Posted by hank, Thu Jun 12 00:21:00 UTC 2008
These guys are my new heroes. They objectively evaluate the situation in Sudan/Darfur simply by going there with a camera and asking people questions. It turns out that what most Americans believe is going on there may be a bit skewed…
All the rest are inside…
Posted by hank, Wed May 28 14:46:00 UTC 2008
After seeing this, I couldn’t help myself:
Posted by hank, Tue Mar 18 22:28:00 UTC 2008
So, there I was, wondering what the Founding Fathers of these united States were thinking when they scrawled the 2nd amendment into the paper, wording it so ambiguously (at least in today’s grammar). Maybe they wrote it down in another form somewhere else… Maybe at the Virginia Convention of June 27, 1788! Keep in mind that these were simply proposed amendments, so one could feasibly argue that they later decided that people shouldn’t have guns, but they should word it in Latin Grammar so it’s really confusing…
From page 221 of my Anti-Federalist Papers:
17th. That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit. And that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
This is from the guys who fought for the Bill of Rights. If it wasn’t for these guys, we wouldn’t have many of the other freedoms we enjoy, like the following:
15th. Right to peaceable assembly, redress of grievances
16th. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press
20th. Freedom of religion
Posted by hank, Sun Mar 16 19:03:00 UTC 2008
I find these figures interesting. It seems that many of the happiest countries in the first world are near the top (US, UK, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany), which means they have more crime than many more disadvantaged countries. It also seems that many of the countries with the least crime have very strong religious influences in their government, while the top is mostly “free and prosperous”. But what is extremely interesting is how I’ve been hearing that England has less crime than we do. It plainly doesn’t when taken per capita. They have about 6% more crime currently. It’s amazing to me since they have all these measures to curb it such as spy cameras on every corner of London.
Hopefully, no politicians will elect to start this invasive Orwellian crap here. It obviously doesn’t work.
Posted by hank, Wed Jan 09 18:47:00 UTC 2008
I was reading the Republican Party platform of 1860 today, which is about 1.5 pages, very broadly worded, and actually has good general platform aims. It was an interesting contrast to the 2004 platform, which is very specific and verbose and specific about every possible issue, 92 pages, and full of praise for George W. Bush. The old platform is much less superficial - it actually lays down the underlying principles that the party aims to achieve, some of which have been ignored by later platforms, the following being particularly powerful:
That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
So, why has the party changed so much? Maybe the 2008 platform should be minimal, only stating the underlying principles behind the individual policies in the 2004 platform. Any intelligent person should be able to conclude from the minimal set of principles what the party’s policy would be on a particular issue. The 1860 platform seemed to recognize this.
Posted by hank, Sun Dec 23 10:24:00 UTC 2007
Within ten minutes of posting that Ron Paul had 18% of the vote, Cherry Creek news removed all references to Ron Paul from its article. Also, it appears that their results for McCain went from 19% to 11% somehow. This is proven by the snippet found on Google News. Depending on Google News, this may or may not update there.
Here is a screenshot of what Google News says:
And here is a screenshot of the article:
Contact them to tell them to add Ron Paul back into their results. This distortion is unacceptable. How could they have screwed up their results so much? I mean, confusing McCain as 19% rather than 11%? Weird…
After a little more detective work, I managed to reconstruct most of the original paragraph. Most of it is the same as the new one. It looks like they just removed a section about the Echo Boomers, who are supporting Ron Paul 18%. Here it is:
Rudy Giuliani is still the top choice for Echo Boomers followed by Mike Huckabee (28% and 21% respectively), but John McCain moves into third place (19%) and Ron Paul jumps into 4th place with 18 percent of this generation’s support.
So, tell Cherry Creek News to put back in its Echo Boomer results, which are apparently the generation of people between 18 and 30.
They told me to “get a life.” Wow - what a fair and honest publication. I don’t know why they won’t add Dr. Paul back into their article after these amazing polling results that obviously show he is neck and neck with Huckabee with young people. Boycott Cherry Creek News.
Posted by hank, Fri Dec 14 01:30:00 UTC 2007
So, I keep seeing people posting comments around that say Ron Paul is a racist, and most of them refer to a 1992 mailing list post he allegedly wrote. This posting was controversial because it portrayed inner city Blacks in a bad light. It was protesting against the lack of police action against rioting, the Rodney King scandal, and inner city crime committed by Blacks. Now, I don’t think he was inferring that only Black people commit crime, or are predisposed to it by their race; quite the contrary in fact.
Posted by hank, Sun Dec 02 13:33:00 UTC 2007
I saw a post on Digg that caught my eye, and thought that this might be another way to gauge the amount of hardcore supporters each popular candidate has. I picked the following:
Now, you would think that the number of hardcore supporters should correlate nicely with the number of voters turning out in the primaries since one should think that anyone in a Meetup group would go vote come primary day. But, sadly, by the looks of it very few of the supporters of the “top-tier” Republican candidates are enthusiastic enough to join a Meetup group. I wonder why since this would help their campaigns immensely. Here’s the result:
Maybe they’re all just using a different site? Let me know what you think.
I'm a computer programmer from Ellicott City, MD.
I go to OSCON every year, write random code, and blag about it here.
I enjoy cooking,
reviewing beer, hiking, kayaking, and watching movies and television shows.
Email me: ralree@gmail.com
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