Say Anything Blog

Hubert Sumlin is among the best - he used to back up Howlin’ Wolf. Check the clip... It gets real good around 3:15!!!

Original here.

BARRE, Vt. - Torrential rains pelted central Vermont on Wednesday, triggering flash flooding that washed out roads and inundated the city of Barre, where water ran up to 6 feet deep for a time.
Between 3 and 4 inches fell in the area Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, which estimated it based on radar but had no precise rain gauge readings. The deluge caused rivers, streams and storm sewers to overflow, sending water coursing down streets, into basements and up around cars.
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Street flooding was reported in Hardwick, Woodbury, Randolph and Bethel. The Town of Berlin opened a shelter at the Berlin Town School, and two mobile home parks were evacuated, according to Mark Bosma, a spokesman for Vermont Emergency Management.
In Williamstown, up to 75 people were moved to the Williamstown High School by authorities fearing a dam breach.
But the worst of it was in Barre, where the Stevens Branch of the Winooski River overflowed its banks, forcing the closing of portions of Route 302.
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Lorna Garland, 41, was among a dozen members of a women’s group meeting at the Salvation Army store on North Main Street. She said they decided at one point it was unsafe to leave the building, which was surrounded by water. They began praying, and the water receded about 20 minutes later.

Go god! All the war and famine… those ladies must have said something right.

Original here.

SALT LAKE CITY - Two southern Utah counties cannot undo protections limiting off-road vehicle use on the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument by claiming without proof that they have historic rights-of-way, a federal court judge ruled Friday.

In a ruling with broad application to other federal public lands, U.S. District Court Judge Bruce Jenkins threw out claims by Kane and Garfield counties that monument managers disregarded the repealed statute R.S. 2477 that once established “highway rights-of-way” when the West was being settled.

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation intervened in the case, joining federal attorneys in asking the court to dismiss the suit.

Well damn. Its always disappointing when the Fed uses their property or their holdings in the states to exert broad laws and limit local autonomy. This phenomenon, I have found, enjoys a certain type of trickle down effect, duly entailed in Exhibit A:

Indeed, we find that even on a local level, any form of power that is doled out, is abused. The inherent disregard for property rights and autonomy, on both scales, simply should not be tolerated.

In a small Vermont town I am quite familiar with, an analogous dispute played out a couple years ago, with surrogates for the Sierra Club and the Fed.

In many Vermont towns, roads laid out by selectboards long past either have never been built or have vanished from memory and use over the years. These “phantom roads,” many of which lack corporeal form, still bear form, force, and spirit given them by law, and now haunt Vermont towns and private property owners.

The curse of phantom roads is highlighted by the specific instances within the Towns of Barnard and Chittenden examined in this article. There are innumerable private property owners along the paths of phantom roads that might be similarly affected. For example, twenty-six phantom roads are currently being researched in the Town of Chittenden. There are 254 other municipalities in the State of Vermont, likely with inventories of phantom roads and hosts of private property owners that will be affected should these roads themselves rise from the grave.

In the case I am familiar with, selective clearing was supervised by members of the selectboard on the ‘Green Road’ (one of Chittenden’s phantom roads that affects a wide swath of different properties), within close proximity of the houses and properties of the townsfolk who complained the loudest when discussion of unearthing these old roads began. They began toying with the idea of exerting town right of way on some of these old logging roads, and doing some clearing, in order to encourage winter sport enthusiasts. Some people whose property was disected by the ‘Green Road’ were quite vocal and totally against the idea, rightly so. Fed, state, and especially local politics can be nasty.

Posted at http://arbuckleinstitute.blogspot.com

...but I ain’t the president so I usually bite my lip and ‘wait for the walk signal to turn green‘ before crossing the street. This‘ll leave a big hole in history.

I flew to L.A. on Friday for an event. On Saturday, I saw a Dodgers vs. Angels ‘Freeway Series’ game (Angels 3, Dodgers 0). It was sunny!

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I also went to the Getty Center (as in the oil guy). They have all these modern buildings up on top of a hill with a killer view and tons of art. Its like a combination of one of James Bond’s evil enemy’s hilltop compound and the Louvre. Sweet!

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...and then I flew back this morning.

