Well what _about_ Gary Johnson?

A cousin of mine sent me an email last night about Gary Johnson. I hadn't heard of the guy, but I checked out his website.

Says he was a governor and wants to cut spending, legalize marijuana and legalize gay marriage. Fine by me, I guess. Never really gave that stuff much thought. I keep my head down and put food on the table, maybe hunt a little and take my wife out for dinner once in a while.

Johnson was a handyman? That's cool. Successful businessman? Even better. Never raised taxes and they called him "Governor Veto." Whoa, this guy climbed Mount Everest and built his own house! Now, that's awesome. Sounds like my kind of guy: Tough, independent and minds his own business.

I might send this email to a few friends. I know this one who was all ticked one day. He was like, "They're all a bunch of crooks."

He might like this Gary Johnson fella. Seems like a regular joe to me. Except for the Everest thing.

Hey, what about Gary Johnson?

Newt Gingrich makes it difficult

I've written off the GOP candidates for President.  What they promise to bring is big(ger) government, expanding bureaucracy, endless war in the third world ... well the guy in the White House now is doing a bang-up job of that, already.  Why trade horses in mid-stream, I say.

But Newt went and made it real difficult.  Promised a moon base by 2020.  Said we'd do it by using private industry, offering prizes.

"Whereas the Congress has determined that an American owned Lunar Colony is in the national interest, the first American owned company that shall place 31 American on the surface of the Moon and keep them there alive and well for a period of three years and one day shall be paid a prize of $7 billion dollars."

View 372 July 25 - 21, 2005

Which would get 'er done, if it can be done. 

A moon base, infrastructure to deliver things there, a solid foundation to an actual space age, getting some of our eggs out of this basket.

Oh, elbow room, elbow room.
Got to, got to get us some elbow room.
It's the moon or bust,
In God we trust.
There's a new land up there!

Elbow Room - Schoolhouse Rock

Now how am I supposed to NOT vote for this guy?

Not that I have any actual worries on this score.  The GOP will come to their senses, nominate Romney.  Who will a) promptly loose to the Current Occupant or b) Win the election and then continue the program currently in progress.

Did you kill anyone?

If there’s one thing that can be said about the experience that is joining the Marines, it’s that your friends back home won’t understand a damn bit of it. For every life-altering experience  you may have, good and bad, your friends back home will ... be the same way they were when you left them. Your friends will be doing the same things–going to school, not going to school, working, while you’ll be barraged with culture shock and do things that none of them will ... ever have to worry about.

You’ll meet new people, see new things–new worlds even; and they won’t even begin to understand it. Going home will never be the same again, and being home for too long finds you in the precarious position of wishing you were gone again. The very idea of home becomes a distant memory, because it’s never the same as it was. It’s not that home has changed, ... it’s remained largely the same.

What’s really changed is you ... and you’ll never be the same again. But hey, that’s okay. Regular people live regular lives, and you’ve lived anything but. What’s really important is that you try your best not to alienate everyone at home, and if you need help with it, don’t be afraid to seek it. Your friends and family will never understand, but they can try if you give them a chance.

Terminal Lance #175 "Back Home"

Tab Clearing

Aaron Sorkin Is Ready to Masturbate All Over Your HBO With The Newsroom  I can't think of a more Sisyphean mission than to try and restore America's faith in the media with a fucking TV show. Yes, reporters used to be depicted as good guys in pop culture, and that's because pop culture back then was naive and stupid.

The Mastering Emacs Reading Guide

The Ultimate Collection of Emacs Resources 

Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking  I'm not staring vacantly into space, I'm working. Most of the time.

Why the Future Never Gets the SF Right - Michael Flynn  ... anyone who thinks the main basic function of SF is to commit journalism on the future will be perennially disappointed.

Air Force’s Top Brain Wants a ‘Social Radar’ to ‘See Into Hearts and Minds’

The Harvard Classics - in handy digital form.

Wikipedia protest is 'foolish', says Twitter boss

The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man

The Rise of the Praetorian Class

Newsweek: Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?  The article is okay. The cover makes it clear that nothing would give the editors of Newsweek greater joy than to drop their collective knees and give the President (D) a right good sucking.

The Cambered Hand Push Up.

Schlep Blindness.

Ideas: Mormon Candidates, Gay Marriage, and Polygamy.

I had no idea judges could order grown men and babies to be executed.   Funny ol' world.

Grandchild Update

A year old, and he's getting sly.

Crawls into the kitchen. Reaches for the dog's dish: nothing better than dog food.  Remembers that Mom is in the other room.

Sits up all innocent-like, cranks his head around to check his six. Mom is not paying attention.

Situation: excellent. On to the dog dish!

Better to be the doer than the doee

Mr. Pournelle says it pretty well, about the jarheads who pi*ssed all over dead enemy fighters . . .

... some things are pretty clear. First, they allowed a comrade to tape this, and he put it up on a social medium, and it got loose. Is anyone here astonished? Which says several things about these particular Marines.

