Bill Gates - Outsourcer, Destroyer Of Jobs, and Evil, Evil Man

In the late 1980's, IBM was poised to open a major typewriter manufacturing plant in rural Kentucky. 
The building they constructed to house this project was almost 1,000,000 square feet. 

You can go here to see the proud history of IBM typewriters.  Notice how the history ends in the late 1990's. 

Most of this is because of one man. 

Bill Gates. 

He eliminated tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S. typewriter industry.  His software packages have also eliminated American jobs at the U.S. postal service, secretarial positions, and the printing industry.  The job losses that can be laid at his feet probably number in the millions.  And yet some people consider him a hero.

Please do your part to reverse this trend.  Take whatever device you're using to read this, lift it high above your head, and smash it into tiny little pieces.  Then go buy a typewriter.

Create jobs for America !!!  Boycott Bill Gates and all others who try to eliminate jobs in the name of lower prices and better products for consumers !!!

On Judge Roy Moore's statue of The Ten Commandments

We need to talk theology for a few minutes. 

Judge Roy Moore, an Alabama Republican, is back in the news.  Here's the Montgomery Advertiser:

Roy Moore said about 2 a.m. Wednesday that even though he had not been declared the winner of the Republican primary for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court that he expected to win without a runoff.

“Statistically, there is just no way we’re going to have a runoff in this race,” the former chief justice said to reporters just before leaving his election night headquarters.

Moore, the former chief justice who was removed from office refusing a federal judge’s order, said about two hours earlier that, with him well ahead of his two competitors in the Republican primary, “the people have spoken.”

Moore was eventually removed from office during his previous judgeship because he wouldn't remove his Ten Commandments statue from his courtroom.  Later on he built this large statue of the Ten Commandments and had it placed in the courthouse yard. 

The man does love his statues. You could safely call him the Raymond Nasher of Montgomery, if not all of Etowah County. 

Moore is well known for two legal fights over the 10 Commandments.

As a judge in Etowah County, he placed a small plaque with the commandments in his courtroom. The American Civil Liberties Union sued unsuccessfully to try to have the plaque removed.

As chief justice, Moore had a more than two-ton granite monument that included the 10 Commandments placed in the rotunda of the state’s judicial building. Several organizations including the ACLU sued over the monument and a federal judge ordered Moore to remove it. Believing the order was illegal, Moore refused and was removed from office.

As a devout, foot-washing, snake-handling Libertarian, I should be objecting to Moore's statue of the Ten Commandments because of separation of church and state.  Yeah, I shouldn't support my courthouses being decorated with statues of The Big Ten, scrolls from the Torah, plaques from the Kabbalah, needlepoint samplers from the Koran, or paint-by-numbers quotes from the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Bless His Noodly Appendage).

But I have to object to Moore's statue on theological grounds.

Here's why.  Here's Commandment number three in its entirety:

Exodus 20:4....Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Moore's statue doesn't feature the entire verse.  (It's kind of wordy, and would take too long to chisel.) 

With his 10 Commandments statue, Judge Roy Moore has created a graven image of a law that outlaws all graven images.  We aren't supposed to create any likenesses of any thing on heaven, earth, or in the water. 

Read it again, folks. 

Exodus 20:4....Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Commandment #3, which Moses supposedly brought down from the mountain, outlaws statues, paintings, pencil sketches, needlepoint samplers, that old photo of your grandparents, carvings of Christ on the cross, Michelangelo's Pieta, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, your senior portrait, your baby pictures, half of the internet, most stained glass windows, all art that isn't totally abstract, and the cover of Roy Moore's book. 

I repeat:  This crazed Alabama Republican has made a statue of a set of laws that outlaw statues. 

I don't care who you are, that's funny. 

Ordinarily I would link to the sources for all of these pictures graven images, but I don't want to spread sin. 

Satan, Santorum, and Superstitions

Some of Rick Santorum's advisers are frustrated and angry that reporters are focusing more on their candidate's statements about Satan than on his positions on the issues. Here in Arizona Tuesday, Santorum faced repeated questioning about portions of a 2008 speech at a Catholic university in Florida in which he said, "Satan is attacking the great institutions of America."




Much hilarity ensued amongst the secular Statists when Santorum's statement about Satan was brought to light.

The Santorum team recently punched back, stating that according to a 2007 Gallup poll, 70 percent of us believe in The Devil and 69 percent of us believe in hell.   This put Santorum's statement in the middle of the American mainstream. 

You can look it up.  70 percent of us believe that God created a being that rebelled against him, and that this Evil One sometimes tempts us into doing bad things, causes crops to perish, created Cash For Clunkers, the Texas Department of Transportation, and the stimulus package. 

