Saturday, February 28, 2009
Musical Chairs
IRS regulations contain over 8.5 million words - 11 times the number of words in the Bible. The US Tax Code is almost 1.4 million words - more than 300 times the length of the Constitution, including all Amendment. There are more than 640 different forms, schedules and instructions, and the publications offering advice to taxpayers total more than 16,500 pages. Yet even if you call the official IRS phone help line for advice, if they give you the wrong advice or bad information (as they did in one out of every four calls, according to a recent study), YOU are responsible for the resulting error(s), including any tax due, fines, penalties and interest. Them? Responsible? They’re civil servants and union members and couldn’t get fired short of a Class ‘A’ Felony during working hours.
The $3.6 TRILLION budget put forth by Obama does not include the $700 billion bailout just passed. It does not include the $410 Omnibus Spending package being discussed this week. (Funny thing about that “no earmarks pledge by Obama during the campaign, for The One had co-sponsored several earmark amendments to this omnibus bill, and Democrats are now going back and expunging his name from the list of co-sponsors. Not the earmarks, just the fact that Obama had co-sponsored them. (MINITRU hard at work.)
Do you honestly think that they have ANY intention of actually paying for that spending? Hillary just got back from begging the Chinese to continue loaning us money.
We, as a nation, are passengers in a bus heading towards a cliff. The driver - elected with a vote of 52% of the passengers - has just stepped on the gas and let go the wheel.
What is our responsibility to our fellow passengers?
“It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error, it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.”—Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson (1941-1954)
Contact your elected employees. Get their attention. Take back your government, before it is too late.
That last chair is going to be an expensive one.
Friday, February 27, 2009
What about Laws that simply cannot be enforced?
I mean, we all know of laws where violations of that law that go almost entirely unpunished. (Speeding, jaywalking, spitting on the sidewalk, etc.)
Worse are laws that simply cannot be enforced.
Worst of all are laws that are selectively enforced based on the opinions of those to whom the enforcement of those laws have been entrusted, because “it isn’t worth the time”.
So I have an idea.
Have each State appoint a Citizen’s Committee, not more than 1/3 of whom are allowed to be lawyers/judges/politicians (or former etc., etc.), with the sole task of going through that State’s Criminal/Penal laws and eliminating any law that is obsolete. (Do it at the County and City levels, too.) Members are chosen at random, just like jury duty.
Any law that manages to have one-third of that Committee vote in favor of deletion gets eliminated, and cannot be reintroduced as a new bill for at least five years. If it gets a 50%+1 majority, then it is a ten-year ban. Two-thirds vote means a twenty year ban.
That means the really worthless laws like the one that states that ducks have the right of way on Rancho California Road in Temecula, CA. Or the one that criminalizes the act of crying on the witness stand in Los Angeles.
Then there are the truly bizarre ones, like the law that criminalizes the detonation of a nuclear device within the city limits of Chico, CA. (The penalty? A $500 fine.) However, just outside city limits is apparently perfectly fine.
Or the one in Ada, Oklahoma, making it illegal to wear any New York Jets clothing. Or the one in Washington State banning lollipops. Or the law requiring the Chief of Police of Kalamazoo, Michigan, to inspect all bathing suits.
My personal favorite from Texas: “When two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.” That’s it. That’s all it says. (PS: Didjaknow that it can be considered a felony in Texas to own more than six dildos?)
Every law that cannot be enforced weakens all of the others. And think of all the paper that would be saved!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Everybody relax, folks
I actually read my first “I’m actually looking forward to an armed revolution” comment today, but things aren’t that bad.
Yet.
Yes, we have a group of idiots in Washington who are spending it faster than the Mint can print it. Yes, Barcky (aka PrzCrkHed) is going to go down as the Worst President Of All Time. Yes, the bill introduced today wouldn’t be paid for if they were to outright seize 100% of gross income of anyone making more than $75,000/year.
But our government is in the position of the man who has finally pissed off the credit card companies. The government is going to get a taste of what it is like living in a cash-and-carry economy. It is only then, when those who would control us, will resort to armed force to compel taxes. One incident. That is all it will take.
