JohnHays.net

2003 Safety Alerts for Drugs, Biologics, Medical Devices, and Dietary Supplements

For those of you medicating yourself because you lack health insurance, you better check out MedWatch - 2003 Safety Information Alerts - 2003 Safety Alerts for Drugs, Biologics, Medical Devices, and Dietary Supplements. Then go out and buy as much tequila as possible because I understand tequila prices are rising. I wonder what an economist might say about all this. I know one we could ask but he's so busy being involved in some sort of bizarre Conspiracy, that he's probably too busy posting really important stuff, just like me.

According to the Small Business Survival Index 2003, Oregon really sucks

I wonder what Jack Bogdanski would say about the following:

Small Business Survival Committee | Fact of the Week

SBSC released the “Small Business Survival Index 2003” on Thursday, September 25. The Index ranks the states according to their public policy climates for small business and entrepreneurship.

One measure included in the Index is state personal income tax rates. Why does the personal income tax matter? First, income tax rates impact decisions regarding where people live, work, invest and take risks. Second, most businesses – about 89 percent or 90 percent – pay the personal income tax as sole proprietorships, partnerships or S-Corporations – rather than the corporate income tax.

Deficits and the Federal Debt

According to ">NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Deficits and the Federal Debt, as recently as January 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected budget surpluses of $5.6 trillion over a decade. But as fiscal year 2003 ends, a new study says that federal budget deficits could add up to $5 trillion over the next decade.

I don't care what the Hayekians might say, even if they say Vita,
"Je Maintiendrai". I know for a fact we can spend our way out of debt. If fact, I think we can spend our way into another solar system, or as General Clark might say, "I know we can go faster than the speed of light, because, hey, nobody really knows how fast light travels in one party dictatorships".

"Man, "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" is a pretty good flick

At the moment I'm watching "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones". It's not as good as "Return of the Jedi" but it's still pretty good.

It's got plenty of good, clean violence, but where's the blood and the guts and the beer?

An opinion from an Ifeminist about October and Domestic Violence

Looks like the Ifeminists are fighting the mindless propaganda spewed out by the crazy Marxists that control the agenda of the America-hating, men-hating, family-hating, minority-hating so-called feminist movement. Remember Ifeminism is the feminism of the 21 Century.

editorial rel="nofollow"> Domestic Violence Campaign Not About Helping Women" href='http://sleazereport.com/redirect.php?url=www.ifeminists.net%2Fintroduction%2Feditorials%2F2003%2F0930roberts.html' rel="nofollow">ifeminists.com > editorial > Domestic Violence Campaign Not About Helping Women by Carey Roberts. It's an interesting opinion. The following is an excerpt:

October 1 is the start of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. But don't be fooled -- this feminist-driven campaign is not about stopping partner violence, or even helping women in abusive relationships.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month is an excuse for radical feminists to perpetrate their myths that domestic violence has reached epidemic proportions in this country, that men are always the brutal perpetrators, and women the inevitable victims.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month was spawned by the federal Violence Against Women Act, the $3.3 billion taxpayer boondoggle that proves the truth of the Führer's famous statement that the masses "more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie."

The truth about domestic violence has been reported in well over 100 scientific articles. The findings from this research were summarized in an article by John Archer in Psychological Bulletin in 2000: "Women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently."

There's even something about Arianna Huffington's sleazy, personal attack on Arnold during the famous California gubernatorial debate. I agree with Arianna on many things, but, man, she should have known better than to make such a silly insult like the one she made to Arnold. And she's a neighbor of Arnold's and attends many of the same parties. The following is the excerpt about the famous California gubernatorial debate:

So how are we going to stop the cycle of feminists who silence men, which allows the lies to fester and grow, and permits more VAWA-type legislation to be passed?

The answer: men must stop being intimidated by abusive women. Here's an example of what I mean.

During last week's California debate among the candidates for governor, the discussion began to heat up. At one point, Arnold Schwarzenegger interrupted Arianna Huffington.

Huffington then trotted out one of those lines that is intended to silence their male opponents: "This is the way you treat women, we know that."

But Schwarzenegger had just the right response, "I would just like to say that I just realized I have a perfect part for you in Terminator 4." Of course, he was referring to the female terminator character in Terminator 3 whose face was shoved into a toilet by Schwarzenegger's character.

Now there's a man who refuses to be bullied.

The Multnomah County tax is commented on

I'm not a tax lawyer or, for that matter, any kind of a lawyer, but Jack is and his post here is a musing about some aspects of the infamous and dreaded "Multnomah County Income Tax". Man, just thinking about it makes me cranky. Who knows, maybe it's all a hoax.

Buy 'em books and buy 'em books

Eric Muller wrote a book entitled "Free to Die for Their Country". At this post Eric Muller mulls about a book that has recently come out, General Dick Thornburgh's autobiography.

This leads us to peruse Eric's comment section which leads us to this post about Philip Greenspun's efforts to get a book published.

This in turn leads us to this post about intelligence failures by Jim Miller.

It's time for rain and floods

It's that time of the year for rain and floods and extremely busy sewage systems, so I would like to remind my four drunk readers in Joe's Saloon in the Virgin Islands about the horrors we Oregonians face this time of the year. Not only do we have to put up with idiot lectures, but it's possible tequila prices will be rising.

Punishment Issue Splits Ashcroft, Judges

I'm not surprised that the Punishment Issue Splits Ashcroft, Judges. Judges get paid to judge and part of judging means setting sentences. If Ashcroft really doesn't want judges but really wants prosecutors to be judge, jury and executioner, then maybe Ashcroft is in the wrong country.

A bureaucrat with nothing on his mind

Sometimes a bureaucrat will do something so stupid that you just have to think to yourself, "What the HELL was he/she thinking??!!"

The following case is a case in point. It's a PDF file so you'll need the Acrobat Reader. You can download the Acrobat Reader here.

LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HOSPITALS, Petitioner,

versus

CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES; THOMAS A. SCULLY, in his
official capacity as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; TOMMY G. THOMPSON, in his official capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Respondents.

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
__________________________
No. 02-60834
__________________________
LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HOSPITALS,
Petitioner,
versus
CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES; THOMAS A. SCULLY, in his
official capacity as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; UNITED
STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; TOMMY G.
THOMPSON, in his official capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services,
Respondents.
________________________
Appeal from the Administrator of the Center for
Medicare and Medicaid Services
________________________
Before WIENER, CLEMENT, and PRADO, Circuit Judges.

EDITH BROWN CLEMENT, Circuit Judge:
This appeal arises following the determination, by the Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that Rural Health Clinics in Louisiana do not furnish “hospital services”, and hence are not eligible for certain reimbursements. Because we find that interpretation to be unreasonable, we REVERSE.

Children Killing Children in Colombia

JOANNE MARINER has a column entitled "FindLaw's Writ - Mariner: Children Killing Children in Colombia" that brings up the fact that many guerrilla groups use kids as weapons. This is definitely an evil that maybe the U.N should address. Of course, since the U.N. can't even address its own security it's unlikely the U.N. will find the time to handle something as important as children killing children.

Dan Flynn, Why the Left Hates America

I don't think most of the Left hates America, but I do think a small minority of the Left hates America and I also believe they hate America because they are crazy control freaks and they're not in control.

However, I could be wrong so check out Dan Flynn, Why the Left Hates America.

Here in looney, homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon we also have a small band of morons who hate America. Washington County, Oregon also has a looney psychiatrist who diagnoses people as having the dreaded International Homosexual Satanic Ritualist Syndome. Next thing you know this looney psychiatrist will be diagnosing people as having the dreaded International Jewish Banking Cabal Conspiracy Syndrome. This just goes to show that there are loonies on the Left and loonies on the Right and loonies at all points in between.

There's even a looney at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Oregon who performs super-duper secret medical tests to determine if a person is a homosexual or not.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the looney who bugs bathrooms in Washington County in order to find out information about the rituals performed by members of the International Homosexual Satanic Ritual gang. Apparently this looney became convinced that the Satanic homosexuals perform their rituals in bathrooms. (You would think cemeteries would be a better place to hold the pet and children ritual sacrifices because, hey, you know, more room. And, of course, cemeteries have an abundant supply of corpses for feast time because.....you know.....after a hard time of sacrificing pets and children it's always nice to sit back and have a corpse feast and......you know......I've heard tell there's plenty of corpses in cemeteries. I mean, when you're in a cemetery you don't want to have to run down to the local corpse supermarket and decide which corpse is the fresher corpse or which corpse is the best deal for the money. If you're in a cemetery and it comes time to feast on corpses, you've got a big selection. I personally don't know how you could get a hundred or so people in a little bitty bathroom to perform all those bloody rituals which include eating corpses.......oh, I know........Satanic powers.........silly me, how could I have forgotten? Yep, only super-duper supernatural powers could get all those people and corpses in little bitty bathrooms.)

Only in looney, homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon.

"Fleazy" - just invented word of the day... and "Vindictive" - the word of the hour

Vindictive - n.

1. Disposed to seek revenge; revengeful.
2. Marked by or resulting from a desire to hurt; spiteful.

This brings us to an update on the sleazy activities of the pig family from hell. The pig family is still continuing their mindless, pathetic, spiteful, vindictive slandering of my two daughters and their mother.

The pig family is extremely perturbed that I like the mother of my two daughters and her family but I dislike my ex-wife and her idiot family.

The reasons for my likes and dislikes are simple. The mother of my two daughters and her family are hardworking, honest, decent people who are not control freaks and I like that in people. On the other hand, my ex-wife and her family are liars, manipulators, thieves, bigots, morons, and control freaks to the max. My ex-wife and her sick, pathetic family are also deceitful, envious, jealous, dishonest, violent, spiteful, and vindictive to the max and I dislike that in people.

I mean in what other family would a grandfather (Victor Oekerman) tell his grandson that the grandson's father (me) was dead, instead of telling the grandson the truth, which was that the grandson's father (me) was in reality out on an aircraft carrier (CV-67 - USS JOHN F. KENNEDY) serving the U. S.

I reiterate, there is definitely something wrong with my ex-wife's sick, pathetic family when they lie to my son about me being dead.

I swear, the pig family has more rationalizations for being extremely sleazy than a jackass has fleas. Then again, since many members of the family are jackasses, they're not only sleazy but "fleazy" as well. I guess the pig family's motto is, "A family that's "fleazes" together, sleazes together".

By the way, since, to the best of my knowledge, I just invented the word "fleaze", I can enlighten you as to what the definition of "fleaze" is....FOR FREE. The following is the definition of "fleaze":

fleaze
n. v. adj. adv.

n.
1. To be a person who has fleas and is sleazy at the same time
2. Anyone who has fleas and is sleazy

v.
1. To seek out sleaziness and fleas
2. To seek out sleaziness while having fleas

adj.
1. To have sleaziness and fleas at the same time, i.e. That person is fleazy or That fleazy person reminds me of someone in the pig family

adv. - fleazily
1. To do something in a fleazy manner, i.e. A member of the pig family is fleazily ripping off another elderly person

The Wit and Wisdom of Wesley Clark

It's so much fun to watch people on the campaign trail say the weirdest things. (It must be an American tradition.)

Timothy Hulsey over at My Stupid Dog has an amusing post entitled "The Wit and Wisdom of Wesley Clark".

Investigative Non-profits

It seems there has been a slew of stories in the news across the country about sleazy shenanigans pulled by various non-profit organizations so it is time to put up a link to www.guidestar.org. GuideStar, the national database of U.S. charitable organizations, gathers and distributes data on more than 850,000 IRS-recognized nonprofits.

Here in Portland, Oregon, KOIN TV news personnel did some great investigative journalism and broadcast a story about how some people in Goodwill Industries, a non-profit, were enriching themselves in ways many people were not aware of. This brings up a question of the hour: Why shouldn't we boycott Goodwill Industries until the organization quits being sleazy?

NJ legislators exploit the system

In an investigative article by Asbury Park Press entitled "How many NJ legislators exploit the system", newspaper investigative journalists have described how New Jersey legislators are egregiously enriching themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. This may explain why New Jersey passes so many stupid laws. An excerpt from the article is below:

The New Jersey Legislature has become a personal money machine for many lawmakers who parlay their public service into private gain, a Gannett New Jersey newspapers investigation found.

Gov. McGreevey delivers his annual budget message early this year to a joint session of the Legislature in the General Assembly chamber in Trenton. Lawmakers have used their connections to land multiple government jobs, obtain lucrative no-bid contracts and fatten their state pensions, the investigation found.

Call it legislated greed.

I guess we can assume that somebody in New Jersey is asleep at the wheel.

Save the Veterans Hospitals

The following letter was received from Angelo Vitalone Sr. The letter concerns saving the Veterans' Hospitals and a link to a petition you can sign. The petition is at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/951659085.

We are trying to reach 1000000 signatures, and we need YOUR HELP!

Please help by signing this petition. It takes 30 seconds and will really help. We really could use your support to get our message out. Please forward this email out to friends and family. THANKS

We, the veterans, and patients, and concerned citizens of the United States ask that you support our online petition at the following link. We need every signature possible and every person to get involved and make their voice heard by contacting their elected officials and demanding that the VA hospitals remain open and receive increased funding for
operation.

The American people say that they support our troops, now is the time to show that support. Make sure a soldier returning from Iraq and Afghanistan has a hospital to come home to for care. Please forward this email to your friends, family and elected officials.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!! The Veterans Administration is proposing closure of the Canandaigua, NY VA medical Hospital along with 7 (SEVEN) others in the US. This hospital and the other seven are vital to our veterans and our hospital has been rated the best in the country. We have our state Senators and Representatives fighting to keep it open. BUT, We need the help of everyone to help start a letter drive and petition to help keep our VA hospitals open and increase the funding for our hospitals. We now ask for your help in this fight. I am a veteran and this is my hospital. If it is closed, other vets and I will be forced to drive 80 or more miles for care. This is the same story for other VA hospitals slated for
closure. Since we are disabled and many are elderly, this is an outrage.

It is unthinkable to ask the elderly and disabled who have given so much to us...especially our right to free speech and peacefully protest our government...to take away their healthcare and impede the care that they need so desperately. We are putting these veterans lives at risk by

A) having them travel so far,

B) putting others at risk by asking them to drive that far when many are on medications that impair driving ability,

C) That their pain is so severe that driving long distances would be extremely painful and debilitating,

D) Life threatening illnesses of such, that time is critical in their care.

Driving 80 miles for care would surely mean death.

At the moment our president has involved us in 2 wars, and is pushing for a third and fourth. He is creating veterans at an alarming rate, yet he calls for reduced benefits and medical care. We need to get America to support their veterans. They say have said that they support the troops, well now is the time to show it. We need every American to call, write and email their elected representatives and demand that this outrage be stopped. Now is the time for action. These veterans have little time left.

So I beg of you to throw the full weight of the American people behind this fight and let's make a difference.

Please follow this link:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/951659085

Once you have signed, help even more by telling your friends and family to sign as well!

Thank you!

Angelo Vitalone Sr

Check out the young Italian student with a lot to say

A young Italian student has a blog called "promoting ideas of democracy". It's pretty interesting and her blogroll is also interesting. And, man, does she have strong opinions......or what???!!!

Free Iran News update- seized satellite dishes

Free Iran News update: Project: FREE IRAN![activistchat.com] :: View topic - Iranian Militia seize 14,000 Satellite Dishes

Where is the left when sleaze like this happens? Why isn't the left making any kinds of statement about this travesty of justice? The mullah theocracy is one of the most oppressive dictatorships in the world.

Free Iran.

The Oregon Blog has some info about Oregon's dismal financial picture

The Oregon Blog has some info here and here about Oregon's dismal financial picture. Maybe It's time to move to Panama

When I took my two daughters and their mother to Costa Rica we spent about three or four days in Panama. We all enjoyed it. Costa Rica and Panama have some of the biggest bugs in the world.

Spite - the word of the day

spite
n.
1. Malicious ill will prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate.
2. An instance of malicious feeling.

Spite - what the "pig family" does better than anybody. In fact, it's all they do.

New Jersey discovers the 14th Amendment

Looks like New Jersey has finally figured out that before you can put a person in jail, that person has to be afforded the right to legal counsel.

I wonder what took New Jersey so long to figure that out. Maybe it has something to do with mindless, socialist administrators.

Administrators who lie and violate legal rights get sued

As Critical Mass states in this post, the adminstrators at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo are lying and they apparently think they can get away with their egregious behavior.

If the administrators had just stopped and took a moment to think about the situation instead of acting in a knee-jerk reactionary manner, maybe all this hoopla wouldn't have happened.

Jack Bogdanski is as amused about the GOP as I am

I like this post by Jack about the current sorry state of affairs in the Oregon Republican Party. As I've written before, the Oregon GOP was infiltrated by loonies, crazies, and Kevin Mannix and this made the Oregon GOP more representative of space aliens than regular Oregonians.

The Oregon GOP does have some bright spots, though, and Senator Gordon Smith is one of the brightest.

Time to Visit Tim Blair

Well, Tim has a couple of interesting posts. I was in Australia in the early 1980's for a couple of weeks when I was in the Navy. We even held joint exercises with the British and the Australians in the Indian Ocean. Now on to the posts.

One is

Tim Blair: OBVIOUS, MOMENTOUS, AND UNDER-REPORTED

Julie Flint in the English-language Lebanese Daily Star states that which cannot be stated often enough:

The other great post is

Paul Sheehan on Australia and the US:

Now that you've read the posts, hightail it to Australia and drink some beer.

Help Save the USS Des Moines CA-134

Link via Sgt Stryker.

Help save the USSDesMoines.

Donna M. Hughes and abolition

There's one thing I think should be abolished and President Bush brought up the subject during his UN speech. It's about time this one dirty secret was exposed to the general populaces of the world.

Donna M. Hughes has more here.

Sgt Stryker has a post about true absurdity

Sgt Stryker has a post about a couple of absurd comments by civilians made to him and some of his buddies and his reaction. In the comments there are also a lot of interesting observations.

When I was in the Navy you wouldn't believe some of the strange things that were said to me by American civilians. You also wouldn't believe some of the insults that were directed to me.

It's my opinion that the Navy is the service most misunderstood and hated by civilians.

By the way, when did Air Force guys start having to do pushups?

Talkleft and Instapundit bring out excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty

Talkleft has provided commentary and provided many links for anyone who wants to know why people are against the death penalty.

TalkLeft: Executing the Innocent

Check out this post by an Iranian blogger

Link via Instapundit.

Check out E:M | The real Iran and remember, Free Iran.

XRLQ points out something absurd

For a chuckle read the following post by XRLQ.

damnum absque injuria: Do Not Call Update

Michael Kinsley is right

I fail to understand why many people fail to realize that, as is stated in The oil oligarchy, OPEC is a conspiracy to fix prices. All indications are that OPEC is not for free markets and we shouldn't pretend that it is.

Ask one little itty bitty question and the slimeballs clam up

At the moment I'm watching the debate of the Democratic presidential hopefuls. When they are not discussing the Iraq situation, they sound reasonably coherent.

Since the Bush administration will not reign in that idiot, John Ashcroft, or the adminstration's proclivities for wanting to support every policy in favor of controlling every aspect of every moment of every American's private moments, there is no way I can ever vote for a republican.

Of course most of the time since I could vote I've voted for third party candidates, so you know I'm a loser. I did vote for Reagan once and while I disagreed with most of his policies, I thought at the time he was the best we had at the time and I think I was right.

I'll probably vote for the libertarian candidate the next time around. I've done that twice before so you know I really am an optimist.

In the meantime I've decided to ask a little, itty bitty question and the question is as follows:

Who assaulted a woman in the late 1980's?. Believe it or not it's not that difficult a question to answer. My relatives, John McClelland Hays, Neta Hays, and Chris Andrea Hays, and members of their fine upstanding church, the Church of Christ in Aloha, Oregon, know the answer.......but they're not talking.

Since they're not talking about something that needs to be talked about, do you think that fine, upstanding church has something to hide........or have they been afflicted with cowardice, political correctness, or something as simple as sleaziness? Is it possible that the fine, upstanding members of the fine upstanding Church of Christ in Aloha, Oregon have decided that what Jesus teaches is nothing but crap and that silence about sleaziness is the way to go?

Beats me.

But, hey, if these sleazy, lying, fine, upstanding members of society and hypocrisy want me to join their mindless cult, then shouldn't they offer a better reason other than, "If you don't do what we want you're going to hell!"?

By the way, when the Navy finds out that a JAG officer who graduated from Baylor University in the late 1970's committed all sorts of violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice( UCMJ), what do you think it does?

If you guessed that the Navy would try to cover up this JAG officer's crimes you would be correct.

After the CA debate XRLQ brings us some sagacity

XRLQ has a point. I believe what he says about Less is More applies not only to the law, but to many other disciplines as well.

The Agonist has some info about reservists

If the news The Agonist links to is true, then it is important that any Potential Threat to Reservists should be brought to the attention of as many people as possible.

Baghdad Burning's Sep 24, 2003 post is up

The permalink won't work so I'm putting the whole post below.

Baghdad Burning

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

For Sale: Iraq
For Sale: A fertile, wealthy country with a population of around 25 million… plus around 150,000 foreign troops, and a handful of puppets. Conditions of sale: should be either an American or British corporation (forget it if you’re French)… preferably affiliated with Halliburton. Please contact one of the members of the Governing Council in Baghdad, Iraq for more information.

