Today’s Thoughts . . . Nov. 21, 2013

WE the People must take legal action. Neither elections, nor the Establishment, nor revelations and opinions expressed on forums will ever do it for us.

*snip*A group of 2,000 dead mice equipped with cardboard parachutes have been airdropped over a United States Air Force base in Guam in order to poison brown tree snakes.

It may sound like the plot to an animated movie starring the vocal talents of Gilbert Godfried, but we assure you this is actually happening.

NBC News reports that the dead mice were pumped full of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. The hope is that the snakes, which are invasive to the area and cause harm to exotic native birds and the island’s power grid, will be drawn to the toxic rodents, eat them, and then croak. Other animals face minimal risk, reports the Air Force Times. *snip*

I believe that it is certain that acetaminophen is being added to Hydrocodone in order to deliberately punish users for so-called overindulgence. This is intrinsically criminal and those persons responsible should be indicted and tried. In principle is no different from BOOBY TRAPPING property to injure trespassers. (The booby trapping issue was decided in court ages ago, therefore the Precedent exists.)

I’ve started research for a file and am trying to decide just what action I can take. Anyone wishing to assist me please do so. Absent explicit permission to do otherwise, all correspondence will be held in strict confidence.

Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)

13519 Chase Ct.
Gonzales, LA 70737
225-673-2447

bastlaw@yahoo.com

‘The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.’

‘To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.’

‘To affirm that the Sun is at the center of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures.’

– Catholic Church’s findings against Galileo

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

“Holy Writ was intended to teach men how to go to Heaven not how the heavens go.”

“My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?”

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”

“Surely, the Creator could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead, and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something. It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Maker at every turn to the refuge of a miracle.”

“Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.”

“Nature is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men.

For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words.

For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature’s actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible.”

– Galileo Galilei Quotes

“Hanukkah Blessings” – Bare Naked Ladies

How Lucky are we that we have lights so we can see. Although the day is done
What a miracle that a spark lifts these candles out of the dark
Every evening, one by one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIgqirSadms

Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, asher kid’shanu
B’mitz’votav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

We remember how Maccabees. Fought so all of us could be free
And so we celebrate on this festival of the lights
There’s a joyful time every night

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha’olam she’asa niseem
La’avoteinu bayamim haheim baz’man hazeh.

Hanukkah…

(translat Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe. Who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time. Who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season. Amen)

Street performer got skills
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STMjDzEjR04

A mountain man goes to jail for fishing to feed himself. The welfare monkeys keep getting their checks
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=703_1385224413

Creepy Cat Petting Machine
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a3e_1385332683

Remember – Storm Clouds Gathering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTk_uQwDFBU

ObamaCare: What You’re Not Being Told – SCG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQtxcKT-u_Y

How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGJltGBrazw

Free Man’s Bill of Rights
http://www.freemansperspective.com/free-man-bill-of-rights/

These are rights that we demand and will defend.

The Roman Catholic Church was guilty of many abuses in Europe all through the Middle Ages, and I think the people of Europe had good reason to walk away from it. But as they did, they made a massive error: They didn’t replace it with anything better.

The Church, regardless of its errors and crimes, taught virtues to the people of that continent. Medieval Europe became home to a culture founded largely on some very positive values, and you can’t deny that the Church had a hand in that development.

After all, not everyone involved with the institution was corrupt and abusive (in fact, such villains were the minority). A significant percentage of local priests, monks and nuns were decent, caring people, trying to help the people of their diocese. However many and evil the inquisitors were, the number of kind and decent clergy was higher, and they had their effects.

Europe’s error was that they didn’t just reject the Church; many of them rejected everything that was associated with it. The virtues that the Church taught, however poorly, had given Europe a moral core. Those virtues should have been preserved.