There will be riots. The government will defend itself.
Somebody will be shot on national TV.
THAT will be the new Shot Heard ‘Round The World. Before 2025.
You heard it here first.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
A frightening thought
There is a specific order to the line of succession for President of the United States, in case anything bad happens to the President.
The list goes, in order from top to bottom:
- President
- Vice-President/President of the Senate
- Speaker of the House of Representatives
- President pro tempore of the Senate
- Secretary of State
- Secretary of the Treasury
- Secretary of Defense
- Attorney General
- Secretary of the Interior
- Secretary of Agriculture
- Secretary of Commerce
- Secretary of Labor
- Secretary of Health and Human Services
- Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
- Secretary of Transportation
- Secretary of Energy
- Secretary of Education
- Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs
- Secretary of Homeland Security
Talk about anti-assassination insurance. Obama’s line of succession means that if anything happens to him, we end up with Jokin’ Joe Biden. If Joe’s cranial vacuum implodes and sucks him off the face of the planet, we’re crippled under San Fran Nan Pelosi. If we hit the Cosmic Accident Trifecta, we get the President pro tempore of the Senate - the Grand Kleagle himself, Robert Byrd (who was just today decrying Obama’s “executive power grab"). And if all of them buy a farm, remember who the Secretary of State is....
We are so fucked. 
More potentially useful legal stuff
This one is a General Waiver. No, he’s not the military guy who salutes the President as he steps off his official transport (and that guy is usually only a sergeant anyway).
This is something you can use when you need to make sure that there can never again be any kind of legal claim against you.
Make sure you fill out all of the blanks with the necessary identifying information. (’Releasor’ is the one who is accepting the settlement and promising not to sue in the future, and ‘Releasee’ is the one who should keep the original in a safe place, because he is the one needing the potential protection against getting sued.)
Again, if you actually feel the need to use this, you do so at your own legal risk. In other words, you might want to have a cousin who is an attorney look it over for specific suitability for your jurisdiction, but it is fairly broad. It also doesn’t cover anything that might happen after the day that it was signed, but we can cross that litigious little bridge when we come to it. Like the category says, “Thinking Ahead”.
Office of the President
"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
So reads the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution. That sentence describes the scope and authority of the Office, but does not describe the qualifications necessary to fill that position.
The qualifications are laughably simple:
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
Just those three - (1) a natural born citizen, (2) at least 35 years old, and (3) he or she must have spent at least 14 years of their life inside the borders of the United States.
Nothing about being a successful businessman, yet he is responsible for the largest economy on the planet.
Nothing about being a lawyer, but he is responsible for executing and enforcing the laws for more than 300 million citizens.
Nothing about being a doctor, but he is responsible for the protection of the public health.
Nothing about being a military officer and leading men into battle, yet he is the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful assemblage of military might in the history of the planet.
Nothing about being a high school graduate, yet he will determine the course of education for literally tens of millions of public school students.
Should there be other qualifications? A college degree? Oral examinations? (No, I’m not talking about Bill Clinton.) Success in a professional field outside of politics? (Sonny Bono ran a restaurant before becoming Mayor of Palm Springs, and used that as a springboard into Congress. Sarah Palin was a TV reporter, before becoming a hockey mom running for PTA Chairwoman, thence to Mayor and Governor. George Bush owned a baseball team. Ronald Reagan was an actor.)
Or should we just accept that we are now in the era of the winner of American Idol for President? (In the words of Don Henley, “I just have to look good, I don’t have to be clear.") I get nothing more than a rueful grin from everyone to whom I remark, “Why would we elect someone to represent us, when we wouldn’t hire them to babysit our kids?” Is this what we really want? Is this really the best choices we can make?
What kind of minimum requirements should we have for our leaders?
Shooting practice
Do you own a gun? If so, when was the last time you practiced with it?
Do you carry it with you? (Concealed, perhaps?) How quickly can you actually get to it?
