– George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”, 1946

Bookmark to:

Titled “Electronic Love” there is enough innuendo to make the lyrics amusing. For anyone who has seen how the net can both enhance and cripple relationships, the rest of the song will be a painful reminder.

This rough hack is very dirty sounding due to my over experimentation with the recording equipment. But there is one lesson that came out during the production of this test piece, namely experiment with everything!

The lead guitar didn’t have a sound I liked, and while pondering what to do I kept clicking through the various effects that were packaged with the digital audio workstation software (Sonar Studio if you are curious). There was one item in the effects list I had not noticed before, and it was a guitar effect rack simulator called Revalver. When it opened I saw a classic 19″ rack loaded with gear in just the way old analog musicians are used to. A quick experiment with the presents and I found a grungy effect that isn’t exactly what I want, not it is 90% closer than what I had.

Bookmark to:

But there is an option.

Come spring when even atheists catch a glimmer of God in the annual renewal of life, the U.N. will host an anti-racism conference. Like most Orwellian institutions, the name given saints disguises the monster beneath.

The head of the monster de jure is the chairman of the committee who hails from Libya. Unknown for its adherence to civil or human rights, yet well known for explicit links to bombing jumbo jets and an aggressive WMD program, suspicion of Libyan racial intolerance is understandable.

Since criminals are pack animals, hand-selected “friends of the chair” will include Iran and other ideological backwaters. The explicit aim of the conference leadership appears to again claim that Zionism is a form a racism and thus the only way to counter such is to be even more racist (repeat until dizzy and you will have as good of a grasp of mid-East politics as anyone). A European Union proposal to discuss “freedom of expression” as part of the conference was denied as being “political in nature.”

Odd. The U.N. is a political machine but with less class, honor and ability than all the others. Why not discuss political matters?

The anti-racism conference is an offshoot of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council which has little to do with rights and appears to be opposed to humans. An idealist recently proposed that the Council oppose female genital mutilation, a procedure performed in barbarous localities and whereby many enjoyable pieces of the feminine reproductive system (clitoris, labia) are removed with little warning and no anesthetic.

Egypt’s response was “We will not discuss issues related to Shariah law.”

The U.N. is hopelessly soiled. Since U.N. membership is open to all nations — regardless of what band of baboons run these countries — co-opting the organization to spread human abuse is a natural direction for the U.N. to go. Like welfare offices everywhere, the U.N. cannot discriminate between good and bad actors and in short order the evil, corrupt and lazy run the show.

Hence the un-UN (also warmly referred to as the Alternate U.N. or Liberty league). The proposal calls for free nations to form a new confederation with higher admission prices to keep out the riffraff. The gauntlet might include a list of civil and human rights and a track record of adherence (which means my friends in the U.K. and Mexico might have a tough time getting in given their bans on self defense tools).

This alternate United Nations would receive most of the cash currently dumped into United Nations Plaza. The lucre would be used to actively export freedom and counter balance anti-human initiative, instead of extravagant life styles for third world diplomats. It would also provide free nations a perpetual planning forum for promoting freedom universally.

And the weakened United Nations would remain as a year-round debating society and a good place to keep careful watch on the likes of Lybia and their pals.

Bookmark to:

Where was Bill Clinton nine months before the blessed event?

While confessing to ABS News Edwards also said “You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself.” You would think a politician would understand the media better than that.

Dear John, the journalistic butt kicking has only begun. Your former friends in the media have found a more interesting story than Russian invading Georgia and will ride it like a payday cowboy on a Vegas hooker.

Speaking of Vegas, betrayed wife Hillary Clinton was in Las Vegas today and in reaction to Edwards confession said as little as possible.

Bookmark to:

Normally an amputation without anesthesia would be preferable, but in this case I was enjoying the commissioning of the new Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf.

This ex-cowboy ended up in the company of unsavory elected ruffians by virtue of having grown-up with the Bertholf’s captain and his wife. We reconnected shortly before Captain Stadt, Michelle and the new ship arrived here in San Francisco.