To hear of the first of the economic reforms announced by Kamil Al-Gaylani, the new Iraqi Finance Minister, you’d think Iraq was a Utopia and the economy was perfect only lacking in… foreign investment. As the BBC so wonderfully summarized it: the sale of all state industries except for oil and other natural resources. Basically, that means the privatization of water, electricity, communications, transportation, health… The BBC calls it a ‘surprise’… why were we not surprised?

After all, the Puppets have been bought- why not buy the stage too? Iraq is being sold- piece by piece. People are outraged. The companies are going to start buying chunks of Iraq. Or, rather, they’re going to start buying the chunks the Governing Council and CPA don’t reward to the ‘Supporters of Freedom’.

The irony of the situation is that the oil industry, the one industry that is *not* going to be sold out, is actually being run by foreigners anyway.

The whole neighborhood knows about S. who lives exactly two streets away. He’s what is called a ‘merchant’ or ‘tajir’. He likes to call himself a ‘businessman’. For the last six years, S. has worked with the Ministry of Oil, importing spare parts for oil tankers under the surveillance and guidelines of the “Food for Oil Program”. In early March, all contracts were put ‘on hold’ in expectation of the war. Thousands of contracts with international companies were either cancelled or postponed.

S. was in a frenzy: he had a shipment of engines coming in from a certain country and they were ‘waiting on the border’. Everywhere he went, he chain-smoked one cigarette after another and talked of ‘letters of credit’, ‘comm. numbers’, and nasty truck drivers who were getting impatient.

After the war, the CPA decided that certain contracts would be approved. The contracts that had priority over the rest were the contracts that were going to get the oil pumping again. S. was lucky- his engines were going to find their way through… hopefully.

Unfortunately, every time he tried to get the go-ahead to bring in the engines, he was sent from person to person until he found himself, and his engines, tangled up in a bureaucratic mess in-between the CPA, the Ministry of Oil and the UNOPS. By the time things were somewhat sorted out, and he was communicating directly with the Ministry of Oil, he was given a ‘tip’. He was told that he shouldn’t bother doing anything if he wasn’t known to KBR. If KBR didn’t approve of him, or recommend him, he needn’t bother with anything.

For a week, the whole neighborhood was discussing the KBR. Who were they? What did they do? We all had our own speculations… E. said it was probably some sort of committee like the CPA, but in charge of the contracts or reconstruction of the oil infrastructure. I expected it was probably another company- but where was it from? Was it Russian? Was it French? It didn’t matter so long as it wasn’t Halliburton or Bechtel. It was a fresh new name or, at least, a fresh new set of initials. Well, it was ‘fresh’ for a whole half-hour until curiosity got the better of me and I looked it up on the internet.

KBR stands for Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of… guess who?!... Halliburton. They handle ‘construction and engineering services for the energy community’, amongst other things. Apparently, KBR is famous for more than just its reconstruction efforts. In 1997, KBR was sued $6 million dollars for overcharging the American army on sheets of plywood! You can read something about the whole sordid affair here.

They are currently located in the ‘Conference Palace’. The Conference Palace is a series of large conference rooms, located in front of the Rashid Hotel and was reserved in the past for major international conferences. It is now the headquarters of KBR, or so they say. So foreign companies can’t completely own the oil industry, but they can run it… just like they’ll never own Iraq, but they can run the Governing Council.

Someone sent me an email a couple of weeks back praising Halliburton and Bechtel to the skies. The argument was that we should consider ourselves ‘lucky’ to have such prestigious corporations running the oil industry and heading the reconstruction efforts because a. they are efficient, and b. they employ the ‘locals’.

Ok. Fine. I’ll pretend I never read that article that said it would take at least two years to get the electricity back to pre-war levels. I’ll pretend that it hasn’t been 5 months since the ‘end of the war’ and the very efficient companies are terrified of beginning work because the security situation is so messed up.

As for employing the locals… things are becoming a little bit clearer. Major reconstruction contracts are being given to the huge companies, like Bechtel and Halliburton, for millions of dollars. These companies, in turn, employ the Iraqis in the following way: they first ask for bids on specific projects. The Iraqi company with the lowest bid is selected to do the work. The Iraqi company gets *exactly* what it bid from the huge conglomerate, which is usually only a fraction of the original contract price. Hence, projects that should cost $1,000,000 end up costing $50,000,000.

Now, call me naïve, or daft, or whatever you want, but wouldn’t it be a. more economical and b. more profitable to the Iraqis to hand the work over directly to experienced Iraqi companies? Why not work directly with one of the 87 companies and factories that once worked under the ‘Iraqi Military Council’ and made everything from missiles to electrical components? Why not work directly with one of the 158 factories and companies under the former Ministry of Industry and Minerals that produced everything from candy to steel girders? Why not work with the bridge, housing and building companies under the Ministry of Housing that have been heading the reconstruction efforts ever since 1991?

Some of the best engineers, scientists, architects and technicians are currently out of work because their companies have nothing to do and there are no funds to keep them functioning. The employees get together a couple of days a week and spend several hours brooding over ‘istikans’ of lukewarm tea and ‘finjans’ of Turkish coffee. Instead of spending the endless billions on multinational companies, why not spend only millions on importing spare parts and renovating factories and plants?

My father has a friend with a wife and 3 children who is currently working for an Italian internet company. He communicates online with his ‘boss’ who sits thousands of kilometers away, in Rome, safe and sure that there are people who need to feed their families doing the work in Baghdad. This friend, and a crew of male techies, work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. They travel all over Baghdad, setting up networks. They travel in a beat-up SUV armed with cables, wires, pliers, network cards, installation CDs, and a Klashnikov for… you know… technical emergencies.

Each of the 20 guys who work with this company get $100/month. A hundred dollars for 260 hours a month comes to… $0.38/hour. My 16-year-old babysitter used to get more. The Italian company, like many other foreign companies, seems to think that $100 is appropriate for the present situation. One wonders the price of the original contract the Italian company got… how many countless millions are being spent so 20 guys can make $100/month to set up networks?

John Snow, US Treasury Secretary, claimed that the reforms were the “proposals, ideas, and concepts of the Governing Council" with no pressure from the American administration. If that’s true, then Bush can pull out the troops any time he wants because he’ll be leaving behind a Governing Council that is obviously more solicitous of Halliburton and Co. than he and Cheney can ever hope to be…

- posted by river @ 3:41 AM

Jeralyn Merritt's column is up at Altercation

Jeralyn Merritt is subbing for Eric Alterman and her column is up at Eric Alterman's Altercation.

She also has a post at TalkLeft worth reading. Actually, all of her posts are worth reading.

The American Family Rights Association is a front for violent, white supremacists

It's time to remind people that the American Family Rights Association is a front for some of the most violent, hatefilled white supremacists in America. Click on the preceding link for more information.

Remember, the American Family Rights Association, lead by psychos like Roger Weidner, Pamela Gaston, and Leonard Henderson, is not out to help anybody but themselves. They really want to set up a government where only members of the super-duper, superior, white Aryan race will have any kind of family rights. Don't be suckered by the lies and mindless propaganda of the liars and thieves of the Roger Weidner/Victor Oekerman cult.

The following is an excerpt of some of the shenanigans pulled by associates of the Roger Weidner/Victor oekerman gang:

[1] Assistant Attorney General Eileen J. O'Connor and United States Attorney Michael W. Mosman announced today that a federal jury in Portland, Oregon, convicted six defendants, Richard George Flowers, Dorothy Lenore Flowers, Jeffrey Allen Weakley, John David Anderson, Ronald William Stacey, and Dan Romaine Kirkham, of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). All defendants were associated with the Christian Patriot Association, a warehouse bank located in Boring, Oregon, which provided anonymous banking for 900 members nationwide. According to proof at trial. this warehouse bank was operated for the purpose of impeding and impairing the Internal Revenue Service and bad deposits totaling $186 million during the 14-year span of the conspiracy. The jury also found Richard George Flowers guilty of failure to file federal income tax returns for 1995 and 1996 and found Anderson, Ronald and Elecia Stacey, and Dan Romaine Kirkham guilty of tax evasion.

[2] The indictment alleged a conspiracy that involved a nationwide web of financial transactions from March 1986 until July 2000. The scheme was designed to enable members to conduct banking transactions anonymously by using numbered accounts that were come singled in a single comercial bank account.

And let's not forget that two of the gang, Forrest Bateman and Fritz Springmeier, have been convicted of robbing a bank.

Roger Weidner even wrote a book. Well, actually Hedy Hammond wrote the book and Roger Weidner dictated it. It's called the "Weidner Method". The following is the preface:

PREFACE It is my hope that Americans in every county in the country will converge upon their courthouses and use The Weidner Method to fight any kind of case.

The courts control the money and the judge controls the cops. Therefore, you have to neutralize that judge. -- Roger Weidner

Throughout my 20 years of research about government corruption The Weidner Method is the first solution I have ever encountered. If nothing else, it will expose duplicity and make the entire community aware of it, a necessary first step.

Government child-snatching, IRS extortion, voting fraud, government racketeering, health food laws, lawyer malpractice, property taxes, the necessity for citizen oversight of government agencies, unlawfully mandated 501(c)3 non-profit status for churches, the unlawfully mandated driver's license for sovereign citizens, lack of protective tariffs, overwhelming imports, mind control, national security abuses, land rights, heavy-handed cops, unlawful search and seizure, conflicts of interest, federal funding of abuses, Federal Reserve audit, violation of freedom of worship, poisoning of the air, land and water through chemicals in the water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides and chemtrails, multi-vitamin labeling that doesn't include absorption rate or info that nutrients are synthetic, issues concerning hybridized seeds, public schools, taxes, too much government, alloidal ownership of land, regulation of industry which should emanate from the people not the federal government, unlawful and unConstitutitonal laws and statutes, lawyers holding office (13th amendment), any and all ways in which our Constitutional rights are being denied-all these and countless other issues can be addressed in the courtroom using The Weidner Method.

The government should be formed from the bottom up in cells of 10 families as described in the writings of Kelly Hoskins, author of the Hoskins Report. Senators should again be elected by state Legislatures, no more foreign aid, fractional reserve banking should be outlawed, debtfree money should be issued by the Congress, solar technology, which was running factories 100 years ago, should be unsuppressed, natural healing should be unsuppressed, the truth should be unsuppressed, and countless other issues can be addressed in the courtroom using the The Weidner Method.

According to history, when a nation is in transition from one form of government to a different type of government, as we are now (making the transition from freedom to enslavement) there is a point in the struggle, a section of time, during which it could go either way. I believe we are presently teetering on that brink.

Hedy Hammond

As noted in the paragraph above, the cult wants to form society along the teachings of Kelly Hoskins. The following is an excerpt from an article by the Anti-Defamation League.

Although not as well known as white supremacists such as Matt Hale and the late William Pierce, Virginia financial advisor Richard Kelly Hoskins has promoted racism and anti-Semitism for more than forty years, and has considerably influenced the far right during the past two decades. His books, Christian Identity-based commentaries on history and economics, are among the most popular on the Identity circuit, and he has become a fixture at movement conferences and retreats. He is best known for introducing and advocating, in Vigilantes of Christendom (1990), the purportedly Biblical concept of the "Phineas Priesthood": white supremacist guerrillas who violently avenge "crimes" against the white race. Hoskins' idea, based on a passage from the Book of Numbers, has been adopted or popularized by some of the country's most radical racists and has provided a religious justification for acts of domestic terrorism.

Stephen Baskerville has a new website and exposes extreme sleaze

Check out Stephen Baskerville, PhD - Fathers and Men's Rights Articles.

There was a story in the Washington Times concerning a new Welfare Reform bill.

The following is an excerpt from the Washington Times story:

The House as well as Senate chambers are paving the way to pass a sweeping welfare bill that would call for an increase in child-care spending and stringent child-support programs. The legislators are amending and reauthorizing the Welfare Reform Act of 1996.

The socialist propronents of the bill are saying this bill is the greatest thing since central planning but the truth is this bill is merely another attempt to control poor people and fathers and further add to the disintegration of the family unit.

The Welfare Reform bill is a great welfare bill for federal, state, and county bureaucracies, but not for ordinary, hardworking Americans near or below the poverty level.

Stephen Baskerville points out in an article entitled "Absurdistan in America" at LewRockwell.com some of the absurdites of laws already on the books and how the Welfare Reform bill is not only bad policy but bad law as well. Below are some excerpts from Dr. Baskerville's article:

In Iowa, the government has confiscated the savings of 11-year-old Rylan Nitzschke. Rylan saved $220 from chores and shoveling snow, but that now belongs to Iowa. Why? Rylan’s father allegedly owes child support (to Rylan), and his father’s name was on the boy’s bank account.

OK, so this is a mistake, and Iowa will return the boy’s savings, right? Wrong. State officials have no intention of returning the money. After all, they receive federal funds for each dollar they collect (and for each father they incarcerate). Rylan’s piggy bank helps balance the budget.

West Virginia officials cleaned out the bank account of an 85-year-old grandmother whose son allegedly owed child support. The son paid in none of the $6,450 taken from the account, which comprised her life savings. She was also charged a $75 processing fee.

The elderly can also become targets of rape-for-profit. A disabled 85-year-old man, sexually assaulted by his housekeeper and awarded damages for the assault, was ordered to pay her child support, and his pension was garnished. The court denied him access to the child.

According to the Keystone Cops who enforce child support, a "child" is not a dependent minor but any recipient of their chivalry. "We've got some 40- to 45-year-old ‘kids’ running around who are owed child support," says Nick Young, enforcement director in Virginia. In Ohio, a 77-year-old great grandfather who had always paid on time was told he owed $45,000 in back child support and had his wages garnished, even though his youngest child was 46 years old.

It's time to let our senators and representatives know that pursuing absurd socialist policies and passing ridiculous laws are not helping Americans, only mindless bureaucrats.

The banning of any Mark Twain book is ridiculous

I've heard through the years many reasons for banning various writings of Mark Twain. I'm not a great believer in banning books and banning books by Mark Twain is absurd. Cobb has an opinion about many things, maybe even about Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn.

The Legal Theory Blog has mass info about the CA election situation

Legal Theory Blog - En Banc Decision in Recall Case: The Recall Election Is Back On

Another Potential Threat to Reservists: Unemployment

It is incredible and outrageous that some employers are reorganizing in order to avoid having to save the job position held by a Guardsman or reservist called to active duty.

This is an example of extreme sleaze.

I've heard a lot opinions about Clark

I've heard a lot of opinions since General Clark joined the Democratic fray and here is one by Col. Hackworth

There's new stuff at Forfeiture Endangers American Rights

Forfeiture Endangers American Rights Foundation (F.E.A.R.) Home Page

Check out internet statistics at CyberAtlas

Check out internet statistics at Stats Toolbox: Statistics

Antipolygraph.org has some new stuff

The farcical nonsense known as the polygraph test is being exposed at Polygraph Litigation | AntiPolygraph.org

Howard Bashman has a great post about the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals

How Appealing has an excellent post about the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I can't get the permalink to work so I'm putting the whole post below.

A report on today's Eleventh Circuit oral argument concerning the legality of Alabama's law prohibiting the distribution of sex toys: Today a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit heard oral argument in an appeal in which the State of Alabama, the losing party in the trial court, is seeking to have the appellate court reinstate a law prohibiting the distribution of "any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs."

You can access here the trial court's opinion, and you can access here my preview of today's oral argument, which includes the names of the judges on the appellate panel.

Lately it seems that an appellate courtroom that lacks a "How Appealing" reader is a rare occurrence, and today is no different. Via email, the following report from a courtroom observer entirely unconnected with this case has arrived:

The state (Deputy S.G. somebody, with Attorney General Pryor nowhere to be seen) argued first. Though he had saved 5 or so minutes out of his 15 for rebuttal, his 10 minute opening was going strong at about 30 minutes when I finally had had enough.

Senior Judge Hill was funny as hell, and rather forceful in the view that this was an absurd law. Choice paraphrases of what he said:

"What exactly is it that you're trying to protect Alabamians from? What's the horror here?" "Next thing you know, you'll be banning bathing suits, and then on to burkas." "When I was young, condom packages said 'for medical use only.' Could a vendor lawfully sell these devices if they had a label that said 'only for the treatment of psychological needs within a marriage relationship'?"

Judge Hill also said that he thought the only interest that was sought to be served by this legislation was the desire of its sponsors to proudly tell some of their constituents that they voted for it. The attorney arguing for Alabama couldn't even bring himself to disagree very forcefully with that assessment.

The State argued that this law was directed against only the "prurient" use of vibrators. Judges Barkett and Hill wanted to know what "prurient" meant in this context. Judge Barkett suggested that it merely meant "pleasurable", Judge Hill suggested "fun," and the State went with "recreational." Who knew that recreation was ipso facto prurient, or that things could be banned on the grounds that they were fun?

Judge Barkett read lengthy passages from Lawrence v. Texas, challenging the state for some reason why the same reasoning wouldn't apply. Wasn't quite clear what the state's answer was -- seemed mostly to be the assertion that this law imposes criminal penalties only on the seller, not the user. But Judge Birch said words to the effect of, even if I wanted to agree with you on that, how do you get around Eisenstadt, which extended Griswold to a law that (like yours) merely prohibited sale rather than possession? The State had no good answer to that question.

Judge Birch was -- either as a Socratic exercise, or not -- suggesting that the State's legitimate interest was in keeping people from the horrible sight of people selling sex (toys) for profit -- the view being that it was the sight of this going on in public, with the motive of filthy lucre, that was the problem. Judge Barkett neatly parried that with an inquiry into the law's exceptions for those who need the devices for medical, psychological, academic, etc., reasons -- given those exceptions, some people will be able to buy, and so the public is still going to be subjected to the same harm that Judge Birch suggests this statute will avoid.

The State also relied on what I call the Brookstone defense, which was something like, "if you want to buy such a device, just buy one of the readily available things that is marketed for other purposes but easily adaptable to stimulation of the genitals." Somehow or another, in the State's view, this saves the constitutionality of the statute.

The courtroom, by the way, was full of high school students. Don't know if they knew what was on the docket and came on purpose in connection with some class, or if they just luckily stumbled in to a day full of cases that involved child porn, vibrators, and a high school principal seeking qualified immunity despite having severely beaten a student with a metal walking stick for no good reason.

Thanks much to my correspondent for this very interesting description of today's oral argument.

posted at 4:05 PM by Howard Bashman

Urge support of the new bipartisan legislation for farm worker legalization!

Take Action: Send your e mail for farm worker legalization today! - An historic bipartisan agreement, negotiated by the United Farm Workers and the nation’s major grower groups, has been reached on legislation for farm worker legalization. Help us protect those who put the rich bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables on America’s dinner tables. These hard working people accept risks no other American workers endure. They pay taxes but enjoy few, if any, benefits while performing some of the most important labor in our nation: feeding America and much of the world. They constantly live in the shadows of fear, making them easy victims of abuse and poverty.

Pontificating about leaves

I just cleaned out the gutters once again. We had a windstorm shortly afterwards. Now there's leaves in the gutters again. Damn leaves?

I've stumbled upon the problem. It seems there's lots of trees in Oregon (I'm not counting the ones that have burned down or been logged) and these trees have leaves. What we need to do is replace all the trees with peyote cactus.

I know, I know, call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

More idiots exposed for false accusations about Satanic Ritual Abuse

Must have been some temporary insanity going around in Canada.

Sex case likened to witch trials Prosecutor thought case too weak to proceed

Jason Warick
Saskatchewan News Network

The Saskatoon Crown prosecutor first handed the Klassen sex abuse file more than a decade ago compared the children's claims to the complaints made during the Salem witchcraft trials.

"I was completely floored when I read the documents," prosecutor Terry Hinz testified Thursday at the malicious prosecution lawsuit filed by 12 people charged with ritual abuse of several foster children.

"It made me feel I was transported back into the 17th century reading about the Salem witchcraft complaints."

The children detailed stories of baby killings, drinking blood and eating eyeballs, Hinz said, who reviewed the file in the early months of 1991.

"I had a file with inconsistencies, bizarre allegations and no corroboration," he said.

Hinz had read the file over the weekend at home. The following week, he gave the file back to Saskatoon police Cpl. Brian Dueck, who had interviewed the children and compiled the file.

Hinz said he told Dueck, "Where are the bodies? Find me the bodies."

He said Dueck replied that "these cultists are too clever" and would have long ago disposed of the bodies of the babies.

Hinz recalls asking Dueck if he would go through various records to see if any neighbourhood children had died or gone missing.

Dueck told Hinz that people like this work with "brood mares" -- women who breed children specifically to sacrifice them. These children are never registered with any agencies and are impossible to trace, Hinz told the court.

Hinz said he couldn't prosecute without more information. The conversation ended cordially, and Hinz never talked to Dueck about the case again.

In July of 1991, Hinz was at the courthouse on another matter, and heard that the Klassens and their relatives had been charged with more than 70 counts of sexual assault, incest, and gross indecency.

Hinz went into the court office and looked at the file to see if there was any new information, but there wasn't, he said.

"There was really nothing new in there," Hinz said.

Hinz, who retired last year after 25 years as a prosecutor, said the ritual sacrifice allegations "coloured" all the other allegations, calling the entire case into question.

The prosecution went ahead, led by prosecutors Matt Miazga and Sonia Hansen.

The Klassens and their relatives were committed to stand trial. On the eve of the trial in 1993, a controversial plea bargain was reached.

Peter Klassen pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault in exchange for staying the remaining charges.

The case began when three children, Michael, Michelle and Kathy Ross, began to fabricate fantastic stories of ritual abuse against their former foster parents, Anita and Dale Klassen, and 14 other adults.

