So… there’s not really much to say at this point, other than…
…good job Massachusetts! I don’t even like Scott Brown, I think he’s a Bush-era neoconservative, but his vote will more than likely kill Obama’s healthcare bill, so I guess I’m pleased.
Shopping with me (or doing anything involving me and the unsuspecting public) is always an experience. Today, me and a friend of mine went shopping at a kitchen appliance store. Now, I’m all for more Americans getting involved in their kitchens, as stated above, it’s better than fast food at least. However I have to say that some of the most interesting items exist at this store…
…so first off, it’s like two degrees outside. There’s no excuse for this. I blame the guy in the Prius for trying to stop global warming. Anyway…
OK, this is perfect… if you’re trying to create a cookie in the shape of Bo, the First Dog.
After you bring home Baby’s First Kitchen Knife, your family gets to decide who gets to be Baby’s First Stabbing Victim.
Instead of getting your Swine Flu Vaccine, you can always get your Swine Flu Kitchen Dispenser!
I thought it looked less arrogant than turning the camera on myself directly…
…and just when I thought us Americans were starting to be less lazy, we’ve decided that we can’t be bothered to put both ice and a straw in the glass.
The store employees either found us funny… or were humoring us. Somehow I feel it was the latter….
Oh, and if you haven’t heard the good news, I’m back at openSUSE!
You may wonder what a yearly dues-paying membership in the esteemed U.S. Libertarian Party earns you and America. Winning candidates? Changes in public policy? A wall calendar with all the previous presidential nominees on the beach? (on second thought, you can keep that last one to y’allselves)
Actually, no. But you do get stickers and a magnet!
Oh, don’t forget the card… in case you forget which one of the endless number of parties (that was the end) that you belong to. But I suppose you could say “I’m a card-carrying Libertarian” and impress your mates. Though, if your friends are impressed by that, then quite frankly they’d probably also be impressed by a monkey throwing his feces at passersby in the local zoo. Being a card-carrying Libertarian is a little bit like when I say in my bio that I’m an “award-winning satirist”… it’s not false, but it’s also not really that impressive in the scheme of things.
Actually, in addition to my Libertarian Party care package, I also received a Gasden flag in the mail from our friends at Young Americans for Liberty.
I wanted it for the express reason of using it as a backdrop at meetings and speeches, though I suppose I could also use it to attract Glenn Beck viewers to me and then proceed to educate them on what a hypocritical person he is. But I won’t.
First off, I hope everyone’s enjoying 2010 so far. I’ve been working on a bunch of different stuff these past two days, including a new project (I’ll talk about this more later!) First off, my New Year’s resolution is to revamp the Kevin’s Word blog and actually blog more. As with everyone it seems, Twitter for the past few years has taken over blogging as my main source of putting my thoughts out in the wild. While I love Twitter, I do find myself putting out several tweets in a row, each 140 characters full, with pictures, etc. Let’s face it, the writing style I have really lends itself to longer-form content anyway, and with my new blogging app on both my phone and my PC, hopefully it’ll be more convenient to write in the blog (you know, because going to KevinsWord.com and logging in is so hard).
The question comes back to what look should the blog have… I’ve had this style with K2 on WordPress, with the site in all black except for the content area. I’d like to keep that but clean up some of the clutter in the white content area. For one, I’m dumping all the pages… except for About. I’m probably going to put just a simple bio, examples of projects I’m working on, and contact info. In addition, dealing with K2 is getting annoying. Not because it’s a bad theme, infact for a large website with a lot of content it’s probably one of the best. Instead, I need something simple that will allow me to customize it easily to get the look I want. My podcast (another resolution: get it back up and running) is running on Squarespace, but I’m a student working on volunteer projects… not exactly the person that can afford to run one, let alone two Squarespace blog accounts. I love Squarespace, and if I could do two blogs on it I would in a heartbeat.
The new project
For those keeping track at home, I’m the West Baton Rouge Parish Coordinator for Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, the President of Young Americans for Liberty at Brusly High, a member of the Twitter team at Young Americans for Liberty national, and involved in Project 2012: Year of Youth and various tea parties and other organizations (such as anti-war organizations) that believe in similar goals that I do. For all that, some awesome news fell into my Inbox this morning: a New Iberia man filed a petition to recall Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu on December 28th, and Secretary of State Jay Dardenne says he will accept the filing, meaning Landrieu and the Louisiana Democratic Party, in addition to us, the citizens trying to remove her from office, have been put on notice. Louisiana law states that we must collect the signatures of one-third of the eligible voters in the 2008 election within 180 days of the filing (so around the end of June is when the petition needs to be returned).
It’s a high mark, but I can tell you that in my role at coordinator for Campaign for Liberty, going door to door to get signatures on petitions to ask Landrieu to vote no to Barack Obama’s healthcare reform package and yes to real reform from Congressman Paul’s packages, there is a lot of hate for Landrieu. Not just “oh I’m not a big fan”, but actual seething hate. Shouldn’t take much to convince those folks to sign a petition asking for her removal, huh?
For more information, or to sign up to volunteer, visit MoveOnMary.org. If you’re a Louisiana citizen interested in signing this petition, check that website continuously, and as we get more information on when we’ll start canvassing and getting petitions signed, all that will be on that website.
Happy New Year and have a great 2010!
Barack Obama, the peace President, the Constitutional lawyer, has a new power: the ability to kill you.
One of George W. Bush’s worst policies, the Military Commissions Act, has been reinforced by the Supreme Court as not just Constitutional (which it is, of course, not) but also allows for the administration to declare you a “suspected enemy combatant” and at that time, you cease to exist as a “person”. Per the Supreme Court, a suspected enemy combatant, even if they are an American citizen, does not have any rights: human, inherent, natural, or any legal standing whatsoever. Even if you are a normal American citizen walking down the street, if President Obama (or any other president after him) declares you a suspected enemy combatant, you will simply cease to exist as a legal entity in the United States at that time.
From then on, the federal government can arrest, torture, or do whatever they feel necessary with you. You or your family have no legal recourse – after all, in the eyes of the national government, you don’t exist. Obama’s promise to end torture still applies – after all, if they’re torturing “suspected enemy combatants”, legally speaking, they’re not torturing people.
The United States Constitution, which has been trying to gasp for air after being drowned in eight years of Bush, prohibits the taking away of due process. United States law on torture is also clear: under no circumstance, even in a time of national emergency, may anyone, including the national government, torture any individual, and no immunity is offered to those to participate or order it. Yet Barack Obama, the former Constitutional scholar, hasn’t changed the U.S. policy on torture or the Constitution. The only change is that while Bush drowned the Constitution on all fours, punching it as it struggles for life; Barack Obama simply stands on top of it, drowning it while proclaiming it’s praises for the purposes of being re-elected in 2012.
Yet despite his scholarly knowledge and rhetoric against torture, him and his administration have argued in court that torturers are immune from the law. He has stood up and publically proclaimed that there is no issue with torture, and those who do it should be immune from the punishments that go along with it in a nation that follows the rule of law.
You may wonder about my first paragraph, which ended with my assertion that President Obama now has a right to kill you. Though it’s not expressly authorized, if you are not a person with any legal standing in the United States (and presuming the U.S. is the only country you are a citizen of, any other nation in the world), then what is to stop the Department of Homeland Security from just killing “suspected enemy combatants”?
I think it’s time we wake up out of our honeymoon. Bush was a horrible president and established many horrible precedents, including the law that’s led to this decision. I wholeheartedly supported Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s attempts to impeach both Bush and Cheney. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful, and now with a new administration establishing even more dangerous precedents, I think it’s time we begin the process of impeachment against Barack Obama for high crimes against the United States in authorizing and attempting to provide immunity for torturers.
I’m actually not that down on my Congressman, Bill Cassidy. After he was elected as a Republican to the House in the 2008 elections, I was convinced that we had elected a neoconservative. But in his votes and my talks with him over issues such as foreign policy have convinced me that he’s probably 80% there on issues I care about. However, every now and then I get something that just reminds me that he’s yet another politician… take this campaign flyer, sent out by his Congressional office I found in my mailbox yesterday:
If you have trouble reading that highlighted part, it says “This mailing was prepared, published, and mailed at taxpayer expense.” You’ll even see at the top, under the address, that this letter constitutes “official business”. The letter, in case you’re wondering, consists of a look at all the work Cassidy’s been doing in the area to save jobs and his position on issues.
You might say “that’s business as usual”. That’s true, but so is not following the Constitution and rushing bad legislation at 1 in the morning. It’s time to change business as usual. In addition, for the Congressman to say that he supports less spending and then proceed to spend on this letter is stupid at best, hypocritical at worst.
I expect better from our otherwise OK Congressman.