The cutter emphasizes the old and new priorities of the Coast Guard. In a post 9/11 world, the coasties have an expanded mandate involving defense from the world’s nasty players. The Coast Guard’s  enhanced mission becomes clear when you discover that this 418 foot (127 meters for my foreign friends who use a vastly superior system of weights and measures) ship can sprint through the water at 28 knots, run for 60 days and reach 12,000 nautical miles.

Oh, and the laser aimed 57mm bow gun that fires 200 rounds per minute is a dead give away.

The Bertholf is the first cutter of this design — the Legend class — and I feel a bit sorry for Pat having to take the lumps that come with version 1.0 hardware (quite literally, that forward gun is serial number 001). But after a shakedown cruise, everything appears to be in fighting order.

Security was amusing as it always is when dignitaries are in town. Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff was at last night’s reception as well as today’s commissioning. I managed to leave the poor fellow alone. Taking the helm of a bureaucracy hastily assembled from bits and piece of the federal government in the panic of post 9/11 is enough pressure for one lifetime. Unsolicited critique from me was wholly unnecessary.

However, the parking lot and reception area had the usual assortment of large men in ugly suits, sporting dark sunglasses (at night while indoors), coiled cables coming from the ears and conspicuous bulges under the left side of the jackets. Piece of advice: don’t engage these guys in conversation, especially with an opening line like “So, what make of handgun do you carry?”

The security situation was even more entertaining outside. The Bertholf is moored at the Coast Guard island next to Alameda, California — two islands in San Francisco Bay. The ditch between the islands was littered with smaller Coast Guard patrol boats that slaked menacing sideways, bow always facing away from the Bertholf and the assembled guest.

And each had a very stern looking fellow on the bow, hands firmly gripping the Browning .50 caliber machine guns mounted there.

The Bertholf bridge is geek heaven. Nothing resembled the helm of ships you have seen before. The twin rudders are independently operated using two tiny dashboard wheels that I could cover with one hand. Large computer screens provide an at-a-glance view of the entire vessel’s status. Both screws are independent as well and have variable pitch controls, allowing the thrust of each to be tailored.

In a pinch you can steer the ship using just the propellers.

The captain and crew certainly are ready. Not a dullard in the pack. All young, healthy and seemingly eager to get the on with their duties. If al Quaeda reads this blog, then allow me to suggest not screwing with this crew. You’ll arrive in Paradise well ahead of schedule.

Bookmark to:

I spent an enjoyable hour chatting with my childhood chum and painfully funny fellow Chris Muir, creator and chief instigator of the Day By Day Cartoon. We share an insatiable appetite for politics and bashing anyone remotely disingenuous.

So naturally we talked a long time about Barack Obama.

I betray no secret in exposing Obama’s gift for reciting lofty teleprompter platitudes. His lighter-than-air oratory now generates complaints from residents in heaven, a plane to which Obama’s speeches have ascended. Jesus is particularly pissed over Obama’s messianic messaging that threatens to steal His thunder in the actual second coming.

Chris claimed that Obama’s policy and character were “nano thin” — so slight as to be transparent and thus impervious to serious assault. Try to spear his position and like morning mist his position separates, engulfs and reforms. My more simplistic take was that Obama is like a fist full of Jello: whenever you squeeze to get a grip on it’s substance, it simply squishes through your fingers.

And oddly a newspaper that is slightly to the left of the American Communist Party agrees.

On the same day Chris and I traded Obama Barbs, the San Francisco Chronicle — a paper with an editorial board manic enough to publish my op/eds — ran a pair of page two Obama stories, the substance of which being that Obama has no substance.

In a single day Obama changed his position on offshore drilling and reneged on his vow to debate McCain in town hall formats, opting instead to swat softballs tossed by mainstream media mates instead of grenade lobbed by agitated voters.

I’m no McCain fan. I wish he at least offered the entertainment value of other candidates. After eight years of presidential preposterousness, McCain may be boring enough to be electable.