I'm on the State Libertarian Executive Platform Committee this year, and I'm going to try to get an anti-Satanic influence plank added to this year's statement. 
Satan doesn't do this crap. 
We do it. 
If there is an evil being who is in rebellion against God, we need to stop blaming him for our actions and our votes.  Who needs Satan when we have the electorate?   

Agreed?  Good. 

Sorry for the digression. 

In addition to believing in Satan, 37% of us believe that houses can be haunted, 21% of us believe in witches, and 25% of us believe in Astrology. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job. 

24% of us believe that extraterrestrial beings have visited earth. 

44% of us believe that the auto bailout was a good thing. 

21% believe that we can communicate with the dead. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job.

47% of Americans believe that the rich should be giving Washington more money to waste. 

29% of American League baseball fans say that the New York Yankees are their favorite team. 

Here's a quaint one:  32% of Americans still believe that Global Warming will be a threat to themselves or their way of life within their lifetimes. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job.

42% of us don't want to repeal ObamaCare. 

26% of Americans believe in Clairvoyance, the ability to see the past or predict the future. 

As of February 23rd, 2012, 45% of us believe that Barack Obama is doing a good job.

I thought that all of those facts were interesting. 

For all the kids with the cool Che Guevara t-shirts

For all the kids who think that wearing mass-murderer t-shirts are cool:

Go here to read more about Che's body count. 

A Prayer For The Texas Rangers

Dear God,

I know that I am a sinner. 
I have no business asking you for anything. 
One of my earliest blog entries was based on a pun on the name of your servant, Oral Roberts.  I called it something funny just to get a lot of hits.  It's still getting them. 
Anyway, I'm sorry.  Please hear my prayer, and I'll delete it.   

Tonight, The Texas Rangers will face the despicable New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. 

The Yankees have won the World Series 27 times.  Until we put away The Devil Rays a few days ago, we'd only won one playoff game.  Ever. 

The Yankees have had Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, and Mickey Mantle on their roster. 
The Rangers once had Mississippi taxidermist Ned Yost. 

I know that the Ballpark in Arlington is built on stolen land.  I know that George W. Bush threatened to pull the team out of Arlington unless he got a sales tax increase and a $205,000,000.00 subsidy.  I know he bought the team for $86,000,000.00 and then turned around and sold it for $250,000,000.00   I know that he never properly thanked the taxpayers. 
But the Yankees are worse.  They've won it all so many times that they now personify evil. 

I know that when Major League Baseball had their last big strike/lockout about 15 years ago, and I had to lay off about half the staff of my close-to-the-ballpark retail store as a result, I swore I would never again care about this silly game.  I know.  I know. 

This is about The New York Freakin' Yankees.  All God-Fearing people in this great Republic hate The New York Freakin' Yankees. 

Anyway, I'm not asking for much, God.  It just wouldn't be right.  We are all sinners, but can't you agree that some teams are worse than others?  I mean, seriously....

I'm not going to ask for a victory over the Yankees in the ALCS, and I wouldn't dream of asking for the Rangers to win it all. 

But is there any way you could arrange for Josh Hamilton to hit the game-winning RBI in World Series game seven?  That wouldn't be asking for too much, would it? 

The pictures of typical Yankee fans came from here.  The picture of She Whose Name Is Not Spoken came from here. 

Dutch government to close 8 prisons - Not enough criminals

From Race Hochdorf's Facebook page, comes a link to the MPP Blog:

Netherlands To Close Prisons; Not Enough Criminals

For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:

The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.

Just for fun, let’s compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California’s actual prison population is 171,000.

So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?

If marijuana did not exist, the Prison Guards Union, the Prison Construction Lobby, the Parole Officers, and the SEIU would have to invent it.  God, what a waste of lives, money, and taxes, all in the name of "saving and creating jobs". 

Food For The Machine

I have an acquaintance named James who just got sent to jail for four months.

James and I have a mutual friend named Judy, who called me yesterday, absolutely frantic. James had already gone to be an Involuntary Guest Of The State, he had no way to prepay four months’ rent on his small garage apartment, and unless Judy could find a way to get the rest of his possessions to a storage facility, everything James owned would either be dumped out on the curb or sold for back-payment of rent.
I was able to help Judy get the remainder of James’s furniture moved to a 10’x10’ storage space that she and another friend had rented. Had those two ladies not been willing to do this, James would have been released from prison owning absolutely nothing.

Think about that for a minute….starting over with a criminal record, and owning nothing. Then think of having to face a plague of counselors, probation officers, parole officers and other leeches, all with their hands in your pockets, trying to collect their Oversight Fees, payments for counseling sessions, payments for drug tests, and other legal rip-offs.

James will probably spend the rest of his life as food for this vile machine, ensuring that some Civil Service lifer is able to collect a good pension at the age of 50.