The Rights of Free Men and Women

We hold these as inherent and inalienable human rights:

1 We are free to do whatever we wish, so long as we extend this same right to others.

2 Every individual stands equal to any other person or group. We accept no person or group as inherently superior.

3 No person or group has a right to aggress against us.
We hold the right to defend against aggression.

4 Our property is our own, and our will regarding it ought not to be opposed. Any person or group that attempts to counter our will regarding our property is an aggressor.

5 Our sole obligation to others is to do no harm.

6 Cooperation, compassion, and kindness are positive goods that we choose to bring into the world, but so long as we harm no one, we have committed no offense.

7 We claim the freedom to trade, to express ourselves as we wish, to move and think as we wish, and to be free of surveillance.

We will defend these rights, both for ourselves and for others
+ + + + +

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner

The Prisoner – Episode 17 – Finale – Watch at 30 minute mark – 30:00. Number Six has been promised a chance to address the assemblage earlier in the episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-uQ84-waV0

– Even in the best of company. The many drown out the few. And the one.

Congratulations Eric. Glad to hear the good news. Castigat ridendo mores.

22 upvotes 5 downvotes
http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1r50ve/the_war_on_some_drugs/

Abortion: An Excerpt From Hope
by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith

Hope is a “political thriller” that concerns the election of the first libertarian president, Alexander Hope, and what he does with the presidency through two terms in office.

“Dana” is Alex’s wife, Dana Li, a young, beautiful Internet reporter the long-widowed candidate met during his first campaign. “Katy” is one of the college students who call themselves the “Austrian Mafia” and encouraged him to run in the first place. “Faith-Anne” is Alex’s daughter and chief of staff.

And for what it’s worth, Alex was brought up Roman Catholic and personally opposes abortion. However…]

* * * * * *

“Your visitors are here, Mr. President.”

Alex sighed inwardly. It was a cold and soggy April in DC. He missed his good old Austrian Mafia—Katie wouldn’t have called him ‘Mr. President’, she would have called him by his first name. He also missed Dana—she was off suffering through some kind of physical therapy and planned to do some First Lady work afterward. His only consolation was that Faith-Anne was here to help him deal with ‘visitors’ this morning.

She still called him “Daddy”.

He arose and walked around his desk. “Please send them in, will you, Louise?”

There were three of them this morning, and even if he hadn’t been expecting them, their faces were extremely familiar. They were the assistant Republican leader of the United States Senate, the assistant Republican leader of the House of Representatives, and the Republican Senator to whom the topic of this morning’s discussion was the be-all and end-all of his political existence.

“Good morning, gentlemen!” He strode forward and took each of their hands in turn, as warmly and sincerely as he could manage. “Congressman Blue, Senator Commack, Senator Peters, good to see you. You all know my daughter and good right hand, Faith-Anne? Excellent. Would you all care to join me over here, where it’s more comfortable, at the coffee table?”

Blue was a tall man in his late 30s, with strong features, deeply sunken eyes, and prematurely white hair. Alex found himself thinking of the man as “young Boris Karloff”. Commack, Blue’s opposite number from the Senate, was fiftyish, short, plump, and florid, with a low, rasping voice.

Peters—the individual who’d organized the meeting this morning—was of medium build, appeared to be in his early 60s, and had what Alex thought of as that “lean and hungry look”. Peters had founded a national anti-abortion lobby group and led it since his earliest days as a state legislator. He still published a weekly newsletter on the subject.

Coffee had been poured, sugared, creamed, and the first sip taken. Cigars had been offered and refused. All of these social amenities having been taken care of, it was time, Alex thought, to get down to business.

“Now what can I do for you gentlemen today? Perhaps I ought to inform you that CNN is already reporting that a delegation of ‘irate Republican leaders’ is visiting the White House to remonstrate with the President over what they refer to as his ‘lackadaisical’ position on abortion.”

There was an embarrassed silence, which was exactly what Alex had intended. These three, of course, were the ones who had planted that story with CNN and he was letting them know that he knew it. It was interesting to him that straight talk, an extremely rare commodity in this city—in an apparent contradiction of the basic economic theory known as the Law of Marginal Utility—had no value at all to most of its inhabitants.

