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Collected Thoughts, July 2001:
Hanessen:
You may like or dislike the counterspy, Robert Hanssen. Either
way, let us admit that he did us a service by revealing how dishonest
our government is. We put a tunnel under the Russian Embassy?
does anyone understand that an Embassy's grounds are, by definition,
sovereign soil? That is tantamount to the invasion of a foreign
country. How dare our government make moral sounds about people
in the middle east.
A new word:
Here is a new word. "desp." It's a verb. It's what we
do when we become desperate. The Texas seven desped. They wanted
out and they were desperate so they desped. That is, they did
some desperate things. We should try to not drive people to where
their only choice is to desp.
Gambling:
When you buy insurance, you are betting that you will need it.
The insurance company is betting that you won't. Of course, you
are hoping that the insurance company will win the bet.
Drinking:
I once went to a doctor who told me that, If I kept on drinking,
ten years from then he would not be able to help me. That was
thirty years ago. It turned out he was right. He died before the
ten years elapsed. I think the cause of death was terminal puritanism.
Porky:
A while back, I hired a guy I call Porky Polk to come and build
a garage for me. By the time I realized that he was completely
incompetent, it was too late. He had several thousands of dollars
of my money and I had a bungled garage. Fixing it has cause me
a great deal of money, not to mention rage. On my mean days, I
want to kill this guy. On my really mean days, I want him to live
forever.
Control:
To control a population, you need only suppress and control the
artists and the intellects. Scientists are not a problem. You
need only give them something interesting to do, be it making
weapons or robots. It matters not. In general scientists have
no sense of conscience to guide them. They are not particularly
thoughtful people. Just tell them what gadgets you want and give
them the resources to build them. They don't particularly care
how the gadgets are used after they make them. Artist and intellects
are a different matter. that's who will bring you down.
Felony:
January 18, 2001. Channel 12 local news, Flint, MI. A kid brings
a loaded gun to school. He got the gun and the bullets out of
his mother's cupboard. In Michigan, there is no law under which
the mother can be charged with endangering another human. She
could only be charged if the kid had actually committed murder
with the gun. That is patent bull! What she did should be a felony.
If it's not, why not?
Washington:
A man would have to be insane to drag his family through te sewers
and slime of Washington politics. That world belongs to the Gingrich's
and the Helms'. It always has and it always will. Decent people
have no place there and never will.
Evil people:
There are a handful of evil people in this country. They are not
a majority. They are just a few, but they have gravitated to positions
of power. They have put themselves into a position to completely
destroy the democratic and moral fabric of this once great nation.
They are in publishing. They are in corporate executive positions.
They are in the upper echelons of government and in our courts.
The results of what they do are evil and they know it. They set
the example for our children that the way to success is to lie,
cheat, and steal. Whether it's the creative work of another person
or an election, does not matter. Their behavior is the same. Any
means to win. Winning is the basis of morality in their world.
About power:
What if we could deliver electricity the same way that we deliver
oil, coal, or topsoil. A truck pulls up. A guy jumps out, connects
the cables to your terminals and charges you up for the month.
Think of the competition that would create. There are many more
ways of producing electricity that there are of producing gas
or oil. With electrical deregulation, the government did not create
alternative ways of delivering the power. This was an invitation
to disaster. It did not create competition because the means of
delivery were monopolized. It's all well and good to say the delivery
system owners must cooperate. So what? I can't be cost effective
if I must rent someone else's delivery system. All we did was
to give them an excuse for not investing in their facilities.
Social Security:
Bush's idea of privatizing social security is to give idiots control
over their own savings program. For God's sake, the very reason
for social security in the first place is because too many people
cannot plan and invest properly. We have social security because
old people were starving to death, literally, because they could
not manage their own money. Bush is a colossal fool. If you really
want to privatize social security, turn the program over to an
insurance consortium and force the feds to pay back what they
stole from it. Then let the consortium pay benefits based on income
and actuary realities. Stop the political hacks, like Geebush
and Algore, from mucking with it altogether.
Contaminated corn:
Peter Jennings, 11/28/2000, evening news. Half the corn crop of
Iowa is contaminated with genetically altered corn. No one will
buy it. Why don't they pack it up and ship it to Somalia or Cambodia.
Let the people who are starving to death eat it. Tell them the
truth. They will eat it anyway. We gain two things. Less people
will starve to death and it will be the largest test of that corn
possible. It should resolve, once and for all, the danger of lack
of danger involved. The corn is not good for corn borers and other
insects. Whether it's not good for humans, we don't know.
Petty Power:
Remember when postal clerks had little tiny widows with bars over
them. You knew they were in there because you could hear them,
but you couldn't see them. You didn't know what they were doing.
They generally ignored you and treated you with arrogance when
the did deem to notice you. This was the classic image of the
arrogance of petty power. The strange thing is, I suspect the
postal workers feel better now than they did then; about the system
and about themselves.
The arrogance of petty power had not disappeared. It still permeate
our culture. It is pretty much gone from big government offices,
but it is still prevalent in local governments. Most lower and
middle level managers are also addicted to this malady.
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