I bought my wife an actual Taser. (In glossy pink, no less.) Laser-light point-of-aim, 4 meter range of effectiveness, 50 kilovolts of electricity, and a protective carrying case with magnetic clasps (so that they will come apart INSTANTLY when needed).
She prefers the ice-pick she has been carrying in her purse for the last few decades, because she “can just grab it” (and she starts making jabbing motions with the business end to show me what she means).
My point is that people will instinctively grab whatever they feel most comfortable using, whenever the “fight or flight” reflexes start kicking in.
If you own a weapon (rifle, shotgun, pistol) or even things that just leave nasty bruises (such as the 1” dowel rod currently being used to hold all the clothes off your closet floor), you need to become familiar with it. Learn what it will do, what it is designed to do, and what kind of uses you can put it to in extremis.
Look around the room you are in. I don’t care if you are at the library, at work, or sitting in your mom’s basement. Unless you are sitting in the Uniform of the Day at Black’s Beach, there will be something available you can use to defend yourself. A rock. A chunk of wood. A broken off chair leg.
If you were to blink and suddenly find the building you are in under assault by some whacked-out loser who mistook your place for the local post office or school, what would you do?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Parliamentary procedure
"If you wanna play the game, you first gotta know the rules.”
One of the many ways that can be used to alter our system of government is to interact with legislative bodies, and bend them to your wishes. But in order to understand what they are doing and the most effective ways to influence them, you have to understand their internal rules.
Sun Tzu would call it “learning the weak points of the system”.
The most common rules of parliamentary procedure - familiar to those of you who have ever been to a Mock Congress or other non-governmental legislative assemblage - are Robert’s Rules of Order. The US Congress uses a slightly modified version, which can be found here. (You might want to take that last in several small bites, rather than in one gulp.) Other publicly-held corporations that have stockholder’s meetings and non-profit organizations that have representative bodies will use their own versions, adapted for their specialized needs and memberships.
I have spent the last few days re-typing one that I had saved and printed back when I was much looser with information. (I have the hard copy version, but not the electronic one.) It was adapted from a copy I found somewhere many years ago, but parliamentary procedure has not changed much over the last few decades. It was written in plain language, explains each of the parliamentary actions, its ramifications, its requirements (and why), and the respective order of precedence.
I’ll be polishing it up and cleaning out the specific information (to be replaced with generic), and posting it here, using Open Office software format (.odt). If you wish to download Open Office, it is an office productivity collection of software, and is absolutely FREE! You can find it here.
Check back later!
Update: Okay, it’s later. The .ods file is a spreadsheet that should fit in on page 14 (which is blank in the document) of the document file (.odt). You can download both file in .rar format from here
Sunday, February 22, 2009
IANAL
That is Intertubes-speak for “I Am Not A Lawyer”. I know I have done a lot of things in my day, and I have debated the intricacies of laws from local to international in scope (with varying degrees of success), but I am most assuredly NOT a lawyer in any jurisdiction on the planet.
Yet.
However, that doesn’t mean I cannot offer certain opinions and personal experiences.
This is one such experience.
I have had reason to execute the following document - a General Power of Attorney - before in my life, and this is my personal copy of that document, prepared by an attorney (specifically ordered to prepare a document that would stand up under most jurisdictions, because of the probability of transfer while on active duty), cleaned up and with my personal information edited or removed. Remember that this document is not the power of attorney designed for medical purposes (that can be found at any local hospital), and is not what should be used without long thought and consultation with your own attorney to ensure its legality and effectiveness in your own jurisdiction.
However, I present it as my means of archiving such information for those who might find it useful in the future. Free of charge, so to speak. (Excepting, of course, the costs necessary to obtaining Internet access. No obligation is implied or should be assumed.)
Regarding the “nationalization” of the banking system
I have a single question: Has there EVER been a government that voluntarily gave up power once it seized it?
I point out that bureaucrats exist to perpetuate bureaucracies, and whole departments exist merely to justify the existence of their particular width of red tape.
We give up the banks, we give up our wallets.
Viva La Revolución
It’s almost like I have a crystal ball.
I don’t want to hotlink to Val’s pic on Babalu, but you really need to click on this link and check out the picture.