The first of them to recover his aplomb was Senator Peters, who shook his head. Alex realized that Peters reminded him of the columnist Robert Novak, whose mortal enemies had called him the Republican “Prince of Darkness”.

“No, Mr. President, that’s not why we’re here. I’d never call any of your policies ‘lackadaisical’, I’m sure they’re all extremely well thought out and energetically pursued. We’re here because the nation has arrived at an important crossroads in history. You see, we Republicans—along with a small handful of conservative Democrats in each chamber—we Republicans believe that we finally have garnered enough votes to outlaw abortion altogether…”

“And?” Alex asked.

“Not ‘and’,” said Senator Commack. “But. But certain conditions have been imposed on us by our potential supporters both Republican and Democratic. Among the conditions, many of those supporters don’t want to risk exposing themselves publicly on this issue, only to have you veto the effort. Which means that we can’t get this work done without your endorsement.”

“I see.” They didn’t have enough votes to override his veto.

As Commack looked on, Congressman Blue handed out a single Xeroxed sheet to each of them. Faith-Anne glanced over the sheet Blue had given her with a carefully neutral expression, and stuck it in her notebook.

Alex read the proposed bill before he commented. “Well, if nothing else, gentlemen, its brevity is commendable. It simply bans abortion anywhere within the United States, their territories, on US military bases overseas, or on American ships at sea. So where’s the rest of it?”

Senator Peters looked confused. “The rest of it, Mr. President?

“That’s right, Senator, the rest of it. When I was a schoolboy, before the Roe vs. Wade decision, something like 50,000 women a year were dying from botched abortions of one kind or another, either self-inflicted, or at the hands of some back-alley butcher. What that tells us is that, whatever the law may decree, women will still take huge risks to control their own destinies.”

“Excuse me, Mr. President, I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

Alex nodded. “Well for example, you don’t want American women skulking off to Canada or Mexico to get their abortions, do you? So where’s your provision for physical examinations at the borders to detect pregnancies leaving the country, or terminated pregnancies coming back in?”

The man reddened. “I… we never thought of that, Mr. President.”

Alex nodded. “I wondered whether you gentlemen had thought this matter through completely. Here’s another thing: if you seek to outlaw abortions, you’re going to have to add an enforcement clause to this legislation, aren’t you? And you may even have to create a whole new federal bureaucracy to do the enforcing. I certainly can’t imagine any existing law enforcement agency that I’d care to see doing it, can you?”

Alex was morally certain that they had thought of those two points, hoping the president would overlook them. The looks on their faces tended to support his suspicions. Whoever had said the devil was in the details had been right. Heaven knew what details these three had in mind.

“And then,” he added, “there’ll have to be agency regulations that go along with the law and sustain it. To begin with, I suppose you gentlemen realize that you’ll have to insist on mandatory monthly pregnancy testing for every female in the country, from puberty to menopause.”

“M-mandatory—” Peters sputtered to a stop.

“I don’t know what it’ll cost, gentlemen, but it’s going to be horrendously expensive—and extremely unpopular,” Alex mused. “Maybe you’ll want to require women to show up once a month down at the local offices of the… well let’s call it the ‘Pregnancy Enforcement Administration’, shall we? Or maybe you can just issue them a home pregnancy test kit every month and they can use it and send in the results—although can you trust them to be that honest? You’ll also have to accept the fact that you’ll be creating a whole new underground market for false test results.”

“Mr. President, I—”

Alex interrupted. “All pregancies, of course, will have to be registered immediately with the PEA, and every pregnant woman in the country will be required to undergo frequent psychological evaluation to determine whether she’s become an abortion risk during the past couple of weeks. And of course she’ll have to report for regular compulsory physical examinations to make sure she and the baby remain healthy. Here I thought you three gentlemen were against socialized medicine.”

