them as tools for survival and liberty maintenance which is what they truly are. An old, ugly, banged up, but still serviceable rifle, handgun, or shotgun that came without any “imperial entanglements” attached to it is worth a closet full of newer and better stuff that does in my humble opinion.

All the boasting, bragging, and strutting many of us did on social media websites about our cool new AR-15 or tricked-out Glock seems kind of ill advised now in hindsight doesn’t it? Especially when we knew or should have known all along that the feds routinely monitor social media websites for just such information about us. An anti-gun newspaper in New York recently published the names and addresses of all state licensed handgun owners in their readership area. And unsurprisingly the people named were incensed at this invasion of their privacy. I know I would be myself. But I wonder how many of us gun owners that are now outraged on their behalf have ourselves gone on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others and posted blog entries, pictures, and videos that in effect “outed” ourselves to the whole world? Bottom line: See the irony here?

Guns aren’t the only things to consider for bolstering your home security. Instead of un-assing $1000+ for a new Sig or Ruger consider obtaining some bags of mixed silver coins instead. It will be vastly simpler to buy food, medicine, new tires, or whatever else you may need in the future with silver coins from someone willing to trade but who isn’t interested in taking piles of worthless government issued paper or in doing e-commerce that can be traced. Value-for-value voluntary transactions build trust between people and can lead to further mutually beneficial transactions down the road. Bottom line: Start thinking about this situation that we’re in as a serious issue of long term personal/family survival and not as a temporary condition to be put up with until it blows over. I have a strong suspicion that this time it isn’t blowing over.

History it has been said doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. I believe this is true. For example the first armed rebellion that occurred in America post independence was the so-called Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1787. What would cause George Washington’s ex-soldiers and small landowners to take up arms and fight their own state government so soon after securing independence? Hint: It was their inability to pay their property taxes and so having their homes and farms seized for non-payment. This bit of history is something we should all take note of. If things get really bad, and which I have every expectation that they will I’d rather be living in a junky old motor home or a tumbledown shack than in a suburban McMansion even if I owned it free and clear but that I can’t pay the taxes on and so is always on the cusp of a tax foreclosure. I recommend that everyone look up Shay’s Rebellion and read about it. Bottom line: “Home security” takes many forms.

An acre or three out in the woods somewhere with your own water and fuel supply (i.e., trees) can still be had relatively cheap and you can pay the taxes on it by selling off some timber or firewood you harvested, selling fruit, vegetables, or hay that you’ve grown, or even by picking up deposit soda and beer cans on the side of the road if need be. No matter how bad things get for us in the near term local governments are still going to demand property tax payments and for the foreseeable future they’ll have the means to get them too. (At least until we hang abolish them all, but I digress.) Bottom line: Your home should be more than just the dwelling you live inside. It should provide for you as well.

Learn what an actual education is and what it can do for you. As things are going now I’d rather have my kids know how to weld, learn basic carpentry, learn how to type, do nails/hair styling, speak/write Spanish or Chinese, or gain other practical skills or knowledge by whatever means are available than I would have them go to an Ivy League college for four years. Seriously. Being able to scan a balance sheet and understand it, or knowing how to can fruit, or grow hay seems way more useful these days than anything they would likely learn listening to university professors lecture at them all day. Bottom line: Knowing how to do things is preferable to just knowing facts and theories.

 “The first time someone shows you who they [really] are,”  an American poet once said, “believe them.” Obama and his ilk have stopped being ciphers and have shown us all who they are and what they intend to do and we should all believe them. It has been pretty apparent for a while now how astonishingly fast our liberty and well-being can be taken away. The burner under this pot of boiling frogs we call America has now been moved from “simmer” to “hot”, so be advised. Bottom line: Don’t depend on government or corporate mass media for anything but basic information or data. (And be skeptical of that too.) Learn to figure things out for yourself.

 

 Maybe we can halt or even roll back this onslaught against our liberties and well-being or maybe we can’t. But either way let’s not kid ourselves any more, eh? For those of you inclined toward religious belief remember that Bible verse warning against “putting your faith in princes”? That is still very good advice. The Republican Party, the NRA, Oath Keepers, Alex Jones, Anonymous, Judge Napolitano, Ron Paul and all the rest of the marginalized and despised mineshaft canaries still left couldn’t rouse us and they can’t save us either. And sad to say as goofy and weird as some of the above-mentioned are they all turned out to be right. (I have a sick feeling that one after another they’re all going to go silent, be intimidated into towing the party line, or just disappear.) Bottom line: What’s over is over. Don’t wallow in your own despair. Instead organize and prepare.