What year was it that Drum said we would have a revolution and take back the United States?
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Shotgunning
Click-click-boom.
I’m going to pick up a new shotgun as part of my ongoing effort to create a worthwhile armory in my house. But with the limited space that a condo affords me, I need to get some kind of gun locker that can hold all my goodies, but take up minimal space. I’m looking at a maximum width of 12” to 15” inches, and a maximum height of six feet. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions?
The NRA has a news post about how the Obama administration wants to start putting serial numbers on ammunition. This might be a good time to go to Cheaper Than Dirt and pick up a few extra boxes before the government knows exactly what kind of rounds you have, and how many of each you bought. If someone can point me in the direction of the Obama Ammunition Serial Numbers, I would really appreciate it. I want to post it here so everyone can read it.
CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s Chicago Tea Party
This guy is awesome.
I don’t know what this guy puts in his coffee, but I encourage him to keep doing it. I think Santelli might be my new hero.
I had to save up a bunch of money to buy my house, and I live 40 miles outside of Los Angeles. No one is helping me pay for it, nor the expenses associated with it. And at the same time, I’m not asking for any help, because I saved my money, put a huge down payment, and now I have a really nice house with a mortgage I can afford in a beautiful part of town. I don’t want to pay for the people that bought more than they could afford.
I hope Santelli doesn’t hear a click followed by a boom next time he gets in his car, cause we need guys like this on the tube.
Better to be judged by twelve
... than carried by six.
The Times, They Are A’Changin’, kiddies.
The economy is still on a downturn, and there are only three things that drive humans the most urgently - money, food and sex.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed at 7365.67 yesterday afternoon - the lowest point in several years, and barely half of what it was just 18 months ago (the DJIA closed at 14,164.53 on October 9, 2007), while simultaneously, the most liberal Senator-turned-President has managed to allow the biggest spending bill transfer of wealth from private to public control in the history of Humanity. That wealth is backed up by nothing more than an increasingly shaky credit rating and the blissed-out smile of the rank amateur sitting in the Oval Office. (Don’t forget the comments of his Klingon wife, M’Shel - “The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.")
That “someone” is you and I, folks. In the eyes of the politicians, you are either a government dependent or a revenue stream.
The latest “housing crisis” apparently only has one solution - reward all the people who made the decision to spend more for a mortgage than they could really afford by forcing the banks to re-issue the mortgage. Did I say “force”? I meant “entice”. How? By offering anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 as a bonus to the bank when they do the re-fi.
So if you were careful, prudent, thrifty and dedicated to paying your bills on time, you get to have more of your money taken away to pay for the mistakes of those who were incautious, reckless, short-sighted and wildly extravagant (with cash bonuses to those companies who issue the new round of NINJA - NINJA = “No Income? No Job? Approved!” - loans).
As the dollar continues to lose value and banks continue to fail (there have been 14 banks that have failed since January 1, 2009), barter will become more common, and as taxpayer-supported services will be cut (given that dependent groups will demand more and more largesse from the public treasury, yet less and less money comes in), all that will be needed for the social structure to break down in a simple natural disaster that cannot be handled by local agencies.
Friday, February 20, 2009
OODA
No, that’s not the newest trivia game from Parker Brothers. Nor is it that fab new band opening for Toad the Wet Sprocket.
It is a way to think in life, whether engaged in one-on-one dogfighting at supersonic speeds, or trying to win back your watch from the old-timer who just beat you at checkers.
OODA is an acronym. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. Then return back to Observe and repeat as many times as necessary.
Bill Whittle spoke of the OODA loop in detail, but I’m going to include a snippet:
Picture two pilots in identical airplanes: two physically identical swordsmen wielding physically identical swords.
Picture the Red Pilot closing head-to-head with the Blue Pilot, over the desert at 30,000 feet and each at 500 miles an hour. The aircraft blow past each other in a blur.
Fight’s on!
Both pilots nearly snap their necks on the break, literally turning in their chairs under the G-load of the initial turn. Each must keep sight of the other. To lose visual on the opponent almost certainly is to lose your life, and this is the only life you’ve been issued. Each pilot observes the other. That’s step one.