Commack tried to say, “Well, that’s not so—”

“Naturally,” Alex went on, “the mother-to-be will be criminally prosecuted if she drinks or smokes while pregnant, or exposes herself or her baby to secondhand smoke or to any other politically incorrect influence—perhaps even if she eats too little or too much of the currently right or wrong thing. It will probably be called ‘unborn child abuse’.”

“Mr. President!” Congressman Blue was furious. He held up a hand to stop Alex, who raised his eyebrows, pulled his battered old pipe from a jacket pocket, tamped it with a tool made from a .30-06 shell, struck a match, and puffed it into life. Sweet-smelling smoke filled the room.

“Yes, Congressman Blue?”

“Mr. President, we didn’t write any of these things you’re saying into the bill. They don’t have anything to do with what we’re trying to accomplish.”

“Ah, but there we disagree, Congressman Blue,” Alex puffed. “How can you outlaw a thing without taking steps to make sure that people don’t do it? Even if you don’t write those provisions into your bill, others who come along later will try to make political hay of their own by tightening up all the ‘loopholes’ that you left for them so thoughtfully.”

“‘Loopholes’,” For the first time, Faith-Anne spoke up, “being a technical term for the few remaing freedoms that the government hasn’t gotten around to crushing yet.”

“Well, I certainly don’t—”

“I know you don’t,” said Alex, “But there’s no way you can avoid it, Senator. Here’s another example: a woman who’s obviously pregnant—involuntarily—or has a history of attempted abortions, or who happens to fail a psychological evaluation will have to be subjected to various kinds of physical restraint, ranging from house arrest with an electronic anklet to keep tabs on her whereabouts, to the local jail where she can be watched, to a federal prison, to forced hospitalization, to a padded cell in some lunatic asylum, to a straitjacket. She might even be forcibly sedated—turned into some kind of zombie—for the term of her pregnancy.”

Peters protested, “But that’s not—”

“Yes it is,” Alex replied. “You just don’t realize it yet. Of course you’ll have to outlaw all wire coathangers, knitting needles, chopsticks over a certain length, or anything else that can be used to induce a self-abortion. Maybe registering these items and licensing their owners will be enough. Although in that case, the coathangers, knitting needles, and chopsticks will all have to have serial numbers.”

Faith-Anne stepped in again. “Any contact between a woman and her health providers will naturally be suspect. If she goes to her doctor, even to have an ingrown toenail removed, they’ll have to be ready to prove they weren’t planning an abortion, possibly by recording every word they say together. If she discusss the weather for too long with her pharmacist at the drugstore, they’ll be subject to interrogation by PEA… greenshirts… who’ll want to know if what they talked about was RU486.”

“Greenshirts?” asked a puzzled Congressman.

Faith-Anne said, “As in medical greens.”

“Likewise, each and every miscarriage, however tragic, innocent, or accidental,” Alex said, “will have to be investigated like a homicide, with all of the invasions of privacy and violations of rights any homicide investigation entails. And there’s plenty of room in there for another kind of miscarriage—a miscarriage of justice. If a woman can be shown to have taken one vitamin pill too few—or one vitamin pill too many—when she was pregnant, some ambitious prosecutor will make her life even more miserable than it is, by trying to nail her for manslaughter.”

Peters tried again. “Mr. President, this is—”

“The direct consequence of what you’re trying to do, Senator, nothing more, nothing less,” Alex told him. “But it gets much worse. The Democrats will fight this legislation tooth and nail, but once it gets passed, you can count on your opposite numbers in that party to exploit what you’ve done, and use it as a springboard to push through little items like the parental licensing laws they’ve wanted at least since the Clinton Administration.”

Faith-Anne said, “When that happens, when couples fail to qualify for a government license—maybe because they own guns, or drive an SUV, or smoke, or like to barbecue red meat—their unlicensed kids will be seized by the state and raised in the creches socialists are so fond of.”