The Ross children were living with a new foster family, the Thompsons, at the time that many of the allegations were recorded by foster mother Marilyn Thompson.

Dueck and therapist Carol Bunko-Ruys questioned the children and the adults extensively.

The children have all since admitted to lying, including the allegation about Peter Klassen.

Twelve of those charged are now suing Dueck, Bunko-Ruys and prosecutors for $10 million, alleging malicious prosecution.

During the lawsuit's pretrial questioning known as "examinations for discovery," Dueck's lawyer, David Gerrand, successfully argued that Hinz would not be able to testify about any conversations he had with Dueck.

Justice Mona Dovell agreed that these conversations were covered by the solicitor-client confidentiality rule.

Richard Klassen was prepared to argue this point again at the trial, but Gerrand stood and told court last week that they have removed their objections.

That cleared the way for Hinz to answer any queries about his involvement with Dueck.

Under cross-examination by Gerrand, Hinz was shown to have confused details about a previous case involving Peter Klassen.

"And that's one of the firm recollections you have?" asked Gerrand.

Hinz also said he had no doubts about the integrity of Dueck, Miazga or Hanson.

Also Thursday, there were some emotional moments when Richard Klassen questioned his niece, Jackie Klassen.

Jackie, now 21 years old, recounted being questioned at her elementary school by police and a social worker about abuse. She denied ever being abused or seeing her parents abuse anyone.

She and her brother were taken for medical examinations.

She was again questioned about the same matters after the family moved to Red Deer, and was taken "kicking and screaming" to the doctor for another medical exam.

When she began to discuss being taken from her parents and placed in foster care, both she and Richard Klassen broke down and a five-minute recess was called.

The third Ross sibling, Kathy, finished her testimony Thursday afternoon.

Like her brother and sister, she admitted to lying about being abused by the Klassens and their extended family members.

The case is expected to run at least another week.

Klassen Lawsuit

© Copyright 2003 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)

KOIN of Portland, OR uncovers extreme sleaze

KOIN TV of Portland, OR has done some great investigative reporting and has uncovered extreme sleaze in Goodwill Industries, a non-profit. Hmmm.....well, it's not a "non-profit" for some people.

Goodwill of the Columbia-Willamette pays the highest top-level salaries of all Northwest charities.

Michael Miller, President
Salary: $484,348
Benefits: $51,229
Total: $535,647

Click on the link above to read the whole thing. It will amaze you.

Is this judge too stupid to know about the War?

Nevada probably has the world's stupidest judge. If this judge would take her head out of her ass and look around, she might see that the U. S. is involved in some sort of war over in the Middle East.

Las Vegas SUN: Southern Nevada judge terminates soldier's child custody rights

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Southern Nevada judge has been criticized for terminating a Las Vegas man's child custody rights while he was deployed overseas during the buildup for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Family Court Judge Cheryl Moss terminated James Denson II's joint custody rights to his 8-year-old daughter after Denson failed to show up for a Dec. 18 court hearing, according to court records.

The judge found Denson in contempt of court for unpaid child support and issued a warrant for his arrest. She also awarded custody of the girl to his ex-wife and gave permission to garnishee paychecks from his military and civilian jobs.

But Denson was called to active duty for the Navy and was in the Persian Gulf at the time of the hearing.

Navy Lt. Charlie Brown told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Denson was deployed to Kuwait five days before the hearing and remained there until mid-January. Brown has since sent a letter to Moss confirming Denson's whereabouts.

Who the hell did this judge screw in order to get her judgeship?

Another Supreme recognizes the obvious

Justice Breyer Decries Minimum Sentences - BOSTON (AP) -- Mandatory minimum sentences are unfair and take away flexibility needed in the judicial process, said Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

Time to Review the life of Bill Porter

The Oregonian should have won some sort of award for the story of Bill Porter - Life of a salesman - Betrayed by a crippled body that leaves him in continual pain, betrayed by a changing world that no longer needs him, Bill Porter each day trudges his door-to-door sales territory, set on making his way in the world.

It seems Psychscape is doing some myth debunking

Psychscape - While most people who participate in psychological debriefing say it was helpful, controlled studies showed little or no effect on the onset of PTSD. According to an upcoming study in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the American Psychological Society, studies point out that individuals who receive debriefing do no better than those who do not receive debriefing.

Mindless social engineering is no substitute for education

We need to get back to the idea that education has something to do with educating and not with mindless, Marxist social engineering.

When Teachers Flunk the Test - According to a September 2001 Chicago Sun-Times series that reviewed test scores for elementary, junior/middle and high-school teachers in Illinois, 67,118 teachers were tested between July 1988 and April 2001 and 5,243 failed at least one test while 1,308 failed three or more. On basic-skills tests alone, 66,769 teachers were tested during the same period and 2,132 failed at least one test, 414 failed three or more tests and 868 failed to pass any basic-skills test.

Convicted Murderess Can Get Custody but Decent Fathers Can't

It's damn shame there's so much hatred of men in family courts.

glennsacks.com | Convicted Murderess Can Get Custody but Decent Fathers Can't

Oregon and Oregon State are doing their job

The Oregon Ducks and Oregon State Beavers both won and are doing their job of beating non-conference opponents.

Portland State Vikings lost. We wish them well in the next game.

Porphyrogenitus and USS Clueless have cleared some things ups

Porphyrogenitus brings up a good point and links to Steven Den Beste. Together they both point out some skewed reporting by the BBC. It seems the BBC is deteriorating to the level of some of the worst tabloids.

The kids, their mother and I in Costa Rica

Some years back I took my two daughters and their mother to Costa Rica for four or five months.

We rented an apartment in Alajuela, Costa Rica. It was more rectangular than square. We had electricity for a few hours a day and occasionally clean water. The water we drank and used for cleaning dishes was purified water in plastic gallon bottles. Since we only had electricity a few hours a day we had to buy food on a daily basis. There was a huge farmers' market about a mile or two away from where we lived and we would go there to buy meat, fish, tons of fruits, and other food items.

There was a huge playground a block away from where we lived and we would take the two daughters there to play on the playground equipment and, also, to play with the other kids. Even though my two daughters spoke only bits of Spanish, they still managed to communicate while playing with the Costa Rican kids.

About five days a week for a couple of hours the two daughters would be taught math, English, Spanish, spelling, and a simple science course.

Since I'm eligible to join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, I joined an American Legion Post and a Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in San Jose. Both groups share the same post, the same area, and the same bar. I would take the whole family there and enjoy a few hours of relaxation. They had a library there and a huge outdoor area for the kids to run around.

We got around by using taxicabs within whichever city we were visiting and when going from city to city or village to village we used public buses. Costa Rica has only about 3 cities and the rest are villages. Sometimes we found ourselves riding with livestock that the local people would bring on the buses. If you think TRI-MET buses are crowded at rush hour, you should just try to get on one of Costa Rica's buses during the day.

We went to the Atlantic beaches and the Pacific beaches. The Pacific Beaches were the best. We also went to the Caribbean side of Panama for three days. That was an adventure.

Before we went down to Costa Rica we got passports for the daughters' mother and for the daughters. We also got about a million shots for almost every disease you could think of. We needed, and took, our yellow World Health Organization cards certifying all the vaccinations and other medical precautions were up to snuff.

All in all, it was an interesting four or five months.

Yea, they both have nukes, so...????

They both have nukes and they both have radicals and they both have radicals that kill lots of civilians and it's possible they are fighting over a piece of land that some people want to be independent.

Who are they? What are they? Maybe they're the Ninth Circuit. I don't know. It certainly beats me and since it beats me, check out PakistanNews.net and The Times of India.

I've been told Americans should be more aware of what's happening in other parts of the world, and I am. I linked to a post about the Ninth Circuit, didn't I?

The internet is a scary place

I can't believe it. I was innocently surfing the web looking for research papers by Margaret Mead concerning her study of the sex lives of bugs when all of a sudden I ran into a website called discriminations and learned, much to my chagrin, that discriminations is censored by a public library.

My gosh, why is this stuff allowed on the internet? Where's our national censors when we need them? You don't see these kinds of things in Saudia Arabia.

This is about misdirected cops

We have a crazy cop in Washington County, Oregon who is not only corrupt, but also misdirected.

Misdirected Cops

There has always been a great deal of interest in the law enforcement community in the subject of "occult crime". It is a subject surrounded by mystery and sensationalism, which gives it an enticing image. Some of those in law enforcement have pursued their interest and have produced manuals on investigating occult crime. Wittingly or unwittingly, these manuals are another factor leading creation of Satanic hysteria.

I have collected many such manuals over the years I have spent in police work. Most of them are appallingly inaccurate and the few that have any factual basis are so short that they are virtually useless. As we saw in the previous chapter, much of the information being presented to the sincere and unsuspecting officers writing such manuals is inadequate and inaccurate.

Ultimately other investigators take these inadequate manuals and waste a great deal of their time on unproductive wild goose chases trying to put the "information" in them to use. As a result, expensive investigative hours are wasted, innocent people are falsely accused and investigators are embarrassed. To give you a better idea of the kind of misinformation available, lets look at a few examples:

We also have an update to the case of former sheriff's deputy, Paul Ingram. When you read this you might ask yourself, "How on earth did idiots like Gary Edwards, Neil McClanahan, Tom Lynch, Detective Vukich and Gary Tabor ever manage to get into any area of law enforcement?" or, "How on earth did an idiot like John Bratun ever became a Pastor?"

The following is an excerpt from TheLocalPlanet.com

How invented memories and a modern-day witch hunt landed one Spokane man in prison

Notice has already gone out to a neighborhood on Spokane’s South Hill because a level-three sex offender is returning to his family home. The fearful effect of that notice became apparent when a passerby yelled “molester” at a relative of the inmate who was working in the yard. TV crews have already been caught traipsing into the home’s back yard, shooting video for the day later this month when the inmate is released.

The trouble is: this inmate is innocent.

Let me say that again.

This inmate is innocent. There has never been any credible evidence that he led a satanic cult that murdered 25 babies. There has never been any credible evidence that he abused his children. Paul Ingram is simply the victim of Washington State’s most successful witch-hunt.

It's rather surprising to me that the Governor of Washington state stood idly by while an innocent man was in prison. Must be interesting to live in a state where the governor and the parole board have no guts. It's a good thing these guys weren't in charge of the country when Al-Qaeda struck, otherwise Al-Qaeda might still be flying planes into buildings.

If it's Sunday, it must be time for the cult to give God orders

Update: After I posted the original post immediately below, the psychopaths in the cult made some phone calls. It seems one of the cult's worst fears is for people to find out just what liars and thieves they are. Intelligent people are starting to realize that the diehard members of the cult are incapable of recognizing reality or telling the truth.

I have received news that my a couple of my relatives (Chris Andrea Hays and Neta Hays) were bribed to lie for the Victor Oekerman clan. I'm not surprised. The psychopaths in the Oekerman clan tried to bribe me not to leave Victor's psycho daughter, but like a couple of Portland cops told me after they found out she tried to run me over in a park in Northeast Portland, "Stay with her and she'll end up killing you. She should be in prison."

For the last year or so I have been in communication with various cult experts and mental health experts and their general consensus is that members of the cult are acting like mindless members of the most destructive cults usually do. According to the experts, the members of the cult will continue to bug anybody I associate with, any girl I go out with, and neighbors. Members of the cult will continue trying to get people in various positions of authority to lean on me in order to get me to acquiesce to the wishes of the leaders of the cult.

----------------------------------------------------------
ORIGINAL POST

Well, it seems to be Sunday. Time for the the lying, thieving hypocrites in the psycho cult and their allies in a certain, unnamed Aloha, Oregon church to don their dandiest duds, hightail it to church and order God to let them into heaven because, after all, they are members of the super-duper, superior, white, master Aryan race.

Then it's back to the daily chores of assaulting, ripping off, cheating, lying to, falsely accusing and hating their fellow Amercans and anybody else they come into contact with.

Of course, they also have really, really important work to do such as destroying Care Bears, the Smurf toys, G.I Joe and other Satanic toys. Check out the following:

Phillip's Ministries

I mentioned in Part I of this article that one of Pulling's resources was Phil Phillips, who makes similar claims to Pulling regarding Fantasy Role Playing Games. Phil, like his father, is a fundamentalist Christian minister from the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Phillips has a bachelor's degree in Bible studies from "Christ for the Nation" college in Dallas. He is another of those "spiritual warfare" supporters whose writings are full of battle terms and references to spiritual armour.

Phillips is most well known for his anti cartoon and toy stance. Phillips believes that toys, games and cartoons such as "Care Bears'" "Smurfs," "My Little Pony," "Rainbow Bright," "Gummie Bears," "G. I. Joe," "Crystlar," "Power Lords," "He Man and the Masters of the Universe," "Dungeons and Dragons," "Black Star," "Ghost Busters," and others are Satanic. Phiilips has written a much quoted book on this subject entitled Turmoil in the Toybox. He has also organized toy burnings in the past. Not all of these went as planned.

Many people have also expressed astonishment that Victor Oekerman would tell my son that I was dead when in reality I was out on an aircraft carrier serving my country. Like people have told me, "That sort of gives you an idea of what kind of a sick, perverted, hatefilled family my ex-wife was born into". Of course, it doesn't explain why my relatives went along with the insanity.

I guess that's an indication that getting dandied up and going to church every Sunday like my relatives do doesn't mean a person knows the difference between right and wrong. Then again, the parents of the mother (not the ex-wife) of my two daughters go to a Catholic church every Sunday and they have an excellent sense of right and wrong, and they're intelligent to boot.

If it's Rhode Island, then it must be secret

NMU: Study shows agencies routinely break Open Meetings Law - A recent Brown University study found that most public agencies in Rhode Island fail to comply with one of the state's most basic public disclosure laws.

Sounds like Rhode Island is an outlaw state.

The Shark Blog is hot on the trail of education bureaucracy sleaze

Shark Blog: Seattle School Scandal

Maybe cheating is a natural part of the education bureaucracy but, somehow, I don't think so. Then again, check out the following excerpt from the The Daily Howler.

Cheating on standardized tests has been endemic in public schools since the early 1970s, when school systems began to use the tests to evaluate teachers and principals. In September, we described this problem in some detail as we critiqued a predictable 60 Minutes report (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/24/99). Anyone with the slightest clue about public schools would know that there have been repeated, documented cases of such cheating in public schools all over the nation, for years. Indeed, whenever we read about public systems tying these tests to graduation/promotion/pay/evaluations—and these stories appear in the papers all the time—we know we're reading about another school system that is gambling with this problem.

How the Left Treats Iran and the Middle East

As usual, the "left" is on the wrong side again. I'm beginning to think the left can only act like knee-jerk reactionaries.

Project: FREE IRAN![activistchat.com] How the Left Treats Iran and the Middle East

IMF Board OKs Argentina Deal

Is this good or bad for Argentina? Maybe we should ask if this is good for the average citizen of Argentina? With the IMF you never know.

DUBAI (Reuters) - The IMF approved an economic plan for Argentina on Saturday aimed at bolstering investor confidence and growth in a country deeply scarred by a botched peso devaluation and a record sovereign debt default last year.

Farmers and Indigenous United

It's about time and I hope the people involved are able to accomplish something.

Narco News: Farmers and Indigenous United - COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA; SEPTEMBER 2003: In an expression of solidarity with Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, indigenous and peasant farmer leaders from across the continent, and representatives from other countries of the world, will gather October 11th to 14th in Caracas, Venezuela. The meeting is intended to strengthen the struggles against globalization, consolidate a bloc to fight for a better future, and unite forces against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

News from Costa Rica

Check out news from Costa Rica from The Tico Times Online Home Page

Indian experts see "moral victory" in Cancun failure

According to the Hindustan Times the rich countries of the world didn't make out like bandits.

Indian experts see "moral victory" in Cancun failure : HindustanTimes.com

Good, I don't like what the World Trade Organization stands for. Public Citizen and Noam Chomsky both have opinions about the WTO.

The IMF Warns Of Oil Shocks Derailing Recovery In 2004

According to India's Financial Express - Dubai, Sept 18: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said oil prices will remain volatile next year and warned against possible “shocks” that could threaten global economic recovery.

One of the reasons for high gas prices in the U.S., at least so I've been told, is the lack of necessary refining capacity. Maybe we need about four or five more refineries.

Oregon Ducks Beat The Wolverines

Oregon = 31

Michigan = 27

That says it all.

I'm going to critique Phil Carter

Only in the blogosphere could I critique somebody as important as Phil Carter of INTEL DUMP.

For those who don't know, he's a former Army officer who is now a law student. I'm not that familiar with Army officers, but he seems like he is as sharp as Naval aviator officers.

Phil has an excellent grasp of the mundane things of life that are extremely important and one of his best postings is about the responsibility of military cops and their importance in making Iraq a better place for Iraqi's.

Here's my critique: Check out his archives.

A post at the "BuzzMachine" gives some insight into.....read the post

BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

If you want the status and money, then you have to not be sleazy

If you want the status and money being a lawyer brings to you, then you shouldn't be sleazy. Eugene Volokh has a posting about what I consider to be a sleazy prosecutor.

The Volokh Conspiracy

I can't believe there's such a thing as crooked cops

TalkLeft: Nine Law Officers Arrested for Ripping Off Drug Dealers

When it comes to the truth, everyone has their own version

Well, this is interesting. In the process of trying to figure out what happened to my son and assets and their mysterious disappearances (my son and assets mysteriously disappeared shortly after I went into the Navy in 1980 and ever since various possessions I've had have either disappeared or been mysteriously damaged), I have repeatedly run into strange and bizarre explanations of what was, what is, and what should be.

I've just talked to my mother, Neta Hays. She is filled with anger and hatred. A lot of this anger and hatred is directed towards me for a number of delusional reasons. The first reason is that I'm responsible for my sister's divorce. The second is that I'm responsible for my sister's ex-husband wrecking their car. The third reason is because I'm responsible for my sister going to hell when she dies because I caused her and her husband to get a divorce. (I'm really not responsible but they've got to blame someone). These irrational delusions have also caused my mother and sister to get involved in various conspiracies initiated by my psycho ex-wife and her idiot family to have me murdered.

After further conversation I found out I've committed the following crimes and for over twenty years they've been telling people I committed the following crimes. (I didn't really but, apparently, in order to continue the sympathy that has been comforting them and making them popular to a small segment of society for all these years they've got to keep telling the same false stories over and over again).

My mother's first false accusation is:

• I slapped my wife (the one I divorced in 1980) around. I didn't. I've recently found out my ex-wife donned the mantle of being a victim of domestic violence and Satanic ritual abuse some months after our divorce and my subsequent enlistment in the Navy. I've also found out my sister donned the mantle of being a victim of domestic violence, a victim of Satanic Ritual abuse, and a victim of a space alien abduction at the same time my ex-wife donned her mantle of victimhood. It appears my mother and sister became victims shortly after learning they were special members of the super-duper, superior, master white Aryan race.
• The second false accusation is that I shot up a vehicle owned by me and my ex-wife. (I wonder if I was supposed to have used the .38 my ex-wife carried around in her purse). I've recently found out the cops checked out the vehicle to ascertain if there were bullet holes anywhere in the vehicle. There weren't, otherwise I would have been arrested.

  When pressed as to why there weren't any bullet holes after I supposedly shot up our vehicle, my mother explained that I used Satanic powers to cover up my crime. I wonder if I can use those same powers to pick the right numbers for the lottery. Probably not.

• The third false accusation is I abandoned my ex-wife. (Actually, I divorced her and went into the Navy after she kept trying to kill me and she and her idiot family kept stalking me.) You would think that if I slapped my ex-wife around and shot our vehicle up then abandoning my ex-wife would be a good thing.

I never slapped my ex-wife around but I can't prove that. She can't prove I slapped her around and since her so-called witnesses also accuse me of being a homosexual Satanic Ritualist who sacrifices babies and pets in bizarre rituals, a member of the Illuminati conspiracy to control the world, a sleazeball who married a Satan spawned Jewish woman, and other horrible, rotten things, it's no wonder those accusations are not believed.

I actually did marry a Jewish woman but I don't think she was a spawn of Satan. My beautiful Jewish wife eventually decided she had married too soon and wanted to have some adventures. That was ok with me and we got divorced and went on with our lives. By the way, after the divorce she went out with a pilot who got her to parachute out of an airplane. She always had more guts than I did. She broke her ankle from one of her parachute jumps and wanted me to tend to her but like I told her, "That's what boyfriends are for".

My mother's total hatred of me doesn't really make any sense. It probably has something to do with her and my sister's delusion that I'm responsible for my sister's divorce, the destruction of her and her husand's vehicle (I never even drove the damn thing) and her inevitable journey to hell. They're not victims, unless you consider divorce a crime and the person who was divorced a victim of a crime. While they believe divorce will send my sister and my ex-wife straight to hell, I seriously doubt in the real world you can convince people a person is a victim of divorce.

The need for my sister, mother, and ex-wife to be looked at as victims sometimes approaches the bizarre. They've actually assaulted people who doubted their veracity. When a couple of preachers and assistant DA's didn't believe their weird accusations about me my sister, mother and ex-wife had a tizzy fit for two days.

The truth of the matter is my sister, my ex-wife, and my mother are not victims of anything except delusions. They've used their so-called victimhood to lie to people, to steal from people, to con people into giving them money and sympathy and to control people. Despite the fact that my sister's, my mother's, and a crazy ex-wife's claims of victimhood violate the laws of physics, there are still really stupid people in Washington County who believe them.

