FEMA, Get Thee Hence....

Nowhere in the US Constitution is it authorized that a federal agency be created to offer assistance to victims of a natural disaster such as Hurricanes Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Lovely Rita. Nor for the Northridge Earthquake of 1994 nor any very heavy snowstorm.

What happens, as happens with all federal help agencies, is that they take the money, which comes to them by way of our taxes, skim off 40 to 60% to pay the civil servants, appointees, various hacks and, of course, the politicians themselves, and waste any remainder on porky-type projects. FEMA is exactly the kind of agency into which politicians place their brothers-in-law, nephews and blackmailers to give them a hefty salary and shut them up.

We, those of us who fall into the category *productive* lose at least half of our productivity to our bloated, out-of-control, thieving government. FEMA is only a small one of literally hundreds of money pits that suck up this production and waste it by putting it in the pockets of the non-productive.

Were it not for FEMA, and all these other unConstitutional federal agencies--and, yes, even many of the Constitutional ones, imagine what it'd be like to actually be able to spend, save or invest every bit of that paycheck. Cool!

But, back to disasters. In a real-world, in the absence of confiscatory taxation and the occasional pittance one gets returned on those rare occasions, you'd be getting $1000 a week to use as you wish, unlike in this world of theft, in which you get $1000 minus federal withholding, SS payroll tax, state income tax, state sales tax, gas tax, property tax, auto, aircraft and rv fees and licenses, business fees and licenses and last and best, sin taxes. As it is now, maybe you'll be able to use as much as $500 of it for yourself and your family.

That's a pretty good disaster in itself.

What if there's a real disaster, and no FEMA?

Well, at the risk of talking down to most of you, here goes.

One thing many of us might consider is living in a part of the country not prone to floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, landslides, democrats and republicans. If you, like me, decide to live in certain areas in spite of one or more of these dangers, insurance is a really good idea. Ah, but if insurance against republicans and democrats were only available!

If the worst happens, and you lose your house and its contents to one of these, you may lose your baby pictures and your best copy of Atlas Shrugged, but at least there'll be a payout to help you get a new start (with FEMA, that's not nearly as certain!) . And, in the absence of the above-mentioned confiscatory taxation, it'd be far more likely you'd be able to afford good insurance.

Also, observe that during the recent tribulations, affected victims sit on their flood-soaked front stoops and whine to media reporters about how nobody helped them. The mayor was busy chasing news cameras to whimper into, the governor was making sure no federal empty suit took over her national guard. FEMA set up road blocks to make sure nobody provided help before they could. At least, with your insurance broker, you're just dealing with one guy, and you get to pick the guy.

You have the relative certainty of knowing that when that emergency happens, you're on your own and that you, on your own, having planned for as many contingencies as possible, have given yourself the best chance possible of survival. Compare that with sitting on the stoop and hoping FEMA will come along and help!

I'd far rather depend on myself than depend on the likes of Michael Brown or Michael Chertoff to get their heads out of their butts.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

It Would Be Chaos....

When I was a young lad, in the Frozen North, there were many an hour when there wasn't much to do.....but read. There were times when I'd think up some reason to leave the (boring) classroom to go to the library and read something interesting. There were the Saturday afternoons after Howdy Doody was over, and it was too cold or there were no friends around.

Aside from Robert Heinlein's teen science fiction stories and Hot Rod magazines, my favorites were the popular tech magazines of the day. I'd gobble up Mechanix Illustrated, Popular Mechanics and Popular Science in the first days after they appeared, then go back into the archives and find old ones I hadn't already read.

One story, or rather one theme from which a number of stories emerged, was about the coming of personalized flying cars, for use by the public for the same everyday purposes for which we now use ground cars. Last May, I wrote about this briefly here.

These pop tech magazines carried stories of inventors who were experimenting with personal aircraft which could be re rigged to drive on the streets. These "aircars" were very primitive and not easily converted from air- to surface-usefulness, but they were a start. Continued experimentation would certainly have brought improvements in these vehicles. We have to recall from history that early automobiles weren't very easily used, either.

Further experimentation was not to be--at least not on a continuous basis. There are a few research groups working on the project, but bringing aircars to the general use of the public is still a long way off.

Seems the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), predecessor to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), decided that we dopey Americans aren't capable of handling flight, most of us. They halted most research into aircars on the basis that every aircar driver would have to be licensed as a private pilot--a lengthy and pricey process.

I brought all this up in a conversation with a couple of younger, tech-savvy denizens of my local coffee shop yesterday. "It would be chaos," one of them said. "When they start crashing into each other like they do on the streets, then falling down onto people's homes....hey! I'm enrolling in law school tomorrow!"

I'm a little surprised that a couple of my younger friends, each owning more hi-tech than I care to afford, would take such a skeptical view of technology that must happen if our government-stalled technological progress is to move ahead. In truth, I'm pretty sure that my two young friends will buy aircars as soon as they can afford them (after me).

The error that government keeps making that gives them an excuse to continue to squelch aircar technology (beyond the fact that government doesn't want us to have that much freedom!) is to think about safety the same way we do regarding automobiles: how to minimize the effects of a collision. Problem: at 5000 feet, it's really hard to minimize these kinds of collisions, and what they do to our bodies and those of the people on the ground. What we have to do is think like aircraft people. To them, almost all the effort goes into avoiding the collision in the first place.

What with all the radars, sonars, proximity alarms and air traffic control (which would be far better and safer if the lunkheads at FAA would get the *your favorite obscene epithet here* out of the way.

