Jeber Jabber

The murder of habeus corpus

Keith Olbermann reports, you decide.  Is this not one of the most extreme challenges to the Constitution yet put forth by the White House?  At what point, after which of our freedoms gets quietly deleted from the books, do we become angry and demand an accounting from these federal employees of ours?  The president is not a king, he is not god.  He's an official elected to be our representative to the rest of the world, to be the point man for an administration entrusted with supporting the Constitution.

A religious mandate?

This last election was more than a choice between two candidates for the presidency.  It was a referendum on morality, another step in the direction of proclaiming a state religion.  The protestant Christian movement does not seem content with rendering unto Caesar that which is due Caesar, it seems they wish to share in Caesar's bounty.  Separation of church and state is becoming less popular than freedom of speech.  The terrorists have partially succeeded...they have made us become more like them.

Well that sure helped

So after two debates by the main contenders and one by their understudies, it seems we as Americans have reached the conclusion that our opinions on who should be the next President haven't changed a bit. No change, nada...zip. We're just as evenly split now as we were two weeks ago. So how many millions of dollars did we just spend on these less-interesting-than-reality-TV extravaganzas? How much clearer can it be that many Americans believe we don't really have any choice in the coming election? Or am I simply being pessimistic? Perhaps it's not that the polls indicate indecision, but rather show that we believe both men are so well qualified to lead us that we just can't pick between them. Yeah, sure.

Want Frye's with that?

Usually I could care less about San Diego politics. This is a city run by bought-and-paid-for bureaucrats on a par with mob bosses, but without the charm. Leadership in San Diego has been a joke for many, many years. Lately it's only gotten worse, as some of the city's biggest power brokers have died and others have stepped up to the plate to flex their financial muscles. It first looked like this year's mayoral race was going to be typical and pointless, a race between two rich white male Republicans; our own Beevis and Butthead mayor's race. But nearly at the last minute, we've been presented with an option that could take this mired-in-mud city in a whole new direction. Donna Frye, a Democrat, has decided to run as a write-in candidate. Not only does she represent a party that traditionally has had no power here, but she is not a member of the cabal that has run San Diego from their secret chambers for so long. I hope all my fellow San Diegans will consider what a positive force a mayor could be if we elected one who acted on behalf of the citizens instead of the special interests. I'm not a Democrat (or Republican for that matter) and I don't work for Donna Frye. I don't endorse her for her politics, but rather for the possibility she represents to finally break San Diego free from the chains of big money that have dragged our city into gross mismanagement and financial ruin.
I wish Donna the best in her quest for the mayor's seat. I hope she's sitting in it before long.

Move 'em out

If we do nothing else in Iraq, could we at least get all the civilian contractors out of country until we can ensure their safety?

Phishing for dollars

According to a story on MSNBC today, Indian phishers have managed to send out bogus emails to Kerry supporters, collecting both personal information and "donations".
It's ironic to read this so soon after I posted my thoughts about online honesty. But I like to think this sort of dishonesty re-enforces my argument. The more honest and open our usual communications with one another, the more the dishonest stand out. The more emails you get from friends and family, the more familiar you become with the way a proper email header looks. Even legitimate spam (if there is such a thing) exposes the phishy ones. Malformed headers, misspelled words and poor sentence construction are all indicators that the email you have received might not be what it says it is.
The TAO teaches that you can't have white without black, love without hate, honesty without deceit. One extreme begats the other extreme. If we are to truly have open, honest exchanges on the internet, we can be assured that we will also always have to deal with dishonesty and lies. The trick is to let the one teach you of the other. Embracing and avoiding are also opposites. Embrace open communication, avoid the phish.

Deep Throat Dies

According to this CNN story, the man thought to be Deep Throat died Saturday. Another figure from my hippy past fades into memory. Too bad he didn't leave a note spilling the beans or pointing a finger before he died. So many mysteries from the 60's have never been cleared up. Now there's another one.

Google this!

Google has decided on the price of their stock, $108-$135 a share. (Just a side note...I heard the price mentioned on our local news station yesterday as $1.08 to $1.35 a share. Ooops! Where are those editors and fact-checkers when you need them?)Read all about it.

Will you be my neighbor?

This morning I was watching the news, as usual, and heard a story regarding the Scot Peterson trial. It seems his lawyers will argue the police failed to consider sex offenders living in the neighborhood as suspects.
But the real news nugget was the mention that roughly 200 sex offenders live in that neighborhood. That seems to be a popular location to live, should you be a convicted offender I have a feeling that very soon a lot of property is going to be put on the market around Scot's old house.

Long, downhill slide

Call me paranoid (rather, call me Jeber...you may refer to me as paranoid), but I'm beginning to see a trend in the erosion of our basic civil rights under the guise of homeland security. We are becoming more isolationistic in our opinions, and more restrictive in our policies. In fact, I'm coming to the conclusion that the 60's were the high point in our country as regards concerns over personal freedom. Ever since then, we've been sliding down that long, slippery slope of reduced personal freedom and rethinking freedom of the press, all in the name of security. Is it necessary, in order to ensure the safety of our country, to destroy our freedom? I can easily imagine a slow, well disguised implementation of a police state with the blessing of the American people sold to us under the banner of safety and security. We won't notice until it's too late that it also involves the surrender of our personal freedoms. Anything the "terrorists", the new boogymen of this century, can use for their own ends will be regulated and controlled by the government...speech, the press, the internet...almost every means of communication will be seen as a potential weapon of the terrorists, therefor subject to tightened oversight. And it will happen in small ways, the introduction of a seemingly innocent bill here, the ammendment of a right there...nothing to get much attention.
So are we going to destroy our country in the effort to preserve it? Only if you let them.