Donning the mantle of victimhood has allowed them to become liars and thieves and get away with it. Being "victims" has also allowed them to assault people and get away with it.

My sister, my mother, my psycho ex-wife and their allies (the ugly, old hags) believe that if I take prozac, anger management courses, quit being a homosexual Satanic ritualist, quit going out with women who are spawns of Satan, quit listening to devil music, and quit doing computer stuff (see below) I will become a good guy and come back to my wife, thereby saving her soul from eternal torment in hell.

All I can say is, "I like being a rotten computer geek and listening to devil music." By the way, in the strange email (posted below) by one of the gang there is an explanation as to why computers are evil. I still can't figure out why the music of Bach, Beethoven, the Beatles, Merle Haggard and all the others is considered devil music by the cult. Maybe all music is considered devil music.

For more background info on what I'm trying to explain, visit this link.

The following explains some of the bizarre beliefs of my sister, my mother, my ex-wife and their witless allies.

TIME TO PROTECT WOMEN AND CHILDREN AGAIN - IN A BARBARIC SOCIETY THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN SAFE, AND WE ARE SLIPPING INTO CHAOS.....

The credible evidence in our court cases in Oregon is that the STATE is operating this black market child selling/child pornography operation, and it is international. After Child Services head Kay Toran went to romania and taught them how to profit from their vulnerable children and orphans, the children being seized and adopted to usa nd europe were not arriving here. This is so bad that just recently the UN stopped all international adoptions because so many of these children were missing.....

thousands in every state and NO real statistics.....

the us Supreme Court is part of the problem , but our rights and accountability are at state government level, which brings us to pedophile chlid abuser protector JOHN KITZHABER and the Oregon Supreme Court. This evidence has been before them for five years and growing in our cases, and to this day only the pornographer has been protected, while we have been attacked and with ALL THIS KNOWN, Melissa has dissppeared into their market.....

We proved in l998 that the pronographer HAZEL SPEES, and the caseworker LARRY LAWSON and TIM IRMEN were grooming Melissa for the pornogrphay trade. The woman who had her seized was later arrested for black market child selling. The courts have done nothing but spend milions $$ literally, more than thirty cases against us on anything they can make up, and all this right out in the open. As these facts have come to light has this Governor investigated? NO has he interevened" NO - he has only protected the criminals, of which he is one.

The state Supreme Courts are the constitutional courts, and where these issues are supposed to be dealt with. Because it is so FETID all the way thorugh, you have these offices filled with pedophiles themselves, the whole gay agenda we deal with every day, and the HUGE money making machinee they have going....

The snuff movies and every kind of perversion on the internet are why WE have not lost our communications network - the people of the world are learning about their abuse through this same network, which the powers that be would LOVE to shut down - BUT THEY CAN'T GET THEIR PORNOGRAPHY AND SATIATE THEIR LUSTS UNLESS THEY HAVE THE INTERNET TOO - and so far they have not figured out how to do this.

I have read that most of the people on the internet are looking at pornography, in chat rooms or buying and selling...... that leaves a small and important segment of the population that are connecting the TRUTH on these websites for the benefit of ALL who will come and learn.

GOD SEES EVERYTHING AND WE TRUST THAT THE DAY IS SOON THAT THE INTENT OF THE HEART WILL DECIDE THE FATE OF THE SOUL .....

So many people think the world is somehow the same as when they were growing up but there is NOTHING that is the same anymore. These pictures decribed in this article that our children can find anywhere on the net, are unlike anything that was in circulation or accessible to children twenty years ago.

God help us all that the children today are being fed this diet of sex and violence, mixed human primal emotions, then influenced with the perversions of homosexuality when they are too young to understand their sexualtiy...

IT REALLY IS TIME TO START PROTECTING YOUR CHILDREN PEOPLE = THERE WAS A REASON WHY MOMS STAYED HOME AND DADS WORKED AND FELT GOOD ABOUT PROVIDING FOR THE FAMILY ...

But then again, we all know that the design of the global controllers is to destroy the Family Body and the rest falls into their control

we are there already.

THE ONLY ANSWER IS FOR MORE PEOPLE TO STAND AGAISNT THIS AGENDA WITH THE TRUTH. IN THE COURT, AND IN THE WORLD, THE ONLY POWER IS THE TRUTH AND THE SWORD FOR THOSE WHO SPEAK IT.

We hear stories of abuse like this constantly. In Oregon, KEVIN MANNIX governor candidate is financed by LOREN PARKS who is one of the biggest perverts in the country - he designed pedophile machines that are used by gays and the state alike to abuse chidlren and adults. And you see "church" groups like Christian Coalition SUPPORTING THIS FILTH.

Lastly, the people should know that these so called "assessment centers" that make pornography of the children, often with male and female foster people and caseworkers and "therapists" in there, SHOW PORNOGRAPHY TO THE MEN WHO ARE WIRED UP ON THE LOREN PARKS PENIS MACHINES AS THEY ARE QUESTIONED - WHERE DO THEY GET THIS PORNOGRAPHY????? IN THREE TRIALS NO ONE CAN SAY IN THE MARION COUNTY COURTHOUSE WHERE THE PORNOGRAPHIC VIDEO OF MELISSA IS - IT IS NOT WHERE IT WAS CONCEALED CRIMINALLY BY JUDGE JOSEPH OCHOA TO PROTECT THE PORNOGRAPHY.

THIS WHOLE THING WAS SENT TO THE JUSTICE DEPT BY A POLICE CHIEF, AND ALL THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DID WAS RETALIATE MORE AND MORE, AND STILL.......THEY ARE THE PEDOPHILES !!!!

WAKE UP AMERICA - IT MAY BE TOO LATE ....

WE HAVE KNOWN FOR SOME TIME THAT WE WERE IN A WAR BUT YOU DID NOT SEE THE TANKS ON THE STREETS - WELL THAT IS HERE NOW......

Like Roger Weidner tells people "your children will spit on your grave for what you did not do when you could have to stop this....."

pamela gaston
a voice for children

A lot of people care

On one of my menus I have a link to online newspapers. I like to read various newspapers around the world. The most interesting part of the various newspapers is the "letters to the editor" section. I am constantly in awe about how many people really care about what is going on in their local communities and take the time to write their "letters to the editor".

Obviously it's not possible to publish every single letter sent to the various editors. I would think that the job of having to go through all those letters is probably one the most important and most underated jobs in the media industry.

It may take a little time, but check out the complete website of the Agonist

Check out The Agonist--Thoughtful, Global, Timely and then check out this.

A vote for Nader or Willis is not a wasted vote

Since I voted for Nader for president once, I might as well vote for Oliver the next time around. (Gosh, I hope he's not with the Greens.) The question is: Does he have the experience to be be president?

Might As Well Make It Eleven @ Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite to Stupid

Pejmanesque has a link to a good article

I like his column.

Pejmanesque: MY TECH CENTRAL STATION COLUMN IS UP

I would think, however, that a cursory study of the Iran/Iraq war would be in order in order to have a better understanding of the post.

I've glanced at a couple of analyzes of the Iran/Iraq war, but I'm not sure if all the information has come out or even if it's possible to give a complete history of the war at this particular moment.

Adam Scrupski points out that teachers must be educated to teach

Since I can't get the permalink to work, I will put the complete NAS post below:

NAS Online Forum

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

The Cold War as Seen by the Educational Testing Service
Adam Scrupski, Rutgers University School of Education

For some time I have been interested in the attitudes of public school history teachers toward the Cold War. Although, in almost all cases, these educators formally teach "social studies," they are really history teachers, because in most secondary schools, one or two years of American history and a year of world history are required for all students. In both history courses, the Cold War figures significantly, or shall we say, should figure significantly, because my experience suggests that the Cold War may be an embarrassment for most teachers. I have yet to meet a high school teacher who is enthusiastic about teaching the Cold War.

One gains the impression that, except for pointed attention to the sins of McCarthyism, social studies teachers avoid the Cold War and appear to know little about it. There seems to be a cultural consensus about it that is even reflected in the Educational Testing Service's "Praxis" test -- a passing score on which is a requirement for certification as a social studies teacher in most states.

ETS does not offer much in the way of sample items for the Praxis test in social studies. Their web site includes information on test structure, however, from which I learned that there are twenty-nine questions each for the sections on American history and world history. (There are also questions on geography, civics, and economics.) The web site exhibits ten sample questions on history from tests used in the past; and one of the questions deals with a general definition of the Cold War. (Go to ETS web site for Sample Question 4 of the social studies test.)

That ETS officials were willing to give a question on the Cold War such publicly displayed prominence suggests that they had a good deal of confidence in its validity. Here it is:

The term "cold war" refers to the

race between the United States and the Soviet Union to claim ownership of Antarctica

contest between the United States and the European Common Market for economic domination in the West

struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union to gain political hegemony in world affairs

competition between the Soviet Union and China for the resources of the Pacific rim.

Of course, the correct answer is the third alternative, not difficult to determine, given the ludicrous nature of the others. The key word in the answer is "hegemony," a term, made popular by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, that denotes the control of political and economic affairs of others. In the Marxist mode the term refers to the domination that capitalist nations like the United States establish over other states. In the ETS item, the term "hegemony" is extended to apply as well to a socialist state whose hegemonic objective is revolution in the interest of the world's victims of capitalist exploitation.

Note the parity of purpose imputed to the two contenders, each trying to extend its own political control in the world at large -- interest-based politics on an international scale. The ETS item's imputations are similar to that of the first (1994) version of the national history standards, which referred to the "swordplay" between the United States and the Soviet Union with no reference to its initiation or to the essential nature of the two contenders. The "swordplay" reference received fierce criticism and was deleted in the subsequent version of the standards, published two years later.

The Cold War application of international relations theory in the Praxis item presents an equivalence that makes no distinction of morals or character between the U.S. and the USSR. If it had distinguished between the two nations, it would have taken account of what Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov called Stalin's "revolutionary-imperial paradigm." There is more than ample evidence of the workings of this paradigm -- in 1950, for example, Stalin strongly supported (and armed) North Korea's aggression against South Korea in a strategy intended to strengthen the geopolitical position of the Soviet Union.

In light of what is known about Stalin's revolutionary-imperial paradigm, consider the ETS answer to the Praxis test question:

The term "cold war" is used to describe the tense relationship that developed [my emphasis] between the United States and the Soviet Union in the years following the Second World War. During the cold war, both the United States and the Soviet Union sought to extend their economic, diplomatic, and, at times, military influence in many parts of the world. Beginning in the late 1980's, dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe led to a reduction in U.S.-Soviet tension and the end of the cold war.

Note the use of the term "development" to denote the onset of the Cold War, as if the U.S.-Soviet contention "just happened," and was not the result of Soviet aggression and strategic genocide in Poland and the Baltic nations, or a result of Soviet takeovers in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, or a consequence of Soviet failure to permit free elections in the nations made captive at the Yalta Conference.

Consider, as well, the parity imputed to the U.S. and USSR's efforts to extend political "influence" in the world at large. Was it merely an extension of influence that brought about the Czechoslovak coup and defenestration of Czech leader Jan Masaryk in 1948? . . . Merely an extension of influence that massively armed North Korea with Soviet weaponry to enable it to attack South Korea in 1950? Were such strategems comparable to the Marshall Plan's role in the recovery of European nations from wartime devastation?

The Praxis test conspicuously elides the causes of the Soviet collapse. To say "dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe led to a reduction in U.S.-Soviet tension" is to suggest that the Soviet collapse was generated by some process of indigenously generated change, and not, as was the case, by the final disastrous failure of the socialist economy, by citizens' dissatisfaction with their lot, by Ronald Reagan's indictment of the USSR as an "evil empire," or by election of the Pole, Karol Joseph Wojtyla, to St. Peter's throne. To refer to the abrupt dissolution of the Soviet Union's East European empire as a mere "reduction in . . . tension" is a historical minimization without equal.

The moral equivalence that ETS imposes on the two parties in the Cold War is no minor oversight by test constructors. That it is intentional was confirmed in a phone call with an ETS functionary, who enthusiastically informed me that the test item I had questioned was completely accurate. This gentleman, a historian with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, said that other ETS historians concurred with the interpretation. We had a long phone conversation, but he was less than forthcoming on my request for other sample test items. Alas, his reluctance makes it appear that I shall have to sit formally for the Praxis social studies exam, if I want to learn more about ETS's agenda.

Medpundit tells what it's like dealing with a bureaucrat

I'm having a little difficulty getting the permalink to work, so I'm going to put Medpundit's whole post below.

medpundit

Medicaid Mandarin: I always thought economics would be the deciding factor in whether or not I would continue to see Medicaid patients. The reimbursement is dismal, the patients are challenging both socially and medically, they have a higher rate of no-showing appointments than the general population, and it’s extremely difficult to find a participating specialist when needed. But, it looks like economics won’t be the deciding factor after all.

Yesterday, the managed care company that administers our area’s Medicaid program called to say they wanted to inspect our new office today. The problem is, there is no new office yet. A series of unfortunate events conspired to delay the readiness of my new office space by a month. In the meantime, I’m working temporarily out of two exam rooms and a storage space in my old building while the new tenants remodel all around me. It’s far from adequate. There are too few phone lines, my medical records are in boxes, and all but the most necessary equipment and supplies are in storage. I’ve been limiting the patient visits to only the acutely ill. Operating at full capacity just isn’t possible under the circumstances. And even though I’m following the OSHA, CLIA, and HIPAA rules, any insurance inspector would be put off by the general disarray. Not to mention that this space isn’t really the new office. If they want to inspect the new office, then shouldn’t they inspect the new office?

This point was completely lost on the Medicaid rep. She insisted. My office manager balked. Then, she fired the ultimate threat. If there was no inspection today, then we just can’t see Medicaid patients anymore. To which I can only say, “Adios, Medicaid.”

posted by sydney smith on 9/18/2003 07:30:46 AM link

I was going to poke jokes at the Harvard Federalist Society but.....

I was going to poke jokes at the Harvard Federalist Society but..... there's already a website that makes fun of the Harvard Federalist Society. I think it's called Ex-Parte.

The power of the Internet continues to astonish

I know I'm astonished that I'm able to save bandwidth by having only four readers who are always drinking cheap, sleazy booze at Joe's Saloon in the Virgin Islands. But enough about my brilliance, let's see what Ernie has to say about the Internet. By the way, I capitalized the first letter of "internet" to see if my "I" key was still sticking.

Ernie The Attorney: Weblog account of a U.S. 9th Circuit oral argument

Trudy Schuett has a letter to the editor published

Trudy Schuett of the of the DesertLight Journal has a letter that's been published in the Phoenix New Times.

Phoenix New Times | phoenixnewtimes.com | News : letters The Alternative Phoenix, valley of the sun connection for events, event listings, music reviews, CD reviews, and all of the latest alternative news from the Phoenix, valley of the sun area.

The following is the letter:

Search and destroy: It's no surprise to me that an ASU professor has decided that freedom of speech only applies to some people. After all, most public universities today are nothing more than domains of left-wing, feminist ideology.

And what is feminism but the promotion and elevation of some people, at the expense of others?

Joe Russomanno is just being a good little masculine apologist and doing what he has been trained to do -- seek out and destroy (or at least hamper) independent thought everywhere!

Trudy W. Schuett
Yuma

For those who like politics, there is Watchblog

WatchBlog: 2004 U.S. Election News, Opinion and Commentary

In the interest of fare and unbalanced news, Kicking Ass

DNC: Kicking Ass - Daily Dispatches from the Democratic National Committee

National Libertarian Party

Libertarian Party of Oregon

National Republican Party

MADD has become mad

Check out Hit & Run: Chasing the Flagon. Then check out TRUE FACTS MADD PROPAGANDA WILL NEVER TELL YOU. Maybe there's some sort of connection.

It's been years since MADD stopped relying on scientific evidence and started relying on false, misleading, and paranoid data whose real purpose seems to sucker people into giving mass quantities of money to the ruling clique AND further their real goal of bringing "prohibition" back to America. But, remember, the primary goal of MADD right now is to keep the money rolling in so the ruling clique can live like royalty.

DB's Medical Rants has a post about boutique medicine

DB's Medical Rants brings up some interesting observations about the wealthy being able to affort better access to health care. I would assume "better access to health care" also means better health care.

We live in a somewhat capitalistic system so I naturally assumed all along that the wealthier among us were getting more personalized and better health care. I guess now it's out in the open. DB's Medical Rants is also soliciting rants from interested people.

Finally, proof I'm more popular than Instapundit

Hahahahahaha. I'm finally king of the rat pack. Look at my statistics and you will see I'm the BOSS blogger.

Good Grief?????!!!!! I wonder what "error" means????!!!!

Dr. Andrew R. Cline

Today we're highlighting Dr. Andrew R. Cline because I have a few megabytes left.

By the way, what the hell is he trying to say???

USS Clueless is on the cutting edge of stuff

As usual, USS Clueless is on the cutting edge of stuff, and this time it is the cutting edge of stuff that's .......................really???????.....really......really........????important???......because it gives us a chance to see how he uses words.

(No matter how impossible, I always try to look on the positive side of things. But, today I took a break and decided to visit USS Clueless.)

USS Clueless - More on Anna

All right....all right...this is my socially unredeeming post of the day

danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: More blogging advice

Do I detect sarcasm in Crimlaw's post

I grew up in the Southwest of the U.S. Despite the army of narcs, there was always all sorts of drugs easily available to anyone who wanted the drugs. Some people liked doing the drugs and some people didn't. Some people made a habit of doing drugs and some didn't. Some of those who made a habit of it had extreme difficulty undoing the habit and others didn't.

Because I'm a complete jerk trying to avoid all material entanglements, I avoided becoming habituated to the use of various drugs, but I had friends and girlfriends who followed their own course of absurdity.

CrimLaw has a post. Actually, he has more than one post for some reason. He must be some sort of blogger. You never can tell.

Of all the drugs and all the drug users I've had the chance to come into contact with, speed users and cocaine users are the ones you want to avoid, if possible. It's not possible because they're everywhere.

So my advice is, "read Crimlaw until you don't want to".

Everybody's giving out advice to new bloggers

Everybody's giving out advice to new bloggers....but what about...... confused bloggers....like myself?

First off, there's Electric Venom and then there's
danieldrezner.com :: Daniel W. Drezner :: Advice to new bloggers.

Hahahahaha. I know all the secrets, including how to save bandwidth because, after all, I only have four readers and they all hang out drinking cheap, sleazy booze at Joe's Saloon in the Virgin Islands.

The link of the day - at least for a little while

http://refdesk.com/ has brought us another interesting link of the day.

MayoClinic.com - Medical and health information for a healthier life from Mayo Clinic

How about a Shakespeare sonnet

LXXXVI.

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence:
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.

From the United Farm Workers

Let's let the Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) know that fairness is important.

Take Action: Send your e-mail today to help dairy workers!

Sept. 15, 2003
Farm workers at state’s largest dairy denounce
U.S. subsidies backing anti-union activities

Farm workers at the dairies located at Threemile Canyon Farms dairies who have been organizing for seven months with the United Farm Workers of America are denouncing anti-union coercion and intimidation by a company receiving heavy federal subsidies. A recently released report from the Environmental Working Group indicates the dairies are the top recipient of U.S. dairy subsidies in Oregon. Hundreds of thousands dollars in federal assistance went to the dairy last year alone.

So the workers and the Cesar Chavez-founded UFW are urging public officials who direct tax dollars to the dairy to bring its owners to the negotiating table. Ignacio Carrillo, a worker at the dairy, called on the “state and federal governments and the banks to not finance Columbia River Dairy until they agree to deal with the issues that we have, because they may very well use that money to fire us.”

Dairy workers have complained about management retaliating against pro-union workers by suspending them and physically isolating them from other workers. The company has imported anti-union consultants to meet with workers. “The company’s campaign against us is based on lies,” Carrillo says. The consultants claim “that there have been a lot of changes, but the truth is that they haven’t happened. The consultants have met with three to four workers at a time in small rooms. A man named Richard, he is [a] consultant, told us that in Oregon there is no law which allows there to be a union.”

In its latest move, dairy management is now circulating an anti-union petition for workers to sign. “If the company was truly interested in gauging worker support for a union, they would allow an open and fair union representation election. To circulate a petition on the clock using supervisors is coercive and violates national and international labor standards,” says Erik Nicholson, Pacific Northwest regional coordinator for the UFW.

Steve Witte, executive director of the Oregon Farm Worker Ministry says, “These workers provide milk for retailers and processors throughout the Pacific Northwest. Not only is it unconscionable to think that the dairy has gone to such extreme measures to keep workers from having a union, but it is outright immoral to realize that these agro-industrialist owners are receiving such significant federal aid in addition to the support they’ve already received from the state of Oregon.”

According to a recently released report from the Environmental Working Group, the three dairies located at Threemile Canyon Farms cumulatively received more than double in U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidy payments than any other Oregon dairy. In 2002, Columbia River Dairy and Gary Te Velde, owner of Willow Creek Dairy, together took in $219,348 worth of dairy program subsidies. According to the report, Columbia River Dairy owners R.D. Offutt and the Bos family have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal subsidies for their operations in other states since 1995. Te Velde, operator of Willow Creek Dairy, is the Bos’ son in law.

In addition to the federal subsidies, the state of Oregon has provided $20 million in private activity bond monies to help establish the dairies.

Dairy workers have been organizing for the past seven months and asked the UFW to represent them. To date, however, the dairy has refused to negotiate.

