Earlier a friend sent me a link which has graphic photos purporting to show children (gasp!) engaging in one of the most evil and perverted acts it is possible for humans to perform. It is so awful that I blush in contemplation of it. That’s because it is the ultimate taboo. The most evil activity in which man can engage.

I refer to an act so vile and unspeakable that even the few remaining adults who perform it at all are shunned by decent society. I dare not name it, but the idea of children doing such a sickening thing revolts the senses and turns the stomach.

There are even pictures, and let me warn you, these are not for the squeamish.

I have in the past had the courage to cover this issue in all of its depraved detail in the blog, but I don’t know how long I can keep it up, for it may soon be completely illegal to depict children in such vile acts. And why not? Surely they are victims, and helping to enabling the victimization of a single child enables the victimization of them all, does it not?

This is a health issue, by God! And if health is involved, then the government has to be involved, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of putting us all in the same risk pool?

What I cannot get over is the lackadaisical attitude shown by some commenters when this issue was raised in the past.

Aw, smoking never hurt Huck or Tom none, and they come out heroes and rich in the end.
‘Fore long I reckon kids won’t be allowed to read the Adventures of Tom Sawyer much any more, on account of it’s a might threatenin’ to their morals.

I can’t think of a better reason to ban the vicious (and racist) books Twain wrote than that.

We owe it to our children!

I’m reminded of the famous but never verified Edmund Burke quote that I have seen invoked as implied authority for many a forwarded email:

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

So why are so many good men asleep at the wheel while evil prevails?

MORE: In other news, M. Simon reminded me that Jerry Garcia just turned 70. Like the Beatles and McDonalds and Timothy Leary and Big Tobacco, he made children consume things that were bad for them.

Clint Eastwood is backing Romney:

Eastwood tells The Associated Press that he’s backing Romney because, in Eastwood’s words, “I think the country needs a boost.”

Good for him. Eastwood is enough of a non-ideological Republican that he might be able to help win over some independents, without whom Romney (and thus the GOP) will lose. I realize that a lot of Republicans are perfectly OK with Romney losing, because they don’t consider his ideology pure enough, but I think putting ideology ahead of winning is a big mistake — especially at this point. I say this as someone who has held my nose and voted for people whose ideology is not pure enough for my liking for decades. Their ideology has never been pure enough for me and never will be. In elections, I have to put winning ahead of ideology. Otherwise, I would either stay home or vote the strict Libertarian Party ticket. (Gary Johnson is of course far more to my liking than Mitt Romney.)

The funny thing is that even if you put ideology first, whose ideology would that be? Your own, more principled ideology? I don’t know of any candidate with whose ideology I like more than my own; does that mean I should not vote? Voting is inherently a compromise with ideology, and as a libertarian I have understood this for decades. What I cannot understand is why others don’t. I’m sure some people will deride Eastwood as a “RINO.” And why? Because he does not align with their thinking 100%? How do they ever think they’ll win a national election? The answer is they don’t care. They put ideology first. Even Ronald Reagan would be a RINO by today’s “conservative” standards.

If they vote (and a lot of them do), the independent voters are going to vote for either Romney or Obama. Granted that these people are not ideologically pure by anyone’s standards (including mine), it might be worth considering whether it matters who they vote for.

I think it ought to matter more.

Much as I don’t like it, my own ideological principles might have to wait.

(Oh, the horror.)

Those of you who think this is about to become a lecture on unusual sexual practices may leave.
Okay, now that the ten thousand or so are gone, the twenty of us left here can talk about the real point: private versus public.

When I was growing up in the seventies, under an increasingly leftist regime in Portugal (mitigated only by the fact that Portugal is so unorganized that any central planning is so only in name) I heard over and over, at school, at speeches and just about everywhere at all that your right to swing your fist ends where another’s nose starts.

As a statement it is irreproachable.  It’s also empty of meaning.  Like saying “we’re all naked under our clothes” or “people weren’t born with clothes, man” which were what the (older) hippie guys used to try to get me out of mine, they are indisputably true but to our purpose, nothing.

Or to put it another way – it depends on how many fists, how many noses and how they’re arranged.  Given enough will, it is possible to hem a potential fist swinger all around with noses so that he can’t breathe let alone swing his fist.

More importantly, when arguing hypothetical noses and fists, it’s all too easy to say “but you could hit a nose – if someone moved suddenly or a kid came running.”  Eventually it comes down to no fist swinging unless you have wrapped your fist in a feather pillow and after that, the appearance of swinging your fist can be perceived as a hatred of nose, and you must control your speech so you don’t even mention fists.

Yes, this is about chicken sandwiches, again.  Sort of.  What hit me, as I was watching it, was that the whole thing arose because we’ve got completely confused about what is public and what is private.  So a man’s private opinions which in no way affect how his business is run (they both serve and employ everyone regardless of sexuality) become part of public debate and discourse – and his private donations, from his profit, which is what he gets out of his work running his business are taken as evidence of corporate malfeasance.

All of which is nonsense, but it’s a type of nonsense we’re used to at this point.  The right of property supposedly secured to us by our constitution has become hemmed in with so many takings that are considered legitimate and for the common good, that sometimes it’s only by poetic license that we can say we own anything.

No?  Then explain to me why, when replacing a century-old railing on a century-old porch (a tree had felled it) I had to make sure the slats were no further apart than those in a crib?  Because a baby MIGHT crawl on the porch and get his head wedged between them.  Let alone that I didn’t have a baby at the time – we did sell the house, so that wasn’t so far an hypothetical – why would anyone in their right mind let a baby crawl unsupervised on a porch floor?  And ignore the baby long enough for it to wedge its head between slats?  You’ll say “it could happen” and undoubtedly it could, but look here, if a baby is being raised like that, you have WAY bigger problems than porch slats.  If in a hundred years, during which time the house was often an apartment house or a rooming house, used by various transients and what was once quaintly called “the under class” no baby had managed to wedge its head between the slats, what is the rational to have the city tell me what the distance between the slats must be.  No, it wasn’t that difficult to adjust, though it required a redesign so it didn’t look completely stupid, but it was a great piece of nonsense, and an unwarranted taking, which required me to submit plans to the authorities and delay and spend more before I was allowed to rebuild my railing.

This is a minor thing, you’ll say, and why am I so exercised?  Because we’re hemmed in with “little things” that all but paralyze life and the market place.  Say you find yourself unemployed and you decide, instead of taking unemployment, to open a business using your sainted grandmother’s cookie recipe, your very own kitchen oven, and your car.  You’ll make cookies, then take a license (well, it is a public space) to sell them near that park where all the school kids hang out in the summer.

Do I need to tell you all of this is a pipe dream?  You’ll need your kitchen inspected, certified, licensed and it’s so hard to pass the certification you might as well rent a commercial kitchen, for which you of course don’t have money.

