Woody Cavenaugh

I remember it well, just a few months ago we had two intelligent qualified guys running for president. It was going to be a tough choice. Back then it was about the issues. They didn't attack the other, that would be low and a waste of words, "Let me tell you about what I believe!" Good times.

But those times are gone now. Now we've reached the stupid season. It happened when the presidential candidates chose their vice presidents. The criteria for choosing a VP is different from that of choosing the president. The VP's job is to fill in the gaps in the president's armor, and hopefully at the same time help balance any niches the other team have. Obama is a minority, so the McCain camp chose a woman. No harm in that women can be Vice Presidents too.

So, did you flinch when I referred to a woman as a minority? Probably not. Should you have? Most definitely. In the 2000 census women made up 50.9% of the US population. Just saying. You can talk about the glass ceiling, but you can't compare a minority to a woman. Its apples and oranges, both are fruity arguments.

They've made a big deal in the news about "The Bridge to nowhere". The facts say that Palin supported this bridge, then the popular tide of opinion changed and so did her opinion. There is no harm in this. However, you can't really say that she was against it. That would be a half truth, which is a lie in sheep's clothing.

For most of my life I said over and over again that I didn't care for blond girls. My preference was for brunets or red heads (a man can dream). If you look at the facts of my dating record you will see that I tended to prefer small, brown haired girls who were looking for a knight in shining armor to protect them from the evils of the world. Then I married a tall powerful, intelligent, capable of killing me with her pinky blond. Can I really honestly say, "I have always preferred blonds"? Nope. I CAN say, I didn't used to like blonds but I saw the error in my ways and I now prefer them. So logically, Palin could say, "At one time I supported the bridge to nowhere, but after careful study of the facts I turned against the idea entirely." She could, but she won't.

Politicians are not allowed to learn, or grow, or change their minds for any reason. If they do, it summons the clown parade with their clown cars, and honking horns, chanting "Waffle! Waffle! Waffle!" while making horses asses out of twisted balloons.

That's why we've had eight years of an idiot president. He's not allowed to say, "Whoopsie daisy, I sure blew that call." Not only can he not apologize for screwing up, he's not allowed to fix his mistakes either because that would imply that he's realized he's wrong, learned from his mistake, summoned the clown parade.

Meanwhile, EXTREMELY well paid political wolves are going over every speech with a microscope looking for clips and phrases they can rearrange, and spin out to say something to damage the candidate. Or, to put it in a less politically correct way, "lie and slander". Here's one that John McCain approved of (or there is a sound bite at the end that says he did) where they accuse of Obama of passing legislation that teaches comprehensive sex education to kindergartners. Lets for a minute assume that it is the truth from the mouth of the all mighty himself. Guess what! You've just agreed that McCain supports pedophiles! If you don't want to teach kindergartners where your "no-zones" are and teach them to tell a parent, teacher, or police officer anytime someone tries to touch them there, than you are supporting the people who are out there (RIGHT BEHIND YOU) groping your babies for sexual gratification.

But that's crazy talk. Obama didn't pass legislation teaching little kids how to do the horizontal mombo. For one, the legislation states that the comprehensive material had to be age and developmentally appropriate. They wouldn't be teaching the little ones to use a condom, they would have been teaching little ones to protect their no-zones. Not that this matters at all, the legislation didn't actually pass. Those poor little tykes have no idea what is happening to them and don't know what to do about it.

But I digress...

These idiotic and false messages are getting front page headlines for two reasons, first the mainstream media is playing to the lowest common denominator. Second, anyone who is dumb enough to believe the lie, is going to click on the ad on the page asking the question, "Who was a better leader of the world: Britney Spears or Cookie Monster? Click here to vote!" If you actually clicked that link I've lost a lot of respect for you. You should be ashamed!

Do you want to know who I think is to blame for all this mess? Ralph Nader. You want to know why? Seat belt laws. First Nadar helped make the seat belt mandatory in all cars. Then the laws were created forcing everyone to wear them. This very small thing was a death knell of the human race.

If seatbelts were optional, people when they bought a car would have the choice. "Hmmm...seat belts for $50 dollars or a front drivers side DVD player for $200. Duh! Give me the DVD player!" Some weeks later this guy watching is Epic Movie while driving 80 miles per hour down the highway veers across the median and slams head first into the car which has no DVD player but did come with seat belts because it is an obvious choice for safety. The Epic Movie fan and his family are launched out of the windshield where he splats into a tree in a cow pasture, a Mack Truck, and a guy on a moped. The family with the seat belts are hurt bad but survive. Darwinism is at play. The idiot has removed himself and his family from the gene pool, making the world a smarter place. The car filled with those who chose of their own free will to buckle up survive, also improving the gene pool. Its a win-win.

You think I'm making this up? You think the world isn't a dumber place. Feel free to examine the evidence.

No child left behind. Lowering the bar, one school at a time.
Search youtube for "painful and stupid" I got 41 THOUSAND hits and most of them also included the term "funny".
Hole in the wall. If I even have to say why...
Protectionism in general

My absolute earliest memory: I had been put into my crib for the night and my parents were getting ready to go to bed themselves. I pull the pair of tweezers I had hidden in my PJ's out, climb out of the crib and find out for myself exactly what it was in those little slots in the wall. (Which I learned later were called electrical sockets.) I learned a valuable lesson that night that has stuck with me my whole life. Do you doubt this was a valuable lesson?

As long as there are people out there stupid enough to spend money on internet enhancement drugs there will be a market for the idiocy that defines today's politics.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:17 PM | Permalink

I've been pretty good about keeping my mouth shut during the Spitzer thing. I thought I could move past it, but all I did was let it fester. So, here it is, and it is on.

The Sheriff of Wall Street earned his name by really cleaning up crime and making New York a safe place to do honest business. He also made a lot of enemies doing it, many of them political. So when the day came when they finally found a way to knock him from grace, he fell and he fell hard.

"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."
From the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Why else in this day and age can a guy who has done so much good get lynched for consorting with high dollar whores? He fell because he kept a whole bunch of people from making a whole lot of easy money. He also fell for being an honest man. Honest men are held to higher standards and all the good they do vanishes into little more than smoke and dust when it is found they aren't as honest as it was believed.

You can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. What do you do with a former coke head who dodged the draft, and got rich and powerful by making it easier for others to get rich and powerful? You try to make him president of course! If it doesn't work out you can always use rigged voting machines and hanging chads to finish the job. Sure people were upset but whats the big deal. No one was surprised. He didn't pretend to be anything he wasn't.

Now I read that the governor of New York has admitted to having affairs. No not that one. The new one. (Thanks to Fark.com for the headline.) I can only guess that this will blow over because he had no reputation for being an honest man. From what I've heard he is a guy who likes to get along. Criminals and big business people like guys who like to get along. They help grease those squeaky wheels.

There is a triangle, that defines the difference between criminals and big business people. The peak of the triangle is where a small number of big business people are while the flat bottom is where the multitudes of criminals are. The criminal only wants to get money and power and climb to the top of the triangle. Those big business people at the top of the triangle only need to try to stay there. Its an ugly but efficient system. The space between the top and the bottom is filled with politicians.

There was a time I believed that we wanted honest politicians. Now I realize that what we really need are dishonest politicians. With a dishonest politician we know where we stand. In the Lieutenant Governor's race the state employees have been getting almost daily an email from Hampton Dellinger. He has a plan. He is liked by all sorts of fluffy bunnies. He tells us every day in the emails he does. He's getting my vote. Not because of the fluffy bunnies but because he was the one dishonest enough to spam the state employees. No other candidate sends us emails. They are probably too honest to do so, or they are not clever enough to figure out who to pay off to get the email list.

He's my kind of scum, fearless and inventive.

This of course leads you to wonder about my presidential choices. Its a tough one. I was sort of rooting for Bush as dictator for life. All of the candidates seem like good people, so I will probably lean in the direction of the Republicans. As a rule they are always closest to the top of the triangle, and if McCain is as good as a man as he seems, surely someone out there will step up and pull his strings. Perhaps they are thinking he's good enough to get elected but not good enough to abuse power. That means that the Vice president will be truly a scoundrel, and they only need to wait for age to catch up with McCain. Of course, these are republicans so I can only guess they have a plan to help him along if his health suddenly improves and his goodness crimps their style too much.

Honest men have no place in modern politics.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:06 PM | Permalink

Where I come from, when you invite someone some place, you actually want them there and you treat them with respect. From the articles I have been reading Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, must be from someplace else entirely. Perhaps it is my Southern upbringing, perhaps it is because I never belonged to a fraternity, but if someone invited me someplace as a guest and then ripped me a new one in front of all of their friends, I would have to beat someone's ass.

To this end, I guess that makes me a lesser man than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Of course, I suppose this thing is still developing. My blood is Irish, we strike quickly when insulted. Who knows about the Iranians, later on Mahmoud just might crash a plane into Bollinger's house or something. Different cultures different styles. Who could blame him?

It would be a hoot if he turned the other cheek though. That would kink the "Iran is Evil" crowd's hose for a bit. Well, I suppose just long enough to call him a coward or something. Some people you just can't reach.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had hoped that this sort of thing was something we could call a part of our primitive history. It seems however that pockets of primitive thinking linger on. Homo Honkius is alive and well and living in Jena Louisiana. Send in the cryptozoologist.

From Color of Change:

I just learned about a case of segregation-era oppression happening today in Jena, Louisiana. I signed onto ColorOfChange.org's campaign for justice in Jena, and wanted to invite you to do the same.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1437-264161

Last fall in Jena, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

It's a story that reads like one from the Jim Crow era, when judges, lawyers and all-white juries used the justice system to keep blacks in "their place." But it's happening today. The families of these young men are fighting back, but the story has gotten minimal press. Together, we can make sure their story is told and that the Governor of Louisiana intervenes and provides justice for the Jena 6. It starts now. Please join me:

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1437-264161

The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the stage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the next couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of Jena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same weekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by a young white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran away. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students were later arrested for the theft of the gun.

That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was beaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black students "nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. He was taken to the hospital, but was released and was well enough to go to a social event that evening.

Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified minor, were expelled from school, arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder. The first trial ended last month, and Mychal Bell, who has been in prison since December, was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery (both felonies) by an all-white jury in a trial where his public defender called no witnesses. During his trial, Mychal's parents were ordered not to speak to the media and the court prohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or where the judge could see them.

Mychal is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, and could go to jail for 22 years. Theo Shaw's trial is next. He will finally make bail this week.

The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fighting tooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they are standing strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone, their sons will be a long time coming home. But if we act now, we can make a difference.

Join me in demanding that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco get involved to make sure that justice is served for Mychal Bell, and that DA Reed Walters drop the charges against the 5 boys who have not yet gone to trial.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1437-264161

Those wondering about my inflammatory blog title, it has been edited several times. Originally I was going to go in the direction of Outbreak and liken the racism to a deadly virus. Then I said, "Nuke Reed Walters". My thinking was that if you kill the head vampire the others would be freed. But who the heck is this Reed Walter's guy anyway and why should you care from just a blog title. So I went back to nuking the town, but I cracked myself up when I thought of racist as a hopefully extinct scavenger. The problem was the title "Mysterious Cryptid found in Jena Louisiana" would simply attract the wrong crowd. So I went with the hellfire and brimstone Southern Baptist title but kept the mysterious creatures entry. Now you've seen into the mind of the writer.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:54 AM | Permalink

This has been on the back of my mind for a while. I have slept on it, I have showered on it, I have driven on it, I have walked to my office thinking it over. The reasons I am pondering such an odd subject is the NC prison system requires a doctor on site during executions. The NC medical board says it will take action against any doctor who does so because it violates the Hippocratic Oath. The prison system went to court to try to force the medical board to not take action against the doctors. Their argument? "An execution is not a medical procedure."

I have thought this over and I agree with the prison system. Any fool can kill someone and the prisons are full of fools that do. Therefore they don't need a doctor on site at all. Fill the role the doctor had with the next guy in line for the procedure. Chances are if you are on death row, you've already had some practice killing someone, and you are going to be killed for it anyway in keeping with the bibles "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "Eye for an eye" clauses. What's one more going to hurt. Plus they will already be familiar with the method of their own demise so they can face it more relaxed when their own time comes.

Of course it is actually more complicated than that. They want someone there to make sure that the guy being killed doesn't actually get hurt in the process, and they believe the doctor has some sort of leg up here. They are worried about the killing of someone being inhumane. I don't see the big issue. The Humane Society has occasion to put wayward pets down. They are very humane, everyone knows it. They even use "humane" in their name. If you kill the person the same way they kill the animals you would be humane about your killing and wouldn't have to worry about it. Again no doctor necessary.