Original here. You really should read the whole thing.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: And I am also against an arms race. I am opposed to any kind of arms race but I would like to quickly draw your attention to something I said in last year’s Address. We have learned from the Soviet Union’s experience and we will not be drawn into an arms race that anyone imposes on us. We will not respond symmetrically, we will respond with other methods and means that are no less effective. This is called an asymmetrical response.

The United States are building a huge and costly missile defence system which will cost dozens and dozens of billions of dollars. We said: “no, we are not going to be pulled into this race. We will construct systems that will be much cheaper yet effective enough to overcome the missile defence system and therefore maintain the balance of power in the world.” And we are going to proceed this way in the future.

Moreover, I want to draw your attention to the fact that, despite our retaliatory measures, the volume of our defence expenditures as a percentage of GDP is not growing. They were 2,7 percent of GDP and will remain so. We are planning the same amount of defence spending for the next 5 to 10 years. This is fully in line with the average expenditures of NATO countries. This amount is not more than their average defence expenditures and in some cases it is even lower than that of NATO member countries. And we can use our competitive advantages which include quite advanced military-industrial capabilities and the intellectual capacities of those who work in our military complex. There are good results and good people. In any case, much of this has been preserved, and we will do everything possible in order not only to maintain but also to develop this potential.

Assymetrical warfare… AKA terrorism. What is Putin getting at here? Joel, got any bigoted anti-Russian propaganda in your valise? Now might be a good time…

The original article is here. I posted earlier on the pending trial of this youngster, and now it appears as if the tribunal judge in charge has sided with me and what I view as an appropriate application of justice.

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - The military judge presiding at Omar Khadr’s war crimes tribunal dismissed all the charges against the young Canadian on Monday, saying he did not meet the definition of those subject to trial under a new law.

Army Col. Peter Brownback said a military review board had labeled Khadr an “enemy combatant” during a 2004 hearing in Guantanamo.

But the Military Commissions Act adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2006 said only “unlawful enemy combatants” could be tried in the Guantanamo tribunals. Brownback said Khadr did not meet that strict definition.

This was the latest setback for the Bush government’s efforts to put the Guantanamo detainees through some form of judicial process. It was forced to rewrite the rules last year after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the old tribunals illegal.

Brownback dismissed the charges, but left open the possibility that charges could be refiled if Khadr went back before a review board and was formally classified as an “unlawful enemy combatant.”

Khadr, who was captured in a firefight in Afghanistan at age 15, was accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade and wounding another in a battle at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

He was also charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism along murder, attempted murder and spying, for allegedly conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan.

I agree with the result, but not the rationale. IMO, even if this young man can be reclassified as an, “unlawful enemy combatant”, he should remain unable to be tried as an adult.
For an individual to be guilty, there must be responsibility for the acts in question. While a 15 year old is able to have causal responsibility (insofar as he is actually the one who committed the crimes), a 15 year old is not old enough to be found morally responsible for their actions to a degree that warrants life in prison, capital punishment, or any other type of punishment beyond juvenile hall or an analogue. Mr. Khadr, in addition only being 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan, was also brainwashed by his jihadist father.

Several of Mr Khadr’s family members have been accused of ties to Islamist extremists. His Egyptian-born father, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was killed in Pakistan in 2003 alongside senior al-Qaida operatives and Canada is holding Mr Khadr’s brother Abdullah on a US extradition warrant accusing him of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.

If Mr. Khadr had reached the age of 18, widely acknowledged as a legal age of consent and adulthood, when he committed these heinous acts; perhaps his responsibility for the crimes in question would make him more deserving of being tried as an adult, but he was only 15. In conducting these legally ambiguous tribunals that have previously been deemed illegal and modified to conform to law, it is of utmost importance to maintain a coherent and transparent variety of justice. As the world superpower, it is our responsibility to lead by example and trying 15 year olds is not the example we should enact.

Concurrently posted at The Arbuckle Institute

Yea. Its kinda funny, I guess…

Here’s my favorites of the Federalist Papers: #51, #55, and #56. Read ‘em. Do it slow like. They’re great and there is some real fodder for the anti-leftard fires in those. If you have a fav, let me know what it is. Those articles are fucking brilliant, BTW. Its why we are the best, IMO. Oh, and here’s a link to them all. Enjoy!

I’m leaving in a week for the current murder capital of the country and, well, I couldn’t be happier. I’d rather risk death than remain in this corrupt shithole full of union mafia and faux Republican wankers.