“But Sarah,” you say.  “That’s different.  That’s food safety.  Upton Sinclair.”  Upton Sinclair was a socialist, writing apologetics for government control.  His book is filled with the type of “reality” that underlies all the blades put in apples given to kids on Halloween, and all the poisoned candy, too – it might have happened once, somewhere, but it was for reasons specific to that place, and it had bloody nothing, or less than that, to do with conditions most places.

Were food preparation areas less sanitary in the nineteenth century or even early twentieth than now?  Arguably EVERYTHING was less sanitary.  If you want to find what your great grandmother was up against, turn off the electricity and the running water, then try to clean the house.  (I’ve found myself in this situation several times, in the aftermath of a disaster.)  Add to that the lack or difficulty of refrigeration and you’re going to have food conditions that would make us go “ew.”  And probably the food of the time would sicken any of us.  BUT on the other hand, our ancestors had a level of resistence we don’t have.  (And less asthma and fewer other auto-immune diseases.  Our species didn’t evolve to be sparkling clean.)

HOWEVER food companies that wanted to stay in business COULDN’T logically make it a point to kill their customers with tainted food.  Yes, I do know what I’m talking about here.  I have no idea if there was the equivalent of an FDA in Portugal when I was growing up, but if there was it worked with the efficiency of other Portuguese institutions at the time.  And in the seventies, when the economy was in a state of semi-collapse (or slow-mo collapse) people could – and did – out of need for survival take the cookie route outline above.  In an economy where the price of bread was hard set by the government, and the bakers went on strike every other week, it was possible to knock at certain doors and buy fresh baked bread that the housewife had just baked and would give you for a consideration.  It’s how most of us got bread.  And while the price of meat went through the roof, everyone had a backyard chicken coop and a flock of goats, and for a little more, you could buy your meal ready prepared, again, by knocking at the back door and saying “so and so sent me.”  Unless you were already a customer.  In the same way, if you were handy with a sewing machine, you could sell not just clothes but handicrafts at the flea market.  Most of my jewelry at that time was made by unemployed recent college graduates, with no license, no supervision, no formal training.  The same sort of people would sell pastries in street corners.

Were there cases of food poisoning?  Of tainted jewelry?  Undoubtedly, though the only time I got food poisoning was from an established, licensed deli.  Most people – PARTICULARLY those working on a slim margin – were terribly careful not to do something that might give them a bad rep.  Because people talk.  Heck, if a pastry vendor where I normally shopped was coughing in the morning, I was likely to tell my friends “not today.  I think he has a cold and I don’t want it.”

In the same way, farmers who routinely watered the milk got known for it, and people didn’t buy from them.  And that was enough.  The general public had to pay a little more attention, and be aware of what they were doing.  On the other hand, frankly, don’t you have to do that now?  Do you really trust the government seal?  Do you think someone followed the piece of food from harvest to store?  You’ve never heard of tainted peanut butter, then?

Tell me, how many people have you heard of, recently, poisoned by the tamales sold out of the back of their car by some of our more enterprising citizen-aspirants?  You think they have licenses and their kitchens underwent inspections?  Guys, those people don’t even want the police near them in case it’s la migra.  (And by the way I have nothing against them.  They’re showing spirit and a desire to fend for themselves.  I say we put everyone with an illegal tamale and roasted chilli stand a fast path to citizenship.  We’ll call it the Dream-Tamale act.)  There was one station wagon near my older son’s highschool, there through summer and winter and they were always mobbed with customers.  The chances of this if their stuff was tainted is zero.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is in food safety, the place where we “self evidently” need government supervision.  That is, we need to pay government to imagine all the circumstances in which an hypothetical nose might be in the path of an hypothetical fist.

Are there places where the public, legitimately has a right to stick its long nose?  Yes, of course there is.  I’m partial to “providing for the common defense.”  Also, it probably should intervene in private wars among citizens (that is, at least if the bodies aren’t properly buried and are left to pose a public health hazard.)  And it could be argued, though we’re on treacherous ground, that the community has an interest in protecting the defenseless: minor children and impaired people who lack other means of supervision and defense.  After all, taking care of the widows and orphans has often been judged beneficial by older cultures than ours.

However, that does not include the right to poke one’s nose into every home, to make sure children are being treated according to government regulations.  (No?  My kids had meetings at the schools where they were specifically asked how they got punished at home, among other things.  Fishing expeditions.  Fortunately my kids, being my kids, wouldn’t admit the sky was blue if it were a school official asking them.)  I’ll also note that even our over regulated society has spectacular cases of child abuse and neglect, often serial and often by STATE LICENSED CARE PROVIDERS.  Because once the government seal is on something people stop inspecting.

Look, it’s got so insane that I’m not allowed to drive my own car without wearing a seat belt.  It’s MY car, it’s my seatbelt, it’s my LIFE.  (For the record, yes, I do wear it – because I talked to an EMT once and he said they’d never cut a single dead man out of seatbelt.  BUT it should be my decision.)  I’m not allowed to buy the lightbulb I d*mn well please to put in my own light socket in my own house.  It’s been deemed that the Earth’s nose is burning up (or is it freezing this week?) and therefore I should not be allowed to spend whatever I deem I should spend on electricity.

I say it’s time to step back and take a deep breath.  Someone wants to build a house that’s not up to code?  LET THEM.  At most advise them, but they have the right to roll their own eyes at you.  (As we’ve all talked about even to-code houses have massive safety failures.  They’re human-built.  They’re imperfect.  Deal.  you pays your dollar, you takes your bet.)  NONE of the houses we grew up in passed current code, and most of them are still standing and our parents still live in them with no ill-effects.  Someone wants to sell food and someone else wants to buy it?  What exactly is the government’s interest in interfering in a lawful transaction.  Yes, the food might be tainted.  So might licensed food.  Sellers who willfully taint their food for short term profit don’t last.  Neither do customers who buy from fly by night here today gone tomorrow outfits.  You can’t save people from their own folly.  Not forever.

It’s time to admit that somewhere, somewhen, a swinging fist might meet a nose.  That’s fine.  It happens.  We live in an imperfect world.

Meanwhile let the owners of the fists and the noses look to their own safety and liberty and do what they want with their private property.  The main consequences of their actions should fall on them.  No third party with no skin in the game can judge as well as they can.

Let people decide what to do with what they have.  Get the government’s long nose out of my fist.

Let a million fists swing.

*crossposted at According To Hoyt*

What is addiction? You can’t get addicted to a substance your body doesn’t have receptors for. Which means the body makes an analog to fill those receptors. For opiates the analogs are called endorphins. For marijuana anandamides. If those receptors are unfilled due to some defect in body chemistry (frequently caused by PTSD but there are other causes – some unknown) you will try to fill them with substances obtained externally. What we call “addiction” is a deficiency disease. Insulin “addiction” ring a bell? Well we don’t call it addiction because we understand the deficiency.

Addiction is a deficiency “disease”. It is why only one in ten who try heroin get “addicted” to heroin.