If you are worried about if you actually successfully killed the guy, perhaps you are not ready to be in the killing business yet. Again, utilize your experts already in death row. They could teach you a thing or two about killing and if you still aren't sure, when the ambulance comes the next morning to haul the deceased to the morgue, while they are riding over they can run a few standard "are they still alive" test. Remember, no one survives embalming anyway, so if the guy is mostly dead he will be all the way dead once his blood is replaced with embalming fluid.

If he comes back from that he's a zombie, and we have ways of dealing with zombies.

Bottom line lets keep the doctors as far away from the state mandated killing as possible. It just isn't what they do.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last night just before my Saber class I was visited by one of Greensboro's finest, and I am not speaking ironically or sarcastically. The police department was aware of my previous entry on the safety of the area surrounding the YWCA, and the excellent comments it attracted. The officer outlined what they were doing to help improve the security of the area. I outlined what we were doing to improve our own safety.

Each of us was satisfied with the action plans the other was taking and I taught my class as the solo coach no longer feeling like I had to keep one eye on the door to the front desk in case I needed to be called to instant action. I liked being able to focus wholly on my students again. I felt they got a better lesson. At the end of class, we left in groups. As the last fencer out (and usually the last patron), I pulled the external doors to, assuring that those YWCA employees left inside were secure. It was a good night.

Many thanks to the Greensboro Police Department for coming by, it was appreciated.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Big Oil, you know the guys who are raking in record profits while you pay over $2.00 per gallon? Besides getting a substantial portion of your pay at the pump, they get a big fat check from the government. This means you pay them TWICE! Isn't THAT cool? Unless you own stock in Exxon, I suspect the answer is an resounding HECK NO!

As you may be aware we have a brand new majority in congress and they are all looking to score some points with us Americans. This being said, we need a good big loud voice to them saying that we are tired of paying twice for the same tank of gas! We are tired of them diging up the world looking for oil. We are tired of the pollution. We know better ways of powering our cars exist, why can't we use them?

A petition has been created to give you this voice. Lets get them to make their first 100 hours memorable and not wasted. Here's How

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:36 PM | Permalink

Unless you have never read anything I have ever written before, or have never spoken to me about politics, you already know that I am unsatisified with the job President Bush is doing. The world holds the United States to a higher standard because we are the most powerful country in the world. Thus, we hold our president to a higher standard. It isn't just me, let us not forget that Clinton was practically burned at the stake for being a man. Bush on the other hand has, to the best of our knowledge kept it in his pants, but he makes up for it by acting like an idiot monkey at every turn. But people change...

Earlier this week I was looking at a picture that the Voyager probe took from its vantage point outside of our solar system looking back at Earth. At that distance the Earth was less than a pixil across, but by some amazing stroke of luck it managed to capture us, "A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam". I am not quoting Carl Sagan exactly but I mean to. Go here to see the image and the article about it. In case you aren't into clicking links I want to quote a part of Dr. Sagan's speech because it is an amazing revelation.

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

Maybe it was this. Maybe it was the fact that I watched Dead Man's Chest last night. Maybe it was the box of Bojangles chicken I ate before bed. For whatever reason, last night I dreamed that I was standing in Center City Park listening to people talking about politics and war (these topics are inseparable). Then I flew, I just rose above the park, the city, the county, the state, the country, the continent, the earth. I stood there in space above our little blue world and I realized that America isn't the largest or the most powerful country in the history of man. In the entire history of man the greatest human ever was still just a human. I realized that Bush isn't a really bad president of the greatest country ever, he is an amazing Pirate King, leading a country founded on revolution, built by broken promises, and fueled by priacy. We are not a rogue nation, we are a nation of rogues, and the king of all rogues leads us.

I awoke a changed man. My approval rating of Bush grew seven sizes that day.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:56 AM | Permalink

First things first, many thanks to Sara for making this connection in the shower this morning. Bathing seems to bring the best out of intellects. I hope no one ever outlaws it!

War is good for the economy! I used to hear that all the time in both history and economics classes. While it is a pretty crass statement, it is also true. Back in the day, wars meant that average people had plenty of good jobs making uniforms, ammunition, equipment, weapons, and more. Nowhere was this more clear than in the first and second world wars. Pretty much an entire middle class made their livings on the war effort.

But times they are a changing. Modern warefare uses fewer troops, thus less equipment. Modern manufacturing technologies means that fewer workers are needed to make the same amount of product. So the middle class sees little econimic gain. The money is still there of course or we wouldn't still find ourselves in these foreign wars. It is just being made by the few elite people who own the companies who make the wartime goods and services.

Its just coincidence that it takes money to run for public office, so only people with money get elected and they make their money on oil, weapons, and services used in the war effort. Right?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:55 AM | Permalink

It used to be that to steal an election you had to be better than the other candidate. Then you only needed to look better than the other candidate. Then you needed destroy your opponents life. Now you only need to hack the machines. Here's how.

I don't know about you, but I think Yellow Dog has a real shot this year. Thanks to Jeff Williams for the tip.
I miss the old days where you needed to be better than your opponent to win.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Namely explain the entire voting process in a way that everyone could understand and leave them wanting to participate. In case I haven't said it before, this guy really impresses me.

the show with zefrank

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:19 AM | Permalink

Bloggers all over Greensboro will keep a low profile on Wednesday as the Commander and thief himself is comming for a visit. I guess he's getting tired of that "idiot monkey" joke.

Maybe I'll take a sick day and keep out of the county. The last thing I want to see is a couple of suits coming to take me to one of those spiffy new homeland security resorts. Of course, if they come for me, they'll come for at least half of the Greensboro blogging crowd. I might disappear, but at least I'd be in good company.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I read this article this morning about an Ohio girl who was suspended because she was caught with a comb in school. This tap danced on my "outrage" button and so I am now on a mission. I will find this secret list of banned items and expose the dangers of combs and...stuff. I donno.

The Guilford County Schools Student Handbook a sprawling 94 page tome of enlightenment has this to say:

Rule 22 - Possession of a Dangerous Weaponor Other Instrument
Students shall not possess or conceal or transport any weapon or other instrument
that could cause or that is intended to cause bodily injury or other harm to another
or misuse otherwise acceptable objects in a manner intended to cause harm to
others at any time while a student is at school in any school building and on any
school premises, attending school-sponsored activities, on or about any schoolowned
or operated vehicle, off school property at any school-sponsored or school
approved activity or function or during any period of time when students are subject
to the authority of school personnel, and at any time when the student's behavior
has a direct and immediate effect on maintaining order and discipline and protecting
safety and welfare of students and staff. N.C.G.S. 115C-391(d1) mandates a 365-
day suspension for students in possession of dynamite cartridges, bombs, grenades,
mines, or powerful explosives. Fireworks are excluded from these provisions.
Consequences
• Elementary - Up to 10 days OSS. Confiscate weapon. Law enforcement will be
called. Repeated offenses may result in long-term suspension.
• Middle School - Long-term suspension up to 365 days. Confiscate weapon. Law
enforcement will be called.
• High School - Long-term suspension up to 365 days. Confiscate weapon. Law
enforcement will be called. Principals of high schools on a block schedule must
consult their School Support Officers prior to suspending a student out of school for
more than five (5) days.

Well, that doesn't seem so bad. It implies a comb is only a weapon when used as a weapon. I approve. Wait a minute, 94 pages and I couldn't even find a dress code? Hmmm...

Ok, the dress code for the county was strait forward enough. If you smell, or your cloths are disruptive, you are in trouble. The definition of "Disruptive" is left to the individual school. Aycock doesn't allow anyone to wear red for instance.
Wow, secret societies are banned in guilford county schools. Take that you Masons! And you, vile members of the Reel Big Fish fanclub. Ban the tube top!

Door to door selling is allowed up to twice a year and only by High School students. So you middle schoolers selling wrapping paper and stuff for your school are breaking the law.

You know, its odd. I really expected a list like the TSA post for things not allowed on airplanes.

It looks like in leu of a list, what is being said is "We get to decide on a case by case basis, what your child may or may not have subject to change at any time." So relax parents, your child will be suspended for the oddest things at any time. You can use common sense to help keep it to a minimum but basically if your child looks crosseyed, they will be suspended for having a book, and when they return to school without books, they will be suspended for not having their books.

My advice, save some vacation days and when the man goes all arbitrary on your kids backside, you can smile and enjoy a day at the zoo.

"OMG you got suspended for a ruler? What are you going to do now?"
"Me, I'm going to Disney land."

Meanwhile I will be quietly designing a training program so my children will be able to kill with a book, pencil, crayon, or white long sleeved polo shirt with between 2 and four buttons by the time they leave pre-K. You can never be too careful these days. People are killing Amish kids, no child is safe anymore.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have been so good. I have kept the politics out of my blog for so long, but I can't ignore this. Bush signed into law a bill that creates some minnimum requirements for FEMA directors. He immediately signed himself another "This law doesn't apply to me" signing statement. Read it here.

I realize that I am putting myself on the short list for a one way trip to Gitmo for saying this, but it had to be said. WTF is that idiot monkey think he's up to anyway?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was listening last night to the latest offensive and harassing voice mail from Vernon Robinson on the phone. This time to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies, some idiot is singing to me in true redneck fashion about how their politiical enemy was spending all of my money on illegal immigrants. It occured to me that the phone call was harassing, insulting, and not for a candidate in my district. Perhaps I should return the favor either with some phone calls of my own or maybe a lawyer's note. Then it occured to me that the candidate they were attacking is the one that really should be doing the lawyering. I started thinking back to all of the other heated political campains and how candidates took turns lying about each other. This candidate was AWOL from the national guard, this candidate was hated by everyone under him in the military. Look at this picture we made in photoshop with this candidate and a known traitor. If I had said any of the things above about any of you, I'd have found myself in court answering to either libel or slander charges.

Then it all became clear to me. They have an honor system. Honor among politicians as it were.

Look at it like this with these entirely made up ficticious examples.

"Vermin" of the Bloated Pachyderm Party accuses "Cockroach" of the Stubborn Ass party of being a child molester. The media goes wild with the story and Cockroach falls like a stone in the polls the only way Cockroach can combat it is to take Vermin to court for libel, slander or both.

They get to court and Vermin has to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cockroach is a child molester. He made it up clearly, so he can't do it even though he has reams of color photos of Coackroach kissing babies at various Wally World grand openings. Instead, he takes the time in court under oath to prove beyone a shadow of a doubt that in 1979 Cockroach got drunk and slept with someone not of his wife at a party out of town. He also proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cockroach failed to file a tax return during his sophmore year of college. It is quickly forgotten that Vermin lied about the baby raping thing, because everyone's going goo-gah over the 1979 "One Night Stand-Gate" and the tax dodging incident. (Even though one of these may not have actually occured.)

So what have we learned? Politicians can say anything they want to about anyone they want to without any fear of repercussion. (They can also get past the "do not call" list.) So maybe what I really ought to do is run for Trinity or something and accuse Vernon Robinson of being an abuser of small furry woodland creatures. It clearly wouldn't even matter that I wasn't running "against" Vernon for the position or even in the same district. I'd be a politician and would only have to answer to the bloggers.

On the other hand, being a politician is a pretty slimy and disgusting job. I don't think I have the stomach for it. If I want to lie for a living I'll I do it honestly by writing fiction, or being an actor.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over the years our representitive democratic government has been frought with scandle, politicians bought, votes bought and sold, votes stolen, elections stolen, presidents that dare not to hold to a higher ideal. Thanks to the power of the internet, these events are being uncovered more and more because more people with equal voice (like bloggers) are watching. I have heard folks say that the corruption in our government was some new thing brought on by a lack of "Moral Values". Nobody can agree on what those values are by the way. "Moral Values" seems to be defiinded as "How I want you to behave."

I remember back in High School history class where the winners were always right because they wrote the history. In this class there was never any corruption worth mentioning because the winners always stomped it out. In this class we were taught that in ancient Greece all citizens had one vote and they all participated in government. It worked because the population wasn't all that great, they all lived in a city state, and women, slaves and foreigners were not citizens. (Slaves and foreigners could buy freedom and citizenship however.) This system stopped working when there were too many citizens too far apart geographically to really effectively govern themselves. Throw in a couple of invasions, and the sytem eventually evolved into something like we are using today.

I contend that the very technologies we use to keep a fire lit under those people who claim to represent us could be used to create a system whereby we could bring back the true democracy. There are more than enough smart people in internet land to make that happen. The power of many over the power of few and all.