The United Farm Workers of America is the largest farm worker union in the United States. The Washington office of the UFW is coordinating this campaign.

- end -

Brandon A. Perron - a man of many talents

Brandon A. Perron is not only the director of The Criminal Defense Investigation Training Council, but he is also an award winning poet.

There are reports that he has been presented with the "OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN POETRY AWARD". The award was presented to Brandon by the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF POETS in Washington, D.C. on August 17th, 2003.

Go to Poetry.com, put his name in the search engine, and see what comes up.

William Safire has a column - "The Senate Says No"

Hmmm, it seems everytime I go to "New York Times on the web", it greets me with "Welcome, lousy blogger with only four drunk readers in Joe's Saloon in the Virgin Islands".

I don't understand. How does the New York Times know so much about me? Those New York Times reporters sure are slick.

The following is an excerpt from William Safire's column.

The Senate Says No

A handful of media giants want to further concentrate their power by gobbling up more local TV and radio stations, beyond the 35-percent-of-penetration limit. The F.C.C. chairman has called arguments for local diversity "garbage" and this week branded the proposed Senate resolution disapproving of his anything-goes ruling as "bordering on the absurd."

Call me liberal, call me conservative, call me......I know, I know, I voted for Nader for president but you don't need to call me "that!!!!!!!........ but I think Safire is on to something.

Time for Mark Twain on Congress and Twain on politics and, of course, how can we forget Twain's Bee Essay. I wonder what Twain said about government.
I wonder what H. L. Menken has to say about anything.

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When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale."

--Candidate Bill Clinton (The New York Times, 3/30/92)

I wonder how he did that.

"Actually, I -- this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about -- when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me."

George Bush before becoming president--Hardball, MSNBC, May 31, 2000

I wonder what he's talking about.

A recent GAO report on the Freedom of Information Act:

Agency Views on Changes Resulting from New Administration Policy. GAO-03-981, September 3. - http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-981.

The link above will take you to a PDF file so you will need the free acrobat reader and its download page.

You might also want to check up on Freedom of Information Clearinghouse. For those who want to know what the Freedom of Infomation Clearinghouse is, don't ask me. I don't know. I don't even read my own blog unless my four drunk readers in Joe's Saloon in the Virgin Islands tell me there's something interesting on it.

The Freedom of Information Clearinghouse is a joint project of Public Citizen and Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law. We provide technical and legal assistance to individuals, public interest groups, and the media who seek access to information held by government agencies. We are available to consult by phone or mail. The Clearinghouse is a nonprofit organization and welcomes your tax deductible contributions. This site contains links and resources to assist citizens in using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as well as information and testimony on our involvement with Freedom of Information issues and cases.

I wonder what Randy Barnett is trying to say

The Volokh Conspiracy - Fcuknig amzanig: Perhaps others have seen this floating around the internet, but it is a first for me:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Fcuknig amzanig huh?

I took the whole post. I hope I didn't violate any copyright laws. Hmmmm....I wonder who I can ask about that.

Memo To All Students

Memo to all students:

In order to assure the highest levels of quality work and productivity from students, it will be our policy to keep all students well taught through our program of SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TEACHING (S.H.I.T.). We are trying to give our students more S.H.I.T. than any other school. If you feel that you do not receive your share of S.H.I.T. on the course, please see your lecturer. You will be immediately placed at the top of the S.H.I.T. list, and our lecturers are especially skilled at seeing that you get all the S.H.I.T. you can handle.

Students who don't know S.H.I.T. will be placed in DEPARTMENTAL EDUCATIONAL EVALUATION PROGRAMS (D.E.E.P. S.H.I.T.). Those who fail to take D.E.E.P. S.H.I.T. seriously will have to go to EDUCATIONAL ATTITUDE TRAINING (E.A.T. S.H.I.T.). Since our lecturers took S.H.I.T. before they graduated, they don't have to do S.H.I.T. anymore, as they are all full of S.H.I.T. already.

If you are full of S.H.I.T., you may be interested in a job teaching others. We can add your name to our BASIC UNDERSTANDING LECTURE LIST (B.U.L.L. S.H.I.T.).

For students who are intending to pursue a career in management and consultancy, we will refer you to the department of MANAGERIAL OPERATIONAL RESEARCH EDUCATION (M.O.R.E. S.H.I.T.). This course emphasizes on how to manage M.O.R.E. S.H.I.T. If you have further questions, please direct them to our HEAD OF TEACHING, SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING (H.O.T. S.H.I.T.).

Thank you,
BOSS IN GENERAL
SPECIAL HIGH INTENSITY TEACHING
(B.I.G. S.H.I.T.)

-----------------------------------------------------

Check out more Humor, funny, jokes, Bumper Stickers, One-Liners, Error Messages, Divorce humor, Bumper Stickers, Cyber sex, chicken jokes, women vs. men, quotes.

A Mark Twain Letter from Washington - let the good times roll

Seems like colleges always need money. The following is an excerpt from one of Twain's letters. You should read the whole thing. And then read some of his other letters.

Mark Twain's letters from Washington - No. XI

WASHINGTON, March 2, 1868

The Mining School

Dwinelle's curious resolution concerning Senator Stewart's proposed mining school has reached here - and will be laid before Congress and in all human probability will be tabled there. It is a funny document, take it as you will. It has two clauses in it that are especially entertaining, and would be still more so if they were set to music. One of them proposes to exclude all foreigners from the school - which proposition is narrow enough in policy, and ungenerous enough, withal, to have been resurrected from the dark ages. We that have benefitted so much from the labors and discoveries of Europe's men of science; we that have to send to her so often for teachers; we that are as welcome in her great mining schools as her own citizens, and are freely according every privilege which they enjoy and upon the same terms, ought to be ashamed of so selfish, so poor-spirited a measure as this. The Freiburg school is full of Americans. They will not be pleased to learn how America proposes to show her appreciation of open-handed German hospitality. Measures like Dwinelle's are not the things that made the Californian name a synonym for liberality and generosity.

The other clause I have spoken of proposes to divide the revenue from the mines among a number of States and let them endow with it as many mining departments in as many colleges. The idea is threadbare and old. The Japanese astrologer, Prof. Blake, who knows so much more than it is lawful for any one man to know, is here, now, trying to get the revenues from the mining States conferred upon Columbia College, for the establishing of a mining department in that institution.

Two hundred and eighty other colleges are begging for the same revenues for the same purpose - and Dwinelle comes in at this late day with the same old impracticable idea. Why, even the poor purblind, broken-winded, Old Red Sandstone palezoic saurian, the Smithsonian Institute, has awakened from its ancient dream of Roman horseshoes, Grecian funeral processions, and pre-Adamite ferns and turnips, and it wants the revenues to endow a Mining Bureau with! And why shouldn't the old drowser have its Mining Bureau to fossilize along with its mastodon jaw-teeth, its Egyptian mummies, its pickled Indians and its Agricultural Department that never raises anything? Why shouldn't it have it and so save some old century plant of science from starvation by giving him the professorship? No greater good would be done by Dwinelle's diffusive process.

You don't see this kind of activism on America's campuses

allAfrica.com: Nigeria: University of Ibadan May Be Shut As Gun Duel Rages in Campus - DISTURBANCES which broke out at the University of Ibadan on Monday when students and cultists clashed leaving many people seriously injured continued for the fourth day running yesterday.

Looks like one of the "country's toughest lawmen" got popped

newsobserver.com - 'No Deals' sheriff indicted - Davidson County Sheriff Gerald Hege -- known for painting his jail pink, dressing in paramilitary uniforms and inscribing the motto "No Deals" on patrol cars -- was indicted Monday on 15 counts including embezzlement and obstruction of justice.

Man, Cobb is sure getting some interesting reactions

I have no idea what I'm doing, so check out nitecrawler: Black Bloggers before it rains again....and again.....again.

I.....must.....remember......this.....is.....a......rain....forest. Must.......put.....away......the.......suntan......oil.

Amazing, I've had that bottle of suntan oil for almost seven years. The guy who gave it to me said it was bourbon. It doesn't taste like bourbon.

Jay Bozievich has an excellent column about the 1st Amendment

Guest Viewpoint: Misapplying the First Amendment - The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA - by Jay Bozievich

The following is the complete column:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.registerguard.com | © The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

September 16, 2003

Guest Viewpoint: Misapplying the First Amendment
By Jay Bozievich

No part of American law is more misunderstood, misquoted or misapplied than our Constitution's First Amendment. Whether it is Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and his graven image in an Alabama courthouse or "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance, the First Amendment is invoked incorrectly to argue both sides of the issue.

Now, it seems that even a mother is willing to use a child as a pawn in a battle over civil rights with an incomplete understanding of civil rights or our Constitution. Many of those who support Lee Inkmann in her desire to enroll her daughter at O'Hara Catholic School would demand that religious symbols like the Ten Commandments monument in a courthouse be removed because there should be "separation of church and state." They would be asking for the right thing to be done under the wrong premise.

Here is the actual First Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Funny, but the words "separation of church and state" never appear. What does appear is a clear direction that there shall be no official religion established and that the government shall not interfere with the practice of religion. Now, how does that apply to Alabama Judge Roy Moore and Inkmann?

Moore, by erecting a monument to one specific religion in a government building, violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. (Please don't tell me that the Ten Commandments represent many religions; the monument used a translation that's specific to Protestants.) Had he chosen to honor many religions, as the U.S. Supreme Court does in its chambers, and not limit his monument to one, then he would have been within the boundaries set forth in the establishment clause.

Inkmann's mistake is in attempting to use government force to have a religious organization to do something against its teachings. The flip side to the establishment clause is the free exercise clause. In the great wisdom of our predominantly Christian founding fathers, in order to provide freedom for all people, they knew government should not establish a state religion and it should not interfere with religion. They provided that balancing clause of free exercise. Otherwise, how could there ever be such a thing as a conscientious objector?

Ah, but what about Inkmann's civil rights? She still has them! Why should her rights trump those of the rest of the parish? No one has said she can't be a lesbian; they have only denied admittance of her child to a private institution based on religious grounds.

But aren't all schools in a sense public? No. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1991, as well as the Title 42, Chapter 21, of the U.S. Code, all provide definitions of both public accommodations and public schools. O'Hara Catholic School is neither a public accommodation nor a public school.

It will always amaze me how little people understand about both the First Amendment and civil rights laws. Private institutions are allowed to discriminate. It is legal. You just do not have to support them. Whether it is a golf club in Georgia not accepting women or the Boy Scouts not accepting atheists, it is their right to assemble in any way they please, so long as it does not harm or defraud another.

Even though I am not religious, I will always fight for anyone's freedom to choose their religion (or not) and to worship as they please (or not). I will strongly resist any attempts to use the force of government to compel any religious institution to do something against its beliefs. What would be next, forcing the Camp Harlow to accept an avowed Satan worshipper?

Like the rest of the First Amendment concerning speech and the press, protection of popular speech, media and religious practices is really not necessary. It is the unpopular religious practices (based on one's point of view) that need protection. While this may not be popular with Inkmann, O'Hara's decision is protected in our Constitution, because O'Hara is a private religious school.

The real question should be, why is a government funded Human Rights Commission even involved beyond taking the initial complaint? Doesn't it understand "free exercise" and "public accommodation"?

Jay Bozievich of Eugene is the state contact for the Republican Liberty Caucus.

No wonder I like TalkLeft so much

TalkLeft is always finding interesting stories, and this time there's a post about why prosecutors shouldn't be so lazy or obdurate.

TalkLeft: In the Words of One Who Was Exonerated

Hahahaha - The Ducks, the Beavers and Portland State won their football games

The Ducks won. Bring on the Wolverines.

The Beavers and the Vikings won.

Even the Oakland Raiders won. Too bad I'm not a gambler. All the teams I rooted for won. That'll probably never happen again.

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By the way, I wonder how the Axis of the Naughty is doing. If the Axis wins the battle for the hearts and souls of superior bloggers then I'll be five for five. Go Axis!!!!

More stupid things said to me recently

Well, it's time to think about some of the really stupid things said to me recently. The quotes are as follows and I believe at least one of the people who made the following quotes goes to a crazy, lunatic, racist homophobic Church of Christ in Aloha, Oregon that has been attended by some of my relatives. I guess because of the stupidity of the remarks made to me we can assume the people who made the following remarks are also members of the looney, homophobic, racist gang.

The following are the remarks recently made to me. The gist of the remarks below hasn't changed in twenty years. I'm paraphrasing the remarks and leaving out the cuss words.

• "We heard you were thinking of attending one of the churches around here. Don't go to any of the Mormon churches or the Beaverton Foursquare Church because those people are the spawn of the Satan and they'll lead you straight to Hell."
• "There's forty of us and we can kill you anytime we want."
• If you go out with a Catholic girl you're committing adultery and you're going to Hell.

• Since you're pro-choice why don't you just go out and kill babies, or have you already?"
• You drink cheap beer. Victor Oekerman drinks beer with class. That's why Victor is so much better than you."
• "You're a psycho! Why don't you just admit it?"
• "You're ugly and stupid! Why don't you just admit it?"
• You've got to come back to your wife and quit going out with whores. (I divorced the psycho ex-wife in 1980 and it's none of their business who I go out with, or who I talk to, or which shows I watch, or what beer I drink or which church I may or may not go to.)

I didn't respond. I usually just try to ignore these idiots because if you disagree or try to intelligently discuss things with them they start screaming and, sometimes, they even smack you.

As Carl Worden of the Southern Oregon Militia states:

CI believers insist they are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and are therefore God's true "Chosen". They believe the Chosen are all lily-white, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic and they insist Jews are not descended of the biblical Israel, but are the spawn of Satan himself. People of color and especially whites who marry people of color don't have a place in Heaven, according to the CI freaks.

When it gets right down to it, CI is a religion created to justify racism and anti-Semitism. It is an ugly religion and the people who adhere to it are some of the most evil and hateful people you will ever encounter, particularly if you question their belief system with hard, indisputable facts.

----------------------------------------------------------

On a related note: I think intelligence in a woman is sexy. The loonies fear and hate intelligent women and think intelligent women are of the devil. Maybe this is why they try to keep females of the gang stupid.

I used to play chess with the mother of my two daughters (she's quite good) and I've recently found out that this drove the loonies crazier than they already are. Apparently, the loonies also think chess is a satanic game.

Why the loonies assume it's their business whether I play chess or not or who I play chess with is beyond me.

Only in looney, homophobic, racist, delusional Washington County, Oregon.

Human rights violations in Iran - Free Iran

Project: FREE IRAN! [activistchat.com] - A weekly update on violations of human rights in Iran

PUSH FOR KAZEMI PROBE!

YOU CAN'T MAKE PEACE UNTIL THE WAR IS WON!

Quotes from Crazy Prohibitionists

Some idiots never learn. Prohibition didn't work and it will never work.

Quotes from the Anti-Alcohol Movement

Screw Stanford's political correctness, give Prof Davis tenure

Against The Grain: UC Davis Prof not PC?

Fred on Everything makes sense to me

Fred On Everything - Mom, Drugs, And Apple Pie - Bobby Socks And Psilocybin

It's time to highlight Patriot Watch

Considering the outrageous conduct of the the Department of Justice for trying to ban medicinal marijuana in many states, trying to outlaw a certain law here in Oregon, the ridiculous attack against people who sell what can be used as paraphernalia (example is Tommy Chong), and using laws against terrorism to convict ordinary criminals means PATRIOTWATCH is more important than ever.

Finally, somebody other than me thinks Pete Rose should be reinstated

TalkLeft: On Pete Rose's Reinstatement also has a video of a mock trial about whether or not Pete Rose should be allowed in the Hall of Fame.

What Pete Rose did was stupid and sleazy, but if we kept everybody out of the hall of fame who did something stupid and sleazy, it wouldn't be much of a hall of fame.

Rantavation points to a great posting

rantavation has a post about a post.

Rantavation's new URL will be http://www.rantavation.com. That means rantavation will be moving off blogspot which also means the above link to a great post will soon be dead. I tend not to permalink to blogspot blogs because of the difficulties. I hope blogspot will improve.

That said, I started out using blogger and I would like to thank the people who started blogger once again.

A guy named Cobb has something to say about black bloggers, I think

A guy named Cobb has a post entitled Cobb: The Mystery of the Black Blogger.

I don't really have an opinion on his post. There is some discussion about blogrolls, though. The primary reason I put something on my blogroll is for information purposes and, secondarily, for somewhat unique perspectives.

The latter reason is why I'm adding Cobb to my blogroll.

I also don't really care or not whether somebody has me on their blogroll because I'm still trying to figure out whether this blog should be primarily focused on one thing, two things, many things or whether or not it should offer a unique perspective on a particular subject or subjects.

I'm still experimenting with this thing.

The above link via Oliver Willis.

USS Clueless has an interesting posting about Depleted Uranium

Did you know you can get more Radiation Contamination from ***???!!!#### than you can from depleted uranium?

The Ten Commandments and American Law:

Marci Hamilton has a great article entitled "The Ten Commandments and American Law: Why Some Christians' Claims to Legal Hegemony Are Not Consistent with the Historical Record". You can read the whole thing at the following link.

FindLaw's Writ - Hamilton: The Ten Commandments and American Law

It seems here in looney, homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon some of the populace who profess to be members of the white, superior Aryan race believe the following:

1. A very conservative interpretation of the Christian Bible."

2. A view of the white race, the 'Adamic race' or 'True Isaelites' as superior. Other races are the 'Satanic spawn' of Cain."

3. The belief that Adam and Eve were white. "Other 'pre-Adamic' and non-white people were already in existence when Adam was created. This leads to the belief that Anglo-Saxon Protestants are the 'true identity' of God's chosen people of the Hebrew Scriptures."

4. That the Commandment which forbids adultery does not refer to extra-marital sexual relationships. Rather, it forbids 'racial adultery'; i.e. inter-racial marriages. Their reasoning is that the 10th Commandment which forbids coveting one's neighbor's possessions already bans adultery; one of those possession's is the neighbor's wife. And God would not have repeated Himself."

5. They consider themselves to be the direct descendants of God's chosen people; they regard the Jewish people as imposters. This has led to an extreme anti-Semitism within the Christian Identity Movement."

And below is what the gang's constitutional expert on constitutional law says in a letter to the editor of the Statesman Journal:

POLICE VIOLATED RIGHTS OF PORTLAND SUSPECT

On Jan. 27, Portland police violated the 4th, 5th, and 14th articles of the U.S.
Constitution and were horrified when a U.S. citizen put his life on the line to
protect his inalienable rights as described in the Declaration of Independence.

Well shame on him. Who the heck does he think he is, and doesn't he know that the president, hoping to be dictator, said, " When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."

Sorry, Steven Dons, the police did not like the way you were using your personal freedom in the privacy of your own home. Haven't you heard that our government has declared God's law to be illegal and is trying to find our creator to file a charge of government interference?

The U.S. Constitution is the sovereign citizen's contract that allows the government to exist so long as it does not violate God's laws as set forth in the New Testament.

Bill Mayhar
Salem, Oregon
-- letter to editor----
--- Statesman Journal -- 2-3-98

They should remember the ninth commandment of the ten commandments which states:

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Check out the aviation page at Spiesonline.net

Spies Online - Aviation Resources

Man, my junk email folder has a lot of spam

Junk Mail: 67 (67)

I wonder if there's a law to keep the mentally ill gang from subscribing me to all the porno lists, the vitamin lists, the crazy drugs lists, the singles lists and the other lists that send me tons of spam.

The future of internet communication is the blog.

Congratulations to all those who passed the Oregon - July - 2003 Bar Exam

Oregon Bar Examination Results

Maybe one of them will help me with my future lawsuit against Washington County, Oregon.

Let's hope they don't become like Thomas Huffman, the man without principles.

For those of you who've been waiting for new drugs

CDER New and Generic Drug Approvals: 1998-2003

The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research has also released the latest Warning Letters and Untitled Letters to Pharmaceutical Companies - 2003.

Delusions and absurdity in Hartford

Time to make fun of Hartford, Connecticut once again.

Looks like looney Washington County, Oregon has some competition from Hartford, Connecticut

Another Coup in Africa

Aljazeera.net has an article about Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony.

Aljazeera.Net - Article

Army chief takes over Guinea-Bissau

Sunday 14 September 2003, 13:34 Makka Time, 10:34 GMT

Commander Zamora Induta announced the army is taking over

The army chief of Guinea-Bissau has taken over as the tiny west African country's new president hours after carrying out a bloodless coup.

General Verissimo Correia Seabra declared himself as the interim president on Sunday, as the country's deposed president and the prime minister were being held in the army headquarters.

What universe are the French living in??!!

According to the following NY Times article the French have a list of things the U.S. must adopt pronto. The French leaders just keep getting funnier and funnier.

U.S.-French Rift Reopened as Powell Arrives for Talks
U.S.-French Rift Reopened as Powell Arrives for Talks
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

GENEVA, Saturday, Sept. 13 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, reopening the trans-Atlantic rift over Iraq — this time about expanding the authority of the United Nations there — said today that a French proposal to cut back the role of the American-led occupation was unacceptable.

Arriving in Geneva after midnight for intensive talks on Saturday about what role the United Nations should play, Mr. Powell also labeled as "totally unrealistic" a French suggestion that Iraq establish a provisional government in a month, write a constitution by the end of this year and hold elections next spring, all under United Nations auspices.

Today were highlighting China Hand

Check out the blog China Hand and then check out the some news from China.

For those wishing to convert various units to other units, we have OnlineConversion.com.