A friend at Talk Polywell posted a link to this bit which is a cyclical theory of disorder.

I have a different theory.

Wars cause breakdowns in order. For one thing regular patterns and flows get disturbed. Wars are murder, robbery, rape, and theft. No surprise that they encourage such behavior generally.

But the same thing happens from an effort to impose too much order. See ’76, 17. The attempt to impose too much order not only broke down order but caused a civil war as well.

Alcohol prohibition is instructive. Some disorder must be accommodated to avoid too much disorder. Something the “Law and Order” folks forget. All too frequently. That begets acts of revolt both open and covert.

In any case disorder is built in. Chaos theory guarantees it. We get fooled by the periodic nature of chaotic systems. They seem so regular. So roughly predictable. And they are. Until the system jumps. During the time of the jump very little about the future of the system is predictable. It is in very complicated systems path dependent. Some one decides that going flying is more important that starting a computer program negotiation and the whole future of the world changes from CPM to DOS.

And of course we in America understand the dangers of gun control (most of us anyway). We understand that allowing for the occasional disorder of nearly universal arms availability prevents the disorder (well new strange attractor actually) of mass murder.

And to get back to my favorite topic. The universal legal availability of drugs (those that are currently illegal) prevents the chaos of a country run into the ground by drug cartels. A prime example being the 50,000 dead from the Drug Wars in Mexico. There are worse things than people getting addicted (if addiction is even possible – but that is a topic for another day) to drugs. Mass random murder. Which is very bad for business. People living in fear is not a strong foundation for a civil society.

Roni Golan is a personal friend of mine. His daughter was bartending at the Irish Rose when we were having coffee with Tom Bridgeland the author of the piece linked here. She of course put the above card in our hands and I promised to blog it.

We sat at the booth Eric, I, and the First Mate use when Eric visits the area. As part of our coffee and snacks the First Mate and I had the portobello mushrooms. Melt in your mouth, mouth watering, delicious. Tom was just supposed to stay with us for a half hour on his way home but the conversation extended on for an hour and a half. Delightful.

Earlier I read about a discrimination complaint filed against Chick-fil-A in Illinois by a gay activist group.  Skeptical that the company would be so stupid as to deliberately discriminate against employees or customers, I was taken aback for a moment to read this characterization of Illinois law:

Anthony Martinez, executive director of TCRA, contends that Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy’s recent comments reiterating his opposition to same-sex marriage were more than just his own thoughts and that he was speaking on behalf of his company, stating the views as company policy.

“We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that,” Cathy said in the Baptist Press July 16. He said he was “guilty as charged” for supporting “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

His comments make LGBT people, a protected minority class, feel “unwelcome, objectionable or unacceptable” at Chick-fil-A restaurants, or “public accommodations” under Section 5-102(B) of the Illinois Human Rights Act, Martinez said.

Wow, if the law now prohibits comments that might make people feel “unwelcome, objectionable or unacceptable,” then freedom of speech has bitten the dust as far as businesses are concerned.

But before jumping to such a conclusion, I thought I should read what the actual law says. The phrase “unwelcome, objectionable, or unacceptable” is included in the phraseology of the anti-discrimination laws in multiple states, but there has to be an actual statement to the effect that a person or group of people are unwelcome. Here’s the Illinois law:

Sec. 5?102. Civil Rights Violations: Public Accommodations. It is a civil rights violation for any person on the basis of unlawful discrimination to:
(A) Enjoyment of Facilities, Goods, and Services. Deny or refuse to another the full and equal enjoyment of the facilities, goods, and services of any public place of accommodation;
(B) Written Communications. Directly or indirectly, as the operator of a place of public accommodation, publish, circulate, display or mail any written communication, except a private communication sent in response to a specific inquiry, which the operator knows is to the effect that any of the facilities of the place of public accommodation will be denied to any person or that any person is unwelcome, objectionable or unacceptable because of unlawful discrimination;

Voicing an opinion that some people shouldn’t be allowed to marry each other is nowhere near a statement to the effect that they are unwelcome. But the people who are making the complaint obviously think that an opinion against gay marriage might make some people feel unwelcome:

Individuals named in the complaint have been kept confidential, considering the continued media coverage of the Chick-fil-A fallout.

“The complainants are a same-gender family with a daughter,” said Martinez. “Chick-fil-A used to be one of their favorite places to eat until Mr. Cathy’s latest statements were reported so widely. Now, they feel completely unwelcome in the establishment.”

The complaint lists several claims of public accommodation discrimination.

“As a result of the foregoing published statements regarding Chick-fil-A’s corporate philosophy, culture and policies, as an unmarried homosexual in a “non-traditional” family unit, I know that my family and I are looked down upon, loathed, unwelcome, objectionable and unacceptable to Chick-fil-A,” stated the complainant in the filing.

So, the president of the company said he was against gay marriage.

So did the president of the United States. OK, I realize he has never owned or run a business, but so did the Pope (and the Catholic Church runs a lot of businesses).  So did countless other people. This is a political issue on which the country is divided 50/50, but which ranks low on the list of voter priorities.

I realize that a lot of people are made uncomfortable by opinions they disagree with, but Mr. Cathy never said gays were unwelcome, and his written corporate policy is to  ”treat every person with honor, dignity and respect –regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.”

Being upset over the opinions of a company is of course a legitimate reason to not patronize the place. If you don’t like the leftie agenda of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, or the Marxist philosophy of a successful Philadelphia restaurant, don’t go there. In fact, such policies might make you feel distinctly uncomfortable and unwelcome. The religious and political opinions of the owner of a halal restaurant might very well make Jews and Christians feel unwelcome. Would a vegan feel unwelcome at McDonalds?

Anyway, I’m glad that feeling unwelcome is not a legal standard, and I hope it never becomes one.

Otherwise, I’ll feel unwelcome almost everywhere, and I’ll have to sue the world.

Speaking of catching up with the times, I often rely on Glenn Reynolds to clue me in on the latest developments in gadgetry, and today’s link to an Evolution Robotics floor cleaner was no exception. I’d kind of enjoy having a robot clean the floors, and it looks tantalizing, except there is one problem.

Coco.

As things stand now, she hates almost all gadgets. Vacuuming is always problematic, because she sees anything making noise and movements seemingly on its own as a dire threat — to be met with lethal force. She hates vacuum cleaners, and always has, so she has to be put outside or locked up whenever one is used.

Coco’s canine Luddism goes back to her puppyhood, when she viciously attacked my paper shredder:

So I’m afraid that if I bought one of these slick new robots and let it loose in the house, her reaction might be so extreme that she would either break it, have a nervous breakdown, drive me to a nervous breakdown, or all three.

I guess I could make a Youtube video of Coco’s encounter.

A Dachshund named “Nathan” has already beaten her to it, though:

But I think Coco’s reaction would provide quite a show.