“Think it can’t happen here?” Alex stood, walked around behind the chair he’d been sitting in, and put his hands in his jacket pockets. “Folks probably thought Prohibition couldn’t happen. But a million marching morons—well-meaning dogooders and busybodies—couldn’t be wrong, could they? Never mind that they were screwing people’s lives up beyond all recognition. Never mind that it brought us the first turf wars, drive-by shootings, poisoned booze, cement overshoes, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Never mind that, once it was repealed, the enforcement boys still needed their jobs, so we got the war on guns, the war on drugs, and eventually, the war on tobacco.”

He shook his head. “Gentlemen, I will not allow this bonnet-bee of yours to be represented as simple-minded ‘feelgood’ legislation that makes you look noble to your right-wing constituents, while it ruins the lives of countless individuals whom you never have to look in the eye. The only way I know to keep liberty from being destroyed is by making the government—in this case, that means you—accountable for all of the consequences of all of its actions, intended or otherwise.”

There were grim expressions all around the table. Alex believed that he had failed to win them over or to move them even an inch. He’d been resigned to it from the outset, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

“No, gentlemen,” he told them, “if you outlaw abortion, you’ll have to pay a price for seeing your convictions into the law: you’re going to have to live with the unintended consequences as well as those you had in mind. If you bring me a bill that fails to cover even one of the points I’ve made, I’ll veto it in a New York nanosecond. You might as well go all the way; I’m going to tell the public it’s what you propose, because you can’t claim to outlaw abortion without it. There’s a midterm election coming in seven months. How’s that going to go over with the voters?”

All three looked incredulous. Commack said, “You want to pass these laws?”

“Of course I don’t, Senator. It will give rise to a reign of terror like nothing seen before in America. You’ll be enslaving no less than half the population. It will create a new army of armed and armored nannies. It will devour your wives, your sisters, your daughters, and your grandaughters. It will destroy all that’s left of what America was supposed to be about. But you’ll have made your point, you will have passdd your law, and you and your constituents will be happy.”

Now it was Peters who stood up. “So we’re to assume that you’re pro-choice.”

“You’re to assume nothing of the kind, Senator Peters. I’ve never said where I stand on the issue personally, because it doesn’t matter. Outlaw abortion, and—no matter what anybody hopes or thinks or fears—that’s where the country’s headed, right into the black abyss of totalitarianism.”

There was a long silence. Alex and Peters stared at each other without blinking.

Then: “As I said in my book Looking Forward several years ago, abortion is the issue that the Left counts on, gentlemen, counts on to keep the freedom movement divided. And here we all are today, proving it.”

Another long silence.

“Look: I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell you that you’re going to have to grow up, swallow hard, and do your best accept the fact that, as fervently as you loathe abortion, a great many other people in this country disagree with you just as fervently. It’s absolutely vital that we shut down this endless, pointless argument, and move on with our real work—fulfilling the promise of the American Revolution.”

Blue stood, then Commack. “Maybe that Revolution went too far.”

“As I recall, Senator Blue,” Faith-Anne told him, “the last one to say that was Bill Clinton.

Commack said, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

Alex was ignoring the byplay between the politicians and his daughter. “I plan to end this debate forever, gentlemen, in a manner that will probably be satisfactory to everybody but the leaders on both sides.”

Senator Peters stiffened, but said nothing.

“Abortion,” Alex said, “will remain legal. But not one red cent of federal tax money will ever be spent on it again, and I will do my level best to persuade the authorities at the state, county, and municipal levels to follow my example. As you know, gentlemen, I can be pretty persuasive.”

But not with this lot, Alex thought.

In a few more moments there were hands shaken all around, promises made to think over what had just been discussed, and goodbyes said. The three Republicans left, and the President breathed an audible sigh of relief.

“Momma would have been very proud of you, Daddy,” Faith-Anne told him with teardrops threatening to fall. “I know I am, and Dana will be, too.”

Alex shook his head. “I’m going to brush my teeth, sweetheart. If I’d said ‘gentlemen’ one more time to that crew, I’d have thrown up for sure.”