I teach my kids to prepare for the Hard Day. No one knows exactly what form the Hard Day will take, but it seems certain that we, as a nation, maybe even as a species, will face a difficult period of privation and hardship within the next five years. We call this the Hard Day. Two conditions in particular are coming together to form the perfect Hard Day storm: the seemingly endless plunge of the dollar precipitated by profligate spending of an undisciplined Congress and a White House consumed with sanctimonious megalomania waging an endless war of imperial hubris in the Middle East; and the imminent oil shortage.

James Howard Kunstler wrote an excellent summary of the oil crisis we face. I’ve included an excerpt below, but you should read the full article.

Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.

We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament. President George W. Bush has been briefed on the dangers of the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000 election and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that “the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary.”

[Read the full article…]

Big Brother can’t handle it when people are able to connect with each other freely and effectively outside the constraints of Big Media. So they’ll fix it the way they do every other threat: make it illegal. That’s right, Big Brother in DC has made it illegal for private websites to convey information about political candidates ostensibly to make elections less subject to the influence of Big Bidness and Big Special Interest. Ok, maybe I took the short bus to school, but it seems to me that if millions of little peon websites, such as this one, are not able to express political opinion, doesn’t that INCREASE the influence of Big Bidness and Big Special Interest?

If you use email, or keep a Web journal known as a blog, beware. The
government will soon be out to get you. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform
Act of 2002, better known as McCain-Feingold, has never been just
about keeping money out of politics. Political speech is its main
target. This is clearer than ever, now that the Federal Elections
Commission prepares to regulate the Internet. [read more]

Parents, students and teachers at Berkeley’s Thomas Jefferson
Elementary School will soon vote on whether to rename their school
because the nation’s third president was a slave owner. The question
of whether to rename the school has been debated for more than two
years — since several teachers, including an African American mother
of three former Jefferson students, said Jefferson’s moniker offended
them and suggested a name change. On Monday, Principal Betty Delaney
released a list of potential new names — one nominated by a student,
the rest by adults. Parents, students and teachers must first vote on
a new name, then take a second vote on whether to replace Jefferson
with the new name. The school board must officially approve any name
change. [read more]

I completely agree with this! Thomas Jefferson stood for too many great ideals and is too good a name to be defiled on government schools. Instead, we should re-name all government schools to accurately portray them for what they really are: government indoctrination facilities. Why sugarcoat it with human-sounding names? Schools should have names such as “Government Indoctrination Facility #666.” The only distinction among the various GIFs would be their registration number. So at highschool sports events, it would be the 666ers vs. the 1029ers, and so on. Go team!

And the PC Brownshirts go marching on!

If you want national (socialist) healthcare, then you trust the government with your medical care. If you send your kids to government school, then you trust the government to educate your kids. So, for you, letting the government get into your kids’ heads with mental health screening is simply the next logical step. Right out of Marx’s platform for implementing Communism– get control of the minds of the youth and you control the future of the nation. And you helped.

Big Brother is on the march. A plan to subject all children to
mental health screening is underway, and the pharmaceutical firms are
gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs. Like most liberal,
big-spending ideas, this one was slipped into the law under cover of
soft semantics. Its genesis was the New Freedom Commission on Mental
Health (NFCMH), created by President George W. Bush in 2002. The
NFCMH recommends ‘routine and comprehensive’ testing and mental
health screening for every child in America, including preschoolers. Bush has instructed 25 federal agencies to develop a plan to
implement the commission’s recommendations. [read more]

I just love kickin’ that old horse, Socialist Insecurity. It’s such a perfect example of how far we’ve fallen from a once-proud nation of independent people who prized self-sufficiency and were skeptical of government into a bleating herd of quivering sheeple, utterly dependent on Big Government to take care of us. Mark Outland, at Sierra Times, explains this well:

Social Security, the largest and most invasive Ponzi scheme the
world has ever known, has done more to destroy the American ideals of
self-sufficiency and personal responsibility than any other single
factor, and the fear and hysteria surrounding the President’s
suggestion of personal retirement accounts is proof. Somehow, America
managed to grow and prosper for 150 years without such massive
personal interference. … During most of this time, the concept that
each person was responsible for themselves was a given. Even charity
was conditioned upon true need. … Even when charity was given, the
social pressures to quickly move from dependency to self-sufficiency
— and personal responsibility — were great and ever-present. …
People were expected to do whatever was necessary to provide for
themselves, and not expect their fellow citizens to provide for
them. [read more]

Blogs have proven to be a serious threat to the Empire’s status quo. So much so that the Empire is striking back with yet another naked power grab. The Beltway Bandits want to limit your political speech on the Internet, even on your own website! Read the dispatch below and pass it on to your friends and associates on the Internet.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|

Please forward to friends who value free speech on
the Internet.

