…is really hard. But I love the job. My entire world goes to about 1/8 speed, and I pretty much have to give up any autonomy until Little Bear is in bed, but perhaps it’s the teacher in me. I love to watch her learn. It grips the same place that being a squad leader did. I love to watch her, unprompted, to be about the most considerate person I’ve ever known. I love her sweetness. I love her ferocity. She is my child. She is a warrior. She is a thinker. I love to watch the gears turning in her head. I love getting a kiss, but having it not be enough; she wants, “lots of kisses.” I love dropping her off to school and have her hold my hand to show me what job she has that day. I love picking her up and having 3 kids run across the yard screaming, “Abby, look who’s here!” then having her run full tilt into a growling hug.
Thanks to the general incompetence of the world I’ve no internet. Explanations coming when there’s time. I’ve been able to scratch a pair of minutes together for this while doing legal research and watching my favorite documentary “Red Dawn” in the law school rec room.
I also wanted to do a post about Kony, but looks like this guy has beat me to it perfectly. Read it.
10/9/13 EDIT: I have since modified my position on this post quite substantially. I do not delete the post solely in the interest of remaining accountable for my statements. My favorite work of pen to paper has been Emerson’s Self Reliance. I’m reminded of a specific paragraph:
Do not try to be consistent. Trying to be consistent blocks the new creation that is constantly attempting to flow out of you. “Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannonballs, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.” Yes, you will be misunderstood. All great souls have suffered this indignity. You’ll be in excellent company. You will be a cause, a creator, an architect of a new world, as all great souls have been who had the guts to see the world with honest eyes.
The original post follows:
Former Latah GOP chair Barrett Schroeder has filed for the Idaho State Senate in District 5. Having been acquainted with the man I can say first that he is a good, considerate man. However, I would never be able to offer my support to his candidacy.
Something caught my eye from yesterday’s post. In announcing his candidacy, Schroeder said:
“In 10 years of recruiting Republicans to run for office, the best candidates were those who felt so strongly about an issue that they absolutely had to run. For me that issue today is the emergence of Militia groups. As I’ve watched the Tea Party cause be warped into a Militia movement, I feel that I could not live with myself if another Ruby Ridge-type event happened and I didn’t do everything in my power to stop it.”
Well, the one good thing I can say about that is that he is coming into the running with a mission, exactly what I was saying yesterday was generally lacking amongst office seekers. That mission however…I don’t know where to begin.
Ruby Ridge did not happen because of the militia movement. Ruby Ridge, like Waco, invigorated the militia movement. It was the idea of government run amok that caused people to form militias. It is the big government conservative and the liberal alike that grow the militia. It is dismissing and mocking their views as “conspiracy theories” that cause a legitimate NEED for a militia. It is the idea that “conservatives” are backing the Southern Poverty Law Center that causes people to become worried and form militias.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, whom Schroeder defends and cites on his website is a joke of an organization that exerts its energies in tying legitimate militia and conservative movements into neo-nazi and other hate groups. It is generally trudged out by lazy reporters or left-wing interests to discredit right wing movements such as the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and one of the early exposers of the ATF’s “gunwalker scandal” Mike Vanderbough. Vanderbough, who has regularly out-ed and embarrassed Neo-Nazi members and groups is regularly libeled by the organization.
Schroeder points to Jeff Williams as the leader of the local militia. Like any good feud however, there is no good guy here. I first met Jeff Williams when he organized a meeting at a local bowling alley for Glenn Beck’s first 9/12 project. Since then, the publicly humble Jeff Williams has sought office and has helped expand, if not found the local chapter of the lightfoot militia. While I’d love to publicly applaud the man for doing a good turn, it is insincere to say that the local militia is apolitical. There is a strong religious bent to the militia, and if you don’t think politics and religion mix, I recommend asking yourself exactly what platform Rick Santorum is running on. Having a militia is a good thing, keeping local law enforcement in check is a good thing. I don’t need to be worried about the militia violating my rights when I have experienced it firsthand by Moscow PD. But I’d never trust Williams with any actual power, lest I wished to live in a theocracy.