Off the cuff we would need a system where by each eligable American voter can authenticate into a system and be allowed to cast a vote on issues that concern them. True majority rule. We can even use some of that freedom were giving up anyway to make it where we have to use a fingerprint or retina scan to prove who we were and each of us would have a complete record of ever vote we cast. Why not, we're all spewing our opinions online everyday and more and more people are comming to realize that nothing is truly anonomious.

In the bright side of my little dream, beurocracy would shrink. No more electing a guy to represent you only to have him get bought out by some corporation through a well paid lobbiest firm. Now those corporations have to pay lobbiest to buy YOU out.

True, Exxon would surely monitor the voting practices of its employees and frown upon those who "vote against the best interest of the share holders" but good news folks, there are other corporations who probably like the way you think and you could work for them and safely vote your consious.

Could it be fudged DiBold style? I am sure it could, but with each person getting to see their vote in action and so many of us looking for bugs, it would quickly evolve into a ironclad bug free system.

Would it require each eligable voter to keep abreast of current events. Yes. (That's a good thing.)
Would some people still not vote? Yes. Either they don't know the issue well enough to make a educated vote, or they choose not to participate. How is that different from today? I mean other than the fact that there could be an obstain button for folks to use when they didn't know how to vote.

Is it a perfect plan? No, I only starting writing this entry a half hour ago, but you have to ask yourself, would it be any worse than what we have now? And you lobbiest can just obstain from that question, I wasn't talking to you.

There is a phenomonom called various things like "collective wisdom", "crowd intelligence" and "Wisdom of Crowds". It works like this. Fill a jar with marbles and ask everyone you know to guess how many marbles are in the jar. Write down all their answers. You will find that the answers range widely and infact no one may guess it correctly. Now average all the guesses. Whatever that answer is is proabably frightenly close to the actual answer. This method is so accurate that it is pretty standard practice in Project Management to use it in determinining timelines for work you've never done before. It is powerful, and it could be leveraged in a true democracy.

Think it over. Shoot all the holes in it you want. Holes can be filled.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Last night we had Chinese for dinner. The fortunes are often interesting and insightful, last nights made me understand politics in its entirity.

Now I understand why Americans love spending all their time aghast at the antics of politicians who never should have been elected in the first place. It is as though Hollywood just isn't enough. "Snakes on a Plane", is good entertainment, but a local politician says that homosexuality is "as natural as pedophilia." That's GREAT entertainment. All this time I've been shaking my head wondering how folks who do and say such stupid things are elected over and over again. I've missed the point. The point is, people WANT guys in office to do and say idiotic things, shoot lawyers, and bastardize the American English language. It is entertainment!

Yes, good politicians exist and they work hard to do good works, and we can't name any of them, because they aren't singing and dancing in the lime light. They are in the trenches doing good works day in and day out.

So I suppose, based on this enlightenment, the greatest compliament you can lay on a politician is to say to them, "Who?" when they introduce themselves. If we've never heard of them, they must not suck.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:28 AM | Permalink

The other night the Vermin Robinson camp struck again with terrorist 1/2 messages on my answering machine. This racest tirade has got to end. (And I KNOW tirades) Now he's going after the Mexicans, how soon before he comes after me. As an person of Irish decent and a Caomhánach to boot I take offense in a big old historical way. If I called your house playing "Mammy", talking up grape soda and fried pork you'd chase me up a tree and set fire to it (and you would be well within your rights to do so).

Will the Vermin Robinson representitive whose autodialer uses the number 336-499-6570 Stop calling me and harassing me or I will take legal action! You have no right to terrorize me in this way! I'm not even in your stupid district. Come to thing of it, YOU aren't in your stupid district! You are as bad as the blog spammer who is leaving the message "You have a great site, but I'm so sorry you have a lot of spam :-(" on my blog. Also a slanderous lie by the way. My blog is spam free thanks to dilagence and hard work.

Of course, on the other hand we haven't heard much out of Ashton Kutcher lately. Perhaps he is shooting the movie Punk'd America, and the joke (Vermin Robinson) is on America. Why else would this cross between Boss Hogg, Hitler, and a professional wrestler be in my voicemail spewing hot molten crazy all over the place.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In one bold sentence I will confuse both the left and the right. I do not think illegal immigrants should have the same rights as US citizens, however HR 4437 is a crock of bull.

Crazy huh? I'll bet some readers expected me to burst into flames just then.

Before I rant on, you might need a quick breakdown of what HR4437 is. Here's the Wikipedia article Here is what it means to immigrants. Here's how Haliburton and their government payouts intend to profit from us. Finally, here's all the other things you can do with detention centers. Most of these things smack of concentration camps.

There are some out there who will undoubtably say this is an either or issue. As always, these people are still wrong. The United States has a system of Immigration. Some would say that this system is broken. I am not so sure. Misapplied, mismanaged, poorly funded, unevenly applied, these are all things that might describe it, but it isn't a failure, it simply hasn't been allowed to work. HR 4437 is an invitation to fascism. I cannot and will not support that, even if this means that in 10 years my blog will be used to put me in Haliburton detention center. When in doubt, always go with the forefathers. I think it is a good rule of thumb.

So what we had May 1st with the Immigration Rally was for the most part an extreme response to HR 4437. Extreme both in its big and peaceful turnout (something they should be extremely proud of), and extreme in their demand of a general amnesty for non-citizens of the United States who reside in the U.S. illegally. You don't get amnesty, you're not a citizen. Go get citizenship. (Yes, easier said than done, but still the correct answer.)

HR4437 should line the cage of a tropical bird. Should the border patrols be steped up? Absolutely. Do we need to build a fence on our northern and southern borders? Extreme, and expensive even if it were effective. I wonder by the way if the northern fence is meant to keep the Canadians out or us in? Should an illegal who gets caught driving drunk be charged with a felony and tossed into Halliburton Land guilty until proven innocent? Nope. Should we break up mixed families and make it so they can never see each other again? No Pat Roberson, no Rush Limbaugh, and no Jim Sensenbrenner, (R) Wisconsin.

Ed Cone is correct, it is a complex issue. I just want to make sure everyone understands it isn't a black and white issue. (Or even brown and white if that is how you view the world.)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I haven't noticed it so much in Guilford county, but in Rockingham and Randolph, and even back home in Carteret County, Folks running for sheriff are running as Demoncrate or Repugnican. I just can't get a handle on this concept. Do repugnicans and the demoncrates fight crime differently or something? It is possible I suppose based on the way they commit crimes. Does a democrat sheriff protect his constituents by focusing on the rich white collar criminals? Does the republican sheriff protect his rich white collar constituents while focusing on the poor criminal? If this is what is happening, I want an independent sheriff. I would feel a whole lot safer knowing that my sheriff treats all criminals the same.

I would in fact rather keep the sheriff candidates as far away as I could from the folks running for public office. I am just not sure that mixing crime fighting and politics is ever a good idea. Look at all the trouble we've had mixing crime and politics. There is so much talk of trying to bring down the criminals running the show that the show really hasn't been running at all. Well, except the crime part.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:34 AM | Permalink

Illegal imigrants and supporters are taking to the streets in protest in order to demand rights. They say that by not working or buying today they will prove that they can cripple our economy. They demands rights! Apparently a large population hasn't gotten the memo about how rights work in this country. They would have gotten that information had they looked into the process of being legal. Besides human rights that everyone gets including them, citizens of the United States get rights as citizens, which include voting, good roads, free school for the kids, help for the poor, etc. There is even a government office whose sole purpose is to help people become citizens.

But these people are illegal. They didn't go get citizenship. Admitedly some of them might have tried, and they might have gotten turned down for whatever reason. If you aren't a citizen, or you don't have a greencard, or visa, then that would mean that you are breaking the law and thus "illegal".

Did you know that criminals convicted of a felony lose their rights as citizens? No more voting, no more being a gun owner. If you are breaking the law now just by being here, what makes you think you are going to get rights as a citizen? What makes you think you should?

Do you want to be a citizen? Great! There is a process you go through to become a legal US citizen. It might not be easy, but nothing good ever is.

If you are illegal, you need to get legal or go home. Just because someone else breaks the law by exploiting you in the work place doesn't make you any less illegal. You say that you are willing to do work that none of the real Americans are willing to do. You might be right, but the homeless on the streets and the otherwise out of work Americans get first dibs. If we as a country have jobs we can't fill with the already legal Americans, perhaps those jobs will end up oursourced to your own country. If they can't, then your chances of going through the process and being made a legal US citizen are boosted big time.

As it stands, you don't get much sympathy from me. I can understand why you want to come here, but there are better ways of doing it. All I see now is a bunch of illegal people undercutting the compeitition for jobs and using resources meant for US Citizens. (Like public schools.) That isn't very nice.

All you are doing by taking to the street now, is making it easier to get rounded up and shipped to your country of origion, which I suppose come to think of it probably isn't a bad thing.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I love this time of year, as the days get warmer and the sleeves get shorter, some UNCG student's thoughts turn towards campus politics. The goal of student politics of course is not to hold power but to draw attention away from it. It is really a cute way of making students think they have power. They don't of course, but instead they get trained in how politics works in the real world. I suppose it is like in the military training without ammunition.

What makes this time of year so much fun is the campaining, the signs, the fliers, the meetings, the wild promisses for things that they couldn't deliever even if they wanted to. Every year just about every candidate says that they will fight to lower tuition and fees. That's like Bush claiming he can bring world peace to the middle east. That's like me saying I am going to change the shade of the color of Mr. Sun. There are forces in this universe that are outside of your control. Happieness comes from identifying those and accepting the situation for what it is. For me, I like Mr. Sun just the way he is.

I only wish I knew of some student candidate websites I could link here. It is interesting to see what is important to them, and what they think they have control over. Better still would be if I had a digital camera that I could take pictures of the campain posters and fliers. It is really an interesting exercise.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:18 AM | Permalink

At the advice of Plead The First, I went by Political Compass and took a quiz. The results shocked and surprised me. I wonder what event sent me down this extreme path. I always prided myself on being a centrist, and now I find I am a monster. I am going to need a moment, and a whole chicken, and maybe some steamed vegies...

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.05

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

ABC News has the story, so does Reuters.
The FARK headline read:"Then: "Congress is preparing an investigation, and I will work with members of both parties to make sure this effort is thorough." Now: White House resists Katrina probe"

Will someone tell the idiot monkey in charge that you can't simply opt out. Congressional investigations are funny like that. If congress came to me and asked me about something, I couldn't just say, "I'll tell you a little, but I am not giving certain information to you." They frown on that. Infact, they would without question lock my butt up. Unless of course they subpoena me, and then I plead the fifth, that's legal and good. Yet, the damned dirty ape can sit back and say, "This information is off limits to you." What? Is this part of something larger? Is Katrina the work of the nefarious Osama Bin Ladin? Well in that case, by all means keep that a national secret. NOT. What, do you think we are stupid? If so, please let us know. One would think someone in the white house would be there familiar enough with the rule book to quickly whisper into the appropriate ear, "We can't do that." Did they fire that guy or something?

Separation of powers people, that's all I'm talking about. Don't think I have forgotten the other presidents that have done this, the difference is now I am blogging about it, and the idiot monkey is the biggest offender right now. Again, don't get me wrong, its a great racket. You get made president, you do everything during your administration possible to get as many of your closest and dearest rich beyond their wildest dreams, and you retire after 4 or 8 years to write a book (or in some cases, maybe to learn to read). Meanwhile everyman is getting slowly ground into paste under the boots of "The Man". Maybe he could get someone to write a book for him about that, "How to Succeed in Business Through Politics". I guarantee it would be a best seller.

The way things have been looking lately Chapter One would be titled, "Don't let them fool you, President = King of the world".

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:08 AM | Permalink

If the allegation is true it is not only going to be the subject of a lot more bad outsourcing jokes, but a smoking gun showing the world to what lengths our government will go to to circumvent its own laws.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am getting tired of constantly being told that we don't know what is good for us. I will be the first to admit that the elected president is some pretty strong evidence that we really don't know what is good for us. Fortunately, (or unfortunately) we have seen so much evidence lately of breaking, rewriting, or circumventing the law, who knows, we might not have voted our estemed leader into office. Could be someone thought they knew better than the rest of us what is good for us and relieved us of the burdon of choosing a president.