Obama offers voters something of which to be wary. When trapped — changing position, playing the race card or side-stepping his notorious acquaintances — he nuances. He attempts to explain away what he did or said by shifting slightly to one side or another, propelled using nearly Orwellian language. His position on anything is as firm as a fist full of Jello.

Obama’s polling slide shows that his act is wearing thin. It is not just libertarian-leaning free thinkers like Chris and myself who believe this. Willie Brown — an icon of the California and San Francisco Democrat machines — was quoted in the same edition of the Chronicle saying (and I edited for brevity):

Right now, Obama still appears overscripted. Too perfect.

When Obama gets off the teleprompter, he is as dull …

But right now, Obama is way too focused on being precise in his presentation. Everything has to appear well thought out.

Remember, the public never really trusts a politician until you make a mistake. They don’t want “perfect” - they want human.

No politician can be trusted without the aide of tar, feathers and loaded shotguns. Obama’s policy and promise shape-shifting makes me want to invest in feather futures.

Bookmark to:

Adults appear to be in short supply given the paternalistic exuberance of the city’s Board of Supervisors. The sups suffer under the odd delusion that they have acquired the power to control the lives of adults and free commerce to boot. Routinely, the Board of Supervisors legislates against a slate of selected sin. Given that bad behavior is a cherished San Francisco Barbary Coast tradition, such protective overdrive is out of character with the city’s very vibe.

Like any weary parent, the self-appointed guardians on the Board of Supervisors have had enough. Frustrated by their failures to ban everything else from plastic bags, to handguns, to parking, the sups have reasserted their non-existent parental authority over their citywide crib. In a display of statism that would make Mao flinch, San Fran supervisors have banned the sale of tobacco in pharmacies.

Gang violence, public defecation and hypodermic litter are secondary concerns.

“When it comes to pharmacies, I feel that our children and our teenagers get a different message,” said Public Health Director Mitch Katz. By “children and teenagers” Katz means adults, the only class of citizens legally enabled to buy tobacco.

Ill content with a single euphemism, Katz noted that San Francisco Supervisors curtailed tobacco sales in pharmacies because drug stores were the “group where the case was the strongest.” More plainly stated, pharmacies are small enough in number, and their tobacco sales are such a tiny part of their total revenue that the city doesn’t expect the pharmacies to put up much of a fight. Costco, Wal-Mart and trade associations that represent mom-and-pop liquor stores would bring out the heavy litigation artillery, so the City Supervisors decided to pick on someone not their size.

This ban on the sales of a recreational drug (nicotine) seems oddly out of sync with San Francisco’s schizophrenic peccancy. The very mantra of The City has long been whatever consenting adults enjoy should be allowed, with the exception of voting Republican which remains a hanging offense. Indeed the San Francisco enables many vices including both the right and the subsidized facilitation of injecting recreational drugs that are a tiny bit more potent than a pack of Marlboros.

Pharmaceutical sales prohibition of shag and snuff are just the beginning. Katz himself foreshadowed this eventuality suggesting the ban could be broadened in the future. The pharmacy prohibition seeks to desensitize San Francisco citizens to submissiveness. America’s new nanny, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, has set his sights beyond San Francisco saying “Whatever we can do to make this country a smoke-free zone, we should do it.”

My friends and family back in tobacco-growing Virginia will decline to participate. Virginians refuse to ban guns so they are equipped to enforce their prerogative.

Complicit in denying adults the right to commit decelerated suicide is the American Lung Association of California. Their policy director opined “It changes the conversation from something where people of conscience act to one where a city says, ‘You know what, we support healthier lifestyles in our city’”

Her slogan clearly demarks the line of contention. On one side are the citizens of San Francisco — people of conscience who routinely demand to live their personal lives with little restriction — and the city government, hell-bent on keeping them from doing so.

Perhaps San Francisco’s true children are confined to the Board of Supervisors.