For the second time in as many years, Baton Rouge voters have rejected Mayor Kip Holden’s $900 billion Bond Proposal. On Saturday’s election, 64 percent of voters voted down the proposal. Compared to the 51% who defeated this proposal on last year’s election, the popularity of this proposal is losing ground, and fast (also notable was the turnout’s effect on the results: last year, this proposal was on the ballot along with the national election of President and Congress. This year, it was on the ballot with only small local races).
The proposal would have raised the sales tax in Baton Rouge to 9.5%, up from 9%, as well as raising property taxes for the next thirty years. Although Mayor Holden was promoting the infrastructure and safety aspect of the proposal, more money would have gone to develop a government-funded theme park, Audubon ALIVE!, run by the Audubon Institute (famous for it’s Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans), than to any other project. I know that these city leaders may not notice it looking at our national government, but the job of government is never to fund or run a private organization or attraction.
I think Baton Rouge has sent a clear message that we’re not interested in having the city own the Alive project,”
- Dwight Hudson, spokesman, Baton Rouge Tea Party
The failure of the tax proposal also cements the influence of the liberty-movement in America, with organizations like the Baton Rouge Tea Party (which is one of the few major Tea Party organizations that is run by liberty-lovers and not Republican neoconservatives) campaigning against this proposal.
On one last note, I’d like to highlight the cowardness of Mayor Kip Holden, who I’ve supported in the 2008 election but do no longer. He brings up this proposal after his elections are over, only to have them soundly defeated twice. And really, using TV ads with a bunch of babies crawling around saying “think about their future”? Get over yourself, Mayor.
(BTW, Baton Rouge Police, if more of your police were patrolling high crime streets and less worried about campaigners on the side of the road handing out information on a public sidewalk and road, maybe you wouldn’t need as much extra funding. But I understand: that would require doing your job.)
WAFB, the CBS television affiliate in Baton Rouge, and Brusly High, the school lucky enough to have me enrolled, put on a live pep rally early yesterday morning. Luckily, I managed to find the video from WAFB’s website:
Recently (and I have a very liberal definition of “recently”, considering this event was a week ago), Baton Rouge-area U.S. Congressman Bill Cassidy held a town hall meeting with his constituents at the Baton Rouge Marriott Hotel.
The town hall was put on by the Baton Rouge Tea Party, which is a more libertarian and Constitutional-leaning organization than most other tea party organizations, which tend to be full of neoconservative Bush-loving Republicans. The benefit of this is that these people tend to understand health care reform, and not be opposed to Obama’s reform only to say the current health system is fine.
Rep. Cassidy is a doctor himself, having donated many hours of his time working at the charity hospital here in Baton Rouge, and is one of several health experts on the non-government health care side of the issue. He is a freshman Republican, elected in the November 2008 national elections (ironically, this area voted for Barack Obama as the President but elected a conservative representative), but does not seem to be a neoconservative.
The town hall featured many of the same rhetoric that we’ve heard before. What I don’t understand is that there are literally thousands of pages worth of material to get outraged about in the various Democratic Party-led health reform bills in front of Congress, so why do the Republicans stick with their one or two points against it (cutting Medicare, raising the deficit, rationed care, etc.) when there is so much other provisions that should make the skin of an average American turn inside out. Like mandated government-run electronic health records, a national ID card (REAL ID here we come!), non-taxpaying aliens who are not authorized to live or work in the United States will be given access to care*, government-set wages for doctors, etc.
Oh, and can someone find where in the Constitution it says that the federal government is even allowed to do this? Where is the authorization to control health care?
C4L at the Town Hall
The Louisiana Campaign for Liberty was present, teaming up with BRTP to pass out our information and talk about our plan for health care. I’m glad to see we’re working closer with those tea party organizations who represent our views. Also present were American Majority, a non-profit organization that provides free conservative activism classes and affordable candidate training, and Senator David Vitter’s office. Vitter’s undoubtedly a neoconservative, and although he’s co-sponsored the Audit the Fed bill, we still need to make sure he’s out and someone much better is in when his seat comes up for election in the November 2010 national midterms.
On Foreign Policy
I talked to Representative Cassidy for a short time, and I asked him the most important question I could think of: what’s his plan for foreign policy. He’s right on the economy, ending the Federal Reserve, etc., but many Republicans like him are right on those topics but are for policing the world, needless wars, etc. Surprisingly, he told me he agrees with Rep. Ron Paul’s policy proposals that include retreating from the hundreds of countries American troops are in, but he does believe we need to be fighting this dead-end (my words) war in Afghanistan. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all.
Disclaimer: I am the parish coordinator for Campaign for Liberty in West Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These opinions are my own.