If the news is wrong and torture isn't being outsourced, then who is snatching people from the streets of the world and torturing them? Terrorist? Pat Roberson? The Teletubbies? I don't know about you but I wouldn't mind getting the truth once in a while. On the first try. Even if it was a horrible truth, it would be true, and that's about the best starting place I can think of.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:17 PM | Permalink

All too often we hear on the news about children who perhaps aren't fitting in socially. They get picked on and bullied by the cool kids maybe for years, and one day they just snap. We never hear their story until the six O'clock news on the day they decided they weren't going to take it anymore. France has long been that picked on kid, apparently they have decided they aren't going to take it anymore.

Jacques Chirac has cast asside his silly beret, hitched up his big boy pants, and in his best John Wayne voice announced that they would drop THE bomb on any country that harbors terrorist who attack France.

We probably want to work with our children and picked on countries to develop skills where they can difuse these situations early before they escalate to this level. If my child ends up being the picked on one in school, I will teach them very early to break the nose of the bully, striking so hard and so fast that the bully will never bother them again. My child will get suspended for a little while, but at least they aren't going to go on a shooting rampage years later when they finally decided enough is enough.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I heard this morning that the conservative Republicans had a real problem convincing the rest of the Republican party to push through a funding cut to many of the more popular programs targeted towards the lower class. Through some hard wheeling and dealing and I am sure more than a little hardball they just managed to get enough votes to do the job.

Yes, I have heard the poor excuses, "Stopping a standard increase is not the same thing as cutting funding." Bullpucky. If the money doesn't change and the cost goes up for the same services it does exactly the same thing as a cut. Give up on your semantics game.

Meanwhile there is the push to make the tax cuts for the rich permenant. Please.

Stop pussyfooting around and just do what you want to do you conservative dolts. Clever is not your forte, you need go with your strengths.

You don't want people from Mexico and Central America crossing the border and taking bottom rung jobs. You would rather Americans work for those wages digging ditches. The problem is the Americans who used to be counted on to dig dithces are getting all uppitity, getting financial aid, getting educated, and getting better jobs. The only thing to do to halt the rapidly shrinking naturalized American poor is to shove them back down in the ditches and chicken processing plants. You demand a white pool boy! You demand a return to traditional values!

Quit blowing smoke then. Pass a law that the rich split up the taxes paid by the poor get that lower class back in the field where they belong. Quit lying to us. Lying to us only going to make it worse when we rise up as one and pee in your swimming pools.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:54 AM | Permalink

I belong to a message board filled with friends both near and far who use it as a way to keep in touch even though the miles separate us. On it people feel fairly free to speak their mind so long as they are prepared to get called out on it once in a while. Occasionally, it can get tense, but like friends do, the written promise of a beer to bury the hatchet is as good as the real thing. Recently on the board I made the casual, and to my way of thinking, obvious statement that I was a centrist. You would have thought I had proclaimed the moon was made of green cheese from the reaction. No one offered an opinion of a more fitting label, but it was painfully clear to me that I am seen as a horn throwing, flaming liberal. I could take offence to that, especially since these days liberal is the new Jew, Black or Homosexual. No offense to any of these groups, and especially to anyone who happens to be all three and a liberal as well, fate has delt you a low blow with society my friend.

I am smart enough to know that if that many people crack on me for something, it must appear that I have stated some sort of mistake, or at least an outright lie. In order to get to the bottom of this, I figured I would throw out a few major political points and take a stand on them. Either my opinion will lay to the left, or it will lay to the right. My place on the political tree will be the average of them. I don't actually know why I am doing this, all of the really cool political test all say that I am a centrist, but because of my trust in and my love for my friends, I will take a new crack at this in my own less than scientific way.

1. Roe VS Wade: I support Roe VS Wade. Liberal Who am I to think I know better how to decide what a stranger should do with their own body.

2. Guns: I support the right to keep and bear arms. Conservative Disarming a population only empowers the criminal element.

3. Illegal Imigrants: I believe that illegal imigrants should be deported. Conservative Legal Imigration is fine and there should be little or no resaon to refuse the right to imigrate to anyone (In or out).

4. Prohibition: I believe that prohibition was a kooky idea. Liberal Besides alcohol is a great luxury item for taxing the bejesus out of.

5. Civil Rights: I believe that all men and women should be treated as equals. Liberal

6. Women's Rights: (See Above) Liberal

7. Gay Rights: (See Above) liberal

8. Gay Marriage: This is a tough one. I think this whole debate is nothing more than a misunderstanding brought on by some sloppy planning early on. Marriage is today really a two headed beast. One head embodies the religious aspect, man, woman, god, snake and some kings who wanted a new wife without having to kill off the old one. The other head is law, this person is legally agreeing to assign rights to property, health insurance benifits, etc to another person. Somewhere along the way, everyone seemed to see it as one creature, and you can't be legal unless god (whatever version they are worshipping today) says so. This whole thing can be solved if everyone decides once and for all, that in order for your marriage to be recognized by the church you have to follow whatever the church is telling you today. If you want to be Legal you have to get a marriage license, this gets you the inheritence rights, insurance benifits etc. If you want both you have to jump through both hoops.

9. Taxes: 10% of your salary should go to the government no matter how many kids you have or how much money you bring home. If you want to pay less, earn less. No deductions, loop holes, or exceptions. Liberal I can't imagine any rich man agreeing to this, and since most rich men seem to be conservative, that must mean I'm not on this issue. (If they did, we would have this system in place already as there are no real poor politicians at that level of Government.)

10. Religion: My first thought is to say Liberal here. I really like this new hippy diety, who has a god for a dad, a human for a mother, and is a relative newcomer on the worship circuit being dead only a couple of thousand years now. I like Jesus and he is the epitome of everything that is Liberal. Peace, love, forgiveness, he was the 1970's without the Viet Nam and the drug abuse. However, some real wack jobs on the extreme conservative side are claiming him and I'm not sure why really. Their rhetoric makes them sound like the very ones who nailed Jesus to the cross to begin with. So if I say I love Jesus I am more or less aligning myself with the ultra conservative nutjobs who are against choice, free will, and equal rights. I get a headache thinking about it. I mean, if they wanted to be conservative you would think they would ignore this Johnny Come Lately New Testament nonsense and go for that "Old Time Religion" talking animals, angry gods, and sacrifices.

Ok, that's ten lets tally up the scores.

Conservative: Guns and Illegal Imigration, that makes two.
Liberal: Roe Vs Wade, Prohibition, civil rights, Women's rights, Gay Rights, and taxes that makes six.
Unlabelable: Gay Marriage and Religion that makes two.

Huh, I guess I am a horn throwing flamming liberal. Why don't I feel like it then? I mean, I haven't stolen anyone's land in the name of Manifest Destany, or even Eminent Domain. I haven't fought long and hard against war unjust or othwise (forgive me Jesus). I haven't tried to tell anyone how to live their lives, or even try to force my personal morals on them. I think the security in London and DC is probably a pretty good idea. (Hold the RFI please, I doubt its kosher anyway.) Oh the confusion! Oh the agony! Rush Limbah, grant me the strength to want to bring Great Democracy to all oil producing countries without being distracted by things like Sudan, Ruwhanda, Somalia, North Korea, the Congo, and so on! Save me from the liberal media bent on confusing my wittle mind! Help me to know that everything we know is wrong and if we just do whatever you say everything will be right again in the world! Give me a freakin break!!!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was surprised that Congress wanted to take Brown to task, everyone had agreed that Brown was going to be the scapegoat pretty early on and he accepted his role and resigned. It should have been over, but I guess some congressional types needed some sound bites to boost their popluarity numbers. They wanted a scapegoat, Brown is the scapegoat. They wanted a whipping boy, Brown never agreed to that.

And why should he? Is he to blame for most of FEMA's failures during Katrina? Yes. Is there still plenty of blame to go around? Yes again. Should he take all of the blame for everything? Congress seems to think so. Lets be honest, Brown was appointed, everyone else involved was elected. Everyone wants to be reelected. None of them are going to want to shoulder any of their personal blame and are going to take great pains to spin that blame somewhere else. Congress sees no reason why Brown shouldn't be the fall guy here. Good for reelection campains, bad for Americans.

Lets face it, I would vote for the Mayer of New Orleans as president of the united states, but he should've evacuated New Olreans before escape became impossible. There were plenty of school busses and such available to at least make a good college try. Instead the busses were sunk with the rest of the city. The governor of LA could have mentioned something about evacuation before Katrina hit, and asked for help sooner once Katrina did hit. There is/was plenty of blame to go around.

I am not sure what set me off the most last night watching the news reports of Congress trying to make brownies out of Brown, the effeminate U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor (D) Mississippi who tried so hard to get Brown to accept 110% of the blame, or his even more effeminate toady sitting behind him learing like a jackel into the cameras. He had the kind of learing face that needed to be hit with something.

Kudo's to Brown for refusing to take any blame that wasn't his. Jeers to the whiny little politicians who care about nothing but vote getting. Jeers also to members of the media who are reporting that Brown refused to accept any blame at all. Quit lying to us you little attention whores, you're getting as bad as the politicians.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

But its fine if Richard P. Titus over in Undergraduate Admissions talks about my work. Once I recovered from the mini-stroke slash hernia, I did some double time backtracking only to figure out that this info is officially sanctioned info for viewing by the big man himself. So its not like he's spilling state secrets. I just thought the data was supposed to be a state secret. I hope that doesn't mean I am going to go back and turn 348 mandates into 348 PDF's and put them on display.

Anyway, I'm still not going to talk about my work, and I'm not in any way bothered that Rick talked about my work, however it does open up some avenues if I ever want to talk about some other department on campus.

Now listen up people, have I got a story to tell about ISOM you won't believe...

Just kidding.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I just read an article from the Associated Press about Bunnatine Greenhouse. (Dated August 7th) This is a woman who stood up to Army Corp of Engineers and blew the whistle, having had enough of the unethical, illegal, and expencive practices of US Government Contract spending, specifically with Halliburton. In checking further than one article I find that ABC News covered the same event(via Associated Press) on October 25th of 2004. She originally drew the line in the sand back in 1993. Halliburton does what it always does, states they have done nothing wrong and then throw up a smokescreen. In the ABC article, they state that this recycled aligation is only comming up again because it is election time. Well, its August 2005 and it isn't election time. I wonder why this is comming up again? Could it be because there is a problem and it won't go away. And which is the problem, Bunnatine Greenhouse or Halliburton?

I guess that depends on who you ask. If you ask me, who as a general rule is suspicious of our government spiraling away from its roots and its growing interest in empire, I say Bunnatine Greenhouse is a hero unmatched since the days of our founding fathers.

I suppose if you were to ask the ruling elite they would tell you that Bunnatine Greenhouse is a busy body who doesn't know what she is talking about, and everything would be fine if we'd just let them get back to the business of trying to rule the world.

I think what I find most offensive about this whole thing is that what Bunnatine Greenhouse was reporting isn't some strange new breaking of protocal, its standard government practice. Its how things get done. Just because that is how it is done doesn't mean it is right. History shows us a whole bunch of standard business practices that just aren't right. Slavery, church marriage being a legal distinction, prohibition, flat earth, earth center of solar system, Pepsi Clear, the list goes on, and I bet everyone reading this can add something to the list. And let us not forget current things we haven't learned are mistakes yet, President Bush, Pimpjuice, Scion, gigayachts, tofu (I'm on the fence on tofu).

Might does not make right. The best it can do is "right now". My point? The government is flushing our tax money into the septic tanks of big business, without restraint, without ethics, and without air freshiner. What are we going to do about it?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:13 PM | Permalink

Everything I am reading right down to official press releases makes it clear that this whole failure to pass a budget (Due July 1st) isn't about dollars. Based on everything I am watching and reading the two houses are simply having a battle over who has to largest political penis.

Put this pettiness asside and pass a budget already! All of you are equally massive dicks in my eyes. There is no reason take this any further.

Thank you for your time, I know it is valuable.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:21 AM | Permalink

I heard on the local news last night (best article I could find about the attack) (best article I could find about the murder)...Isn't it strange that there si so little news about this? Anyway, last night I heard that at a rest home in Alamance County someone who was insane, murdered someone who was elderly. A good deal of time was spent on soundbites of how these two ignored groups managed to get lumped in together. Apparently, it is perfectly legal to do this in this day and age.

I can just see someone with two stacks of files on their desk. They are in the office of "Dealing with people the rest of society is trying to ignore department" (A division of the Department of Social Services). They were cursed with all the cases of "What to do with the elderly", and "What to do with the mentally ill." Dazed and over worked a plan was hatched deal with the problem one day when the two piles were knocked over on each other and all the files got mixed up. "Hey," the overworked beurocrat thought, "one pile is surely easier to deal with than two." And so money is regularly mailed out to neighborhood houses that have been converted to small homes for the crazy and old. They have the same needs, entertainment, food, sanitation, and supervised medication. What could go wrong?

Then one day something did go wrong. Someone insane kills someone elerly and the whole world errupts in shock and awe.
"How could this happen in our own back yard?"
"Things were going so well."
"They were so easy to ignore, and now this."
"We have insane and elderly people, when did that happen?"

So I am sure as the drama unfolds, the two political parties will square off like they always do.

The Democrats will say, "We should divert funds to create new segregated care facilities, this will create jobs for caregivers, and we would only need to raise the taxes a little bit. We put the crazies over there, and the elderly people over there, and put a bunch of people to work."

The Republicans will say, "We should close those facilities right away and cut the taxes that paid for them. The elderly and the insane should be at home with their love ones who with the help of the tax break will have plenty of money available to buy medications, adult diapers, Ensure, and live in nurses. If they don't, they don't diserve loved ones to begin with!"

The rest of the political parties will blame one, the other, or both the Democrats and the Republicans. Some will blame the overworked beurocrat, while others will push for recycling of this new untapped natural resource, and offer samples of Soylent Green, at fairs, and other public gatherings. Still others will blame the media for bringing it up in the first place. Others will applaud the media for bring this whole mess to our attention.

Meanwhile the homes will be closed and the insane and the elderly who could not be otherwise placed will be released in the wild to fend for themselves as beggars, petty thieves, and in hippy communes. A few will make it, many won't. Some will thrive as leaders of religious cults.

Otherwise, nothing at all will ever be done about the original problem and soon the whole mess will be forgotten. Again.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What? You mean what they did with me was illegal?

On January 6th 2003 I was hired by the Information Technology Department of UNCG to help startup a fledgeling Project Management Office. I was chosen because of my terrific reputation and the fact that I had been laid off November 11 due to a state budget crisis.

On March 11th I was finally hired on to do my job as permenant staff. (I found out about this April 8th.) So for two years two months and five days I worked for UNCG as a temp with no insurance, or benifits of any kind. I didn't complain much because I was just glad to have a job, and my job is even after all this time still very rewarding and fun.

I wake up to NPR this morning telling me that other's who have been in my shoes are putting together a class action lawsuit against the state because as it turns out working for that long as a temp is illegal by states rules. Sure enough, the N&O has this article that backs up NPR's story.

At this time I formally refuse to comment on this situation because I am at this moment under probationary status as a newly hired state employee.
Everyone knows you don't poop where you sleep.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:31 AM | Permalink

When your project manager tells you a course of action you take it. You don't fire them.

Blackwater Security Consulting, a mercenary firm out of Moyock NC learned this lesson the hard way as they find themselves sued for just such a mistake. You might remember the whole sad tail, under staffed, undersupplied, and unarmored, some American mecenaries on Blackwater's payroll were beaten, killed, burned, and hung from a bridge.
Here's another longer article on the matter.

The Project Manager is your friend not your enemy. In business the executive suits control everything but only know the bottom line. Its the Project Manager who knows what is going on from top to bottom.
Blackwater gets what they deserve.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

While on the coast yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that sent shivers down my back. The car of course, had all of the usual Pro-Bush stickers, but one more too shocking to contemplate. (At least until the shock passed that is)

GOP: God's Official Party

That's amazingly silly. That's probably also a fire and brimstone offence. See ya in hell buddy, keep the fire hot for me. God is a Dictator, and would have no part of a representative democracy. So God isn't like George W. Bush, God is more like Fidel Castro or even Sadam Hussian.

Nowhere in the bible does it say "Thou shall cast thy lot for one of a group of worthy gods. Upon the reading of the vote of all of man a representative vote shall be cast by an electoral college of kings, the winning god thus take all for the sum of four millennia whereby man shall once again cast their lot."

The bible does say in the Ten Commandments that it is a fire and brimstone offence to have any other god before him. It was important enough that it is the FIRST commandment.

The bible is full of examples of God being a totalitarian dictator. Early on he tried to be merciful, rather than destroy some angels who dared question him, he banished them from heaven. If I were him I would regret that decision today. It seemed like a good idea at the time but now we are dealing with a forever of trying to run an organized creation all the while dealing with a militant faction bent on bloody revolution. He's a better creator than I could ever be, that's for sure.

There are plenty of examples of him being a holy dictator. He appeared before the Jews and said, "you are now my subjects, obey me or else". Once he sent an angel to one of his mortal agents in a largish city state and told him to evacuate and don't look back. His agent fled the city and he didn't look back. His wife did though, and was turned into a pillar of salt. I don't care if you are a good agent, no one is above the law.

Slovadan Milosavich got into a great deal of trouble recently for partaking in "Ethnic Cleansing". The bible tells the story of some VERY effective ethnic cleansing. Forget a bullet in the back of the head and being thrown in a mass grave. Try a massive flood and only telling one guy how to save himself, his family and a zoo. Hitler couldn?t come close to that.

The big man upstairs knows how to rule with an iron fist. I'd be surprised if he didn't smite the Republican Party for just inferring that he supports them. Besides, if God's son isn't a member of the Green party, I don't know who is. Jesus wouldn?t be exporting jobs to countries with a lower standard of living. Jesus would have been standing outside of the pentagon in the 1960's sticking daisies in gun barrels. Jesus certainly turned out better that a certain other dictator's offspring.

And that's the real lesson here. ?Silly Sadam, dictatorships aren't for mortals.?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:07 AM | Permalink

Rules change to suit our needs at will.

Back when it suited them the Repugnicans enacted an ethics law which simply stated that members of the House that were indicted by a grand jury had to step down. They were pretty honest and strait forward when they did this and made no bones about their reasons. Demoncrat ethics were slipping and it was their duty as ethical god fearing public servants to protect the hallowed halls of the house from criminals.

Recently their law has bitten them in the party ass as it has come to pass that their own golden boy Tom DeLay of Texas may be on the verge of geting indicted by the Texas State Grand Jury. What to do? What to do? Oh yeah! Now they remember, change the law so Tom DeLay will be spared!

Umm...No.

You can't be ethical and pull that stunt at the same time. Your shield of King James won't protect you from the common since god gave the average box turtle. I am just stunned that they are even trying to do this publically...

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:30 AM | Permalink

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

This guy was a genius or something.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So Ohio is the new Florida. Well, at least Ohio doesn't have Jeb Bush.

...one divided nation, under scrutany with liberty and justice for the winning half.

Overall you won't hear a great deal of complaining on my end so long as the person who becomes president actually wins the election. I do not for a minute believe that Bush won the last election.

Who ever does actually win is going to have a tough time winning the hearts and minds of the 50% who didn't vote for them. I am just glad it isn't me.

And I swear if I hear one more person say that God chose Bush to be president I am going to remind them that the last time God spoke through a bush it was on fire, and I hope to hear God speak again real soon.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Today's election day. So far I have only talked to one person who has not voted and has no intention of voting. Her reasoning is that she has no interest in politics and has not kept up with the elections.

A part of me wanted to thump her on the ear because every vote counts. On the other hand, do we want a strong voter turnout of people who are just going to randomly pick candidates?

I have no answer to this.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

They should know who they are running against. Richard Burr seems to think he is running against Bill Clinton. Wrong state, wrong office, wrong election year.

They should sound intelligent. Patric Ballantine comes off like a frat boy on the morning after. If you're going to debate on TV, at least make sure your suit is fresh from the dry cleaners. Oh yeah, promises don't solve problems, solutions do.

You should not use the word "conservative". There are too many to mention throwing the word around and I am pretty sure most of them don't even know what the word means. The rest are hoping YOU don't know what the word means. Conservative is a slang curse word that means "My god is better than your god."

You should not be a raving lunitic. I am pretty sure this excludes Virginia Fox. This woman makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I would say more but I think the "conservative" point pretty much rounds out the candidates this time around.

I am glad I voted two weeks ago. I am so sick to death of the commercials, and the crap in my mailbox that I am sure I would've snapped if I had to wade through it all of that BS before tomorrow.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Sara and I did the early voting thing yesterday. We were in good company, we were just under one thousand to vote that day. Sheriff Sam Page was there voting too. I am surprised it wasn't a media event. Sheriff Page makes for good TV. Best of all he won't end up in jail like some other triad Sheriff.

One oddity. Ammendment One to the state constitution. I read the proposel (it was relatively long), I read it again. I read it a third time, thought I had the gist of it and made my vote. On paper it seemed like it was a good thing. Last night on the news they were talking about the ammendment and it sounded like a very bad thing. I voted for cities having more authority to do city things. I did NOT vote to take away the rights of citizens so they could put in more strip malls.

I am a little miffed that the wording of the ammendment on the ballot was so poor.

Here is the wording strait from the NC State Board of Elections website:

I. Constitutional amendment to promote local economic and
community development projects by (i) permitting the General
Assembly to enact general laws giving counties, cities, and
towns the power to finance public improvements associated with
qualified private economic and community improvements within
development districts, as long as the financing is secured by
the additional tax revenues resulting from the enhanced property
value within the development district and is not secured by a
pledge of the local government's faith and credit or general
taxing authority, which financing is not subject to a
referendum; and (ii) permitting the owners of property in the
development district to agree to a minimum tax value for their
property, which is binding on future owners as long as the
development district is in existence.

All I can say is study up on this one before you case your vote.

Vote early, Vote often! Its the Adams way!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Lots of people after the debate had opinions about who won the debate. We channel surfed after the debate and we saw them all. If the person was a democrate, Kerry won. If the person was a republican then Bush won.

I disagree with both the professional Democrates and the professional Republicans. As best as I could tell Bob Schaeffer won. He was the only one who seemed to follow all of the rules. Of course this is no good having the moderator win the debate, so we need to define rules so it is clear each debate who won.

1. We will give one point to each candidate who actually answers the Question.
2. We will take away one point each time the candidate rehashes the last question rather than answer the current one.
3. We will take away one point each time the candidate interrupts, or draws attention away from the candidate speaking.
4. We will give one point for humor.

After the debate these early scores are set asside while the fact checkers report in.
5. We will give one point for every correct fact.
6. We will take away one point for every lie (or incorrect statement).
7. No points will be awarded or deducted for half truths. (They are politicians after all.)

After all the facts are checked the two tallies are added together and the winner is the one with the highest score. We could even have a debate hall of fame for candidates who score the highest positive number.

So far in debate history, no one has been able to match (Insert name here)'s record score of 9. Will it happen tonight? Tune in tonight to the presidential debates and find out.

Maybe we could get John Madden to be a moderator....

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I don't ever remember elections being split so evenly as The 2000 and now the 2004. Its like the US has been split evenly between the normal people and people who are completely out of their minds. (You know who THEY are.)

Each debate happens, both sides claim victory, the media splits the difference and the people split into two equal groups. This can't be good for democracy. Making 40% of the population unhappy all of the time is acceptable, but to make 50% unhappy all of the time is dangerously close to revolution.

I wonder if in the history of US presidential elections there have been other periods where the public was split so evenly over who should lead. And if there were times in the past like now, what were the leanings of the candidates. Now for instance we have a conservative VS a moderate. Was it always an end VS the middle, or was it one extreme against another?

I am excited about tonight's debate. I want to see if these candidates can manage to stay on topic. My guess is that one of them (Bush) is going to try to turn the conversation away from domestic issues as soon as possible so he can continue to talk about stuff that he feels he is stronger on. Understandable, but I hope the moderator keeps them both on task, I have heard enough about Iraq, especially after the recently released report about weapons of mass destruction. I want to know when I am going to get a permenant full time job, (this has not happened YET) and I think they ultimately have that answer in their domestic policy.

In the mean time, vote for whoever you want but realize that there is a 50% chance that you are going to be very unhappy for the next four years. Maybe this year the election will be legal and fair. I'll keep my fingers crossed. If there is a revolution, I am completely unarmed and this scares me.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our country, land that I love, is a little weird. Everywhere we go, everything we do we are always trying to take the moral high ground on every front. We didn't go into Iraq for oil, we didn't go into Iraq for revenge, we went into Iraq to liberate the Iraqie people from an Evil Overlord. Korea, Vietnam, we went down there to protect the good peoples of those exotic lands from the evils of communism. And when we finish in each and every case we put on our white hats and ride off into the sunset. We make a big deal about the fact that we don't torture, we don't assassinate (until recently and you haven't heard a word about how that is going btw), we don't kidnap, we don't use terrorism or ambushes. The goal is to make sure that in the eyes of the world we are and remain to be the good guys in the white hats.