Now, Red breaks one way and Blue the other. Their relative positions allow some options and remove others. Each pilot must assess where he is, where the other man is, where he is heading and at what speed, and likewise where the other guy is heading and how fast. From this he builds a mental picture of the three-dimensional battle. Pilots call this Situational Awareness, or SA. SA is powerful Kung-Fu. Good SA will keep you alive. Bad SA is rapidly fatal. So each pilot must orient himself. That’s step two.
Next, each pilot must make a near instantaneous decision as to what he will do next. Will their relative positions allow an offensive move, or is the situation so desperate that he is forced into the defensive? Each has observed, each has oriented…now each must decide what to do next. That’s three.
Once that decision has been made, there is nothing left to do but carry out that decision. Each of the pilots must act. Action in this case may mean a climbing roll – the high-G yo-yo – to increase the separation for the shot. Perhaps the only answer is a Split-S out of the fight to recover lost airspeed, or a desperate Break in the opposite direction to avoid the gunsights.
Whatever the action is, whether thrust or parry, Boyd realized that it is only here, in the fourth step – Observe-Orient-Decide-Act – that physical combat occurs. Being “a good stick” will help you here, yes. But Boyd’s breakthrough was to realize that there are three mental steps that precede the physical application of a warrior’s skill, and that these mental steps are not as important as the physical talent. They are far, far more important.
Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.Then Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.Then Observe…
It’s a cycle. It’s a loop. It’s called by its inelegant acronym: The OODA loop.
Now here’s what blew my mind, as I am sure it blew John Boyd’s mind on a level I can not and will never fully comprehend:
The winner of these battles is not necessarily the fellow who makes the best decisions. More often than not, it’s the guy who makes the fastest decisions.
Agility. Speed. Precision. Lethality. Fingerspitzengefuhl: fingertip control.
It seems counter-intuitive. So let’s first go back to the Green Spot.
Red and Blue are closing at 1000 miles an hour. Fight’s on!
Blue breaks left. Red does too. Both pilots observe, orient, decide, act. But Blue is faster. While Red is still orienting himself, building the situational awareness he needs to decide and plan his action, Blue has already chosen a maneuver and executed it. This renders Red’s previous orientation useless: Blue is no longer where he was a moment before.
Red must re-orient so he can make a new decision. Blue sees the confusion and delay. He’s already oriented. He decides and acts again. His advantage increases.
Now Red is confused and at 500kts he is flying pretty God-damned quickly into full-on fear. This confusion and fear cause him more hesitation. Out of rising panic he commits to an action that may have been appropriate two Blue cycles ago, but which is now – no other word for it – obsolete. Blue is now cycling so fast that he maneuvers for a position where any course of action Red may take will result in his fiery demise. He’s below and behind him – out of sight – not anywhere near where Red expected him because he has been observing, orienting, deciding and acting at a much faster pace.
Should Blue make a mistake he will observe it before Red can, re-orient himself, make a decision to correct the mistake and commit to the new action all before Red is even aware that Blue has blundered. Red, on the other hand, may be making superior judgments… hell, Red may be making a string of perfect judgments, but that won’t save him because his perfect moves are in response to a situation that no longer exists. He’s doomed.
Blue is cycling faster, correcting any errors before they cost him anything, re-adjusting and re-calculating at a much higher tempo than Red. And every second he gets further ahead.
Boyd would say, “he’s inside Red’s decision loop.”
Think about that for a second! Inside his decision loop. To Red, Blue appears psychic, magical, demonic: able to read his mind, anticipate his every move. Blue owns the initiative, and he will never give it back. The more this goes on the more rattled, confused and demoralized Red becomes. This slows his ability to orient, it clouds his decisions with fear, it paralyzes his actions with second-guessing and ultimately reduces Red from being a deadly man in a deadly machine to a floating tumbleweed with no SA: out of airspeed, out of altitude and out of ideas.
And out of the fight too, because that fight is over.
My thoughts below the fold…