A philosophical question...if there is such a thing

What would you do if you were a graduate of Baylor University and you became a Navy JAG officer and you were conned into committing crimes by crazy fanatics?

Maybe you would become a disbarred attorney.

Critiquing software for blogs

The following blog - Blogs: Watch Out for the Lawyers :: SohoAttorney.com :: Because Why Should You Be A Wage Slave? - utilizes postnuke as blogging software. I like postnuke software. Despite popular belief, the latest releases of software are not always the most stable. Then again, some of the latest releases are the most stable.

The following are results from some testing I've done with various blogging or "content management" software.

The most stable releases:

moveabletype: 2.64

postnuke: 7.23 phoenix

phpnuke: 6.0

xoops 1.3.10

phpwebsite 0.8.3

I'm always testing the latest versions, including the beta versions (hmmmm, maybe this is one reason I'm always reinstalling my operating system) and while I can understand why the developers want everybody to get the latest versions, sometimes the latest versions have too much stuff stuffed into them and this causes bugginess.

There are a lot of others. Some are written in perl and some in python and some in.....on and on. If you want to test some of them then check out hotscripts.com and sourceforge.net.

Spybot - you might be interested in it

Check out Spybot.

Link via Spiesonline.net.

The good old days when the Mafia reigned supreme

New gangs just don't have the traditions of the American Mafia.

Highlighting the fragility of civil rights

Today, in order to highlight the fragility of civil rights when faced by a fanatical, homophobic, racist gang, I'm going to tell abou the true story of the Illegal Search at My Place of Employment.

I'm always highlighting injustices suffered by other people and it was suggested to me that I highlight the sleazy, illegal search done to me. So I have.

Update on the murder of Lorenzo Okaruru, a.k.a., Loni Kai?

At the The Hays Report I mention the unsolved murder of Lorenzo Okaruru, a.k.a., Loni Kai. New information I have received indicates a question is in order. Is a dirtball cop somehow involved? It wouldn't be the first time a cop committed a murder or the second time or even the third time.

Since I believe this murder might well be an incident of domestic terror, I think the FBI should investigate it.

OSU vs NCState

Man, right now the game is going into 3 OT. Even though this isn't PAC-10 foorball, this is one exciting game.

Update: Final
- NC State - 38
- OSU - 44

Blogging and journalism

As One Hand Clapping points out there seems to be a discussion going on about whether blogs are journalism, serious journalism, or just one's diary on the web, among other things.

I'm of the opinion that it is exceedingly difficult to define journalism. Some blogs may be journalism and some may not be.

Donald Sensing brings up another point. Do blogs need some sort of ethical guidelines. I say no. The reason I say no is because how can ethics for blogs be legislated or controlled in any manner.

It would seem "caveat emptor" may be in order.

It is ultimately up to blog readers to determine what is journalism, what is not; what is authentic, what is not; and it is ultimately up to blog readers to decide which blogs they want to read on a regular basis.

For example, when I want cold hard news with accompanying facts I visit The Onion, Scrappleface and IMAO.

Dredging rivers - it really does need to be done

If you go here and here and here and here you will get info about an amendment introduced by Senator Ron Wyden with the support of Senator Gordon Smith which states in part "to bill H.R. 2754 for $858,000 shall be available for dredging and other operation and maintenance of the Rogue River, Gold Beach, Oregon and $983,000 shall be available for dredging and other operation and maintenance of the Umpqua River, Oregon".

I think dredging is sometimes necessary.

AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!! Instapundit has joined the alliance against himself???!!!!

Whatever shall we do? This is terrible. My hero, Instapundit, is allied against himself.

U.S. judge rules Iran responsible for 1983 bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut

I wonder why I haven't heard more about the following topic. If Iran is having Americans killed (and there's proof to support this), then Iran should pay. I think the leaders of Iran should pay in more ways than one.

Project: FREE IRAN![activistchat.com] :: View topic - U.S. judge rules Iran responsible for 1983 bombing of Embasy

Michael Ledeen has an excellent article

Michael Ledeen on 9/11/03 on National Review Online

Don't forget Free Iran.

ASSHATERY is not that important, but it is interesting

It doesn't seem that big a deal, but Wizbang brings up something interesting. Why does one become a serial design plagiarist? I don't know, but you can find out more at the following link.

Asshatery?" href='http://sleazereport.com/redirect.php?url=wizbangblog.com%2Farchives%2F000752.php' rel="nofollow">Wizbang: The Sincerest Form Of Asshatery?

The Further Adventures of the Psycho Ex-Mother-In-Law from Hell

Some years back, while I was living in Beaverton, Oregon trying to raise a family, and while I was the stay-at-home father and the mother was working full time outside the home, unbeknownst to me my psycho ex-mother-in-law, Bonnie Oekerman, and her equally psycho daughter, Faye Oekerman, were keeping the apartment that Wendy, our two daughters, and I were living in under surveillance.

Here is what the psycho ex-mother-in-law would do. She would come to Beaverton from her residence in Oceanside, Oregon, where she and her husband had a business ripping off the locals, and she would stay at the Ambassador Hotel in Tigard, Oregon. The Ambassador Hotel in Tigard is very near Beaverton, Oregon.

Then she would snoop around our apartment complex, make friends with one or more of the residents (usually by telling them lies about me and my family) and then she would spy on us surreptitiously. Her psycho daughter, who lived in Hillsboro, Oregon, also near Beaverton, would also spy on me and my family.

During the school year it was my habit to get up early, make breakfast for the girls (they were in elementary school), walk them to the bus stop, and make sure they got off to school. Then I would clean the apartment and do whatever shopping needed to be done, study, and then meet them at the bus stop when they got off the bus after school.

We lived in an apartment with an indoor swimming pool and so, usually, at least once a day, the girls would go swimming with their friends and I would play lifeguard and watch them. It helped that in my younger days I actually was a lifeguard. Studying and learning and then actually doing lifeguard duty were some of the jobs being on a swim team entailed. That and learning how to clean pools and keep them clean.

Had I known what the sleazy Oekerman family was up to I would have been much more apprehensive. But, can you believe that they would stoop so low as to stalk me and my family after I divorced the psycho Faye Oekerman in 1980. AND GET THIS!!!!!!! My mother and sister were helping them and lying to me about it!!!! Don't the Oekerman's believe in amicable divorce, or does a person have to be continually stalked and hunted when leaving the psycho Oekerman family? What do they think they are...some crime family nobody can get out of?????!!!!!

Click here for the beginning, when I first met the psycho ex-mother-in-law from Hell.

Remembering a personal memorial

Beirut Memorial On Line

Can't say it much better than XRLQ

damnum absque injuria: 9-11-01

If there were awards for blog posts, Unbillable Hours would win one

unbillable hours: As Big As Your Fist (A Love Story)

How Appealing is a must read

Man, I'm not a government lawyer. I'm not any kind of a lawyer, but I know enough to be a regular reader of How Appealing.

I get various daily updates from various university law schools and Findlaw.com and other sources about about the latest appellate decisions in the various federal courts and the California and Oregon courts, but I just glance at them and instead concentrate on the posts at How Appealing because Howard Bashman is a great law editor.

An answer to a question posed to me

Well, some people want to know why I think Washington County, Oregon is the cesspool of Oregon. My answer is because Washington County has allowed itself to become a center of activity for some of the most hateful, evil, dishonest, violent bunch of liars, thieves and hypocrites in the world.

Washington County as become a nest of the slimeballs that make up the Roger Weidner/Victor Oekerman gang.

Read the following and you will see why:

Voodoo Christianity Cult Watch News Pg1

Voodoo Christianity Cult Watch News Pg2

Voodoo Christianity Cult Watch News Pg3

Voodoo Christianity Cult Watch News Pg4

Extreme Sleaze uncovered in Massachusetts once again

The link below will take you to a story of a sleazy woman who used a sleazy court to try to ruin somebody because the sleazy woman was filled with vindictiveness, spite and hate. For more info about women who are sleazy, click here.

The Official Page ONE Literary Newsletter Website -

Steven S. Richmond, MSW, MA is a psychotherapist, prize-winning author, and expert on social services delivery systems. His first book, Public Welfare: Notes from Underground, has been required reading for graduate students of social work for more than two decades. He has devoted the last thirty years to developing public and private programs to help families remain intact. He now travels and speaks before groups interested in improving services to vulnerable populations in their communities. Terms of Enforcement: Making Men Pay for What They've Done is the story of failed courts, mental health, and social service systems. Ordinarily such an observation is not remarkable and that in itself is unfortunate. But in the case of the author's story, these failures are deliberate. Worse, as widespread as this problem is, these failures are unreported in the press and the professional literature. Terms of Enforcement: Making Men Pay for What They've Done is the author's unescorted passage through Hell and a story for everyone to consider who cares about justice and the search for responsible ways to protect women who are at genuine risk of domestic violence. Terms of Enforcement: Making Men Pay for What They've Done can be purchased online at www.trafford.com/robots/01-0585.html.

Zeno has new info at his forensics site

What's New

Check out the National Map database from USGS

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geography: The National Map

Want to check out an aerial view of your neighborhood? Then check out www.terrafly.com from the High Performance Database Research Center (HPDRC) is associated with the School of Computer Science at Florida International University.

Homophobic, psycho, white supremacist Dave Mortimer is still sending out spam to email lists

Well, it seems crazy, homophobic, white supremacist, "Christian Identity", "sovereign citizen" Dave Mortimer of the Roger Weidner gang is still sending out mindless homophobic, white supremacist crap. Isn't it amazing how these guys use the internet to network with each other?

Get a load of the following email sent by crazy Dave Mortimer:

CITIZENS TAKE BACK SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY IN THE OREGON SUPREME COURT

To: Fathers_are_Parents_too@yahoogroups.com
From: "dave.mortimer" - dave.mortimer@ntlworld.com

Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 13:21:57 +0100 (GMT Standard Time)

Subject: Re: [Fathers_are_Parents_too] Senator Larkin and new legislation

From: tips_and_tricks@yahoogroups.com

CITIZENS TAKE BACK SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY
IN THE OREGON SUPREME COURT

This is the really important thing...it is the nexus of the whole scam...statutes are not laws...this is SO important for everyone to see what is in this motion...we have criminally convicted the Oregon Supreme Court and lower courts now, on the Record, in their own courtrooms...we confronted the shadow government openly in the Oregon Supreme Court...we have this on videotape also...this in turn confronts the global agenda as it is being put in place...you should know about what we are doing here in Oregon.

JUDGE SAYS, "I CANNOT ANSWER THAT," WHEN ASKED IF THE OREGON SUPREME COURT IS A COURT OF CONSTITUTIONAL JUDICIAL DUE PROCESS

August 9, 2000 - Salem, Oregon: No one stood when the Bailiff announced, "All rise for the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon," as the en banc judges quietly took their seats. Petitioners Pamela Gaston and Michael Marsh sat at the table, and Attorney General representative Wasserman, there to defend the STATE OF OREGON, sat at the other table. A packed courtroom of Citizens' rights advocates, Constitutional defenders and angry courtwatchers witnessed for the People, ex rel, in the hearing. As the crowd gathered outside of the Supreme Court before the hearing, two imposing State Police officers arrived to monitor the court proceedings. As they came through the crowd, one said, "Mr. Gaston," and shook Will Gaston's hand. Whereas in previous court proceedings the judges and sheriffs create chaos and attack the courtwatchers, the mood for this hearing was nothing but respectful of the People.

Pamela Gaston stepped to the lectern and asked which of the four judges would be the presiding judge for the hearing. Judges Carson, VanHoomison and Gillette previously recused themselves, and Chief Justice Carson was seen scurrying away from the Supreme Court Building as the hearing was soon to begin.

Judge Durham stated that he would be the presiding judge. Gaston asked Judge Durham, "Is this a Constitutional Court of Judicial Due Process?" and Durham replied "You are in the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon." Pamela Gaston asked, "Is that court a Constitutional Court of Judicial Due Process?" and judge Durham responded, "I CANNOT ANSWER THAT." Gaston and Marsh were 'allowed' seven minutes to speak, then the Attorney General had an opportunity to rebut and defend the STATE, then Pamela Gaston rebutted the AG 'defense.' Gaston ran through the high points from the following Motion, which is attached after this article. The Motion fully makes the case, and the exhibits which are referred to are attached in the Motion.

Pamela Gaston made an oral record of the fraud and deception of the Oregon government, the history of this corruption, and the plans outlined for our future to be sold to the global sovereignty and enslaved to a Corporate Global Socialism, which they have entrenched already and are relentlessly moving forward to enact at this time.

Pamela Gaston told the four judges that they were knowingly involved in the corruption, as she knew personally that for more than two years they have knowingly and actively been protecting child pornographers and black market child-selling agents for the state, and numerous corrupt judges in the lower courts.

The Attorney General had been forced to appear by the Supreme Court, having filed a motion that they did not intend to appear. AG Wasserman, red-faced and quiet, to the point that no one could hear him in the audience, was asked by Judge Riggs in as many words, "Why did this initiative not get blocked sooner in the certification process?" It was blatant that the Supreme Court judges were amazed that they were having to face this open confrontation about their whole "secret" government, from which they profit, laid out bare before them.

The Attorney General's office had not one word of defense, nor did he dispute one word from the whole Motion, as follows. The bottom line in a courtroom is that undisputed testimony becomes fact, and that was his time to refute these claims and this evidence. There was no dispute. AG Wasserman weakly argued that the ballot could not be enacted, that it was not clear in its intent, and how the Attorney General office would decide whether it was enforceable, under the amended VII authority.

Gaston made a searing rebuttal stating that the AG pleading was "LUDICROUS," that the AG statements that their office would determine whether an initiative was enforceable or not, according to the Amended VII authority, when Gaston had just destroyed the whole authority that he was attempting to impose. Gaston ended the rebuttal telling the judges that, "If it is not Constitutional it is TREASON. Thank you."

The Attorney General and the Justice Dept. gave no factual dispute and now the evidence as presented is fact in the Record of the Court and in the Public Record of the People.

Another facet of court procedure is "false in part is thrown out" in a court of credible evidence. This Record has now factually discredited the authority on which the whole statutory government has been built and, once discredited, it cannot stand. The People, with one voice, declared that our sovereignty WILL STAND and not these corrupted courts, and now the Amended VII no longer exists. The only place these corrupt Public Servants and their statutory rules have any authority any more is in the MINDS of the People who fear them!!! FEAR NOT from now on, Oregon. We have collectively broken open the LIE to the LIGHT of the PUBLIC EYE. Challenge your abusers every time they violate your Constitutional rights. They do not have a leg to stand on anymore in Oregon--NO WHERE TO HIDE FROM NOW ON.

Sheriff Mike has a commentary

The commentary is Coquille, Oregon: Small Town Government Set To Self Destruct - by Sheriff Mike Cook - Sierra Times.com.

Sheriff Mike Cook points out that nobody asked questions that needed to be asked and this led to needlessly huge price increases for water and sewage services.

From MEMRI - Looks like Al-Qaeda has declared War on Saudi Arabia

From the Middle East Media Research Institute comes the following excerpt:

MEMRI: Latest News

Al-Qa'ida's website, which was originally called Al-Nida and then changed its name and URL every few days to avoid being hacked, had disappeared from the Internet following the killing of its site director, Sheikh Yousef Al-Ayyeri, in early June 2003 in Saudi Arabia.
The website has now been reactivated, at http://www.faroq.org/news/. Among the postings on the site is a book called "The Raid of the 11th of Rabi' Al-Awwal – The Eastern Riyadh Operation and Our War on America and Its Agents."

The book's foreword states, among other things, that the "raid of the 11th of Rabi' Al-Awwal 1424 [the May 12, 2003 suicide attack on Western residential housing complexes in Riyadh]… was but the opening shot, Allah willing, and the Mujahiddeen had a need for this detailed communiqué to present the reasons for the Jihad activity in the Arabian Peninsula and to remove some of the religious and military problems regarding it." The following are excerpts from each of the book's four chapters: [1]

Looks like looney Washington County, Oregon has some competition from Hartford, Connecticut

The followng link will take to you a story about a group of delusional "victims" of the international Satanic Ritual conspiracy, the international Illuminati conspiracy and a bunch of other nonsense.

Cult News.com: Fantastic stories of abuse animate "survivors" conference

Fantastic stories of abuse animate "survivors" conference
Stories about vast unknown conspiracies that involve CIA operatives and criminal underground societies, seem more like tired themes for formula films, rather than a subject for serious discussion.

However, as summer ended in New England such subjects became the focus of a conference staged by "abuse survivors" at a hotel in Hartford, Connecticut.

Narratives about secretive Satanists were everywhere at the gathering sponsored by S.M.A.R.T. (Stop Mind-Control and Ritual Torture).

Maybe Scott Peterson's lawyers should have attended to take notes, which might help fuel their speculation concerning the alleged "cult" they say may have taken the life of Laci Peterson and her unborn child.

Anecdotal stories abounded everywhere at the conference with various villains. Besides the usual Satanic suspects there were accusations against Freemasons, secret CIA programs and the so-called "Illuminati."

This event was reported with a dose of much needed skepticism by the Hartford Advocate.

"I was going to be part of their satanic world-domination plan," said one self-proclaimed "survivor."

"My father handed me over to the cult; I was like his gift," explained an attendee.

"We were brainwashed by the cult and made to kill firstborn children," claimed another.

Why were all these victims together in Hartford rather than within a witness protection program?

"Sharing like this is the best way to rid ourselves of…toxic memories," stated the conference organizer. And of course there are always conference fees, not to mention books and tapes for sale at such events.

Being a "survivor" can become a kind of cottage industry for some.

And for those that think this is funny and comparable to a group of UFO believers waiting for their next "abduction," think again.

People have suffered, but not from supposed "satanic ritual abuse." Some stories told by "survivors" have led to false charges and criminal prosecutions that destroyed lives.

This includes witch-hunts like the McMartin pre-school case in California. Taxpayers spent $15 million dollars to find out there was no Satanic abuse at the school, but it ruined the McMartin family.

And there was an alleged "sex ring" in Wenatchee, Washington that was ultimately proven to be bogus after multiple arrests of innocent residents.

Even a police officer was falsely accused in Canada. He was eventually cleared and paid a large settlement for his suffering.

These are the real survivors, falsely accused and damaged by spurious charges and prosecutions.

The FBI once investigated claims of human sacrifice and a network of criminal Satanists. But a report concluded there was no objective physical evidence to substantiate anything.

So why do people want to believe such nonsense and play the role of "survivors"?

According to respected researcher Elizabeth Loftus it's an "explanation for everything wrong in their lives."

The noted psychologist sees conferences like the one SMART recently convened as an opportunity to "get together…reinforce each other…give each other a sense of importance."

And the stories of "survivors" appear to confirm this.

Often their tales put them at the center of some vast and evil conspiracy; its central character, hero or heroine, somehow essential to the plot.

But in the end even those that spin such stories fail to see their own authentic suffering and real situation.

Obviously they are in need of ethical and constructive counseling from objective mental health professionals. But many instead rely upon "repressed" or "recovered" memory therapy and are often estranged from their families.

They "stay unwell and never get help" lamented Loftus.

[Posted by Rick Ross at 08:55 AM]

The links to the original post at Cultnews.com are live and awaiting your perusal.

The idiots in the Roger Weidner/Victor Oekerman gang convinced my sister and mother (Chris Andrea Hays and Neta Hays) that they were victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse and Space Alien Abductions. When a person doubts the veracity of the crazy, delusional stories my sister and mother tell, my sister and mother respond by screaming epithets and insults. Then they call up a bunch of their fellow delusional victims and scream some more at whoever doesn't believe the delusions.

A couple of times when I expressed doubts, my mother and sister screamed that I need to get on psychoactive drugs, expecially Prozac (Fluoxetine), in order to see the truth and be able to believe the delusions.

In fact, they were so adamant about me getting Prozac I thought maybe they and the gang ripped off or bought a bunch of stock in the company that makes Prozac.

The members of the Roger Weidner gang believe they are members of the super-duper, master, true white Aryan race. You'd think the International Satanic Ritual Abusers, the International Mind Control People, and the Intergalactic Space Aliens would know enough not to mess with members of the Roger Weidner gang, wouldn't you? But I guess not.

Critical Mass addresses freedom of speech on campus and she's right

Even though I disagree with Eric Rasmusen on many things, I believe he still has a right to post his views on a university server and I think it's wrong for people to try to censor him or any professor for expressing their views on their own blog.

There's more at the following link.

Critical Mass: More on Rasmusen

Mark Kleiman has an interesting post about some education bureaucrats lying and cheating

Looks like another case of sleaziness in a government bureaucracy.

Mark A. R. Kleiman - The central theme of the "No Child Left Behind Act" is that the public schools can perform if given measurable goals and strong organizational incentives to meet those goals. Part of the evidence offered for that proposition was the "Texas miracle," and in particualr the improvement of the performance of the Houston schools under Superintendent Rod Paige, now Secretary of Education.

Now it turns out that the Houston schools were systematically cooking the books, with at least one large inner-city high school reporting zero dropouts.

Mark Kleiman also provides a link to a relevant post at Open Source Politics.

Black Hole Sound Waves

From NASA come the following news:

Black Hole Sound Waves -

Sept. 9, 2003: Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found, for the first time, sound waves from a supermassive black hole. The "note" is the deepest ever detected from any object in our Universe. The tremendous amounts of energy carried by these sound waves may solve a longstanding problem in astrophysics.