Does anyone know whether these things are designed to resist attacks by riled-up pit bulls? I don’t. I’m just not familiar with the technology. However, there was one thing Glenn said that also got my attention:

I don’t know how these stack up compared to a Roomba.

Until today, I had never heard of a Roomba. (Other than the dance with the similar name.) But I did think it might be worth a search, and I found something directly on point, at least as the point might pertain to Coco.

These Roomba machines have actually been used by cats to terrorize dogs, including at least one very exasperated pit bull!

I kid you not. Just watch.

Oh. My. Gawd.

Isn’t having to deal with an invasion of your master’s house by vacuum cleaner robots bad enough without having the evil devices commandeered by savage cats who slash and then ride away? I sincerely hope Coco never sees that video. They really ought to have warnings or ratings to protect canine sensibilities. Where are the animal rights activists when you need them?

Much as I hate being inconvenienced, and even though I’ve complained about this before, I am enough of a realist to recognize that my current operating system is doomed, and that I will be forced to use Windows 7. Accordingly, I have been conducting experiments with a smaller (80GB) hard drive. Fortunately, it is possible to download and install Windows 7 and use it free for a month, at which point you must activate it. The activation stage is when it actually costs money, and the licenses are not exactly cheap. Moreover, Windows 7 is not “portable” the way xp has always been, so you can’t just pull the drive that contains your OS and plunk it in another similar computer, nor can you “ghost” it over to a larger drive without running into reactivation problems. So I haven’t reached the permanent Windows 7 end stage with this computer. (Itself a complex issue, as I have been through two different drive transplants — finally transforming my old Dimension 5100 into a Dimension E520 running a Quad 4 Q6600, a really nice machine in my beloved old tower.)

I am still tinkering, going back and forth from my trusty old xp hard drive to the 80GB experimental one. To make drive swapping easier, I bought an inexpensive mobile rack, so I don’t need to go inside the machine and switch the cables around every time I want to reboot.

I have compared the two systems side by side and I am forced to admit that Windows 7 is a lot faster and cleaner, and now that I am used to it, I can do almost anything that I could with Windows xp. There is one irritant, though.

Sound.

I have a pair of digital speakers (BA735) that I decided to use because I grew tired of poor sound quality with my machine’s built in sound card and mediocre speakers. The sound is superb, but the problem is that they require a digital sound card which outputs in SPDIF. I had an old Zoltrix Nightingale sound card which in theory should have worked fine, but in practice was a nightmare to configure so that it would work the same way my old speakers worked. I like being able to use the up/down/mute keys on my keyboard and not have to screw around with the volume icon on the system tray. And even after I finally found and downloaded the appropriate legacy drivers and the C-media PCI media mixer (the software and icons look and feel as if they’re relics right out of the 1990s*, which they probably are), and I finally got the speakers working by tinkering with the settings, the next problem was that the output was not controlled by the volume slider, but by the WAVE slider! Worse, there was no way to mute it, and the “mute all” button had no effect on the WAVE even though it placed a check mark in the WAVE’s mute box! (UGH!) I spent long hours trying to determine whether there was some way to link the WAVE slider to the volume slider. Microsoft even has a discussion dealing with this titled –

You cannot control the volume in Media Center when you output digital audio to an external receiver or to speakers on a Windows Vista-based or Windows XP-based Media Center computer

Which told me what I already knew. That it had to be done manually, with the mouse. Unacceptable. I would rather have plain old speakers than go through that ritual of finding and clicking with the damn mouse. But finally, I found a wonderful freeware tool called “Volume Tracker” — which was designed to solve this very problem, and no sooner did I install it when it created a new icon in the system tray that automatically forces the volume to “track” (and control) the WAVE slider. VOILA! I was happy, and the only additional problem was setting it up to open automatically on startup.

Anyway, I got spoiled by the quality of the digital speakers, and I would like them to work the same way in Windows 7 that they do in XP, but no dice! I spent many hours tinkering, and frankly, I think I’ve been lucky to get them working in Windows 7 at all. But to adjust the volume or mute them, I have to open the 1990s console, hit the “advanced” button, and then that opens SPDIF settings box, when then has a separate tab for volume, and so on. There are sliders for left and right and there is no mute so it all has to be done manually. The “Volume Tracker,” wonderful though it is, simply will not work in Windows 7, and there is no way I can make it work. I spent a lot of time reading stuff like this about theoretical ways of controlling SPDIF, but there is nothing I have found — no discussions or software — offering a successful workaround for Windows 7.

So unless I can figure something out, if I am to make the move to Windows 7, it looks like I might have to ditch the digital speakers and be stuck having to use plain old speakers again.

Experienced audiophiles seem to think that SPDIF has become a “legacy” feature. What a shame, because I’m no audiophile, but the difference is remarkable.

I hate to see quality being abandoned, but that often seems to be the nature of what is called “progress.”

I guess this makes me a “conservative” — at least in the literal sense.

But since when is anything literal?

* In the interest of nostalgia, this calls for a picture:

Cute, no?

Post 9/11 I used to ask “Do you support drug prohibition because it finances criminals at home or because it finances terrorists abroad?” Because the Taliban used the sales of Afghan opium to support their terrorism efforts. Just recently I came across this blog post on the Lame Cherry blog that confirms that and also confirms what Mike Ruppert and Catherine Austin Fitts said about how drug dealing supports the NWO.

Once you comprehend that Obama has been centralizing the world drug trade with al Qaeda and the Taliban joined by world communist regimes, one starts to see what Obama handing over Afghanistan to the Taliban again is about, and what this new pipeline into Europe is about and how dope shipments flow into America under the guise of drug interdiction.

The statement “dope shipments flow into America under the guise of drug interdiction.” is corroborated by Ruppert and Fitts. All the facts I’m aware of on the subject are reprised on the Lame Cherry blog. Which makes me inclined to buy into the rest of what she says. (well I assume it is a she)

All that may go a long way towards explaining why drug user Obama has been on a jihad against medical pot dispensaries. Such dispensaries cut into drug cartel profits. Marijuana is a significant fraction of cartel profits. Which may also explain why the city of Los Angeles is cracking down on cannabis dispensaries and why the Feds are cracking down on San Francisco dispensaries.

It appears though that Latin America has has had enough. From April of this year:

BOGOTA, Colombia — When President Obama arrives in Colombia for a hemispheric summit this weekend, he will hear Latin American leaders say that the U.S.-orchestrated war on drugs, which criminalizes drug use and employs military tactics to fight gangs, is failing and that broad changes need to be considered.

Latin American leaders say they have not developed an alternative model to the approach favored by successive American administrations since Richard Nixon was in office. But the Colombian government says a range of options — including decriminalizing possession of drugs, legalizing marijuana use and regulating markets — will be debated at the Summit of the Americas in the coastal city of Cartagena.

Faced with violence that has left 50,000 people dead in Mexico and created war zones in Central America, regional leaders have for months been openly discussing what they view as the shortcomings of the U.S. approach. But the summit marks the first opportunity for many of them to directly share their grievances with Obama.

It appears that the last hold outs in the US are the Christian Conservatives who, while they are rabidly against the NWO, are loathe to strike a serious blow against it by legalizing drugs. The Baptists have always been the bootlegger’s best friends and both support the right politicians.

When this long war (the Drug War) is over I predict that the support for “Christianity” in America will decline precipitously. As a fried of mine likes to ask WWJD? Certainly he did not declare war on people’s “bad habits”. Otherwise he would have been calling for alcohol prohibition. Or stoning adultresses.

Despite my slow posting lately, the attempt to deny permits to Chick-fil-A because of the opposition of its president (the same as the until-recently long-held of our president) to gay marriage irritated me enough to write a post (actually, two) about it. In my view, any attack on the First Amendment (especially one as blatant as this one) must be opposed resolutely,and especially by those who might disagree with the person or people whose rights are being violated.

Yes, I believe in that old-fashioned saying, “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Well, I learned an interesting thing today while reading about the enormous outpouring of popular support for Chick-fil-A. Not that it was all that relevant to my original First Amendment analysis, but when I defended the company’s rights, I did so taking into account that the president and the owners might very well be anti-gay zealots. (As I have noted repeatedly, anti-gay bigotry is not synonymous with opposition to gay marriage; in my view bigotry includes such things as personal animosity, advocacy of anti-gay discrimination, support for “sodomy” laws. etc.) If a business owner disliked all homosexuals and wanted to bring back sodomy laws, I would find that repellent and maybe not want to invite him over for a beer, but the idea of having the government deny him a permit because of these views is outrageous.

So I didn’t devote much time to dissecting the views of the Chick-fil-A president or the company policies, but maybe I should have. Anyway, via Ed Morrissey, I just learned that this is the company’s official policy regarding sexual orientation:

The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our Restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect –regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender. We will continue this tradition in the over 1,600 Restaurants run by independent Owner/Operators. Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.

Huh?

That is bigotry? Frankly, it would not surprise me if some of the genuine anti-gay bigots out there would be very disappointed in Chick-fil-A if they read the above. Nor would it surprise me if some of the company’s more rabid “supporters” have bought into the leftie narrative and believe in the same lies because they want to.

Gay Patriot has a post about the local outpouring of support for the Chick-fil-A franchise in his area, which happens to be Hollywood. Predictably, there were a few anti-Chick-fil-A protesters, and their favorite word to describe the company?

“HATE.”

Let’s all be clear on the new definition of hate, OK?

“Hate” means treating treat every person with honor, dignity and respect–regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.

From what I’ve learned, the Chick-fil-A company is a lot more tolerant than its “tolerant” opponents.

I suspect there’s a new definition of “tolerance” to accompany their new definition of hate, but I’m too tired to write it. Besides, “tolerance is bigotry” and “bigotry is tolerance” seem like plagiarism.

(Ditto “LOVE IS HATE.”)

Not till the end, though.

The cold cold end!

cold starts work that way

WTF. Might as well publish this old drunken throwaway post to honor (?) a certain recently deceased. (I hated the guy’s politics, but thoroughly enjoyed some of his writing.)

Whether dead atheists can come is up to whom?

I just got this press release in the mail.

===

The only way to completely protect patients, cultivators, and providers of medical cannabis from federal enforcement is by changing federal law. The Drug Enforcement Administration keeps raiding cultivators and providers, and the Department of Justice continues to intimidate patients, property owners, and lawmakers in several states. Congress is stalled on this issue, but there is another way to break the impasse: federal court.

Late last week Americans for Safe Access (ASA) got some exciting news: the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to hear oral arguments in Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. Ten years after original rescheduling petition was filed, the courts will finally review the scientific evidence regarding the therapeutic value of cannabis!

We need your help to keep fighting this decade-long battle to remove medical cannabis from the federal list of dangerous drugs with no medical value. Make a contribution today of $35, $50, $100, or whatever you can afford to support ASA’s work.

Last year, we appealed the Administration’s decision to deny our nine-year old rescheduling petition, knowing that the courts could still choose not to hear our case. The decision to hear oral arguments is huge. This appeal may lead to the first evidentiary hearings of the medical value of cannabis since 1994 – and a lot has happened since then!

ASA can make this happen. We have a strong legal team and recognized expertise in the field. We also have a comprehensive plan to use media, legislation, and strategic grassroots organizing to get the most out of this lawsuit. But we need your help to do it. Please make a special one-time or monthly recurring donation to ASA today.

Victory on this front would literally be the turning point for safe access to medical cannabis nationwide! We can fight this fight and win – if people like you support the effort. Thank you for helping make it happen.

Sincerely,

Steph Sherer
Executive Director

P.S. – Join our online activist “summer camp” – Camp WakeUpObama – and sign up for email alerts regarding the medical cannabis community!

====

It wouldn’t hurt to wake up Mitt Romney either.

I’m a survivor of severe child abuse with a bad case of PTSD that often goes with that. I have read – frequently – that marijuana can help with the after effects of severe trauma and the PTSD that often goes with it. I’m thinking of moving to Colorado where they are voting for legalization this fall with a very good chance that the ballot issue will pass. Anyway – unlike Illinois – it is a med pot state. I’d like to give pot a try and see if it helps with the after effects. Like unreasonable fear when some one approaches me from the right rear. I’m over the worst but it is still annoying.

The brilliant folks at Yahoo have come up with a new faster and more secure way to access your e-mail. It is so secure I can’t even get into my own account. Even after accepting their new terms of service which I couldn’t read – probably because of a traffic overload. So I brought up the Yahoo main page in the hopes of sending them feedback. No such luck. That page appears to be on overload too. Probably people trying to get in to complain that they can’t read their mail. And don’t tell me it is a cookie problem. Although I don’t like it, cookies on my machine have been enabled like forever.

I have a gmail account. Is their service any better? Maybe it is time to stop fighting and switch.

The Yahoo answers page has an answer. Yahoo is stupid. Finally. It seems fixed – for now.

I was a bit startled earlier by a quaint, nostalgic sentiment quoted by M. Simon:

All who follow a code of ethics or principles are self-governors. Our system is meant to protect the self-governors from those without ethics and principles, perpetrators of fraud, rape and violence. The state does not run the affairs of people in a free society. It upholds justice between people who conduct their own affairs.

Really?

So… let us suppose you manage to start up and build a brick and mortar style business despite the endless government regulations making that nearly impossible, that you pay all your fees and taxes, that you lick the boots of the bureaucrats who can shut you down at any time if you don’t comply with their unending and constantly escalating demands, and that you manage by the skin of your teeth to keep the business open, that “the system” will protect you if bunch of bad guys band together in a mob and launch an unprovoked attack on your business?