Bookmark to:

Responding to a reporter, Obama claimed that the McCain camp was “… going to try to … make you scared of me … you know, ‘he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”‘

This is not the first time that Obama has accused his opposition of being racist without any proof thereof. This particular form of falsehood is not new but it is clever. Race has always been an issue in this campaign, primarily because Obama and the media make such a fuss about it (frankly, who cares if an unrepentant socialist is black, white, half-toned, or purple with pink polka dots — his authoritarian tendencies are the issue). The interesting aspect is Obama’s externalization.

For anyone fortunate enough to have not delved into the pseudoscience of Freudian psychology, externalization is the process whereby a person projects their own self loathing onto other people, perhaps the only principle that fraud Freud developed. This defense mechanism makes it possible for weak minded people to deal with what they dislike most about themselves by perceiving the same fault in others.

We do not have to look far to find the origins of Obama’s externalization. In his own book he relates tales of being at odds with his own identities and his difficulty with selecting one. The process was greatly slowed by his admitted narcotic abuse. Being uncertain of his race (either one), drugged out of his skull, inflicted by the insane logic of an openly racist reverend … it is little wonder that Obama has a certain sense of self hatred or that he would rapidly externalize it upon his opponents.

Undecided voters will decide this election. Analysis of independents throughout recent history shows they research more deeply than the average voter and that they base much of their decision on their gut instinct about the integrity (or lack thereof) of the candidate. Obama’s externalizations will be his undoing as independent voters evaluate who is the true racist in this race.

Bookmark to:

Robert Burck has ample New York notoriety for being the “Naked Cowboy”.  He roams around Times Square in his tighty-whities, strumming on a guitar and posing for photos.  It’s an odd living, but I won’t begrudge a busker who makes an honest buck.

Burck made his way here to San Francisco and was quickly arrested.  His Frisco rap sheet gives you an idea about what constitutes offensive behavior in San Fran.  Burck was not busted for bearing his bum - public nudity is practically mandatory in the Modern Sodom.  Nor was he arrested for singing badly which is offensive to anyone.

Burck was cited for “violating a posted sign” which informed people with reading skills that soliciting and playing musical instruments is unforgivable in Union Square and thus disturbing the downtown retail trade.

Bookmark to:

A book I’m peddling to publishers titled Catalog of Canards describes how political lies are created and spread. My tongue-in-cheek prose help mollify the reader who otherwise would self-destruct from anger inflicted by the realization of how thoroughly hoodwinked they have been. In outlining the book I was reasonably sure that I described nearly every form of fib in the dirty dregs of democracy.

I may be wrong.

Attending a meeting of the American Constitution Society — a conclave of left-wing people interested in rigging the judiciary to defeat the will of the people — I heard a form of lie that I am uncertain how to codify. The panel composed of law professors and civil rights litigators (including a lone libertarian from the Pacific Legal Foundation) opened their review of the 2007/2008 Supreme Court season with a discussion of D.C. v. Heller, the now famous gun ban case.

The discussion was academic, which was entertaining for a constitutional autodidact like myself (incidentally, never use the word autodidact when speaking to your congressional representative … I did that to mine and his limited intellect kept him from understanding the concept). Most commentators conducted light ridicule of the majority decision in the case, disliking a ruling that said the Second Amendment does secure an individual right.

A seeming sane legal strumpet from Stanford lobbed a lie which I’m still struggling to classify. In referring to the Heller decision she claimed the court “created a new right.”

If I wanted to torture my readers, I could wax for hours on the nature of reserved rights, preexisting rights, 10th Amendment prerogative and any number of conlaw constructions confirming that everything in the Bill of Rights was purposefully composed and ratified to document sacrosanct individual rights jealously guarded by “the people.” It is mechanically impossible for a judge to create a new right since the basic theory of the American legal system is that all rights are reserved by the people and that we grant government select powers in order to maintain a more-or-less civil society.

That someone so clueless teaches law should scare everyone.

So I’m stuck. Throughout my book I cite the various forms of falsehoods as the lie of … For example, when the media omits pertinent information from a news story it is called The Lie of Context. The Stanford professor’s perjury is difficult to classify. It is in essence Orwellian but defies even George’s subterfuge schema.

Suggestions for a codification are welcome.

Bookmark to: