LIBERTY: the detainee, torture, tribunal law

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Latest DownsizeDC missive

http://www.downsizedc.org/index.shtml

***Begin Quote***

Please take immediate action to repeal S. 3930, the detainee, torture, tribunal law. It’s un-American.

My personal comment to you:

This is so un-American, I am at a loss as to understand how it got past in the first place. As big “D” democrats, I’d have thought you’d be more sensitive to the civil rights of people. The limitations of the Constitution were placed on Government not just for citizens of the USA. No, those limitations were on the Government on the USA regardless of citizenship. I am shocked and appalled that this abuse continues for a minute longer that it takes for you all to get together and correct it. There’s no excuse for it. Being abusive doesn’t make you tough or safe. It makes you look like a bully. And, bullies always get taken down by the mob of little people. Get to work and fix this now. Or we’ll send people to Washington who can get it fixed.

Mr. Ferdinand Reinke
Kendall park, NJ 08824-1424

***End Quote***

This should be used on the congress critters. Wonder how long it would take before that was repealed? No campaign contributions required to get that moved forward quickly.

Argh!

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FUN: From “old” friend who flies a lot and has too much time on his hands.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Even funnier as you keep reading…..

Heard in-flight

All too rarely, airline attendants make an effort to make the in flight “safety lecture” and announcements a bit more entertaining. Here are some real examples that have been heard or reported:

1. On a Southwest flight (SW has no assigned seating, you just sit where you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a flight attendant announced, “People, people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”

2. On a Continental Flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew, the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”

3. On landing, the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.

4. “There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane”

5. “Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

6. As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Ronald Reagan, a lone voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella. WHOA!”

7. After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in Memphis, a flight attendant on a Northwest flight announced, “Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that, sure as hell everything has shifted.”

8. From a Southwest Airlines employee: “Welcome aboard Southwest Flight 245 to Tampa . To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”

9. “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with more than one small child, pick your favorite.”

10. “Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Southwest Airlines.”

11. “Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and, in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments.”

12. “As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses.”

13. And from the pilot during his welcome message: “Delta Airlines is pleased to have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”

14. Heard on Southwest Airlines just after a very hard landing in Salt Lake City the flight attendant came on the intercom and said, “That was quite a bump, and I know what y’all are thinking. I’m here to tell you it wasn’t the airline’s fault, it wasn’t the pilot’s fault, it wasn’t the flight attendant’s fault, it was the asphalt.”

15. Overheard on an American Airlines flight into Amarillo, Texas, on a particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain was really having to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the Flight Attendant said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Amarillo . Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what’s left of our airplane to the gate!”

16. Another flight attendant’s comment on a less than perfect landing: “We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.”

17. An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had hammered his ship into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy which required the first officer to stand at the door while the passengers exited, smile, and give them a “Thanks for flying our airline..” He said that, in light of his bad landing, he had a hard time looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a smart comment. Finally everyone had gotten off except for a little old lady walking with a cane. She said, “Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?” “Why, no, Ma’am,” said the pilot. “What is it?” The little old lady said, “Did we land, or were we shot down?”

18. After a real crusher of a landing in Phoenix, the attendant came on with, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Capt. Crash and the Crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning bells are silenced, we’ll open the door and you can pick your way through the wreckage to the terminal.”

19. Part of a flight attendant’s arrival announcement: “We’d like to thank you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you’ll think of US Airways.”

20. Heard on a Southwest Airline flight. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing and if you can light ’em, you can smoke ’em.”

21. A plane was taking off from Kennedy Airport After it reached a comfortable cruising altitude, the captain made an announcement over the intercom, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome to Flight Number 293, nonstop from New York to Los Angeles . The weather ahead is good and, therefore, we should have a smooth and uneventful flight. Now sit back and relax.. OH, MY GOD!” Silence followed, and after a few minutes, the captain came back on the intercom and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so sorry if I scared you earlier. While I was talking to you, the flight attendant accidentally spilled a cup of hot coffee in my lap. You should see the front of my pants!” A passenger in Coach yelled, “That’s nothing. You should see the back of mine!”

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(I agree. Funnier.)

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YAHOO ANSWER: start investing

Thursday, July 12, 2007

http:// answers.yahoo.com/question/
;_ylt=Ajc.cSp3s66dlx8NU73r
fQ6vxQt.?link=answer&.crumb=sXRU6OYqF03&qid=20070712
090500AANTLkC&.done=http%253A%252F%252Fanswers.yahoo.com
%252Fquestion%252Findex%253Fqid%253D20070712090500AANTLkC

http://tinyurl.com/yo22zb

start investing

QUESTION

Asked by “barteq007”

How do I start investing?

I would like to get into the whole investing thing, however, have very little experience and not too many resources. I would like to start up with about $3000, so I don’t know if it’s even worth getting into stocks, funds or similar?

First of all which broker should I go to? Will they help me with making decision on where to invest? I live in Chicago and work right in the loop so there is abundance of different companies, I’m just afraid of even walking into their office and being so inexperienced… Are they dealing with people like me, or are they interested only in people who have hundreds or thousands?

Should I get into the internet broker companies like E-Trade or Ameritrade or it’s not a good idea for a newbie?
Also how much on average are relatively good and safe stocks and how much can I potentially earn/loose on them? Also how much professional companies like Charles Shwab will charge me for trades or advices – will those fees be covered by potential stock gains? BIG THANKS!

ANSWER

Dear “barteq007”:

Well, with no experience, take your 3k$, fold it in half, and put it your pocket. See you just doubled your money. Sorry it’s an old wall street joke. But seriously, there are so many ways to lose your money, please evaluate all advice, even mine, for suitability to you.

Let me make sure I understand your question, you’ve got a stake and what to get into “investing”. You’ve inquired about brokerages in Chicago. And, internet alternatives.

First, stop and take a deep breath. Running into anything, without a thorough understanding of what your getting into, will likely end badly. So please resolve to make haste slowly.

Second, time for some “education”. Below I’ve cited Suzzie Orman and Dave Ramsey for the emotional issues about investing. Also Bob Brinker’s site has an excellent reading list. Finally, for the immediate investing, look into all that credit unions have to offer.

Third, you’ll have to decide if you really want a brokerage account to buy and sell stuff or if you will use mutual funds. I always point people to Vanguard in Philly and on the net http://www.vanguard.com as the exemplar without equal of low cost mutual funds. It’s really hard to go wrong with them.

So to sum up, 3k$ isn’t a lot. No doubt it’s a lot to you. But in Wall Street terms, it’s tiny. If you said you had 3M$, my advice would be the same except louder. 3k or 3M, “investing” can cost you a lot of money from mistakes. So, don’t do anything, until you collect a lot more info.

Hope this helps. I’m interested how it works out for you. Drop me a note sometime. My blog may have helpful “stuff”.

Ferdinand J. Reinke
Kendall Park, NJ 08824

SOURCE

http://www.creditunion.coop/
http://www.suzeorman.com/
http://www.daveramsey.com/
http://www.ftc.gov/
http://www.sec.gov
http://www.bobbrinker.com/books.asp
http://tinyurl.com/lxu93
http://www.reinkefaceslife.com/…

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Update: Selected best by voters

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INTERESTING: Translating the “silent revolution” to what you see

Thursday, July 12, 2007

http://changethis.com/36.05.Dramatic
http://changethis.com/pdf/36.05.Dramatic.pdf

***Begin Quote***

Dramatic Impact: The Effect of “The Silent Revolution”
By You, our ChangeThis readers

We asked you, our ChangeThis readers, to submit brief manifestos of 250 words to describe the impact of “The Silent Revolution” as defined in Elizabeth Haas Edelsheim’s earlier manifesto on the continuing influence of Peter Drucker on business.

***End Quote***

This is a slap upside the head, harder than any V8 commercial, that the rules are again changing silently. Right under our feet. People rule! The value of intelligent cooperation in the creation of value should be what we are seeking. Objections will consign organizations to the dust bin of progress.

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LIBERTY: tax-funding laws mandating education

Thursday, July 12, 2007

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north546.html

Cartels: Economists and Central Bankers
by Gary North

***Begin Quote***

You will search in vain for a chapter on education as an oligopoly within the context of tax-funding, laws mandating education up to age 16, and government licensing of college-accreditation agencies. Somehow, economics textbook authors skip over any analytical discussion of this, the largest sector of the American economy.

***End Quote***

This skewers the blindspot of economists. And, politicians depend upon people to overlook the essential question.

Why do we have the gooferment funding, operating, and regulating so many things best left to the free market?

Education, banking, medicine, drugs, farming, … .. the gooferment has it’s nose in everything!

That needs some debate!

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YAHOO ANSWER: Ideas Please

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

http:// answers.yahoo.com/question/
;_ylt=Ajc.cSp3s66dlx8NU73r
fQ7CxQt.?link=answer&qid=20070711174844AARCARa

http://tinyurl.com/2673ua

Ideas Please

QUESTION

Asked by “MASTER”

I need Ideas Please!!?

I am a really creative writer except I dont know any good topics could you guys and gals please help me?

ANSWER

Dear “MASTER”:

Well, ideas are a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, good ideas are priceless. I’ll give you a couple. You’ll have to decide which is what!

As I understand it, you’re looking for fodder that you use as grist for your mill.

If you’re interested in creating systems that will spew out ideas, then you need to read the Edward De Bono sites (main link cited) about lateral thinking, paradigms, memes, and a lot of other strange ideas.

If you’re interested in having people bring interesting ideas to you, start a free blog at wordpressdotcom. (I would suggest that you spend the 15$ and get your own domain names. You might get lucky and hit the next meme buster, ebay, or pet rock dot com. If you do, that 15$ will allow you to move easily.

Hope this helps. I’m interested how it works out for you. Drop me a note sometime. My blog may have helpful “stuff”.

Ferdinand J. Reinke
Kendall Park, NJ 08824

Webform that creates an urgent email => http://2idi.com/contact/=reinkefj
Web page => http://www.reinke.cc/
My blog => http://www.reinkefaceslife.com/
LinkedIn url => http://www.linkedin.com/in/reinkefj

SOURCE

http://wordpress.com/
http://www.edwdebono.com/
http://tinyurl.com/lxu93
http://www.reinkefaceslife.com/…

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UPDATE

Another answer was picked by the asker as “best”. I don’t agree and I’m disappointed but life goes on!
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RANT: involuntary servitude

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ODD_RELUCTANT_JUROR?S
ITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-
07-10-08-24-18

http://tinyurl.com/2b9spf

 

Jul 10, 8:24 AM EDT
Jury Duty Excuses Could Bring Charges

*** begin quote ***

BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) — A Cape Cod man who claimed he was homophobic, racist and a habitual liar to avoid jury duty earned an angry rebuke from a judge on Monday, who referred the case to prosecutors for possible charges.

*** end quote ***

Why the nerve of that peasant! Who does he think his is? The owner of his own body. The custodian of his time. A sovereign individual. Failing to kowtow to the power of the gooferment!

Maybe when I have time to tilt at windmills, I can throw some sand in the gears.

My argument would be “involuntary servitude”.

From the Thirteenth Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

I can not be compelled to serve on a jury!

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INTERESTING: Balancing Church and State

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

FROM AN EMAIL IN MY HIGH SCHOOL FORUM

***Begin Quote***

Between their violence (as a generic proxy for all the “violence” in Catholic schools), and the later priestly pedophilia scandals, the Church in the USA is a mere shell of it’s former glory. I also made a similar observation in my blog of how the Church has lost the youth.

And, in a sense, the global Church has fallen away from whatever role it had in balancing the power of the State. The Church versus godless Communism probably freed Poland, and definitely had a lot to do with the fall of the USSR. It created the tipping point. Too bad. We could use and ally in wresting the American Gooferment from the current Socialists (both D’s and R’s) that are destroying Liberty here.

***End Quote***

Yes, the Church offset the power of the Kings of old to oppress the people. One has to wonder. Was it a direct conspiracy of the Socialists to destroy the Church? Anyone who studys history can see the classic role of the Church as the arbiter of good and evil. Was it necessary to destroy the Church, all Churches, as a refuge of oppressed people? So let’s examine what the Social Progressives have done.

  • Catholic Schools, gone, a casualty of gooferment education.
  • Catholic and Christian family solidarity anchored by grandparents in or near the family, gone, a casualty of Social Security checks.
  • Catholic and Christian family solidarity anchored by mothers in the home raising children, gone, a casualty of high gooferment taxes and “women’s liberation”.
  • Catholic Charities, gone, a casualty of gooferment welfare.
  • Catholic Hospitals, gone, a casualty of gooferment health care.
  • Catholic Moral Leadership, gone, a casualty of “Catholic in name only” politicians.
  • Catholic traditional marriage, gone, a casualty of the “free love” “let’s just shack up” trend.
  • Catholic Sanctity of Life, gone, a casualty of “women’s rights”, “reproductive freedom”, and “privacy rights”.
  • Catholic Missions to the Poor, gone, a casualty of the gooferment’s high taxes and “foreign aid”.
  • Catholic doctrine of the “Just War”, gone, a casualty of the “War on Terror”.
  • Catholic & Christian Christmas, gone, a casualty of the gooferment’s “winter solstice holiday”.
  • Catholic & Christian Easter, gone, a casualty of the gooferment’s “spring fling”.
  • Catholic, Christian, and Black Churches with their strong emphasis on Family and community, crippled, another casualty of the gooferment welfare.
  • Catholic protection to “illegal” immigrants, gone, a casualty of the War On Immigration.
  • Catholic Fraternal Orders, gone, a casualty of gooferment regulation on insurance and Social Security.
  • Catholic Churches (the buildings themselves), gone, a casualty of gooferment “social engineering” cause wholesale demographic changes.
  • Catholic financial support of the Church as an institution, gone, a casualty of the gooferment high taxes including inflation.
  • Catholic endowments, shrinking, a casualty of inflation.

To steal Walter Williams formulation, “if the Head Socialist wanted to completely destroy the Church — a generic label for all the moral institutions regardless of denomination Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Pentecostal, or any other intuitions that believes in absolutes like good and evil — as a counterbalance to the power of the oppressive State, then they could not have designed a better system to do it than the out of control gooferment of the USA.”

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TECHNOLOGY: THINKFREE blurs the lines

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

http://product.thinkfree.com/products/

ThinkFree Online

***Begin Quote***

ImageManage, access, and edit documents over the internet. Get the best Microsoft Office compatibility available. Share and get everyone’s input on your story, schedule, or marketing materials.

***End Quote***

THINKFREE is messing with my neatly laid out paradigm (i.e., consultant speak for how one looks at the world).

In the beginning, there was the (big mainframe) computer and it had input devices (i.e., punched cards) and output devices (i.e. printers). And after that everything got complicated. IBM’s SNA allowed intelligence and processing power to escape from the mainframe datacenter and go “native”. Then came IP and someone eventually hung one of them new fangled personal computers and there was a paradigm shift.

So we now have a zero footprint web browser, a thin client (i.e., gotomypc and it’s ilk), a fat client like some of the universal instant messengers or Microsoft Outlook, and (obese) clients that are servers like SBS that can do everything with or without the network.

THINKFREE has ONLINE (zero), DESKTOP (fat), SERVER (obese), and (now) PORTABLE (that acts like my uninstalled life).

You have to dig for pricing, but it looks like $50 except for server where they don’t tell you the price. (Always a bad sign.)

The free online will have premium options as yet unpriced. (Always a bad sign).

And, it still doesn’t integrate email.

I’d classify it as Zoho’s stupid brother!

Except for the blurring of the lines between online and offline. In that sense, it’s innovating. (IMHO)

You really want to be able to work without having to think about your connectivity status or what hardware you have available.

Looking at the DESKTOP minimum requirements, it’s very hefty.

In summary, it’s an interesting dead end that could be expensive.

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TECHNOLOGY: update your web pages quickly

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/eleven-lessons-.html

Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far
* Marc Andreessen
* Jul 10, 2007

***Begin Quote***

Fifth, writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits.

I think it’s an application of the 80/20 rule — for 20% of the effort (writing a blog post but not editing and refining it the quality level required of a magazine article, a published paper, or a book), you get 80% of the benefit (your thoughts are made available to interested people very broadly).

Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book, at least in cases where the article/paper/book is restricted by a publisher to a limited readership base.

This of course assumes that you’re not trying to make a living writing magazine articles or books, or you’re not trying to get tenure as a professor by publishing peer-reviewed research papers.

***End Quote***

Clearly, a blog is a light weight way to update your web pages quickly. Stale content on a web page is the kiss of death. Blogs are really nothing more than a web page with content rolling out like “toilet paper”. (A deliberately chosen metaphor.)

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