I was thinking yesterday about writing another post complaining about the latest in the now-regular reports of organized looting, but I thought, why bore the readers? You already know what I think, and I’ve been writing my thoughts publicly for a decade so what’s the point? The point here is that every time I read another one of these numbing reports, I feel violated. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because I was a small business owner myself, and I know what it feels like to be a sitting duck when the mob arrives.  When the government in free market society supposedly governed by rule of law refuses to protect law-abiding business owners against a mob attack by enforcing the laws against mob attacks, that’s as much a crime against all of us as the mob attack itself.

No matter how many times I read these stories, they horrify me.

In yesterday’s news, an organized mob attacked and looted a store in Chicago. The owner of course tried to do the right thing, and called the cops:

Cho said it took police 30 minutes to reach his store after the 911 call went out about 6:45 p.m. on Saturday. He said officers told him they were delayed by the many street closures for Wicker Park Fest.

Cho called the incident organized looting, pure and simple. Police confirmed they’re investigating the robbery, but have made no arrests as of Sunday afternoon.

I have complained before about the callused foot-dragging by police. They simply do not treat these incidents as what they are. They call them “flash mobs” (as if that changes the nature of a violent criminal conspiracy), and they blame “social media.” Moreover, in those cases where arrests are made, the police and prosecutors treat it as if it is garden-variety shoplifting:

“They proceeded up the hill to the Sears store and entered together,” police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said, estimating 30 to 40 teens engaged in the planned flash mob.

The ages of those involved range from 11 to 19.

“In the tapes you can see him leading them up the street,” Chitwood said. “He’s wearing a white cap. On the videotape you can see he holds the door open for everyone to enter. It looks like Marsh and three or four others stayed outside serving as lookouts. The gang went in and went out within four minutes. Nobody was threatened and nobody was hurt.

“We are in the process of preparing the juvenile petitions for retail theft against all the juveniles arrested. We want all the hearings held together instead of separately. We want all the cases tried together and we want their cooperation. This is an open investigation.”

Sorry, but I went to law school, and I am here to tell you that what happened is not simple theft. It is robbery, which is a taking of property accomplished by force or fear.

When an organized mob invades a peaceful and law-abiding store, they put the owners, employees, and customers in fear of violence, if not their lives. It is analogous to strong-arm robbery, because of the show of force, and it has the intended effect of inducing compliance. Store owners cannot resort to the “self help” methods they are legally entitled to take because of the size of the mob. There is power in numbers, and it works the same way small town jailers holding accused criminals used to be unable to stop mobs bent on lynching them.

The point is, violence and threats of violence are effective, and anyone who doubts that the perpetrators understand that principle is in my opinion a despicable fool.

In another incident, local authorities at least paid lip service to the idea of maybe actually watching the video and not only trying to catch them, but to charge them with the crimes they actually committed:

“They tried to overwhelm the employees so they went in as a group and started destroying banners, tearing up boxes and stuff,” Sgt. Steve Bevens with Troutdale Police said.

He said they also stole food and shoved items into their jackets.

Surveillance video also shows two boys get behind a counter and try to steal a cash register. Kids are also seen throwing produce and riding a motorized scooter.

“All of a sudden a mob of kids come walking out and some of them are running,” said one witness who called 9-1-1 but did not want his name published. “I heard Albertsons employees yelling at them.”

He said he heard the suspects bragging about how much they stole.

“What shocked me the most was the girls had the most stuff,” he said. “It wasn’t just the boys.”

Only one police officer was able to respond to the call because other officers were busy elsewhere. He found the group of kids at a nearby bus stop and called for backup.

Bevens said some of the kids tried to intimidate the officer, but the officer randomly pulled two of the teens aside and arrested them for a curfew violation.

So far police have not arrested anyone for the actual theft, although Bevens said investigators are watching surveillance video from the store and trying to get the names of the kids.

“We’re going to work with the district attorney, juvenile system and charge them with everything we can,” Bevens said.

Hmmm…

I wonder whether they really are going to do that. Because, if they did, it might actually make a difference. As things stand right now, merchants are getting desperate. I witnessed a shoplifting incident at a local store, and I saw the store employees who told the guy to stop standing there watching as he just forced his way past them and ran away. “We are not allowed to do anything else,” was what one said to the other. Mind you, it happened so fast that at first I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I remember in the old days they used to use force against shoplifters. Now times seem to have changed. Maybe it’s the insurance companies fearing lawsuits by employees if they are injured by a perp, or lawsuits from the perp, but I know one thing.

I would not want to be a merchant right now.

What do you do if your business is invaded? Shoot the invaders?

A gun group is quoted thusly in a liberal HuffPo piece:

“the most effective defense a victim could muster against a flash mob would be for the victim to draw a concealed firearm.”

I would agree, and of course it is easy for me to agree from the relative safety of my home sitting here at the keyboard. But if I owned a store and a bunch of juvie thugs came charging in, what do you suppose would happen to me if I pulled a gun and they ignored me and I opened fire? No matter what your opinion about self defense, while drawing a gun might work, a pile of dead or wounded 12 year olds is not something I would want to have to deal with or live with.

Perhaps that makes me a coward. If so, go ahead and call me a coward. I get a little tired of this process called blogging anyway, and I don’t like the fact that anticipating criticism causes me to have to explain in detail every last thought lest I be misunderstood — only to discover that I will be anyway.

Being misunderstood is what blogging is all about.

There. I just said something which needed to be said, although I’m sure others have said the same thing. This process is irritating, but I am only slogging through this post because I am sick to death of mob violence being tolerated, encouraged, and even glorified.

Sorry, and go ahead and criticize me all you want, but I don’t think it is especially helpful to see people who know better winking at mob violence as if its cute and revolutionary:

“Step Up Revolution” taps into the dance “flash mob” phenomenon and moves to Miami to give us the sunniest and most entertaining of these kids-gotta-dance musicals.

The flash mobs — in traffic, dancing on the roofs, hoods and trunks of low-rider vintage cars in Miami traffic, disrupting museum openings and a developer’s planning meetings — are a brilliantly choreographed, well-shot and sharply-edited treat.

Oh, I’m sure the choreography is beautifully done and sharply edited.

Kids gotta have violence, doncha know. Even if “reality” sometimes “intrudes”"

Well, except for one unfortunately timed stunt involving a darkened room, smoke bombs and menacing dancers charging in wearing gas masks. And another, with dancers imitating machine guns strafing a crowd. Sad that the news intrudes, inadvertently, on this late summer cotton-candy treat.

I pity any small business owners who might be in the audience just the same way I would pity a rape victim who had to watch a beautifully choreographed musical depiction of a rape scene. Does whoever cranks out such garbage think the kids have a right to invade stores and steal, and the merchants just ought to go with the beautifully choreographed flow?

I am so sick and tired of seeing serious, organized criminal conspiracies being dressed up as something else that I feel I am becoming paranoid, and I am not even a small business owner anymore.

My worry is that portraying them as “flash mobs” and as a social media “trend” minimizes the serious criminal nature of what is going on, and by muddying the water, only masks the greater problem, which I think is police paralysis:

The suspects in these crimes often connected via cellphones and share information on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, police say.