We had a temporary medical marijuana program for about a year or two. It went pretty well, with minor exceptions. Now the legislature is about to make it permanent and the Republican governor is readying his ‘veto pen’. I heard him on the radio today saying, “well, its a federal crime”. The guy is a effing Republican!!! Who cares if its a federal crime? That’s all he’s got? Give me a effing break!!! Ever heard of the 10th amendment Don Carcieri? Grow some cohones you fed-strengthening little pantywaste!

120°F outside? Stuck in the middle of the desert in Dubai? Wanna go skiing? No problem:

Note the palm trees, dwarfed in the foreground.

Original here.

Under the bill, couples eager to marry who attend a state-approved premarital counseling course will have the state’s marriage license fee—which would double from $30 to $60—waived. Couples who receive counseling will also dodge the state’s 72-hour mandatory marriage waiting period.
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Chisum has been married to his wife, Omega, for 50 years in October. He is the president of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, which promotes bedrock conservative policy, including limited government, free enterprise and, of course, family values.

Marriages today, Chisum said, fall apart too often—“the first time they hit a bump in the road.” His bill will force couples to at least acknowledge that there are issues they should discuss that are critical to achieving a healthy marriage.
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The state would also offer its own generic course, lasting eight hours, and make grants available to couples who want to take the state-run class but don’t have money to enroll.

While Chisum said he expects many of the counseling locations will be associated with Texas churches, he said the law would apply to all denominations.

Texas conservatives, all for limiting government but not government spending, or the government’s enforcement of Christian-derived laws. Asinine.

Concurrently posted at The Arbuckle Institute
Hee hee hee. Some young contributer over at HuffPo is absolutely trashing on Hilldog‘s newest effort to reinvent herself with hollow, bullshit rhetoric. I love it when even the libs can’t stomach their own bullshit:

Senator Hillary Clinton is about to unleash a whole new version of herself. Again. This one is going to be a Hillary thinking outside of the box (!), thinking laterally (!!), and using innovation to find the way forward to the path of tomorrow where success isn’t a secret, but a global promise (!!!).

Nothing grates on nerves quite like corporate-speak. It’s the lingo of Type A suits everywhere, proselytizing to the inspirationally challenged while exploiting their own clip-art fetishes. Senator Clinton was thinking synergistically when she hired “serial innovator” John Kao (pronounced “Kao") as part of her senatorial campaign, and paid him $70,000 to show her that with can-do attitude she will flow with jazz magic.

Kao is now on Clinton’s presidential campaign (working pro bono) and his “Innovation Manifesto” is making the rounds in the bullpens.

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The "Innovation Manifesto" is built on "The 20 Statements," which I believe were until now, a secret known only to Mr. Kao, derived from vanished golden tablets buried in his backyard that were only readable through magic glasses sent from God. These incredibly mysterious, deep statements run the gamut from, "Innovation is an expression of an organized culture," to my favorite "Ideation instigates innovation." Apparently, alliterative assholes assume adults appreciate this kind of adolescent absurdity.

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Over all, this “manifesto” uses the word innovation upwards of sixty times, defined by Kao as “creativity applied with intention to create value.” I think that means attempting to co-opt everything that’s great, wring whatever money is possible out of it, and then move on to the next fad like a swarm of well-tailored locusts.

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The whole packet is filled with these empty phrases: statements like "We are in the midst of a profound change from a logic of business based on economies of scale to economies of discovery," which I guess is like the more douchey version of saying that talking about music is now like dancing about architecture. After four pages of this tripe, my head begins to ache. Should you tilt towards towards the masochistic, you can click here [pdf] to read it for yourself.

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“The Innovation Manifesto” reads like the bits that weren’t good enough to get into L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, and since that reads like a barely literate attempt at Bible fan fiction, that’s saying a lot. It’s entirely possible that copies of this lame attempt at “punk” corporate talk, landed in the Clinton staff’s trash cans, but that this sort of faux-inspirational babble has gotten anywhere near a presidential campaign is alarming.

The HuffPo article is here.

“He alone is great and happy who requires neither to command nor to obey in order to secure his being of some importance in the world.”
-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Concurrently posted at The Arbuckle Institute.

This one is quite a read. It was brought about by an argument or two with some lib friends about the morality of any state. It is consistent with Knee-high-man’s accusation that I am merely a ‘shit disturbing anarchist’ (), however I do believe in the need for the minimal state. In what follows I merely prove that there is no moral transition from the state of nature to the minimal state. In addition, I grant Nozick and the ‘individualist anarchists’ certain natural rights which there may or may not be issues with. The girl (brilliant and beautiful without equal), as always, helped at various junctures. Enjoy. I couldn’t figure out how to do footnotes, so I have included the footnotes in the *X* format. They can all be found at the end of the piece, ‘below the fold’. Also, let me add, that I am grateful for the audience. These extended posts are sweet for keeping my research and theory skills up while I’m on hiatus from more formal studies.

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The libertarian Nozick *1*, in his book Anarchy, State and Utopia, sets out to demonstrate that only a minimal state *2*, and nothing more extensive, can be morally justified (Miller 10). In response to Locke’s arguments against anarchy, Nozick feels that Locke dismissed the anarchist position too quickly and gives it a more thorough analysis (Wolff 42). The first part of Nozick’s book is geared toward the individualist anarchists, and he spends this portion of the book answering their moral objections to a state. Individual anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker (who Nozick names), start with the same premise as Nozick, namely that individuals have inviolable rights to life, liberty, and property (16). Since both the individualist anarchists and Nozick share this theoretical ground, he finds himself obligated to answer their objections against the state. Nozick puts forth a theory that purports to show that the minimal state can arise from an ideal form of the state of nature by morally permissible means, and claims that it does so by not violating the natural rights of life, liberty, and property that Nozick believes all individuals have (later in his theory he adds the natural rights of self-defense and punishment) (Nozick 10). Nozick’s view on rights takes the form of Lockean natural rights that are negative in form, meaning that they act as moral side constraints on other’s actions towards you, rather than positive rights that are obligations others owe you. Nozick believes natural rights to be absolute and inviolable since each person’s life is separate and no one individual or his rights may be sacrificed for other considerations *3*. Nozick adopts the Kantian categorical imperative in his view of what individuals may rightfully do to one another. The Kantian view holds that people may only be treated as ends and not only as means since they are capable of having a life that is meaningful *4* (50). After introducing his view on natural rights, Nozick adds that all individuals have the non-natural and non-absolute right to a reliable procedure of justice (Wolff 63).

The individualist anarchists put forth two main moral objections to the formation of a state. Nozick takes these objections seriously, since both share the same premise that individuals have rights that are inviolable. Nozick aims to show that a minimal state can arise from the state of nature and preserve the individual’s inviolable rights each step of the way. It is his hope that he can answer the individual anarchist’s objections with his theory of the minimal state. The first of the individual anarchists’ objections concerns the state’s monopoly on the use of force (Nozick 51). When a state monopolizes the use of force within a geographical territory, the individual anarchists claim that it does so by punishing those who wish to defend their own rights by allowing the state to protect and enforce rights on their behalf. In the individual anarchists’ view, this is immoral since it violates the absolute right an individual has to self-defense and hence, the state is rights-violating and immoral. The second objection the individual anarchists’ put forth concerns the immoral forceful redistribution of property done by the state. When a state holds a monopoly over the use of force, and some individuals do not voluntarily allow the state to protect its rights, the state must somehow include them within its sphere of protection. Through the inclusion of the “independents”, whom would rather self-enforce their right to self-defense, the other individuals who voluntarily allowed the state to protect its rights must now pay for the protection of these “independents” by the state. The anarchists hold that the state has violated the right to property all individuals have when it forcefully makes the individuals, already within the state, pay for the “independents’” protection. Therefore, the individual anarchists conclude, the state is immoral and cannot be justified. Nozick now has the burden, in his defense of the minimal state, to first show that the dominant protection agency (to be explained later in this paper) is justified in protecting “independents” who want to defend their own rights (Paul 68). Second, Nozick must show the anarchists that forceful redistribution does not take place, but rather that it is an act of compensation as morally required by the principle of compensation. Unfortunately, Nozick fails to satisfactorily answer both objections, and due to his strict moral framework of inviolable rights, he is unable to make the theoretical moves he attempts to make while at the same time proving that the minimal state arises by a rights-preserving process. The individual anarchists’ complaints, in the end, are left unanswered and Nozick’s minimal state, by way of his and the individual anarchists’ own requirements, is left unjustified and proves to be immoral. (more...)