We all need to get cracking if we want to survive what’s coming our way and the chances for success will be much higher if we all have a plan. Good fortune it is said favors the prepared. A word to the wise: Don’t wait until you’re standing on the edge of a trench waiting your turn for a DHS supplied .40 caliber pistol shot to the back of the head.

Ken Kraska is a guy who lives in Michigan.

 

January 2013

The plight of the "high-status/low-income" public intellectual
Masterpieces of 90's paranoiac cinema: They Live and The Matrix
Linguistic analysis can uncover Anonymous members
Mocking the father of (the term) "cyberspace"
How John McAfee out-smarted the entire Belizean government
"Rocket launchers" turned in @ recent LA gun buy-back photo op debunked
Even with less competition Barnes & Noble sold less books, media in 2012
 Homeschooling is gaining acceptance even among NYC bobos

December 2012

Jack Donovan on "Police State Liberals"
Contra expatriating
Reaping what you sow: SF murals being defaced by taggers
Soviet-era spy tech still spying on ex-satellite states
The long, strange (ego) trip of Anonymous member "Commander X"
Game show host talks about his sensory deprivation chamber experiences
 Obama should jail his opposition "like a third-world dictator"
Making brain cells from urine
Is it time to put a "may be dangerous to your financial future" warning label on graduate school?
 Experimental handcuffs under development can shock, inject drugs as well as restrain
Urban Outfitters buys garage sale clothes and resells them to hipsters
Items found between the pages of second-hand books
NTSB seeking to require black-box recording devices in all new cars
Defending the world, bankrupting ourselves
Small business owners, white collar professionals are today's kulaks
Amsterdam to create "scum town" neighborhood to exile its anti-social residents to
 Obama campaign still asking for contributions a month after winning re-election
Elites prefer to rule an impoverished citizenry to not ruling at all
 Fresh crop of "celebrity victims" making the mainstream media get real about SWATTING
 CA city official tells residents to "lock your doors" and "load your guns" after PD lay-offs

In a brave twist, Microsoft releases an ad for IE 10 that mocks those who hate Internet Explorer

Hurricane Sandy Observations: Oct. 31- Nov. 05, 2012

"In view of the fact that an ever-encroaching federal colossus has for decades been methodically sapping personal sovereignty and self-sufficiency away from its subjects, I find a perhaps naïve degree of comfort in the fact that some citizens are seizing the power back into their own hands, where it has always belonged."

- Jim Goad @ Taki's Mag

Gov. Chris Christie clowning it up on SNL while thousands still living in ruins

Gawkers touring NYC storm damaged neighborhoods pissing off residents

Borough of Queens pushed to the brink...'We are living like animals'...
Sandy is backlashing on Obama after he promised quick aid to victims

Sandy refugees complain of "prison-like conditions" at FEMA tent camps

Hurricane Sandy: New Yorkers arm themselves to fend off looters, criminals

 Hurricane Sandy: No rat exodus from NYC's flooded subways; likely most drowned

November 2012

Mean people tend to be more attractive
Soldiers who enlist on moral waivers -- more trouble in peace, but better at war? 
  "Are we living in the Hunger Games"?: The power and wealth of DC
  The American Hipster: Living in the age of irony
Indian government hangs 2008 Mumbai terror attack perp M.A. Kasab 
Gene pool now has more unintelligent genes in it because it doesn’t take as much intelligence to survive as it used to
Death In June
Armed drones to patrol American highways by 2025
What would happen if the police just went away?
The last free place in America: The Slabs
The coming EBT riots: What will happen when government entitlements stop? 
"I was David Petraeus's bitch in the 90's and hated every minute of it"
Taliban operative accidentally CCs everybody on its email list 
CIA director's downfall illustrates scope of fed's email snooping abilities
UK fining, jailing people for Twitter, Face Book, email posts
Law student asks Facebook for all its data on him: Gets back a 1000 page pdf
A blog showing what would have been if Sartre had been a blogger
A simple DIY drip coffee maker you can build for about 10¢
How to devise passwords that aren't easily hacked  
An example of why most class action law suits  are a joke
 You can't lose your privacy to Big Brother because you already lost it decades ago
Inventor develops license plate frame that defeats red light cameras  
L.A. porn stars on average have more STDs than do Nevada hookers  
Sweden pays unemployed youth to move to Norway
Seattle's ‘Creepy Cameraman’ pushes the limits on public surveillance 
Graffiti artist Banksy's reputation is diminished when a number of his most famous works failed to sell at auction recently
SCOTUS hears oral arguments in Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley: Decision next spring