First, they won their battle. It’s them that’s doing the urinating, not being urinated on. Urinating on the enemy is a practice of war from at least 3,000 years ago, and probably a lot longer. It’s better to be the guy letting fly than the recipient. When you send young men into combat and they win this is what happens.

Second, none of these guys is ready for promotion to any kind of command NCO level. They may be good as combat leaders and may not – they did win this fight, after all – but they don’t think through enough. This hands the Taliban a bit of a propaganda device, but then we have plenty of tapes the Taliban made about themselves.

Third, this is a Marine matter, and if it were left to me I’d leave it to the Company Commander. That’s what company grade officers are for. There will be howls from the media, of course. It’s a free country. Of course it’s free because we have troopers like these.

And fourth, if nobody else wants them, in the extremely unlikely event that they post me to a combat command over there, I’ll take them. They look like good troops to me.

But because it went viral and because of a lot of reasons it's going to go a lot higher than the company commander and I'll wager whoever is the highest ranking Marine in the group is going to get an other than honorable out of this sorry sad mess.

Sucks but there it is.

This is ...

the oddest and most interesting thing I've seen all week.

BaCon - A free Basic to C converter for Unix-based systems.

That it's written in Bash or Kornshell stopped me for a minute - but only because I'm used to thinking of bash as a tool I use to interact with a computer and not a programming language.

Come to think of it, I think of it this way even when I'm writing and using bash scripts.  Which is, hey, programming.  How about that.

Which is interesting because it's been real obvious for a few years now that the job of 'systems administrator' is changing from 'babysit a server' to 'write code that babysits a server'.

Times change.  Be nimble or find yourself on welfare. 

Think I'll setup BaCon and see how much BASIC I don't remember.

vi is an editor . . .

 "vi is an editor with two modes: one which destroys your input and the other which beeps at you."

~ From Someone in Twitter

A commie, I figure.

I couldn't take it. Before Ron Paul began to speak I went out for a gallon of Padre Kino red and an IV drip. I thought it might hold me over until I figured out how to become an aardvark

After all, Ron Paul is tiresomely predictable. He would say hateful anti-American things. You know, we should get out of damn fool wars, pick the military leech off the back of the republic, dismantle an empire that bankrupts the US, and end our perpetual state of martial priapism against Iran. Completely uneletable. A commie, I figure.

Fred on Ron Paul

Update on the consumer front

Homemade washing machine soap: check.

Using the bread-machine to make our daily bread: check.

New shelves for basement and pantry made from cinder-blocks and pine board: check.  And the basement smells fresh-cut lumber, like a basement should.

Homemade English Muffins: check.

I'm especially happy with the muffins!  A little time-intensive what with the frying in on the griddle step but darn tasty.

And why?  Not because I'm infatuated with 19th century Romantic notions of self-reliance but because I'm cheap.  Have you priced the cost of friggin' English Muffins at the store?  Contrast that with the cost of ingredients times whatever your hourly wage is and the answer is a no-brainer.


I'm not sure where this self-reliant stuff ends - perhaps with forty acres, hyrdo-power, a lot of weaponry and a sign reading

'Ring Bell, Wait, Advance With Your Hands Up, Stay On The Path, Avoid Mines.'

Probably not.  But it would beat the alternative.

Tab Clearing

The Long, Long Depression.  It ain't over yet, Sunshine.

rc - a shell.  Reimplementation of the Plan 9 shell.

Tell Congress To Undo The NDAA, Ban Indefinite Military Detention Of Americans.  This is one doodle that can't wont' be un-did.

Blogger client for Emacs.  Emacs seems to be capable of doing everything except baking bread.  And I would not be surprised if someone, somewhere, has some lines in .emacs that allow one to do just that.

Fred Reed: Advice to a Generic Candidate

ShiftIt - Managing windows size and position in OSX  90% of the time the windows position of this or that is fine.  The rest of the time, not so much.

Mark Steyn: Puncture the cocoon of denial

I Have Seen the Future of Retail. Automated checkouts, no cashiers. Sure, someday. Not soon.

BATS - Bash Automated Testing System. Hmm-hmm!

Jonathan Kay: What Ron Paul is good for

Gary Johnson Goes Full Libertarian: "I am excited. I am liberated. And I am committed to shaking the system as it has never been shaken before."

In Defense of Bourgeois Civilization

So ... You've been indefinitely detained!  An information sheet for U.S. citizens from your United States Government.

For Christmas, Your Government Will Explain Why It's Legal to Kill You. Ha! Just kidding! It won't tell you that. That's classified!

As you stand in endless lines this holiday season, here’s a comforting thought: all those security measures accomplish nothing, at enormous cost.

Good Dogey

There is nothing quite as nice as sleeping in a warm bed on a cold night with a good woman and a large warm dog.

Where was the kaboom?

This is the clutch from my daughter's car that blew up in the middle of Iowa last summer.

That much shrapnel I would have expected a kaboom.

Gary Johnson Discusses Seeking Libertarian Nomination

SIEGEL: ... why isn't it equally true to say that Republican primary voters in this cycle show no interest whatever in somebody who is pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, hence you had little traction in Iowa and New Hampshire?