The black hole resides in the Perseus cluster of galaxies located 250 million light years from Earth. In 2002, astronomers obtained a deep Chandra observation that shows ripples in the gas filling the cluster. These ripples are evidence for sound waves that have traveled hundreds of thousands of light years away from the cluster's central black hole.

I wonder how you hit that note on a guitar.

Here's some Background on Western Shoshone issues

If you live in the Western part of the U.S, or even if you don't, you might want to learn about the Western Shoshone Defense Project

From Martin S. Fiebert comes the following:

The following link via www.mensactivism.org.

REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Legal Theory Blog has a post about some new papers on the net

More new papers on the net can be found at the link below.

Legal Theory Blog

The following is a small excerpt from the post that I find interesting.

This article examines the changing landscape for wiretaps and other electronic surveillance at the state level in the wake of the events of September 11. Based on available statistics, over two-thirds of law enforcement wiretaps in the United States in 2001 were authorized by state rather than federal judges, and there is evidence of significant under-reporting of state wiretaps. Part I of the Article explains the constitutional and statutory framework for government interception of: the content of a communication ("wiretaps"); to/from information (such as phone numbers or e-mail addresses); and stored communications records. Appendix A to the Article provides a survey and analysis of the interception, to/from, and stored records laws for all 50 states. Appendix B provides a survey of proposed and enacted changes to state laws in the initial period from September 11, 2001 to June 1, 2002. This research was performed on behalf of the Liberty and Security Initiative of the Constitution Project.

Samizdata.net has another interesting post about Salam Pax

Samizdata.net, as usual, posts another post that leads to an interesting article - Samizdata.net - Samizdata quote of the day

Exposing some myths about the International homosexual Satanic Ritual conspiracy

Detective Constable Charles A. Ennis of the Vancouver Police Department, Youth Services Unit, writing under the name Kerr Cuhulain, writes about some overly religious, delusional cops who believe in a vast international group of Satanic ritualists who control the world. His article is "Police Who Believe".

More background information can be found here.

Here in looney, homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon we have a paranoid, delusional, homophobic, racist cop who actually believes in the nonsense about the international, homosexual Satanic Ritualist conspiracy that controls the world. This cop is a secret member of the sleazy Roger Weidner/Victor Oekerman gang and has been a member of the church my relatives (John McClelland hays, Chris Andrea Hays, and Neta Hays) have been a member of for many years.

This cop has also broken into my various residences and illegally bugged my various residences. This cop has also illegally videotaped the mother of my two daughters and me in private moments.

This cop believes the laws of our nation, state and county do not apply to him because he is doing God's work. He's not really. What he really is is just a crooked cop with delusions of grandeur.

For about twenty years this dirtball cop and his buddies in the Roger Weidner gang have been slandering me and trying to frame me, among other illegal activities.

Why are the crazy, female white supremacists in Roger Weidner's psycho gang all ugly and stupid?

Having had a bunch of ugly, loud, stupid, violent female white supremacists from Roger Weidner's mentally incapacitated gang harass me and attack me over the years I've noticed that all the females are ugly and stupid.

Is being ugly and stupid some sort of prerequisite for being in Roger's gang?

Y'know, you would think that since they are members of the pure, white Aryan, master race there would at least be a couple of cute, intelligent women in the gang. But noooooooo.....and the older they get the uglier and stupider they get.

At first I didn't know these women were all in Roger's gang because they pretend to outsiders that they don't know each other. They all say the same programmed nonsense, though.

The older these hags get the more obnoxious they get.

Update: I've been informed that the main job of the ugly, stupid women in the gang is to spew out those Aryan babies for Roger's and Victor Oekerman's and Lenoard Henderson's psycho war against the Illuminati and the inferior races, so, therefore, the women in the gang don't have to be good looking or intelligent.

The gang has at least convinced one stupid cop and a couple of moronic Navy JAG officers to help the gang further its delusional goals.

Only in looney, homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon.

It's that time of the year for the "Schoolbus" posting

Sometimes school buses carry kids. Sometimes when a school bus is stopped it means they are either letting kids off the bus or they are letting kids on the bus. Sometimes kids do things that are not in their best interest, like crossing the street to get on the bus at the most inopportune times imaginable.

SO, IF YOU SEE A SCHOOL BUS THAT IS STOPPED IN THE STREET, THERE IS A POSSIBILITY IT IS STOPPED FOR A GOOD REASON. SO......SOO.....AGAIN SOOOOOOOOOOO............DON'T GO AROUND IT!!!!!!!!! WAIT FOR IT TO BEGIN ITS JOURNEY TO WHEREVER IT IS GOING BEFORE YOU STEP ON THE GAS PEDAL!!!!!!!!!

• SO PICK YOUR NOSE.
  



• THINK ABOUT BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT..




• LISTEN TO THE LOCAL RADIO STATI0N.




• THINK ABOUT ALL THE TROUBLES YOU WILL FACE TODAY.




• DECIDE WHO TO VOTE FOR.



• THINK ABOUT WHO OR WHAT YOU WILL EAT FOR LUNCH OR DINNER OR PLEASURE.




• THINK ABOUT ALL YOUR EX-LOVERS AND THE PLEASURES AND MISERIES THEY MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT HAVE BROUGHT YOU.




• THINK ABOUT ALL THOSE COOL, NEAT, EXPENSIVE DRUGS YOU COULD BE TAKING IF ONLY YOU WERE ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE LIVING IN HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA.




• THINK ABOUT HOW MANY TIMES DR. RON TURCO, PSYCHIATRIST, FANTASIZES ABOUT MAKING LOVE TO HIS MORE BEAUTIFUL PATIENTS.
  THINK ABOUT HOW MANY PSYCHIATRISTS ACTUALLY DO MAKE LOVE TO THEIR MOST BEAUTIFUL PATIENTS.
  THINK ABOUT HOW MANY PSYCHIATRISTS FANTASIZE ABOUT MAKING LOVE TO THEIR MOST UGLY PATIENTS.
  THINK ABOUT HOW MANY PSYCHIATRISTS ACTUALLY DO MAKE LOVE TO THEIR MOST UGLY PATIENTS.
  THINK ABOUT THE GROUP OF PSYCHIATRISTS THAT GOT TOGETHER AND SAID, "UH OH, WE'RE EXCEEDING OUR SLEAZE QUOTIENT. THE PATIENTS ARE STARTING TO DISTRUST US. THIS MEANS WE'RE LOSING MONEY. SO THIS IS THE NEW RULE. NO MORE MAKING LOVE WITH BEAUTIFUL OR UGLY PATIENTS UNLESS THE PATIENTS ASK US TO."




• Think about why Guy De Maupassant, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowkski, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis (the very first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobels made a fortune off explosives after many of my favorite authors had already died and so many of my favorite authors were simply out of the running for Nobel prizes because they were...dead...or worse.)
  Ernest Hemmingway, Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Dylan Thomas, Lord Byron, Tom Clancy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Norman Mailer and his nemesis Gore Vidal, Rod Serling, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Herman Melville, James Joyce (I like his stories but, man, is he full of a lot of crap or what?), hunter s. thompson, Charles Dickens, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane are cool. Today I would like to make a comment about one of my favorite authors and I hope it's not too disparaging, but was Herman Melville getting paid by the word?... because sometimes he beats a point to death and drones on and on before getting to the exciting part of the story.




• TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHY A KOREAN WAR VETERAN LIKE MY FATHER WOULD LET MY VENGEFUL, SPITEFUL SISTER TALK HIM AND SOME OF HIS BUDDIES INTO VANDALIZING SOME OF MY VEHICLES OVER AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME.




• THINK ABOUT ANYTHING.........DO ALMOST ANYTHING.........

............

Want to check out the pay scales of your police department?

If you live in a reasonably sized city, then check out the database at www.policepay.net.

Today's word of the hour - etiology - brought to you by Stanley Turecki, MD

Dr. Turecki is a psychiatrist and he has written an interesting article - The Behavioral Complaint. In this article he has used the word "etiology".

Here in looney, homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon we have a psychiatrist who used to be a cop (maybe he still is a cop). His name is Dr. Ron Turco. When he's not diagnosing people, including me, as members of the international homosexual, Satanic ritual gang he's pumping out accolades he's awarded himself. Interestingly, since my sister, Chris Andrea Hays, became a member of a crazy, homophobic, white supremacist gang she has become convinced she's a victim of the international, homosexual Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy. Of course, she's also become convinced she was abducted by space aliens so we know her enchilada is a few ingredients short.

Who is Instapundit? And does he know about the puppy blender?

Questions, questions, questions. Who is Instapundit and does he know the nefarious Puppy Blender?

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) Online has a cool post

At the National Association of Scholars (NAS) Online there is a cool post...but...the damn permalink doesn't work.

Somebody forgot to republish the archives.

Since the permalink doesn't work I'm going to put the posting below:

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

The Tyranny of Diversity
John Staddon, Duke University

I am a psychologist, though not a clinician, but I agree with your anonymous clinical-psychologist correspondent. He is correct to criticize the politicization of clinical psychology. The politics are linked to a covert morality. Clinical "interventions" usually have a moral dimension that is neglected by most practitioners and by the official organs of the profession, such as the American Psychological Association. Which is not to say the field has no morality. It does; but it is rarely made explicit and is very often in conflict with other moral systems, particularly religious ones. Its morality is egocentric and egalitarian.

As an example of egocentrism, consider a strange phenomenon that is becoming surprisingly common among contemporary academics: a change in sexual orientation or gender in mid life. John, a married man with young children becomes unhappy with his sexual identity. He consults his psychologist: What should he do? His course of action raises a moral issue, because it will have an impact on his wife and children. A candidate for transgendering, for example, is unlikely to get three cheers from his kids when they are asked to call him not "Daddy" but "Jane." His wife will not be overjoyed either. Against these "bads" must be balanced the "good" of Jack's "mental health," which will (the therapist may be convinced) be much better if he undergoes surgery and reappears as a woman (his/her tenure prospects may improve also, one suspects).

A moral dilemma -- but not for the average clinical psychologist. His client's "authentic self" is his only concern. If he's convinced that Jack really wants to become Jane, that will be his recommendation -- side effects be damned. In other words, the usual "morality" of clinical psychology is totally self-centered. The only reason your average clinician would seriously consider the unhappiness caused to others by his client's actions is if they adversely impact the client.

Mental "health" differs from physical health in many ways, not the least of which is the reaction of others. A loving family will rejoice when daddy's appendicitis is relieved; not so when he is "cured" of his gender or sexual orientation.

But your correspondent's concern is with a different aspect of the ideology of clinical psychology, its devotion to egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is not specific to psychology; it is the dominant belief among academics in the humanities and social sciences. Why that should be is a story for another time. The quiet but fanatical devotion to (racial, ethnic, but not intellectual) "diversity" derives (I suspect) from egalitarianism. A belief in "diversity" is especially appealing to psychologists because it solves something that is a special problem for them, namely the manifest inequality of human beings. Individuals, and races, differ, not only in obviously biological characteristics like physiognomy and skin color, but more sensitive aspects such as IQ. The reasons for the differences in average IQ, and what they mean in terms of individual psychological processes, are far from clear. But their reality is not in doubt. "Diversity" offers an egalitarian solution to this quandary: different races have different "intelligences" and must therefore get different clinical treatments. What's more (whew!) this means IQ rankings are meaningless.

The idea of irreconcilably different intelligences flies in the face of psychology's claim to be a natural science; it denies the reality of a universal "human nature"; it renders forward progress in understanding the mind almost impossible, since all differences in behavior must be treated as irreducible. It is as if Galileo had accepted the unequal motions of the planets as givens, leaving Newton no work to do in unifying them. And of course there is no evidence for it -- no evidence at all that the minds of human beings differ in ineradicable ways. Indeed, it is hard to know what form such evidence could take, since it amounts to proving a negative.

Most importantly, a belief that different groups think in irreconcilably different ways makes real discourse between different groups and different races -- indeed, even between different human beings -- absolutely impossible. You say the sun goes round the earth and I say the opposite. That's it. We can proceed no further. In such a world controversial issues can be resolved only by force and intimidation, just as your correspondent reports.

NAS9:07 AM

XRLQ is on a mission

XRLQ is on a mission. I think it's a mission about getting a new word, "esnarca", to be snarky, or something like that. Personally, I think he just made up the word "esnarca". You never know.

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While we're on the subject, Howard Bashman was on a mission to get the federal judiciary to make their websites user-friendly (this means making the websites easy for the average citizen to navigate and, in my opinion, to make the websites more aesthetic.)

Let's check out some of the latest posts at How Appealing and see if he's accomplished his mission. Personally, I think he succeeded.

Not another unsolved mystery here in homophobic, racist Washington County, Oregon???!!!

Yes, yes. There is an unsolved mystery smack dab in Washington County, OR. Which dirtball cop in Washington County, Oregon ordered persons on probation and parole in Washington County to assault me and harrass me over a period of many years?

Something tells me that somebody knows and I'll bet that somebody secretly belongs to the fanatical, homophobic, racist, "Christian Identity", "sovereign citizen" Roger Wleidner gang. Maybe there's a whole group of people associated with the gang who knows.

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH - The Oakland Raiders lost to the Titans

I just watched my favorite team for the last twenty five years (the time the team was in LA doesn't count) lose.....on ESPN???!!! I can't believe it!!! My favorite team lost. Oh well, I guess it's back to the drawing board.

Oregon State lost, also. At least the Oregon Ducks and Portland State University won.

Here's the PAC-10 football standings.

For all you hardcore college football fans (I like college football more than pro football - most of the time), you can peruse mass quantities of statistics at ncaafootball.net.

Jack points out that Oregon is going downhill fast

I'm including two paragraphs from Jack Bogdanski's blog to illustrate Jack's points.

Jack Bog's Blog: "How about a little fire, Scarecrow?" -

I've already complained in this space that the Oregon legislators have their priorities all wrong when it comes to ethics in government. Not only did they recently gut the state government ethics commission budget, but they also passed a bill relaxing the government ethics rules to the point of laughability. The budget-gutting of the commission was highlighted in today's Oregonian; the shameful ethics bill is still on the governor's desk. He needs to get his veto pen out -- actually, a large, black veto magic marker would be appropriate.

Today comes word that the Legislature also has drastically reduced current funding for consumer protection. Apparently the folks in the Capitol don't think it's worth it to pursue those who rip off senior citizens and others for only a few thousand dollars a pop. The state attorney general will now be limited to only a few large fraud cases a year. Con artists on a smaller scale than that can operate scot-free.

Porphyrogenitus has a series of posts concerning the EU Constitution

Porphyrogenitus offers some excellent analyzes of the struggle for the birth and life of the EU constitution. There are links to a series of posts at this post by Porphyrogenitus.

DB's Medical Rants brings up some interesting observations about prestigious journals

It seems like many professionals have thoughts about being published in "prestigious" journals.

DB's Medical Rants: Criticizing the NEJM

Medal of Honor - McCandless, Bruce, Cmdr. USN

Soldiers for the Truth has a post about MoH Recipient: McCandless, Bruce, Cmdr. USN.

News about Iran - Arrested Demonstrators From June/July Are Executed in Iran!

The links below will take you to some of the latest news about Iran.

September 07, 2003

New York Post

Amir Taheri

On Tuesday, however, the British government, having recalled its ambassador Richard Dalton, announced the "temporary closure" of its embassy in Tehran. The decision came hours after shots had been fired at the embassy building in the center of the Iranian capital.

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Sign the petition - Kazemi Petition: Expel Islamic Clerical Regime of Iran from The UN For Killing a Canadian Photojournalist, and Call For Free Referendum In Iran!

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Project: FREE IRAN![activistchat.com] :: View topic - Arrested Demonstrators From June/July Are Executed in Iran!

Today's word of the day is "equipoise"

Today's word of the day is equipoise.

e·qui·poise n.

1. Equality in distribution, as of weight, relationship, or emotional forces; equilibrium.

2. A counterpoise; a counterbalance.

"Equipoise" is brought to you by Daniel Drezner and yourdictionary.com.

Read the trackbacks for Daniel Drezner's post because the authors add to Daniel Drezner's observations.

The Hutton Inquiry - an investigation into the DEATH OF DR DAVID KELLY

INVESTIGATION INTO THE CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THE DEATH OF DR DAVID KELLY by THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD HUTTON. Link via cryptome.org.

AFT STATE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES COMPENSATION SURVEY 2003

Want to find out the compensation for state employees in your state? Then check out State-by-State Government Employee Pay.

It's a PDF file so you'll need the Acrobat Reader. It's free and you can download it here.

Stop the crazy "war on drugs"

At the link below Talkleft has a great post about how the "war on drugs" causes corruption to fester in various entities of various governments including local, state, and federal governments.

TalkLeft: How the Drug War Causes Police Corruption

For more news about the futility of the drug war click here.

Portland Copwatch and the One Trueb!x have more info on Portland Police shootings

Portland Copwatch and The One True b!X have info about Portland Police shootings and the seemingly incompetent and deliberately obfuscating investigations conducted by Portland Police into Portland Police shootings.

One of the reports slams the Multnomah County Districts Attorney's Office for the way it handles Portland Police Bureau shootings. It's about time somebody focused on the District Attorney's office.

Michael Schrunk, the Multnomah County District Attorney, has become, and been, a career bureaucrat for twenty years and while his office churns out mass quantities of propaganda about his being the greatest district attorney in the history of the universe, the truth of the matter is he is not. In fact, compared to great DA's or prosecutors like John K. Van de Kamp or Vincent Bugliosi, Michael Schrunk comes up wanting.

The District Attorney's office can indict almost anybody for any reason, but they hardly ever indict a Portland cop for any kind of shooting, including the most egregious shootings. It also seems like whenever anybody in the DA's office comes upon a smell of corruption, the people in the DA's office head the other way. Maybe the real purpose of the DA's office is to further the goals of crazy, racist, America hating feminists. More info can be found here.

We have a Portland Copwatch. Maybe it's time to have a Multnomah County DA's Office watch.

For those interested, you can read the entire report entitled "The Portland Police Bureau: Officer-Involved Shootings and In-Custody Deaths" from the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) and decide for yourself.

"In the Garden" - Mike Darcy highlights the art of garden artist Jeffrey Bale

KATU 2 - Portland, Oregon - In the Garden shows some of the most amazing gardens designed by Jeffrey Bale.

Check out the movie "I am Sam"

This movie is about the compelling story of a mentally challenged father raising his daughter with the help of an extraordinary group of friends. When the daughter reaches seven and begins to intellectually surpass her father, their close bond is threatened when a social worker decides the daughter should be placed in foster care.

It's a riveting story and you can find the movie's official site at the following link.

I am Sam Official Movie Site: Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Trailer, Pictures, Soundtrack, Download, Cast

According to Yussuf al-Ayyeri, "secular democracy" is the enemy of Islam

Amir Taheri: The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad

The following excerpt from the article about the book shows that the ultimate goal of Al-Qaeda is the destruction of "secular democracy" along with all religions which are not Al-Qaeda's particular brand of Islam.

All-Ayyeri first made his name in the mid-1990s as a commander of the Farouq camp in eastern Afghanistan where thousands of “volunteers for martyrdom” were trained by Al Qaeda and the Taleban.

Al-Ayyeri argues that the history of mankind is the story of “perpetual war between belief and unbelief”.

Over the millennia, both belief and unbelief have appeared in different guises. As far as belief is concerned, the absolutely final version is represented by Islam which “annuls all other religions and creeds.” Thus, Muslims can have only one goal: converting the entire humanity to Islam and “effacing the final traces of all other religions, creeds and ideologies.”

Unbelief (kufr), however, has come in numerous forms and shapes, but with a single objective: to destroy faith in God. In the West, unbelief has succeeded in making a majority of people forget God and worship the world. Islam, however, is resisting the trend because Allah means to give it final victory.

Another excerpt from the article is:

The first form of unbelief to attack the Muslim world was “modernism” ( hidatha) which led to the destruction of the caliphate and the emergence in the lands of Islam of states based on ethnic identities and territorial dimensions rather than religious faith.

The second form of unbelief to confront Islam was nationalism which, imported from Europe, divided Muslims into Arabs, Persians, Turks and others. Al Ayyeri claims that nationalism has now been crushed in almost all Muslim lands. He claims that a true Muslim is not loyal to any particular nation-state.

The third form of unbelief mentioned by Al-Ayyeri is Socialism, which includes Communism. That, too, has been defeated and eliminated from the Muslim world, Al Ayyeri asserts.

Ba’athism, the ruling party’s ideology in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, is presented by Al Ayyeri as the fourth form of unbelief to afflict Muslims, especially Arabs. Ba’athism, which is also the official ideology of the Syrian regime under President Bashar al-Assad, offers Arabs a mixture of pan-Arabism and socialism as an alternative to Islam.

Al Ayyeri says Muslims “should welcome the destruction of Ba’athism in Iraq.”

“The end of Ba’ath rule in Iraq is good for Islam and Muslims,” he writes. “Where the banner of Ba’ath has fallen, shall rise the banner of Islam.”

The author notes as “a paradox” the fact that all the various forms of unbelief that threatened Islam were defeated with the help of the Western powers, and more specifically the United States.

The “modernising ” movement in the Muslim world was ultimately discredited when European imperial powers forced their domination on Muslim lands, turning the Westernised elite into their “ hired lackeys”.

The nationalists were defeated and discredited in wars led against them by various Western powers or, in the case of Nasserism in Egypt, by Israel.

The West also gave a helping hand in defeating socialism and Communism in the Muslim world. The most dramatic example of this came when the US helped the Afghan Mujahedin destroy the Soviet-backed Communist regime in Kabul.

And now the US and its British allies have destroyed Ba’athism in Iraq and may have fatally undermined its position in Syria as well.

What Al Ayyeri sees now is a “clean battlefield” in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief.

This, he labels: “secularist democracy”.

Al Ayyeri asserts that this new threat is “far more dangerous to Islam” than all its predecessors combined.

Man, Daniel Drezner is hot, hot, hot

I always knew there was a reason Daniel Drezner was one of my heroes.

Brown University seems to have exceeded its Sleaze Quotient for the next ten years

As the post below will explain, sleaziness and dishonesty at Brown University seem to know no bounds, especially in the egregiously misnamed "Third World Transition Program".

Critical Mass: Segregation at Brown

An abrupt end to a basketball game

Oh no!! Another moron has contacted me and tried to convince me to agree with the premise that the Victor Oekerman clan is a fine, upstanding, white Christian family.

I was actually going to put some jokes about the homophobic, white supremacist Victor Oekerman family in a comedy routine for "open mike night" at a couple of comedy nightclubs in Portland, Oregon a couple of years ago, but the Oekerman family sent some people over to order me not to make any jokes about them because they are a fine, upstanding, white Christian family.

So I'll just make jokes about them on this website.

Only in beautiful, downtown Washington County, Oregon.

So in honor of the truth, I present another true expose.

One of the times the ex-wife tried to run me over

One of today's questions is, "What do the Oekermans have against basketball?"

Another question is, "Is driving through parks an Oekerman thing, or do most people do it?"

Another question, "If members of the Victor Oekerman clan are driving through parks, does that mean we should play basketball in the streets?"

This is an interesting post about a man who twice witnesses extreme violence by women

What the hell is going on in England? Is England trying to be the next France or Washington County, OR?

desertlightjournal.blog-city.com - A TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SON

More false info about the National Organization of Women from a major media pundit

The following link via Summaryopinions.com will take you to a commentary by Marie Cocco.

Newsday.com - A Symbolic Candidate Does NOW Little Good

I generally agree with Marie Cocco except for one item. She says in her commentary,

"The pioneering feminist group, which still maintains a large grass-roots organization in many parts of the country, has just endorsed former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun for president."

The truth of the matter as stated in a book by Kimberly Schuld, a research fellow at the Capital Research Center, is that the National Organization of Women has lost its support from the vast majority of women because its leadership has become more and more like a lunatic fringe group. The following is an excerpt from a news article about the book.

In addition to exposing the financial strategies of feminist organizations, Schuld's book reveals that a "disconnect" exists between the groups and American women.

For example, she said the National Organization for Women (NOW) claims it has 500,000 contributing members, but an examination of the group's finances doesn't support that figure.

When Schuld combined her analysis of NOW's finances with "inside information" obtained from unnamed former NOW officers, she said the group could not possibly have more than 57,000 contributing members. Plus, NOW doesn't have the staff to maintain a database of 500,000 active members, she said.

"The truth is they don't have even 57,000 members, but yet the media prints, 'Kim Gandy and the National Organization for Women with their 500,000 members says ...blah, blah, blah," Schuld said. "Well, Kim Gandy doesn't have 500,000 members. She lies about it and nobody asks her what the truth is."

Today's highlighted Iranian blog is Editor: myself

Today's highlighted Iranian blog is Editor:Myself.

Check out the links to the right of Editor: Myself.

Judges in New York state certainly are a wild and crazy bunch of guys

The following link via How Appealing.

Albany, N.Y.: Timesunion.com - The state commission that investigates bad judges had one of its most active years in recent memory in 2002, despite a wave of unprecedented challenges to its legal authority, according to the commission's annual report released this week.

The One True b!X and the letter of suspension to PTLD, OR cop Scott McCollister

The One True b!X's PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE | Scott McCollister Suspension Letter Reveals The Depth Of Mark Kroeker's Illogic

Hate, hate, hate and what it does to a person

As I've written before, ever since my sister, Chris Andrea Hays, joined a stupid, homophobic, delusional, white supremacist hate group, she has gone around falsely accusing me and a lot of other people of horrendous crimes, including falsely accusing me and other people of molesting our kids.

She has done this for many, many years.

Her hatred has also led her to commit many crimes, including violent crimes, with my crazy ex-wife and others for many, many years. They get away with it because they are surrounded by a group of fanatics who lie for them and make wild, false accusations against anybody who speaks out about the crimes committed by my sister and my psycho ex-wife.

My sister also puts her kids through hell and inculcates her kids with the same delusions and hatred she feels for so many people.

A lot of people have asked me why she does all this and how she managed to learn to hate so many people.

I guess that brings up the question of the day: How did my sister learn to hate so many people, including me, and will she ever quit having delusions and hating so many people?

Unholy Narcissism Fuels Left and Right Extremists

I agree with the article at the below link.

Unholy Narcissism Fuels Left and Right Extremists :: PrudentPolitics.org :: Op-ed articles about government, political issues, and other news.

What do American convicted murderer Paul Hill and Islamic bomber-murderer Raed Abdel-Hamed Masq have in common? There is the obvious, that both are murderers, and the further obvious, that both have ardent supporters who would vehemently dispute that they are murderers. Both killed innocent people, who had no reason to know or think these particular murderers were on the way. Both had happy families with children. Both wanted to die for their cause. Both thought a big reward for their 'just' behavior waited just the other side of life. Both so much alike, they are the players in two seemingly disparate events, which happened across the world from each other, but which show through a closer examination of the similarities of their reasons for killing, that unholy narcissism fuels both left and right religious extremists.

Looks like the federal workforce has exploded

Waste Basket Vol. VIII No. 36: Government Workforce Explodes

TalkLeft has a posting about "Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row"

TalkLeft: Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row

The following is from Stephen Baskerville

The following is from a radio commentary.

Judge Moore: Moses or Taskmaster?

In politics, as in religion, symbols are important. But when empty gestures start hiding real chicanery, it is time for a Reformation.

Alabama Justice Roy Moore displays the Ten Commandments, and he is revered by some as Moses. Yet it may be he erected a golden calf, enthralling and blinding us to the wrongdoing in his courts.

Like every other court system in America, Alabama's judiciary is thoroughly corrupt. While this may not be Judge Moore’s doing, one does not rise to the Supreme Court without playing some unseemly games.

In this case, Judge Moore seems to be siding with the taskmasters.

Gregory Lemieux is one victim of the state’s rapacious judges. Like many other citizens, Lemieux was minding his own business in his own home, a faithful husband and dutiful father, when Judge James Smith seized his children and everything else he had, cost him his job and his home, and is now threatening to jail him indefinitely unless he pays protection money to Judge Smith’s gang of cronies and thieves.

Lemieux was not accused of any wrongdoing, either criminal or civil, when the state proceeded to turn him into an outlaw.

How is it that an innocent citizen, minding his own business, can face indefinite jail without trial? Simple: The state calls it "divorce." But it's closer to kidnapping and extortion.

A devout Catholic, Lemieux does not believe in divorce, and no grounds have been alleged against him. Yet once his wife decides to renege on her marital vows, her husband cannot avoid jail.

Once his wife filed for divorce, contact with his children became a crime. By divorcing she also gained an astounding $2,300 monthly, which he must pay on pain of incarceration. Even more appalling, he must pay thousands to lawyers he never even hired for a divorce he never agreed to and doesn’t believe in. All this despite the fact that he lost his job in direct result of this government intrusion into his private life. Clinical documentation to this effect was ignored by Judge Smith. Greg Lemieux is a slave, and he must make bricks without straw.

LeMieux appealed to Judge Moore, who is required by oath to protect and defend the Constitution against precisely this kind of arbitrary government. LeMieux received silence. He expects to be arrested when he next visits his children.

Judge Moore is presiding over a judiciary of gangsters. If he wants to turn his court into a temple, he might begin by throwing out the moneychangers.

For FCF News on Demand, this is Stephen Baskerville.

The following link will take you to more writings of Dr. Stephen Baskerville.
Writings on the
Divorce Regime,
Family Court Corruption,
and the
Government’s War on Fatherhood

Stephen Baskerville, PhD

A prosecutor with blinders on

Well, what can you say when a prosecutor is in denial about reality?

TalkLeft: Miami Prosecutor Fights Dismissal Despite DNA Clearing

The Gweilo Diaries is back with an ex-girlfriend and a lacerated foot

What can I say? You'll just have to visit the following link to prove it to yourself.

The Gweilo Diaries: I'm Back

"Is That Legal?" has a post - about a product geared to an ethnic group

I think I'll disagree with the post by IsThatLegal?. There is such a thing as ethnic culinary specialities. For example, an Irish seven course meal is a six pack and a potato. I have a lot of Irish in me so I can make these stupid Irish jokes. Of course, I make all sorts of jokes so the last sentence is just silly.

By the way, my Irish ancestors left Ireland and traveled all around the globe and screwed everybody they could possibly screw and that's why everybody on the planet has some Irish blood in them. This upsets my psycho ex-in-laws who are convinced they are members of the true Aryan, master race but like I say, "Screw 'em".

I've visited about 20 countries and it seems each country had an ethnic specialty dish of some kind. Of course, here in the U.S. there are so many ethnic groups that one can go to a Greek restaurant one night, an Italian restaurant another night, an Indian reastaurant on a third night and on and on.

We even have restaurants that specialize in regional specialty dishes.

Read the comments at the post by "Is That Legal?".

Tim Blair - a pseudo-psychological study - conservatism is caused by mental illness

Tim Blair: SICKNESS - Remember the alleged psychological study published way back in July that exposed conservatives as crazy? Melbourne writer Phillip Jones, speedy little unit that he is, expands on that study in today’s Age:

Matt Welch has an article on blogs

Emerging Alternatives: Blogworld

Gullibility and foolishness

As I've written before my psycho ex-in-laws from hell believe almost everthing the cult's leaders tell them, even outrageous crap like the U.S. being "pulsed" with partical beam weaponry from Russia and China.

It seems some of my neighbors have been approached by members of the Roger Weidner/Victor Oekerman cult and have been informed of some outrageous falsehoods. I wonder if my neighors are gullible or not.

My relatives, Chris Andrea Hays and Neta Hays, and some members of their idiot church believe almost everything the cult's leaders tell them. Is this an excellent example of gullibility and foolishness? We report, you decide.

The World Needs More Resentful Feminists

Below link via Instapundit.com

Electric Venom:The World Needs More Resentful Feminists

On a related note, the Psycho Ex-In-Laws from hell prohibit their women from doing research on the internet because the internet is evil as shown in the following email.

TIME TO PROTECT WOMEN AND CHILDREN AGAIN - IN A BARBARIC SOCIETY THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN SAFE, AND WE ARE SLIPPING INTO CHAOS.....



The credible evidence in our court cases in Oregon is that the STATE is operating this black market child selling/child pornography operation, and it is international. After Child Services head Kay Toran went to romania and taught them how to profit from their vulnerable children and orphans, the children being seized and adopted to usa nd europe were not arriving here. This is so bad that just recently the UN stopped all international adoptions because so many of these children were missing.....



thousands in every state and NO real statistics.....



the us Supreme Court is part of the problem , but our rights and accountability are at state government level, which brings us to pedophile chlid abuser protector JOHN KITZHABER and the Oregon Supreme Court. This evidence has been before them for five years and growing in our cases, and to this day only the pornographer has been protected, while we have been attacked and with ALL THIS KNOWN, Melissa has dissppeared into their market.....



We proved in l998 that the pronographer HAZEL SPEES, and the caseworker LARRY LAWSON and TIM IRMEN were grooming Melissa for the pornogrphay trade. The woman who had her seized was later arrested for black market child selling. The courts have done nothing but spend milions $$ literally, more than thirty cases against us on anything they can make up, and all this right out in the open. As these facts have come to light has this Governor investigated? NO has he interevened" NO - he has only protected the criminals, of which he is one.



The state Supreme Courts are the constitutional courts, and where these issues are supposed to be dealt with. Because it is so FETID all the way thorugh, you have these offices filled with pedophiles themselves, the whole gay agenda we deal with every day, and the HUGE money making machinee they have going....



The snuff movies and every kind of perversion on the internet are why WE have not lost our communications network - the people of the world are learning about their abuse through this same network, which the powers that be would LOVE to shut down - BUT THEY CAN'T GET THEIR PORNOGRAPHY AND SATIATE THEIR LUSTS UNLESS THEY HAVE THE INTERNET TOO - and so far they have not figured out how to do this.



I have read that most of the people on the internet are looking at pornography, in chat rooms or buying and selling...... that leaves a small and important segment of the population that are connecting the TRUTH on these websites for the benefit of ALL who will come and learn.



GOD SEES EVERYTHING AND WE TRUST THAT THE DAY IS SOON THAT THE INTENT OF THE HEART WILL DECIDE THE FATE OF THE SOUL .....



So many people think the world is somehow the same as when they were growing up but there is NOTHING that is the same anymore. These pictures decribed in this article that our children can find anywhere on the net, are unlike anything that was in circulation or accessible to children twenty years ago.



God help us all that the children today are being fed this diet of sex and violence, mixed human primal emotions, then influenced with the perversions of homosexuality when they are too young to understand their sexualtiy...



IT REALLY IS TIME TO START PROTECTING YOUR CHILDREN PEOPLE = THERE WAS A REASON WHY MOMS STAYED HOME AND DADS WORKED AND FELT GOOD ABOUT PROVIDING FOR THE FAMILY ...



But then again, we all know that the design of the global controllers is to destroy the Family Body and the rest falls into their control



we are there already.



THE ONLY ANSWER IS FOR MORE PEOPLE TO STAND AGAISNT THIS AGENDA WITH THE TRUTH. IN THE COURT, AND IN THE WORLD, THE ONLY POWER IS THE TRUTH AND THE SWORD FOR THOSE WHO SPEAK IT.



We hear stories of abuse like this constantly. In Oregon, KEVIN MANNIX governor candidate is financed by LOREN PARKS who is one of the biggest perverts in the country - he designed pedophile machines that are used by gays and the state alike to abuse chidlren and adults. And you see "church" groups like Christian Coalition SUPPORTING THIS FILTH.



Lastly, the people should know that these so called "assessment centers" that make pornography of the children, often with male and female foster people and caseworkers and "therapists" in there, SHOW PORNOGRAPHY TO THE MEN WHO ARE WIRED UP ON THE LOREN PARKS PENIS MACHINES AS THEY ARE QUESTIONED - WHERE DO THEY GET THIS PORNOGRAPHY????? IN THREE TRIALS NO ONE CAN SAY IN THE MARION COUNTY COURTHOUSE WHERE THE PORNOGRAPHIC VIDEO OF MELISSA IS - IT IS NOT WHERE IT WAS CONCEALED CRIMINALLY BY JUDGE JOSEPH OCHOA TO PROTECT THE PORNOGRAPHY.



THIS WHOLE THING WAS SENT TO THE JUSTICE DEPT BY A POLICE CHIEF, AND ALL THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DID WAS RETALIATE MORE AND MORE, AND STILL.......THEY ARE THE PEDOPHILES !!!!



WAKE UP AMERICA - IT MAY BE TOO LATE ....



WE HAVE KNOWN FOR SOME TIME THAT WE WERE IN A WAR BUT YOU DID NOT SEE THE TANKS ON THE STREETS - WELL THAT IS HERE NOW......



Like Roger Weidner tells people "your children will spit on your grave for what you did not do when you could have to stop this....."


pamela gaston
a voice for children

Daniel Drezner and "Outside the Belway" on Bush's foreign policy

Daniel W. Drezner and Outside the Beltway have two interesting posts about Bush's decision to seek help from the U.N. and the politicking that went on behind the scenes.

For even more info one might want some background by visiting USS Clueless.

Three poems I like

Dylan Thomas - The Academy of American Poets

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

---------------------------------------------

.The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door--
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;--
This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door;----
Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"--
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;--
'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore--
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door--
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered--
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before--
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of 'Never--nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite--respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!--
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--
On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore--
Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!

This version appeared in the Richmond Semi-Weekly Examiner, September 25, 1849. For other versions, please visit The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore site: http://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/index.htm#R

--------------------------------------

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being—
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!—O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill—
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere—
Destroyer and Preserver—hear, O hear!

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! they are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, ev'n from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height—
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst:—O hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear
And tremble and despoil themselves:—O hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable!—if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision,—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

I think Justene deserves some kudos

I read XRLQ on a regular basis. Blogging for many people is a labor of love, or in my case a sign of extreme mental illness, but, nevertheless, it is a labor that takes one's time and thoughts. For bloggers to be able to take time off and have others take over is a luxury.

So I would like to propose a toast to all substitute bloggers, even the ones I disagree with. It's nice to have XRLQ back - damnum absque injuria: I'm Back - even though now he's a TV news star.

Phil Carter has an interesting post about possible reasons ROTC is attracting people

Phil Carter brings up some interesting observations. When I went into the military in 1980 many people thought military people were the scum of the earth.

Since I've gotten out of the military I have been continuously insulted for having been a member of the military and, even today, in loony, homphobic, racist Washington County, OR, I am constantly being insulted for once having been a member of the military. I only served for four years but ever since I have been called the scum of the earth...AMONG OTHER THINGS.

INTEL DUMP

Communism is behaving like communism

According to Asia Business Intelligence the communist government of China is cracking down on speech that advocates political freedom. So what else is new?

Mark Kleiman has an interesting post about THE DECLINE OF PROSECUTORIAL ETHICS

Mark A. R. Kleiman - THE DECLINE OF PROSECUTORIAL ETHICS

In his post there's a couple of sentences I think I need to reread a few time in order to get the full import of the meaning. The sentences are as follows:

There's always some sort of tradeoff between crime prevention and accuracy; the only way to never punish an innocent person is never to punish anyone at all. But we could keep the prisons full if we only imprisoned those actually known beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty, and in my view the crime-control losses incident on tightening up somewhat on the standard of proof would be slight.

I agree wholeheartedly with the following paragraphs:

What most non-participants don't understand about the criminal law is that an appeal isn't supposed to be a fresh review of the evidence: it's almost exclusively about errors made at trial. As a matter of law, the fact that someone convicted in due form is factually innocent of the charge is not, in general, a reason to let him out of prison. (Justices Scalia and Thomas have argued [*] that the execution of a factually innocent person would not constitute a Constitutional violation.) So the ability of demonstrably innocent people behind bars to have their cases reopened depends on state law and state rules of criminal procedure, and the prosecutors have had considerable success in opposing such attempts both in the legislatures and in the courts. (Most horribly, some states explicitly allow police to destroy the evidence after some period; the proof of innocence in some case may be literally going down the drain as I write.)

While I thought the defense bar's earlier position outrageous, the prosecution's current position is incalculably worse. It should go without saying that keeping innocent people in prison is not a means of crime control. Of course, any organization hates to admit error, but this reflects something uglier: the degeneration of the traditional prosecutor's ethic, which held that "the government wins its case whenever justice is done," into a merely adversarial, notches-on-the-belt mentality. No doubt the rightward swing on criminal justice issues, combined with the fact that District Attorneys are elected, has something to do with it. But that doesn't make it one whit less disgraceful. No self-respecting prosecutor should ever tell a court, "We think it's not quite certain that this person is innocent, so we propose to keep him in prison." (What's really amazing is that the victims and their families as often as not want to keep the matter "closed," as if having the wrong person punished were a pretty good substitute for having the right person punished.)

The Victim's Rights Amendment is a sham and a fraud

The Victim's Rights Amendment doesn't do anything to help victims. As a victim of violent assaults I can recognize that the people at the top of the pyramid of the Marxist "victim's rights" movement are using this as an excuse to consolidate power for themsleves.

TalkLeft has more info on this at the following link.

TalkLeft: Congress Back in Session

Today's Link of the Day is State Law Library

From Refdesk.com we have a link of the day. Social Law Library - State Resources - This site offers a comprehensive and current list, organized by state, of links to state agencies, courts, and laws.

How about a Shakespeare Sonnet?

O, how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark inferior far to his
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or being wreck'd, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this; my love was my decay.

David Bernstein is having problems with Hotel Room Odors

In the interest of helping a fellow blogger overcome a problem I have assembled a set of links to products that might help David's little problem with Hotel Odors.

Odor Eliminator.

Hotel/Motel Rental Property Mold and Odor Removal

Ozone Blaster Room Sanitation Model

odourfreerooms.

Most of the odor in hotel rooms are caused by cleaning supplies and mold. The odors caused by the cleaning supplies is unpleasant, but deadly to germs. While our much maligned chemical industry is responsible for a lot of mischief, they are also reponsible for finding new ways to kill germs that are smelly. QUE LASTIMA!!!???

Now it's time to plug David's book.

Howard Bashman and his twenty questions for appellate judges

God only knows why people from uscourts.gov visit my website, but they do so now I get a chance to plug How Appealing's twenty questions for appellate judge types. Howard Bashman is always looking for appellate judges who don't mind being bugged by Howard Bashman and his twenty questions.

Subscribe to Dr. Reena Sommers' newsletters

Surviving Divorce: Divorce Counseling (Counselling) & Consulting Services.

Absurdity, silliness and weird, irrational racism

The following link will take you to an article from a La Voz de Aztlan Editorial that brims with silliness, paranoia, racism, and xenophobia. Hard to believe Bustamente would want to be a part of this.

US Supreme Court's decision on "sodomy" will worsen the AIDS epidemic

For a more in-depth posting, check out this link from The Shark Blog.