Those other countries we are trying to impress, do at least some of the things that we don't. Our good buddy Isreal does everything we would never do because of our white hat.

And so the news is the same day after day, Iraqi militants kidnap some number of people including some Americans and they say they will behead one every 48 hours unil their demand is reached. Again. Meanwhile the whole worlds knows that we would never give into the demands of a terrorist. That would be giving the evil-dooers what they want and that's not the cowboy way. So every 48 hours a head rolls into the sand and another life is lost. I guess we the people, or the ruling class of the US government anyway, figures that eventually they will realize that kidnapping and beheading isn't going to get them anywhere and they will stop because it doesn't do any good.

Wrong! Dead wrong. Iraqi militants want us dead. In a pinch they will kill us with road side bombs or bullets, but they LOVE beheadings. Beheadings are old school vengeance, and beheadings make good TV. Not to mention its a party. They'll kick back, drink some fermented mare's milk, pose in front of the handi-cam, make some poor infidel beg for his life, and then lop his head off. Lets see western medicen put that back together! This is one of those do not pass go, do not collect $200 deaths. There is no "lucky we found you in time to sew your head back on".

And I, in my infinate armchair president blogside wisdom have a solution. It would work. But it has a price... First off, its time to hang the white hat up and put on this nice grey one. You'll like grey, its much easier to keep clean and it goes with everything. The slightest smudge on your white hate makes you look real bad, and you want to look good for those other countries. Grey doesn't show dirt.

Now, the next time some wacky Iraqi says, "Release our women you hold prisoner or we will cut off the head of this truck driver." Just smile, and say "We will never give into terrorist demands. Now just let us know when you've cut off his head, so we can cut off one of your woman's heads. We've got several in custody to choose from. We will need a PO box from you, so we can mail the newely released head to you, COD of course, you understand about that. Oh, and by the way, do you like my new hat?"

We would have to mail a head or two just to prove we were serious, but after that, the demands will drop off sharply. The militants will figure out that a living prisoner of war is better than having to pay postage on another head. More importantly they might figure out that the truck drivers are really there to help them rebuild their country and not to give them a limitless supply of Americans to behead.

There are those of you who might say, wouldn't it be better if we didn't have American truck drivers there to begin with? In theory you would be right, but the fact is, an American driving a truck in Iraq can make more money in one year than they can make in 10 years at home. I saw my own job listed on the US Government job seeking website. If I were willing to do it in Iraq, I would be bringing in $133,000 per year. Assuming of course, my head stayed attached the whole time. If my temp job here wasn't so emotionally rewarding, I would give it some serious consideration. At this moment, that is over five times what I make per year now. Who wouldn't consider it???

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Please hold your flames until the end of the document.

Being an American to me means being able to say, "no". Our country was founded on the word "no". The king of England was treating the people of the American colonies unfairly. Every attempt to beg for fairness was refused. There is no such thing as "compromise" to an absolute ruler of the largest empire on earth. Who can really blame him; it's good to be the king. (My apologies to Mel Brooks.)

In our Constitution our founding fathers basically said to the world and especially to old king George, "No taxation without representation." "We're not going to take it any more." The king said, "Oh yes you will" and sent a few thousand representatives in the red coats with the long guns to remind us who was the boss. Fortunately for us might makes right and the power of our short supply lines overcame their numbers and armament.*

Thus America was founded on the word "no".

The US Bill of Rights says, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal." Our founding fathers disagreed with and said "no" to the way things were. The amendments to the Constitution had a good many no's in it. No, we're not going to allow you to take away our ability to speak our minds. No, you're not going to take away our ability to meet together. No! You can take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands. No, you're not going to make, drink, or serve alcohol. No, we were wrong about that alcohol thing, forget we said that. No, it isn't fair to keep women, African Americans, and women African Americans from voting.

Even now there is talk about adding, "No, gay people have no right to the pursuit of happiness." To this, I say, "No, as a matter of fact they do have the same right to the pursuit of happiness as whites, women, African Americans, and any combination thereof.". See that. I just exercised the right as an American to say, "No".

No, I don't think that Bush represents my best interest, so I will not vote for him again. Because I am an American, I can say that and I don't have to worry about being sent to a concentration camp (yet). With or without my tinfoil hat I feel that Bush has Imperialist tendencies. Imperialism is one of the things that our founding fathers were saying "no" to, to begin with. (No, this is neither here nor there in my argument. So please don't be distracted by it.)

If America was founded on the ability to say, "No", than voting against the incumbent is technically more American than voting for the incumbent. Thus, my title should actually read, "Why I think it is more American to vote for Kerry." It just didn't have the same pizzazz. Besides, Un-American is a buzz word, American is not. Funny that.

* A history buff could probably refute the supply thing, but I took US history from a Duke PHD who specialized in history from an economic perspective, not a military one. I learned history is like one of those black and white illusions where it's a duck or a rabbit depending on how you look at it.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:13 AM | Permalink

I heard on NPR yesterday that in order to prepare for the Repugnican national convention, a specialist was brought in from California to teach the New York volunteers how to be friendly. Wow. There is just so much material here. New York is unfriendly. Ok, that's not news. Hiring a guy from LA to teach friendliness? That's comic genius. But it gets better.
Some of the volunteers aren't even republicans. One they interviewed will be wearing a John Kerry pin under her volunteer shirt. She doesn't care about the politics so much as she wants these strangers to have a good experience in the big apple. This woman deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. You've got to love the town you live in to be so welcoming and hospitable to a group of people who you are political opposed to, and who will likely treat you like an illegal alien (from Uranus). They interviewed another volunteer. He asked her for directions to Madison Square garden. Her reply:
"No problem! All you have to do is go down to the subway and take the "H" train to "Edith Square. Its right there. Welcome to New York, have a wonderful time."

The interviewer went on to let us non-New Yorkers in on the little secret.
1. There is no "H" train.
2. There is no "Edith Square".

Some of the volunteers are working on a misinformation campaign. They will be giving wrong directions and fake city maps to delegates in hopes that the delegates will get to see the "Real New York". You know, like the one in the John Carpender film about Snake Plisken which we are more familiar with.

To those Republicans about to be mugged in a neighborhood they have no business being in, I salute you.

Another funny thing I heard about was that in the care package the delegates would be getting at the convention, they would be receiving Broadway tickets. But only certain tickets. Certainly not the Tony Award winners. These were deemed to controversial for the ultra conservative republican mindset. Instead these guys get the real Broadway theater experience of seeing "The Lion King".

Hakoona Matata indeed.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

CBS News had this to say about the blogging going on at the Democratic Presidential convention.

In a nutshell stating what the blogging communittee already knew to be true. Bloggers are good at finding obscure seemingly unrelated news and putting pieces together. They are probably not so good at going to a huge convention surrounded by professional politicians and writing good unbiased blog articles. I suspect with the perks showered upon them they were more like bait than the predators of lies they have become online.

Still I am glad they were there, and they do serve a purpose. They should always be there. They won't serve up the truth so much as call it like they see it through a shower of free meals and perks. The regular media will server its purpose which is to spin the event in whichever direction the political alignment of their news outlet prefers. It will be the bloggers in the field who sift through it all that bring out the big conclusions though.

It is as it should be.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:18 PM | Permalink

I heard on NPR this morning about a guy protesting at the Democratic convention. He generally voted Democrat but was going Republican this year because he felt the Democrats weren't doing enough to take opposite stances from the Republicans. Uhh what??

I didn't realize that Demorcats and Republicans were supposed to be polar opposites. So if this is true, if Michael Moore were to shake George Bush's hand would they both explode like political mater and anti-mater?

I realize that historically these parties have switched sides politically but what is wrong with a centrist Democratic party running against a ultra conservative Republican party? What I see is that as a whole the voters of America are going a little conservative over all. This would be nothing more than the ebb and flow of the generations.

In ten years who knows, perhaps the centrist Republicans will take back the night from the Fundies and the ultra liberals ensnare the Democratic Party. If this happens in ten years I will probably find myself voting republican. I don't care what you call yourself, I only care that your stance matches my stance the closest.

The Centrist can't exactly strike out on their own. Its not like Centrist can't make up their minds. As for myself I have strong opinions, they just don't lay with the rank and file of either side. Ultra anything in my book equals crazy.

How did my blog become so political anyway???

In order to take the politics out of my blog I offer this wholesome link. Although I am not a hunter I do hate PETA. And nothing is more natural and wholesome than making fun of people with wacked out ideas.

(see you already forgot what the first part of this blog entry was about!)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I made some logical connections last night. Let me share them with you.
Dictionary.com has this to say about "sport".

1. a. Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.
b. A particular form of this activity.

2. An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
3. An active pastime; recreation.

So the hundred yard dash is a sport. Basketball is a sport. Fencing is a sport. They admitted ball room dancing into the olympics so I guess that is a sport. Dispite what George Carlin says, golf is a sport. I guess based on option three a chess competition could be a sport. I mean why not, they had a whole week of poker on ESPN a while back.

Politics is a sport.

You know I'm right. It has stars, competition, a large fan base some of which are truly weird. This FOX News article talks about some peace protestors beating the stuffing out of an anti-abortion guy. Meanwhile the ACLU is surrounding the whole thing wearing "Legal Observer" ballcaps. We definately have the soccer style rowdy crowd covered.

The news comentators are all TV, radio, newspaper, and blogsphere talking about the performance of one politician or the other and how that could effect The Election. Just like the olympics every four years, there is a large event held, only in this case we elect a president.
They even have betting options.

So November 2nd I'll see you guys down and Old Towne to join the crowds eating wings, drinking beer and watching the game.

I got $10.00 on Kerry to win by 60 Electoral votes. It might be wishful thinking, but I think he can go the distance.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:54 PM | Permalink

(or at least a piece of this president)

Bush tells the world that he is a Peace President It wasn't so long ago that he claimed to be a war president. At least he isn't the only one confused anymore. When you've got the greatest military power in the world under your command war is easy. Its an instant success. War is especially easy if you are picking on small weak countries.

Now if Bush declaired war on the Entire UN and won I would be impressed.

Bush also went strongly against his rivals who he refered to as Lawyers. I can see why lawyers would be distasteful to him. Actually this blog isn't too bad if you are interested in the going ons of Capital Hill. It even keeps up with NC Politics.

Anyway, I hope everyone you wanted to win did in the primary yesterday. That is unless you voted for a crazed conservative fundi in which case I hope sanity prevailed.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:19 AM | Permalink

I finally had a quiet weekend at home, no worries, no pants, no problems. I even watched a little TV. It was here I discovered two new bad words. I was introduced to these words by politicians. I am not surprised by this. As many bad words as I have used to describe politicians it only makes since that they would have a couple for me.

I will start this by making my standard disclaimer I am an unaffiliated. On the test I am centrist. Often I land square on "0" on the X-Y graph. As such I am naturally suspicious about both parties who claim to have my best interest in mind.
Typically Democrats seem to be more interested in helping the little man, whether that be the homeless, the tree frog, or the illegal immigrant. They like to share the wealth, and if that means raise taxes to get the money to share so be it. It is a means to an end.
Typically Republicans are rich. They are the haves and they want to stay that way. Don't raise their taxes, damn the tree frogs and they have a maid and a gardener, screw the rest. The only reason there are poor people is to be a cheep and expendable work force for them.

And now for the two new bad words. I've successfully worked the democrat and republican readers into an indignant froth lets finish them off shall we.

Conservative! Ooooooohhhh! Liberal! Aaaahhhh!!

The funny thing is how these words are used in politics. I watched a bunch of republican adds for the primaries coming up tomorrow. There were many different people using many different tactics but they all said the same thing.
Vote for me:
I'm Conservative.
I'm against raising taxes.
I'm against illegal immigrants.
I'm pro-life.
I'm a member of the NRA.
The only difference was a couple of them went on to say "The other guys just call themselves "conservative" they are really liberal. Didn't matter though, they all said the same things otherwise. I couldn't vote for any of them. Unless of course they didn't use the bad word (and they all did proudly).

Conservative: Bible thumping fundie.
Liberal: Tree hugging hippie.

As an unaffiliated type I get to vote in either the democrat or republican primary. I'm thinking I am going to vote in the republican primary this time around. I am going to vote for the one who doesn't call themselves a conservative (hopefully there will be one). My big fear is that more people with crazy agendas are going to get into office on the coat tails of emperor Bush and it is my duty as an American to keep that from happening.