JOHNSON: You know, I would argue that I'm speaking on behalf of the majority of Republicans but wasn't really ever given a chance on stage. And that had to do more with being excluded from polls that determined who got in the debates. And when I was, I polled equally with those on stage.

Speaking with a broad brush, I think that people consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal. And I think the Libertarian Party certainly stands for that broad brush.

NPR: Johnson Discusses Seeking Libertarian Nomination

Dream

It was The Future, part 'Meet the Robinsons', part 'Sleeper', and I was there because I'd been dead, and now wasn't.  Don't ask me how: it involved MRE-size and color pouches with dehydrated person inside.

And it was cool and gee-whiz and flying cars but it was all ashes in my mouth because She wasn't there and I was really sad and when given the choice of 'stay' or 'go' I choose the latter.

Comment of the Day - Gary Johnson Edition

I don’t have a good explanation for why they spent so much time and energy excluding (Gary Johnson) from the debates — since they clearly believe that most of what he stands for (small government, lower taxes, reduced regulation, drug decriminalization, etc.) is anathema to their voters anyway. The GOP braintrust understand that American voters want a bigger nanny state, more borrowing, more spending, and more military adventures abroad.

Nicholas at Quotulatiousness

Oh, wow, we're going to be profound now

Speaking of the security arrangements of the nation-state ...

"The social structure of any nation-state is ultimately determined by its security arrangements," Ng says, "and Mr. Lee understands this."  Oh, wow, we're going to be profound now. Ng is suddenly talking just like the old white men on the TV pundit powwows, which Y.T.'s mother watches obsessively.

From Snow Crash, duh.  No, I'm not re-reading it, I'm listening to it.  This audiobook is, like, the best of that breed, not so much re-reading the words but getting a new take on an old friend.

X is the least we can do for our men and women in uniform and their families who sacrifice so much

Hey, what else can the government do to stratify society, to make it clear there are serfs and their betters?

Members of the military on official travel, and their families, would move through airport security quicker next year under legislation sent to the president on Tuesday.

Bingo!

Troops could go to the front of the line, or a separate line could be created.

Being a soldier don't pay much, you loose some civil rights, and you gotta listen to cranky sergeants, and your family will live in places like Fayetteville and Oceanside and Jacksonville.  Oh and in this new and shining era of the Coke and Pepsi [1] party and never-ending war you're going to get shot at and blown up on a regular basis in far-off places for reasons that have tenuous and dubious [2] connections to national security.[3]

So I guess the very least that we can do is send them to front of the line of grey dab lines.  Give them some bennies that don't cost nothing and anyway the taxpayers are good for it, don't-you-care-about-the-troops and aren't-you-patriotic?

Worked for the Party in the USSR, nu?  And if it further stratifies society, puts the serfs in their place, that's just gravy, man.


[1] My wookie-suit is on order.
[2] At best.
[3]  Sucks, but USMC stands for You Signed the Motherf*in Contract.

Crapsack World

The universe of Snow Crash is described thusly; [1]

Crapsack World: Society is in serious decline, and everyone seems determined to ignore that and act like nothing's happened.

Example ...

His black Oldsmobile is a fucking bullseye in a place like this. It's the worst thing he has ever seen, Compton. Lepers roasting dogs on spits over tubs of flaming kerosene. Street people pushing wheelbarrows piled high with dripping clots of million- and billion-dollar bills that they have raked up out of storm sewers. Road kills -- enormous road kills -- road kills so big that they could only be human beings, smeared out into chunky swaths a block long. Burning roadblocks across major avenues. No franchises anywhere. The Oldsmobile keeps popping. Jason can't think of what it is until he realizes that people are shooting at him. Good thing he let his uncle talk him into springing for full armor! When he figures that one out, he actually gets psyched. This is the real thing, man! He's driving around in his Olds and the bastards are shooting at him, and it just don't matter!

It's societal collapse all the way down while everything disarranges [2] .. sounds like a lot of suck, all-righty. And the characters sure 'nuff act like it's just a thing, you know?

Thing is ... if you wrote our present as a novel [3] the reader would think we are in serious decline and everyone seems determined to ignore that and act like nothing's happened.

We're a frigging category on TV Tropes.

[1] Warning: TV Tropes & Idioms is a Pit of Time-Suck. You Have Been Warned.

[2] It is possible that the background of Snow Crash is the disarranged past from The Diamond Age. In which case it's not all despair: The Diamond Age 'verse is an okay place to live, if you're a member of a Tribe.

[3] War in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, krep-heads running for President, Congress in a Red Queen's race to see who can sh*t on the Constitution the mostest, etc.

It's Dead Jim

Congress just voted  [1] to shit-can the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, the First is under attack in some kind of internet bill that nobody with a brain is in favor of.

At the rate we're shredding that grand ol' bitch by this time next year I'll have a squad of Marines bunking in my spare bedroom.


[1] Which act appears to me to break the oath [2] each member took on assuming office.

[2] I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same ...