So what did James do to deserve such treatment?

Did he injure someone with his vehicle, the way Ted Kennedy did, and then leave his victim to drown?
Did he try and fail to blow up some buildings, like Bill Ayers?
Or did he drug and rape a 13-year old, like Roman Polanski?

James didn’t do anything to harm anyone else, the way those three guys did. He's only guilty of doing something that our last three presidents have done.

James was pulled over because of his license plate or inspection sticker was expired. The cops used that as an excuse to rip his car open from bumper to bumper. They finally found an ounce of marijuana and hauled James to jail.
Unlike presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, or contenders like John Kerry, Al Gore, and Sarah Palin, all of whom have smoked weed, James is in jail.
Unlike Barack Obama, who did cocaine as a teenager, James is in jail.

Chances are, you have voted for at least two of the politicians listed above. Why is it that you don’t hold drug use against presidential candidates and will support them in their efforts to be Leaders Of The Free World, but if a night-shift welder is caught with 4 joints’ worth of marijuana, you believe he should go to prison and then have to spend years explaining himself to, and being monitored by, government munchkins?

We have a higher percentage and a higher raw number of prisoners than any other country on earth. We are devastating the male African-American population for the sole purpose of “saving and creating jobs” in the counseling, drug-testing, prison-building and law enforcement industries.

Mexican drug lords are destroying their country - all for the right to be monopoly drug suppliers for the United States. The parallels between 2010 and our failed 1920's alcohol prohibition experiment are too obvious for even the most dense politician to ignore. Al Capone and a plethora of other gangsters grew wealthy supplying something that everyone wanted. Grandmothers started making their own bathtub gin. Lawlessness erupted around the border – but in this case, it was our border with Canada!

In places where we legalized alcohol, the bootlegger violence stopped. Alcohol usage didn’t skyrocket, it merely moved out into the open again, and there was no sudden increase in alcoholism.

There are only two politicians of note who are willing to go on record stating that they favor marijuana legalization – Republican Ron Paul (TX) and Democrat Jim Webb (VA).
The other politicians no longer have ignorance as an excuse. They aren’t misguided or misinformed, and they aren’t looking out For The Children®.

They are evil.

Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Eminent Domain

During my recent Arizona gig, I had the privilege of visiting Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's house, studio, architectural intern boot camp, and place where he built lots of stuff and then tore it down, just to stay in practice. 

It was a great experience, and if you ever find yourself in Phoenix, I hope you'll make time to visit.  Wright was a genius. 

Now....imagine that you're an architectural genius who has been diagnosed with bronchitis and pneumonia, and you need to find a new winter home, someplace far away from the near-arctic weather in Wisconsin.  Imagine that you settle on a place near Phoenix/Scottsdale, and you buy enough acreage to control the view from your house. 

The view is why you chose the site, built the house, and started the architecture school at that site.  The view of YOUR property.  Remember, you're a genius, and you think buildings should fit their surroundings, both in materials and placement. 

You whip out a masterpiece.  It's exactly what you want. 

The next part I have to piece together from our tour guide and from the internet.  Some government dweeb, long forgotten except for this solitary act of vandalism, decides to invoke his Eminent Domain privileges and run powerlines across your property.  You fight it, you even go to Harry Truman to try to get him to intervene.  The powerlines totally ruin the view. 

(The powerlines erected during Wright's lifetime were much smaller than these monsters, but they were enough to piss Frank off for the rest of his life.) 

The wall to the left was once almost 100% window.  Wright bricked it in halfway up so he wouldn't have to see the powerlines in the distance. 

He changed the main entrance from the front of the house to the back of the house, all to avoid looking at the reminder of the theft of his property. 

This is the man who built Fallingwater, recently voted as the most architecturally significant building of the 20th century.  And even he had to put up with that kind of crap from his government. 

Oh well.  That's enough ranting about Eminent Domain.  A tour of the house, the meeting rooms, concert halls, grounds, and architecture school only costs $24.00, and it's well worth it. 

The guides won't let you take pictures in the living quarters for some reason.  But at one point, our tour leader asked if there was a pianist in the house, someone who could show off the acoustics of the den.  I volunteered, and therefore was able to get my picture taken playing Frank's Steinway.  A rare privilege.
(Organic, natural, architectural materials look great, by the way.  But they are no good at keeping pianos in tune.  I'm just sayin'.....)

I can now say that I've played The Electric Light Orchestra's "Evil Woman" on Frank Lloyd Wright's Steinway, and "Dixie" on Robert E. Lee's piano at Arlington House (See pic below. Long story). 

Taliesin West, in Scottsdale, Arizona.  Go there. 

Pics came from here and here and here and here and me.