I want to save the whales. I want to do this by nuking the countries that hunt whales.

See Who's Running
Conservatives
Liberals
Hippies
Constitution Party (so new I can't insult them yet)
Greenies (Weak, but I had already used "Hippies")
ugh...these guys (Natural law, kinda sounds like Darwinism, which I like)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yesterday on Fark.com the following headline was posted.

Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage defeated in Senate, 48-50 -- 12 votes short of 60 needed to keep measure alive

Farkers have clicked on the above link 13219 times

It has spawned a very interesting debate, punctuated with the usual flaming, (pun not intended) which can be found here.
I even found myself involved, stating opinion, getting attacked, winning a few points conceiding a few points and generally being swept up in the sum of man. There are as of now 1721 comments on the subject. And National Endowment for the Arts are lamenting that reading is dead and people who don't read literature don't have "a very active and engaged attitude toward information and society" Looks like I have tomorrow's rant sitting here.

I still stand steadfast by the opinion that if the church dictates law then the great America experiment has failed as certainly as Soviet communism. I see the attempt to make a constitutional ammendment banning gay marriage as just that. The people backing it are using the tired buzzword "family values". They seem to have forgotten that their family isn't the only one with value.

If this keeps up how soon before the christians are throwing musilums and jews to the lions in Yankee Statium?

If I didn't know better the Republican extremist are afraid that if Gay people can get legally married then, suddenly half of the republican party is going to suddenly change teams secure in the knowledge that they can have their true love and a prenuptial agreement too.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Whenever someone mentions trying to create a law for something, I run it past a set of logical rules to see if I agree or not.

1. Can this issue harm me?
2. Can this issue harm my wife?
3. Can this issue harm my family?
4. Can this issue harm my friends?
5. Can this issue harm my home?
6. Can this issue harm my land?
7. Can this issue harm my stuff?

If so there ought to be a law.

Health care for everyone? There ought to be a law to make sure this happens. Keeping guns out of the hands of convicted criminals? There ought to be a law to make sure this happens. Arson? Law. Murder? Law. Rape? Law. Theft? Law.

Gay Marriage? Nope. Doesn't meet the requirements. It has no effect on me what so ever one way or the other. If a church wants to block a gay marriage in their church, more power to them. If a gay couple wants to get married at the justice of the peace, congratulations don't ever go to bed angry.

I haven't heard of a single argument for banning gay marriage that wasn't religious. Religion has its place, and it isn't in the law books. Don't forget ancient Rome. You believed one thing but the government was of a different religion. What did that make you? Lion food. My ancestors came to America because they were on the wrong side of the Jacoben war. Someone tried to force a religious law on them. They fought it, they lost, the survivors fled to America. You're in America. Do you know why you are here? You were either running scared from someone else?s religion or you came in chains.

Don't start pushing your religion on me. Until I can find serenity on another planet there is no where else to run. You know what animals do when they are cornered? See ancient Rome.

And another thing. Don't give me that, this doesn't affect you nonsense. Hitler only wanted a little peace too you know.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was doing my usual morning culling of the news from Fark.com when I came across this article from The Nation.com entitled "The Junk Science of George W. Bush". I just had to read this one, just yesterday I saw a short article about Senator John Edwards and junk science. "Junk Science" this is the new buzz word I need to be familiar with.

Science is according to Dictionary.com "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena". That pretty much matches what I learned in college science. Science is pretty much using a formulaic method to discover the truth about something unknown.

Now dictionary.com didn't have a word for junk science so I am going to suggest one. Junk Science (noun) 1. Something offered as fact by politicians to further their interest. 2. Lies we are told by big business to make money.

I decided to expand my knowledge on the subject by doing a Google search on "junk science" My first hit, Junk Science.com. Imagine that. What struck me as funny is that most of the articles on the page are from FOX news. Best I can tell the Junk Science site is as dubious as not. The site seems to believe that DDT wasn't the evil that we were convinced it was in the 1970's. Call me crazy but I have no problem believing that something designed to kill things, kills things.

Confusing isn't it. Everyone has hard science to back any wild idea. Like Regan's science that supported Ketchup as a vegetable for school lunches. We can all be taken in by bad science; it?s not something we need to be ashamed of, just aware of. I believe that some of the world?s problems with starvation and global warming could be mitigated by the eating of PETA people. It?s meat. Its grain fed. It spouts hot air. And I have never heard a single scientific study saying that eating people was bad for you.

Worry not about the slings and arrows of outrageous science. I have the solution and together we can make it so. When our country was founded our founding fathers knew the dangers of blending church and state. They had left Europe to escape from just such problems. My own ancestors, Irish Royalty, lost everything for being on the wrong side of the Jacobean war. Our ancestors knew that when the church blended with government people suffered. Specifically those people who didn't believe the same way the leaders believed.

I propose a separation of Science and State. Let the facts be safe from government just as belief is protected from government. While we are at it, we must also protect science from industry. You can't trust Monsanto to tell you that its herbicide isn't going to make your children three eyed, just like you can't trust McDonalds to tell you that its fried chicken salad with blue cheese dressing isn't going to make you flabby.

Until such time that this change is made, if a government official tells you something is "safe", you have an obligation to see who the scientist were, who paid them, and what is to be gained in votes and profits. Let?s look at a little common since. How can dumping thousands of gallons of pig poop into our rivers not be bad for us? If you really believe that dumping chemicals and waste into rivers and streams is safe, you have to drink all of your water from a toilet from now on. In fact, let?s use my toilet.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:00 AM | Permalink

This article really brought back memories for me.
Flashback
I am in elementary school and I have been seeing a shrink since second grade. Remember, I'm in elementary school, I'm in the top three tallest kids in my grade and in the top two for weight, and my name is Woody. As you can imagine this is a terrible combination on the best of days. I had for some time been dealing with all of that anger by holding it in. After a while of holding it in the relief valve blows and I go balistic against some inanimate object always destroying it and often damaging myself in the process. My shrink taught me to write what I felt down on paper, fold the paper and tear it into pieces. It was very effective! A piece of paper is very inexpensive afterall. So one day after taking about all I could stand of the teasing I took out a note book and with my limited vocabulary wrote down exactly how I felt about the people teasing me. I then folded it, tore it up and threw it into the trash can. I felt much better.

My enemies, and most of them were my enemies, took it from the trash can, borrowed the teacher's scotch tape and reassembled it. When finished, they presented it to the teacher who wacked me with a paddle took me to the office and called my mother. Fortunately for me deep down inside I knew that the shrink had more authority than the teacher and I wasn't going to be punished for doing something good. My other option was just as easy, and that was to kill them, but the shrink and my mother told me that that was bad so I wrote my feelings instead. Really it didn't matter to me which I did, but I did want to make my mother and my shrink proud of me.
/Flashback

I still feel that way.

So what's it going to be, are you going to let them get it out of their system or are you going to force them to do it?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:46 AM | Permalink

The news has been in a frenzy about the treatment of the Iraqi prisoners by US troops. I can't say as I blame them either. The US has been working hard on an uphill fight. All we want to do is to drum up some good will in Iraq so we can rebuild and get the heck out of there.

I'm pretty sure that if we created a thinktank of the greatest minds in the military and politics and said, "What's the best thing we could do to make them hate us?" The answer would most likely be, "Take pictures of Iraqi prisoners naked in sexual poses, and have your soldiers posing and smiling with them."

I am not a military mind and I am anti-political but the only way I can see to make lemonaid out of these lemons is to turn over the guilty parties over to the Iraqi clerics for punishment. Stipulate of course that the MP's may not be killed. This way when we get them back, we can punish them again in the military courts.

Stupidity should always be painful.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:02 PM | Permalink

I herby formally protest protest!

I am going raise my flag, wave my banner, hold my sign and march for what I believe in just like everyone else and I invite you all to join me in what might be the worlds first sureal protest. Its so entertaining watching folks with different opinions behave badly in public so I am just going to have to join them. I will have to dress for the occasion. One sock, mismatched shoes, a "Flashers Against Nudity" T-shirt, a fencing mask, and a bundle of two sided signs. I might also have to have a whistle too. You know, give props or protest to the rave sceen. I think I will also have to have a pink bicycle horn too. My signs will rotate regularly and will read as follows:

"Ban Donkey!"
"No Donuts for Kitty Litter!"
"Free Coffee"
"Down with Gravity"
"Support the right to shower naked!"
"Coffee, Tea, or Milk!"
"Give me toast or give me furniture polish!"
"Just say NO to snow!"
"Vote Lemon for Horseshoe!"
"Badgers!"
"Weeeeeeee!!!"
"Release doorknobs!"
"Lather! Rinse! Repeat!"

That ought to show them.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:03 AM | Permalink

While we are on the subject of protest, I have a humdinger of a protest to tell you about. Some time ago, a group on campus brings in as a guest speaker a former performer from the porn industry named Tristan Taormino. She spoke to a packed house about responsibility, safety, and stood as a voice against the taboo of sex. Everyone who was there said it was a terrific presentation and were very glad that the University was open and free enough to be able to talk about such things.

The campus republicans were against it all of course. They demanded the chancellor do something about it, so she issued a statement that said essencially that the lecture was clean and non-pornographic, than she stated that porn was bad mmmkay. Than in another missive mentioned, oh by the way think before you bring a controversial figure to campus.

All of the controversy brought a up a good question what is a graduate with honors of Wesleyan University and a feminist to boot doing in the porn industry? This question being asked a group of folks banded together to bring her back just to ask her. Most of the campus groups refused to touch it because they didn't want to invite the beurocratic wrath of the administration on them. Many faculty refused to touch it because they didn't have tenure and had children to feed. These are good reasons to get cold feet. Finally a community of business leaders banded together to help to bring her back.

I am sure the campus republicans will be ready for this of course. Emperor Bush has ordained what is and is not proper and as loyal and well paid subjects they are going to do everything in their power to stop Tristan Taormino from returning. I imagine they probably picketed a little on Earth Day between picketing squirrels and tree pollen. (Trees after all have no right to money shot on in public or private.) People who act outside of the doctorin of Emperor Bush have no right to speak either. I of course support both Tristan Taormino and the campus republicans right to speak. Tristan Taormino teaches me that sex is natural and should not be taboo. The republicans teach me that might does indeed make right.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Happy Earth Day folks. Its weird, I always thought Earthday was about some hippy in the 80's who wanted everyone to remember that we are simply one species as a cog in a great wheel of the Earth's ecosystem. If that hippy hasn't OD'd yet he's probably pretty pissed off about what the holiday has turned into. Either that or he simply has the munchies.

Now a days, Earth Day is the official holiday of protest. Everyone who hates anything is out waving their signs, screaming at passing cars and generally being angsty. Groups of like minded people go around using their first ammendment rights to try to take away the rights of others. Should anyone claim victory it is always a "Great Day For Democracy".

So here I am on the campus of UNCG watching the various Earth Day
protest/celebrations, while across campus demolition crews are cutting down ancient trees around the McNutt building.

Happy Earth Day...

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:45 PM | Permalink

As always I am your humble servant and as such would never doubt your wisdom or question your judgement. I speak only that I may humbly ask for your renound and benevolant mercy, may your rule last two lifetimes.

Like a good subject I with great graciousness, accepted your decision that I should have no job. Although the reason for this is far beyond the musings of my most unwourthy brain I am certain your reasons were right and just as you speak for both the almighty himself as well as the rich elite who all know better than I.

It is with sad heart however that I must beseech you to reconsider taking my poor mobile hovel from me. Its value is very slight and the crag of land it sits on is unlevel and rocky, truly unfit for even goats let alone your magistic visage.

The desire for my house and land is the only reason I can see that you would take my job, 40% of my retirement and than an additional 10% of that plus a thousand dollars from me at tax time. I know God is beyond money and to the rich elite a thousand dollars is nothing more than a blowjob from an underage runnaway, but for me it is more than I have or could ever have laying around handy. Please accept my ten payments of $100.00 per month in lue of my tiny dwelling.

Your loyal humble servant,
Woody

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Seems every area has a town or part of a town notorious as being backwards, full of criminals, snooty, whatever.

There is a woman who lives in an area that is known for its crime and people often refer to it by taking the word crime and adding the suffix of the last half of the town name. I won't list it here because for all I know some idiot is trolling the blogs looking for people who refer to their town this way.

This woman, goes to a store, pays a bill and gets a receipt. On the receipt is her address with the town name as it is jokeingly refered to. Seeing this, rather than saying "My address is wrong, can we correct." Goes to the first lawyer she can find and asks "How much bling-bling can we score with this?" The lawyer hit this like a shark in chum (they are bred and trained to do so).