How best to combat the technology-connected crimes — and how far police agencies should reach into private online and mobile phone access — are at the core of a growing debate among police officials, city leaders and civil rights activists. Everyone agrees: It’s uncharted territory for law enforcement.

“You’re looking at an emerging form of crime,” says Sean Varano, a criminologist at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. “We don’t know what power these police agencies have to monitor these websites or where do reasonable expectations of privacy start. ”

A recent survey of 106 retailers nationwide by the National Retailer Federation showed that 80% had experienced multiple-offender crimes in the past six months and one in 10 had been hit by a criminal flash mob, says Joseph LaRocca, a senior adviser with the group. “These crimes are not new,” he says. “What’s new is the social network and Internet activity to coordinate these ad hoc attacks against stores.” He adds: “We’re still trying to figure out how best to address these issues.”

Addressing them is often tricky. Earlier this month, the Cleveland City Council proposed making it a crime to summon a flash mob via Facebook, Twitter and other social media. It was a response to recent flash mob violence in Cleveland suburbs that was mobilized by social media sites. Mayor Frank Jackson vetoed the proposal, saying the ordinance might infringe on residents’ rights.

“Use of this technology in a criminal way and how we react to it — without throwing away the Constitution — is a challenge we all have,” Jackson says. “We want to be responsible.”

The Constitution has nothing to do with it. Social media and cell phones are simply mediums of communication, like telephones or just plain talking. They do not alter the nature of the crimes committed, and there is no need nor is there any right for the state to engage in surveillance of innocent citizens. If anything, the social media communications can later be used as evidence to build a case.

What they first need to do is first arrest the people in the videos. Treat them the same way that bank robbers captured on video are treated. Offer rewards, and when one perp is found, get him to rat on the others.

Do I have to write a blog post to point out that robbery is a serious crime? Or that conspiracy to commit robbery is a very serious federal crime?

(a) Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, or commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in violation of this section shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
(b) As used in this section—
(1) The term “robbery” means the unlawful taking or obtaining of personal property from the person or in the presence of another, against his will, by means of actual or threatened force, or violence, or fear of injury, immediate or future, to his person or property, or property in his custody or possession, or the person or property of a relative or member of his family or of anyone in his company at the time of the taking or obtaining.
(2) The term “extortion” means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.
(3) The term “commerce” means commerce within the District of Columbia, or any Territory or Possession of the United States; all commerce between any point in a State, Territory, Possession, or the District of Columbia and any point outside thereof; all commerce between points within the same State through any place outside such State; and all other commerce over which the United States has jurisdiction.

The law is quite old and it is called the Hobbs Act.

The FBI touts its unique benefits:

Benefits of the Hobbs Act. There are three main advantages:

The penalties are harsher than in local prosecutions. Sentences of 20, 30, or 50 years, and even life sentences, have already been handed out by federal courts around the country.
Since the federal system has no parole, anyone receiving a federal sentence serves out the full term (no early-out for good behavior).
Faced with long prison sentences, some of the suspects in these cases will cooperate with law enforcement and prosecutors—giving up names and knowledge of other crimes—in return for reduced sentences.

Trying these conspirators in federal court and sentencing them to lengthy prison terms would in my opinion accomplish far more than the current approach of calling it shoplifting, blaming social media, and staging beautifully choreographed musicals.

Oh, I almost forgot about Philadelphia’s lame approach of addressing mob violence as a curfew violation problem:

To deal with mobs, which keep residents barricaded in their homes and visitors away, Mayor Michael Nutter has instituted a citywide curfew. Common sense tells us there will now be a drop in flash mobs, although violent incidents are still occurring just outside the targeted zones.

The problem is that the curfew seems to be the mayor’s only answer. Curfews won’t solve the underlying issues for why the uprisings are occurring. But since flash mobs have been plaguing the city since early 2010, the mayor has shown himself to be unable or unwilling to address the root causes.

So the situation only worsens.

Curfews are simply too expensive and resource-intensive to be maintained, and police become bogged down processing curfew violators instead of focusing on the real criminals prowling the city. And that is simply not the most effective use of our crime-fighting resources.

Curfews also create resentment among those affected, most of whom are law-abiding citizens. The majority are punished for the actions of a few.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Philly Flash Mobs Not Solved With Curfews
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Uh, no I don’t “Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election” but where was I?

It fascinates me that there are existing law enforcement tools available which could be used to put these people away for a long time, and instead of doing that, the law enforcement agencies sit around and talk about curfew and surveillance measures directed at everyone else.

Meanwhile, SWAT teams routinely conduct home invasions against wholly innocent people purportedly to look for evidence of victimless crimes. Whether you like the drug war or not, what are our priorities? Why is it considered more appropriate to break down the doors of alleged pot sellers than upholding the rights of law abiding citizens and business owners who are victims of serious mob violence?

Speaking of business owners, in this morning’s news, I see that the DEA illegally “commandeered private property from a law-abiding businessman and ineptly deployed it in an operation that got a man killed and now endangers a family that had nothing to do with the case.”

And of course, we all know about “Fast and Furious.”

Nothing new about any of it.

But the idea that a state which countenances criminal behavior by law enforcement is there to “uphold justice between people who conduct their own affairs” — that was just something I could not ignore.

MORE: I should add that instead of upholding justice, the government often does the opposite. You’d almost think the goal of the state is to make citizens feel as terrorized as possible while they cling to the vain hope that the government is there to protect them.

Romney does have a heart. For some things. For others not so much. With respect to Israel and the Palestinians Romney points out that culture matters (I love a culture that allows women with double Ds to wear bikinis – follow the link for a look).

General George Patton said something similar about Islam almost 60 years ago.

“To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammed and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab”

Winston Churchill was of a similar opinion.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

– Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

So Romney is only out of the current mainstream. He is in the center of the historical mainstream. American and British.

All who follow a code of ethics or principles are self-governors. Our system is meant to protect the self-governors from those without ethics and principles, perpetrators of fraud, rape and violence. The state does not run the affairs of people in a free society. It upholds justice between people who conduct their own affairs.

The above was written by Colleen McCool of McCool Portraits & Political Commentary.

It is my opinion that those who can should be doing as much as they can for those who can’t. What used to be called noblesse oblige. Besides if you are an engineer there is good money in it. The image of Edison in the video struck a chord with me because of my work on Bringing A Little Light To The World™.

Quite innocently, I went to Memeorandum earlier and clicked on the top link, which is headlined

Book bombshell: Obama canceled Bin Laden ‘kill’ raid three times at Jarrett’s urging

Just wanted to read it, OK? The link was supposed to go to the Daily Caller, of which I’m a regular reader. Instead of being directed there, I got this scary-looking icon:

Reported Attack Page!                                                            This web page at dailycaller.com has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked based on your security preferences.
Attack pages try to install programs that steal private information, use your computer to attack others, or damage your system.Some attack pages intentionally distribute harmful software, but many are compromised without the knowledge or permission of their owners.