Last week, FEC Commissioner Brad Smith fired the shot
heard round the Internet. He said political activity
on the Internet is likely to be regulated. Smith
opposes this notion because he believes it’s
unconstitutional. He was engaging in whistle-blowing.

His opponents are accusing him of “misleading” or
being an “alarmist.” But this is not a hoax.

A federal judge has specifically ordered the Federal
Election Commission to regulate political activity on
the Internet. These new regulations must comply with
other regulations on political activity established
by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA).

This means YOU could be subject to regulation. You
might trigger these regulations by…

* Forwarding a campaign press release using
email.
* Printing a campaign press release on your
website.
* Posting a campaign ad on your blog.
* Linking to a candidate’s website from your home
page.

But websites and email lists tied to established
corporate media institutions are exempt from these
regulations. The New York Times’ website is free from
regulation, but your website and email communications
will not be.

All of this is a consequence of BCRA, a law that
protects incumbent office holders from criticism, and
privileges the established corporate news media with
full speech and press rights that you no longer
enjoy.

Please go to www.DownsizeDC.org right now, click on
the link under the headline “Save Our Blogs,” read a
short explanation of how this has all come about, and
then use the easy Electronic Lobbyist System to send
a message to Congress asking them to repeal BCRA and
restore your freedom of the press.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org

|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
is the official email list of
http://www.DownsizeDC.org

Fight the power! Don’t let Da Man keep you down! Let’s take Ameedica back!

To conveniently email this dispatch, click the cute little envelope below.

The theraputic effect of the drug ecstasy (MDMA) is in the news again. I posted previously about how ecstasy is being used to help Iraq War veterans deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. The Bush Administration had no objections. Now, Harvard is researching the use of ecstasy to ease the anxiety of terminal cancer patients facing imminent death. But the Bush Administration objects to this research because it might “destigmatize a dangerous substance.” Hey, don’t blame me– I voted Libertarian.

Harvard researchers are preparing for the first time in three
decades to conduct human experiments using a psychedelic drug, a
study that would seek to harness the mind-altering effects of the
drug ecstasy to help ease the crushing psychic burdens faced by dying
cancer patients. In the experiment, 12 terminal cancer patients would
be given MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, to determine whether
the drug helps alleviate their anxiety. The experiment seeks to
establish a medical use for a drug whose abuse has been on the rise
among some young people, who use it recreationally for its euphoric
effects. A small but growing group of scientists contends the drug,
administered in a controlled medical setting, can improve mental and
emotional health. But critics, including some in the Bush
administration, said the experiment may destigmatize a dangerous
substance. [read more]

Lawmakers in the Montana House of Representatives collectively
thumbed their noses at the federal government Monday by approving two
bills exempting guns from federal regulations and driver’s licenses
from national standardization requirements. The bills by Reps. Diane
Rice, R-Harrison, and Roger Koopman, R-Bozeman, do different things
but are driven by the same concern: the erosion of personal liberties
by the federal government. [read more]

This action by the Montana House sets a dangerous precedent. Just imagine what could happen if more states started acting unilaterally to nullify federal law. We could end up with a federal government bound and gagged by the terms of the Constitution! No more Department of Education to keep the masses uniformly dumbed-down, no more federal funding for masterpieces such as the crucifix dipped in urine. No more Income Tax; we just cannot have this– there’s just no telling what people would do if they’re allowed to keep more of their own money to spend as they see fit. Why, they might go buy guns, or something!

“An East Feliciana Parish woman fired a bullet into the chest of a man
who had broken into her farmhouse, then fought off his beating until
the man died from the gunshot wound. Georgia Belle Sullivan says she
was sleeping before dawn yesterday when her dogs’ barking woke her up.
She retrieved her gun, then saw a shadow move behind a line of chairs.
She told authorities that’s when a man lunged at her. She fired once
at close range … In the beating after the shooting, Sullivan
suffered bruises to her face and elsewhere, and lacerations on her
arms. Sullivan says the gun discharged several more times during the
struggle. She says when Sanford realized he was hit, he told her his
name, asked her not to shoot him again and he let her go.” [read more]

They didn’t say what kind of gun she used, but I can guaran-damn-tee you she wasn’t using a 12 ga. shotgun. I have always maintained that the venerable 12 ga. with 00 buck shot is THE best weapon for home defense.