He is seeking unspecified damages to compensate for being "embarrassed, flustered and shamed".

So if that's all it takes to sue somebody, perhaps I should go after every girl who every turned me down for a date starting from the thrid grade. I was certainly embarrassed, flustered, and shamed too.

Maybe I should go after every elementary schoolmate of mine who every teased or ridiculed me. If I had "unspecified damages to compensate" from everyone who ever accused me of being, ugly, fat, or having braces I could still be a freakin idiot for suing.

If I were a Norwegian black metal band I would take the heads of people like this and put them on pikes for my live show. Maybe even rip their shirts off at half time too.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When one talks about the natural order of things as it occurs in nature, one must speak of what is now called the food web (formerly the food chain). It is a very basic understanding that in nature all things are connected. If a bunch of grasses are suddenly killed off, then the insects starve and their population drops. Then the things that eat the insects starve and die back. Then the bigger things that eat the insect eaters starve and their population drops. Then the bigger carnivores starve and their population drops. At the same time parallel to this, when the grasses die off then the big grazers die off and the big carnivores get a double whammy, when two sources of food dry up. Middle school stuff huh. You probably drew simple food webs with crayons in science class. Now, let us apply that knowledge.
The United States does two things; they welcome with open arms workers from other countries who will work harder for less money. And there are a lot of them. They also allow textile and other production jobs to go to companies over seas who will work for a fraction of the money. On the plus side, the big companies at the top of the food chain immediately see a period where there is plenty of money. However, going back to the natural model, the food chain is damaged. The biggest carnivores are suddenly eating grass as it were. So let us continue to look at this in the natural model.
The people doing the unskilled hard physical labors like gathering crops, or digging ditches are out of work. They have been replaced by a people who are doing the work and sending the money home to feed their own families. We have a population of Americans who have no money to spend, so they go to the grocery store less, buy fewer socks, and spend no money. One step above this we have a group of textile and production workers who are getting hit twice. There are fewer people buying socks, so there are layoffs. The companies see how expensive it is to actually make a sock in America so they close up their factories, lay everyone off and move that business to a third world country who will do the work for nothing. Now the textile and production folks in America without work are going to the grocery store less, they aren?t buying as many socks, they aren?t buying computers, TVs, and furniture. They also stopped going to the beach on their vacations. One step above them we have the workers in the technology sector. Things were going well for them for a while because everyone was buying computers, software, and services to make life better. Well that?s over now. If a textile worker can?t afford ground beef, he is going to make every cut possible until he can. No more new computer, no more high speed internet, no more cable, its now down to only what is necessary to survive.
Needless to say the companies that sold technical products and services are starving too, and their populations drop due to lack of demand. Now we have a group of highly skilled, highly trained, highly educated, individuals who were paying off their college loans, leasing new cars, shopping in the mall, and planning for their retirements. When faced with a dwindling supply of income due to lack of employment they default on their loans, get rid of their financial planners, give up their leased cars, and cancel their weeks vacation in Disney world. Just like that we have the collapse of another group of consumers. What did middle school biology teach you about this? Food chain, the group above them suffers as well. No more weekends in the Hamptons, or Martha?s Vineyard. Paris, Rome, and Tokyo are now just dreams while this group figures out how they are going to pay of their Porsche, and their fancy gated community home on the ninth hole, five star restaurants are just a dream of what was. These were the executives who said once, ?Wouldn?t it raise our bottom line if we stopped paying these outlandish wages, and moved our operations to a third world country where we can buy off the dictator cheaper than we can buy off the union??
Now what have we learned in school today?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The first Amendment, Freedom of Speach, guaranttees all Americans the right to speak their minds without fear of persecution (or prosecution). *

To quote:
AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.*

So if I were opposed to the war, or opposed to the president, or opposed to weiner dogs, or opposed to PETA, or even opposed to skinny women, I have the right to say so. And its a right given to all Americans*. America is a cool thing.
So I guess you wonder where I stand, on things like the war and weiner dogs, so I am free to tell you, and you can do nothing to me for thinking this way except disagree, a right which is yours and all Americans*.

1. War. Opinion: Ambivellent. War and peace are not opposites. Sometimes it takes one to make the other. Sometimes not. I think history is going to have to make the call on this one. Either way, I am in full support of our troops no matter what my opinion of the war might be.

2. The president. Opinion: Somewhat negative. I think he stole his position, but that is now in the past and I have moved on. I'm big like that. I think this president is a "Wartime President". Not because a war happened to spring up while he was on watch, but because he wanted and actively went looking for a fight.

3. Weiner dogs. Opinion: They make me laugh. Their little walks and the way they were bred so that they all suffer back trouble as they get older, and the way their dangley bits drag the ground. They also have nice coats. It feels good to pet them. I would never own a weiner dog. They are yappy.

4. PETA. Opinion: I'm a militant omnivore and as such I feel that if you aren't a part of the solution you are part of a complete breakfast. Fortunately grain fed people are much more pleasant tasting. The problem is getting them fat enough to eat. It doesn't matter how sweet the meat is, if it is stringy, it is good for nothing but soup and stews. I support force feeding PETA people beer in dark stalls until they are fat enough to eat.

5. Skinny women. Opinion: If you are standing normally and I can see your bones through your skin, you need a twinkie. More likely boxes of twinkies. Calista Flockheart scares me. Add a little liquid latex she would look like a little elfin boy zombie. *shiver*

And there are five opinions of mine that you can't really do anything about except disagree, because that is the right of every American.*

Continue reading "First Amendment*" »

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There is a war being fought right now. There is the war we see on TV, reported on by entrenched reporters with night vision cameras. This war is physical with bombs and bullets. It is also psychological with leaflets, emails, phone calls, and pirated radio and TV broadcast.
There is a war being fought right here on our own soil also. No bombs, no bullets, just the army of the Screen Actor's Guild, fighting a psychological propoganda battle right here in our own living rooms.
They claim they are free to think as they choose. They are right.
They claim they are free to say what they like. They are right.
They claim they are free to openly protest the war. They are right.

The time for protest is before the war starts. Protest is your given right to speak your mind about a choice that your leader is making that you disagree with. Your goal is to make your leader change his mind.
In this case, Anti-war protestors were wrong, or out voted, or ignored. Your choice. The war began and the protestors couldn't or didn't stop it.
You cast your lot. You lost the election. Move on. You can still disagree with the war. You can still think your leader stole his position. (I certainly do.) However, the time for protest is over. You can't go back. What is done is done. Now Americans have a new duty.
Last I heard there were something like a quarter of a million Americans over there fighting a war that includes bullets and bombs. These people have no choice. They picked their job which included the possibility of killing other people. It isn't a job for everyone but it certainly pays for college.
People who protest the war now are sending a very powerful message to their friends and fellow Americans who are overseas trying to do a job and get home in once piece. The message is plain and simple. "We don't like you anymore. You didn't listen to us so we hope you die."
Some big names in Hollywood are standing up there in america's living rooms and are saying "Hate the soldiers because they are doing something we don't believe in."
Go ahead. Take a minute to be shocked and afrunted. But before you click the reply button below remember one little thing. Viet Nam.
We lost that encounter partially because we had an idiot in charge, or if not an idiot certainly someone who was bullied into sending Americans to die when he didn't think they should go. It took eight years because our troops were told to fight with one arm tied behind their backs. This is a bad and terrible thing, but no worse than the imaginary elite of Hollywood who shook hands with the enemy and told our soldiers, "We hate you because you aren't doing what we think you should do, we hope you die." Jane Fonda and Michael Moore are the same. Americans need to stand in support of our troops for no other reason than there are Americans in harms way. Anyone who does otherwise, especially those with free and open access to America's living room, are traitors activally using pyschological warfare to demoralize our troops.

Continue reading "Hollywood Enemy of the State." »

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The US wants to go into Iraq. They would rather not go back to North Korea, they are unwilling to look weak by agreeing to talks and are taking the hard line "We will not be blackmailed.". Korea wants to challenge the US for "king of the hill" but can only hit the west coast and hawaii.

This is how they are going to play it. (IMHO)
The US without backing from the UN* goes into Iraq alone, guns blazing. They know they can win so they go for a quick deadly strike. Korea watches until most of the US forces are bundled tightly around Iraq. At this moment they attack with every nuke they have been able to beg, borrow, steal, or build. Only US forces are hit because the UN wasn't involved. Civilians are not hit because there won't be very many civilians hanging around a full scale invasion. Iraqies won't be hit for the same reason. Suddenly the US is missing most of its military in a pile of ash and glass. Korea announces to the world that they defeated the US easily and are now top dog. The UN probably won't do anything as civilian casualities are very light and none of the other UN countries are involved. France will announce that it is all the US's fault. Britian will scream for war but not too loudly as they are all located on a nice small target..I mean island. It is at this moment that the hyena's of the world move in to get their share of the prey.

*A huge mistake. It isn't about having the extra troops and equipment, the US has more than enough. It is about having a stable world government. If the US ignores the UN others will start ignoring the UN. Pretty soon the UN is even more powerless than it is now and the world spirals into chaos. The idea is to have a strong world government. Why? World stability, peace, and one people working toward a single goal of interplanetary colonization. On the road we travel right now, China is going to take the moon and use that as a jumping off point for Mars and beyond, treaty be damned. China will have the stars and the rest of the world's peoples are stuck here to become extinct.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Step one is hybreds. Hybreds are really good on gas. If everyone drives hybreds, Texas can stop buying foreign oil because they would produce enough to support our need. Once they stop relying on foreign oil, Texas has a monoply. Fuel prices skyrocket, offsetting the fact that we use so much less of it. Texas considers buying Mexico. When the US dollar stops buying foreign oil, the middle east suddenly finds themselves sitting on millions of barrels of virtually worthless oil. They lose money, because the rest of the world won't make up for the loss of the American gas tank. Add ten years, their economy collapses. The world calls up Texas looking for some oil, which Texas has in abundance because they picked up most of the middle east for a song at an estate auction. Texas rounds out their North America collection by purchasing Canada. By this time everyone's in America is driving hydrogen cars. That's ok, they have all the other contients they can still sell to as a monoply. Texas picks up central america on ebay, and debates between South america or australia.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:45 AM | Permalink

It has always been a funny human quirk, one that powers the news industry. People seem to love watching and reading about chaos and strife. We were mostly all glued to some form of mass media on the 11th partially to see the memorials in NY and DC but also to see if something new would happen. Here it is the 13th and news is all over the two cars pulled in Florida, and the BASF explosion in Texas. It has made me wonder what world piece would be like. What would be on the news, nothing much except for human interest stories of Kudzu that resembles Godzilla and stuff. Would we as a people, in a world without war, strife, and chaos, be bored because nothing is left to inspire us to be better than we are? Movies are about conflict, popular books are about conflict, games are about some kind of conflict, sports are about conflict. It seems to me that conflict helps the world go around. As twisted as that may seem on the surface, I believe it is true. Now if you will please excuse me, I'm going to get back to reading about explosions and terriorist and stuff on the web.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I voted today. Its a primary and I am an indipendant. As an indipendant I get a choice on primaries, I can vote in the democrate or the republican election. My choice. This was pretty cool for me as it allowed me to vote in the election where there was a candidate I felt most strongly about. Except, that because I am an indipendant I have never noticed or cared which party a candidate belonged to. Fortunately Sara was with me and we settled it this way. She chose one party to vote in and I chose the other. That way we were able to affect each equally. Interestingly enough on my ticket I found two names of two guys I would really like in the senate. So I choose the underdog of the two. On Sara's ticket she only recognized one name in the senate race and it was the one person we want to keep out of office. She obviously chose one of the other names.
We noticed that although statistically our vote wouldn't individually count for all that much it didn't matter to us. What mattered was how voting made us feel. It made us feel connected somehow to our communittee and the people in it.

We have signed up for information on working the polls next time around. Who knows, it might just be fun. It will certainly be performing a civic duty and that always feels good.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:11 AM | Permalink

So we have a president who was elected...sorta...actually we don't know for sure if the election was settled correctly in the deciding state of Florida. But we have a president who had better lawyers than the "also ran" so we will call him president.

This president immediately went out and started finishing what his daddy started in the middle east. Congressional support starts to wane, no problem, his lawyers find a loop hole in the constitution. The fact that someone tried to find a loophole in the constitution should be raising red flags in everyone's minds. Now we have a president questionabily elected who now is free to finish his father's task without having to answer to anyone.

I wonder if that means I am next...

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:06 AM | Permalink