Odd, because my antivirus is usually very sensitive (if anything, overly sensitive) to malware-infected pages, and it it had done nothing at all.

So I clicked on the “Why was this page blocked?” button, which directed me to a purportedly helpful “Google Advisory” which stated this:

Safe Browsing

Diagnostic page for dailycaller.com

What is the current listing status for dailycaller.com?

Site is listed as suspicious – visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 3 time(s) over the past 90 days.

Listed? Precisely what does that mean? Listed by whom?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Thinking it might just be a Firefox problem, I clicked on the same link from Google Chrome, and this time, the warning was even more menacing:

Warning: Something’s Not Right Here!
dailycaller.com contains malware. Your computer might catch a virus if you visit this site.
Google has found malicious software may be installed onto your computer if you proceed. If you’ve visited this site in the past or you trust this site, it’s possible that it has just recently been compromised by a hacker. You should not proceed, and perhaps try again tomorrow or go somewhere else.
We have already notified dailycaller.com that we found malware on the site. For more about the problems found on dailycaller.com, visit the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page.

If you understand that visiting this site may harm your computer, proceed anyway.

Should I, um, proceed?

What I want to know is has the Daily Caller actually been infected with malware, or has someone only reported it as infected?

There’s just something about the highly political nature of the article which raises my suspicions that politics might just somehow be involved.

MORE: It isn’t just the article that is being flagged by the Google advisory. Even the Daily Caller home page triggers the warning.

Maybe I’ll try using Ubuntu and see what happens.

AND MORE: Just booted up the basement computer in Ubuntu 11.04 and both the Daily Caller link and the website work fine. But on this computer, running Windows XP, it is still blocked.

Hmmm…

Is this a Windows only issue?

AND EVEN MORE: Just tried a different computer, a more modern machine running Windows 7. The Daily Caller main page and the link are still blocked in Firefox, but open fine in Chrome. On this computer, no such luck with either Forefox or Chrome. Next step is to reboot both browsers.

I’m very curious about this.

AFTER REBOOT: Still no change in either browser. Every other website I’ve been to this morning works fine, so I doubt it’s a browser or computer issue.

I suspect someone does not want traffic going to the Daily Caller.

MORE: Google very helpfully makes it a snap to report a malware-infected site. All you do is enter the URL and fill in the capcha!

And at the Democratic Underground, a discussion of what’s being called a “nasty new troll attack” as well as an observation:

There has to be a technological fix for this problem of politically motivated false malware reports

for this problem of politically motivated false malware reports.

If the webmasters of targeted sites had an easy way to complain to Google about false malware reports, then Google could run its own sophisticated scans of the site and remove the false reports.

Is Google aware of the problem?

I don’t know, but I was glad to see that Memeorandum had bumped this story (which had moved down) back to the top.

No doubt the unbiased techies at Google are working hard to fix the problem.

(Meanwhile, I’m intrigued as to why the Google warnings don’t work in Firefox in Ubuntu.)

UPDATE: I am not alone in noticing this:

It is evident that someone on the left was sufficiently angry and alarmed by the Daily Caller’s scoop that a false malware complaint was filed to deter traffic.

And this:

For those of you having trouble getting into The Daily Caller, @DailyCaller reports on Twitter, that they came under malware attack. They claim to have ” turned back the enemy & reclaimed our land. Site is safe to visit. Thanks 4 your patience.”

-I’m still seeing the Attack Site notice, however.-

There are no coincidences is politics, folks.

And of course the unbiased techies at Google are no doubt working hard to solve the problem

I have touched on this a time or two in the past but since Pat Buchanan brings it up I thought I’d touch on it again. What is the most popular socialism in America? Moral Socialism or Economic Socialism. First let me quote some from Pat.

In his New York Times report, “In California, GOP Fights Steep Decline,” Adam Nagourney delves into the reasons.

In the Golden Land, a state Nixon carried all five times he was on a national ticket and Reagan carried by landslides all four times he ran, the GOP does not hold a single statewide office. It gained not a single House seat in the 2010 landslide. Party registration has fallen to 30 percent of the California electorate and is steadily sinking.

Why? It is said that California Republicans are too out of touch, too socially conservative on issues like right-to-life and gay rights. “When you look at the population growth,” says GOP consultant Steve Schmidt, “the actual party is shrinking. It’s becoming more white. It’s becoming older.”

Race, age and ethnicity are at the heart of the problem. And they portend not only the party’s death in California, but perhaps its destiny in the rest of America.

Consider. Almost 90 percent of all Republican voters in presidential elections are white. Almost 90 percent are Christians. But whites fell to 74 percent of the electorate in 2008 and were only 64 percent of the population. Christians are down to 75 percent of the population from 85 in 1990. The falloff continues and is greatest among the young.

Moral Socialism is a declining force in American politics. We see that in the coalition that is currently winning the battle for marijuana legalization in Colorado.

Bipartisan support for legalizing marijuana and regulating it like alcohol in Colorado? This is quite encouraging and fascinating (in California, you may recall, there was bipartisan opposition from the blue and red teams).

We saw that in the Obama/Keyes match up in Illinois. I personally voted for Obama because I preferred Economic Socialism to Moral Socialism. Not that I wouldn’t like to end both but I was given a choice and made one.

And the Republican Party in Colorado is split.

Conservatives are split on the proposed amendment. Opponents, led by Republican Attorney General John Suthers and Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, argue that legalizing marijuana would promote increased drug use and impaired driving, while setting up Colorado for a legal skirmish with federal authorities.

Other conservatives, like former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, have argued that regulating marijuana would be a better use of government resources, and that adults should have the personal freedom to make their own decisions about marijuana as they do with alcohol.

“Whether it’s a matter of it being a waste of resources on an ineffective policy, or it being a policy promoting an underground market, it’s also a personal liberty issue for many people who feel alcohol prohibition did not work and marijuana prohibition is not working,” Tvert said.

Republicans seem to love black markets. They seem intent on recreating one for abortion. I love the quote at the end of this piece.

…we love this idea of prohibitions, we can’t live without them. They are our very favorite thing because we know how to solve difficult, social, economic, and medical problems — a new criminal law with harsher penalties in every category for everybody.

Well maybe not so much any more. Colorado is a harbinger.

So how can the Republican Party have a future? It will have to give up Moral Socialism. This rally report shows the direction. The kids are flocking to Ron Paul. In liberal Illinois.

As I often tell my Moral Socialist friends. Government can no more make us moral than it can make us prosperous. And let me add that it is dangerous to try. As a commenter pointed out here.

I have never taken any illegal drug, yet I oppose the drug war. The main reason is the way it is used to infringe on our rights. Asset forfeiture, gun laws, laws to reduce the standards for searches, a myriad of infringements to help “win ” the war on drugs.

Liberty or death. Pick one.