I should also add that the reason militia members don’t want their identities known isn’t out of anything nefarious. Rather, if the militia exists to protect the citizen and the state from tyrannical government (which one can easily argue exists now), then why would the armed citizen want that same government knowing who he is, even if he has no intention of anything but last ditch defensive action when we’re hiding muslims/homosexuals/athiests/republicans or whomever the next political undesireable is in our attics to keep them from being carted off by government agents.
Idaho had their Republican Caucus yesterday. Here’s a county breakdown:
Now, what is to be learned from this? A friend of mine has joked that we should blow up the bridge in Riggins, separating North Idaho from Southern Idaho. We’re clearly two different states.
So Romney won soundly. I’m not exactly surprised. However, it is incredible how many people agreed that black people voted for Obama because he was black, yet too few of my libertarian leaning Mormon friends will admit they voted for Romney because he was a Mormon.
Additionally, I’m most frustrated with the fact that if people refuse to vote for Ron Paul’s message of individual liberty, why then can they not at the minimum vote for Newt’s moon colony? It is as if we are being offered steak (something that’s good for us = liberty) and another person offers us pizza (something fun and delicious = the moon base) and we all came together and overwhelmingly chose a heaping bowl of saltine crackers.
Afterwards, listening to Romney speak last night I noticed something. I’ve heard a lot of politicians say something along the lines of, “In <town> I had the chance to talk to <Bill / Susan / Tom> who <lost his job / couldn’t afford health insurance / was injured in Iraq>, and he/she told me that…”
Said politician earnestly recounts the sad event and how the person approached them to do something about it, and by God he’s listening to the American people!
Romney and Obama (though I repeat myself) have both done that with great frequency.
This is the mark of a man who is running for office because he’s seeking power, not because he believes in something. A person who is seeking office for the right reasons has done so because he saw something specific he personally feels needs correcting. In the above, the person is finding things to believe in after he has sought office. Therefore he sought office for some reason independent of these views he’s espousing or the current Joe the Plumber he’s parading out in public.
Paul was going on about the Fed, Sarbanes-Oxley, American foreign policy, when suddenly a child lets loose his helium balloon. 100 heads are immediately lost to see where it’s going to go in the building.
You could just see the crowd going, “End the fed, Austrian economics, housing bubble, OOH A BALLOON!”
Reason Magazine just put out a piece about Mars Inc, makers of Snickers and a bunch of other candy bars, downsizing their product. You can read the piece here. Here’s a summary followed a few quick thoughts:
“By the end of 2013, consumers will no longer be able to purchase king-sized Snickers bars…Mars is implementing the 250-calorie threshold as part of an agreement with Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), a non-profit organization that aims to ‘broker meaningful commitments’ from commercial food manufacturers like Mars to ‘end childhood obesity.’ PHA was founded in 2010 in conjunction with the Let’s Move! program, First Lady Michelle Obama’s federally funded government initiative that aims to shape up the nation’s tubby youth through a vigorous regimen of legislation, regulation, and mass jumping jacks. Mrs. Obama serves as PHA’s honorary chair, and according to its website, PHA’s mandate is to ‘monitor and publicly report on the progress’ of its private-sector partners like Mars, and, more generally, to ‘make the healthy choice the easy choice.'”
Friends, these non-profits and “federally funded initiatives” are not just feel good groups altruistically trying to convince us all to lead better lives. They’re canaries in the coal mine. What begins here, ends on the president’s desk after a congressman drafts a bill.
Where are the unintended consequences? Businessmen aren’t stupid. That’s why they’re rich are you aren’t. A good businessman sees this as the canary in the coal mine that it is. Congressman Shmuckatelly writes up this bill in the interests of making us healthier. What do you think a good businessman does? Outwardly, the business touts their interests in your health. Inwardly, they smile at their margins. When this bill comes, (and it WILL come) there is no longer the market pressure to provide a bigger bar for a competitive price. Capping the size allows you to sell a smaller bar at the sameprice. There’s small incentive to lower the price. If you want the candy bar, you pay the price. And now there’s no one offering a bigger bar for the same price.