12-Gauge Encounter

Nightime intruder.
Grab the 12 gauge. Chink-chink.
Boom! Lights out, mofo.

Ok, sign me up…

“American soldiers traumatised by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are
to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and
recurring nightmares. The US food and drug administration has given
the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see
if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic
stress disorder.” [read more]

There has been a heated debate for some time now in our area (New London, New Hampshire) over what to do about an aging, over-crowded middle school for our school district. Many are pushing hard for a large, expensive, central facility in the center of the district; others want two smaller schools at either end. Here is my contribution to the debate, submitted as a letter to our local newspaper. I imagine it was unappreciated by most, but this is an issue that needs to be discussed in every town.

— Mrs. Samurai

The Middle School issue is heating up once more! But I think there is an important aspect missing in the debate. Before we potentially commit a huge amount of financial resources to a building, we should step back and look at the larger issue of public schooling – because there is a small but growing debate about its effectiveness that should influence the decision we as a community make now.

There is overwhelming evidence that public schooling has not been a successful experiment and should be dramatically altered, if not phased out entirely. I feel a little like the kid who claimed the emperor had no clothes in saying that because it is such an accepted institution in our country. But did you know that until the mid-1800’s there was no compulsory schooling and yet evidence shows that the non-slave population in that time was nearly completely literate – including a large number of indentured servants? However, since compulsory government schooling began, literacy has steadily declined. In fact, over the span of the 20th century, functional illiteracy (unable to read or write a simple message) doubled to around 20%. No doubt you’ve all heard other grim statistics, and no matter how much more money or brand-new facilities we throw at the problem, it’s only getting worse.

So, our country had an early educational system which basically centered around family choice and free-market schools. You may argue that if things were so great, why did public schools even get started? The short answer is that by the mid-1800’s a lot of powerful people were getting nervous about the possibility of lower-class uprisings (“Red Scares”) as well as the large influx of immigrants with their strange customs and religions (such as Catholicism!). What better way to exert influence over people than for the government to be in charge of education? Before you think I’m some kind of conspiracy nut, you should know that in Massachusetts, where this all began, the idea of compulsory government education was so abhorrent to most citizens, so against the ideals of our free society, that there was resistance from about 80% of the population and even armed uprisings in some communities. It took a few decades before the militias finally forced the last of the families to comply.

Alas, now we take it as a given that the government will have a complete monopoly on the education of our young people. This in a country where almost any other product or service is subject to the forces of the free market. We can go to the store and choose from a variety of good-quality and reasonably priced ball-point pens, but when it comes to the education of our children we are forced to pay more and more for schools that are increasingly failing to produce well-rounded and well-educated children. Even though we are “free” to homeschool or send our kids to private school, our choices are pretty limited and our taxes are still going to the government schools.

I don’t have room here to really address another problem with institutional schooling – the harmful effects of keeping children segregated with their own peers and a handful of adults for such a huge chunk of their childhood. Of course, schools aren’t the only thing wrong with our children’s environment. For various reasons there has been a gradual decline in the life of the family and community, especially due to the influence of television and other electronic media. But whether schools are a cause or a symptom, we will never be able to restore some of what’s been lost without dramatically changing the way we view education and acknowledge the importance of having children spend less time in an institutional setting and more time in the community and with family.

So how does all of this relate to our current debate? This is a huge issue, and even if the majority of citizens agreed with my position, how we could get from where we are now to a free-market system of education is obviously beyond the scope of this letter. My point is that if a financial commitment is made now to a large central facility, then for generations to come the future of schools in this area will not be up for debate. Even if, as I suspect, people increasingly question the method of institutional schooling we’ve been experimenting with, we would be stuck – too many resources would be tied up in that building to try a system that offers more freedom and choices to the families in our communities.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend by the name of
Common Sense who has been with us for many years. No one knows for
sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in
bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such
value lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the
early bird gets the worm and that life isn’t always fair.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t
spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults,
not kids, are in charge). His health began to rapidly deteriorate when
well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.

Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for
kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash
after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student,
only worsened his condition. It declined even further when schools
were required to get parental consent to administer aspirin to a
student; however they could not inform the parents when a student
became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Finally, Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten
Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and
criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense finally gave up the ghost after a woman failed to
realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot, she spilled a bit in
her lap, and was awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and
Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his
son, Reason.

He is survived by two stepbrothers; My Rights and Ima Whiner.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was
gone.

Thanks to Matushka Galina Tregubov for passing this along.

dude wrote:

The public school system is what made this country a world power instead of a thirdworld jungle. Remember, the clues have the little blue paw prints on them. Find one.

The public school system is what made this country a world power instead of a thirdworld jungle. Remember, the clues have the little blue paw prints on them. Find one.

(I typed it twice so I wouldn’t type it incorrectly.)

_______________________________

Message sent from IP: 206.222.219.77

What a witty and informative email! I never knew that we had jungles in this country before public schools came along. Whew! I don’t like humid heat and bugs the size of my foot.

Unfortunately, this clever fellow suffers from a common misconception regarding the history of public schooling. Most people don’t even know when public schools started or why. The when is around the 1850’s. The why is a bit more complicated, but had a lot to do with assimilating the immigrant children quickly and helping them to conform with the existing population. (A lot of the intellectuals of the time had grave concerns about the effect of the Irish and others on the quality of the U.S. citizenry.)

By the time public schools opened, the U.S. had already rocketed to premier first-world status and was an amazing financial success story. This was due to the unprecedented freedoms in our country at that time. Simply speaking, the government stayed out of its citizens’ lives and the result was prosperity and relative peace. Most of you can look at our country’s history since the mid-1800s and see that public schooling was just part of a pattern of increasing government intervention.

The result? Our literacy level has steadily decreased since the first public school opened it’s doors. Many people mistakenly think that we had a bunch of barely literate country bumpkins in this country in the early years. Not so! As an example, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” was estimated to have been read by half of the adult population at that time. Now, it is considered difficult reading for high schoolers. Furthermore, over the span of the 20th century as public schooling became the norm for the majority of children, functional illiteracy (unable to read or write a simple message) doubled to over 20%.

I see public education as an experiment that has failed. I look around me at all of the great services, products, and medical advances that exist because of free enterprise. Given competition and a profit motive, it is rare that a failing system will survive for long (Microsoft Windows is arguably the notable exception to this). But given government protection, a mediocre (or worse) program can live on forever. Think of it – how does a private school increase it’s income? By having a successful, appealing program that draws more students and justifies higher tuition. How does a public school get more money? By proving that they have failed to produce adequate results and therefore need more funds to address the problem. The quality of students continues to decline (the author of the above email excepted, I’m sure), yet we are expected to pay more and more. Is it just me, or is this insane?

If you are interested in learning more about the history of education in this country from someone who really knows about it, read the excellent books written by John Taylor Gatto.

Our latest nominee for the Heavy Metal Irony Award:

Brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of
His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand
against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of
the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may
be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the
breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the
preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of
faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the
wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God…

Ephesians 6:10-17

Fr. Jerome is an Orthodox priest and Navy Chaplain who serves the troops in Iraq. Incoming mortars during Proskomedia (the service of preparation for Divine Liturgy) mandated that Fr. Jerome wear protective clothing.

Ahh, savor the irony.

The cabal of delusional neo-cons in the Whitehouse are not conservatives at all but are just another brand of Big Government cheerleaders like their liberal cousins. Paul Craig Roberts asks a question I’ve been wondering, “Where have all the conservatives gone?”

You see, grasshopper, St. George of the Bush is a false prophet in the Church of Conservatism… unless you’ve warped the definition of “conservatism” to now mean favoring massive budget deficits and national debts (since “deficits don’t matter,” according to Deacon Cheney) pervasive and invasive government snooping into your personal life a la the Patriot Act, and waging imperial wars around the globe. After all, to real conservatives, war is nothing but the biggest, most expensive, and most destructive government program there is. But you neo-con brownshirts get all puffed up in your fleshly minds and declare that, “If’n you ain’t with us, yer agin’ us!”

Now, before you dismiss Paul Craig Roberts as some kind of wild-eyed liberal, think again. Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Let’s pause from genuflecting before the altar of the Humongous Gubmint Beast with its attendant clergy of neo-cons and read how real conservatives think:

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals� abiding faith in government. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person�s civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof.

Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts “conservative,” because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts� delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a “strategic blunder.” ~ Paul Craig Roberts