The fact that we're not all using aircars routinely now; fifty years after the earliest real experiments of which I'm aware, tells me that there's a problem with this once-free country. The problem is the government: but not for government regulation, I'm convinced that those early inventors and the like minds that would've followed them would've had us in very safe and practical aircars well before this year 2005.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

This Racist Universe

I heard it! Proof positive! The Universe is biased against the poor of New Orleans (which means, Black People, since the news has been telling us that all White People of New Orleans are rich, and all Black People there are poor).

On Fox News, of all places, the on-location reporter showed us that the levee re-breachings as a result of the nearby Hurricane Lovely Rita, bypassed all the rich (White) neighborhoods and flooded only the poor (Black) neighborhoods. Whoodah thunk?

The direct quote (as near as I can remember it) of Fox's Shepard Smith is: the flooding damaged "predominantly poor neighborhoods."

Since there are many White neighborhoods very near the levees, this can only be the work of a malevolent Universe. Well, wait!

I did hear that the the NAACP had a big national meeting two or three days ago. Might they, collectively, in the name of getting GWB to grant even more largess to the New Orleans area, have willed the storm to warp toward Louisiana? If so, it looks like the democrat loonie fringe is more powerful than we thought.

At any rate, Shepard Smith is on top of it all, and reporting it as he sees it. We can thank Rupert Murdock for a wonderful job by one and all!

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

The Death of Property Rights in America (Part II)

Part I is here--referring to the utter perversion of the already immoral laws allowing eminent domain seizures. Here, we have eminent domain seizures of ideas! I was kind of aware of this phenomenon, the military being what it is, but I always thought the inventor at least got paid! I found the story in Wired News, by means of a blog entry by Dale Amon at Samizdata.

When Philip French invented the Crater Coupler, a watertight coupler that uses no nut threads or bolted flanges, little did he and his partners suspect that it'd be used by the feds to tap into undersea fiberoptic cables for clandestine monitoring. Mr French's Coupler makes this underwater wiretap much simpler.

The problem: when the government's contractor paid Mr French, et al no royalties at all and they sued, the feds bottled the whole thing up under the veil of National Security, allowing nothing to be released for use in court. French, et al got zip. Actually, Mr French did settle for $30k, a tiny fraction of what the Coupler is worth.

The feds get another way to monitor our communications without our knowledge or consent, and the principle of our right to property gets another big hit.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Well Done, Scott!

Scott Bieser, fellow gun rights advocate and up-and-coming libertarian cartoonist (artist for the graphic novel version of L Neil Smith's novel The Probability Broach <Big Head Press, 2004>), has penned a wonderful response to the jack-booted thugs who went house-to-house in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katina Vanden Heuvel, ransacking homes and confiscating self-defense weapons of law-abiding residents in the New Orleans area. This, at a time when there is rampant looting, rape, murder and other forms of criminality in the area. If there were ever a time when New Orleans residents need the ability to defend themselves, this is it.

The cartoon is reproduced here with Scott's permission.

The National Rifle Association, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Gun Owners of America (and many others, I hope), are formulating legal responses to this atrocity. May the perpetrators of this evil be prosecuted to , and beyond the fullest extent of current law. A firing squad is too good for them!

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

The Pledge of Servitude

Well, the old "Pledge of Allegiance" is back once again. The recently added phrase "under god" is again under fire by alleged atheists and a sympathetic federal court.

I wrote about the pledge the last time it came up, and still hold the same opinion on the matter.

The Stars and Stripes used to be a symbol of all that America is, but thanks to government school civics classes and actions of government on all fronts has led most people to the opinion that the flag is a symbol of the government. Thus, when we "pledge allegiance to the flag," most of us are pledging allegiance to the government. Note the way that many people react to the President as if he were royalty. Note how, during the recent troubles in the Gulf area, many people look to the President as a savior, and are extreme in their anger as they perceive that he's failed them.

Only from libertarians and a few conservatives do we even hear the suggestion that they might actually lift a finger to help themselves and help each other. From the left we hear, "Where was the federal government?" and "Bush doesn't care about black people."

So we send the kids to government schools where they recite the "Pledge of Allegiance" each day, to reinforce that the federal government is and always will be critical to their very existence.

That's what I mean by the Pledge of Servitude.

I don't care at all about the "under god" phrase. I've never added the "under god" phrase when I used to actually recite the pledge, but now, I won't recite it at all. It's subversive and unAmerican. Americans aren't subservient.

Americans are individualists.

I don't care about "under god." Any parent worth his stuff will keep his kids out of government schools (government schools are child abuse) and teach them that government is the servant, not the master. This servant has been doing such a poor job at it's assigned (by the Constitution) tasks that it deserves to be treated with nothing but contempt.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

What's Really Happening in New Orleans?

I've already written some about Huricane Katrina Vanden Heuvel and the awful struggles of those who live and work in the areas damaged and destroyed by the storm. Most of what I've written was based on knowledge and news reporting of the time and was admittedly far from complete. The problem is, as we see the tale unfold from day to day, it seems to be less a natural disaster and more a government-made one.

Where do we start? With the French? I think the statutes of limitation are long past. The Louisiana Purchase was an "as is" deal.

Then to now was mainly a momentum thing. New Orleans was there, was a nice city, an "easy" city in which to live.

There was the occasional storm, hurricanes were a recognized danger, but New Orleans pulled through and became bigger and better. The Big Easy was so easy that local government was, in Southern style, corrupt as Mexico. During the Kkklinton administration, lots of money was stolen from all Americans and given to Louisiana for a full reinforcement of the New Orleans levee system, but the money was spent on other things: pundits claim that money was spent on a gambling casino, was spent to facilitate the movement of more river barges in and out of the port while there were actually fewer barges. I'm sure several New Orleans city and Louisiana state officials have enhanced their personal retirement accounts as well, truth be discovered.

Hurricane Katrina Vanden Heuvel brought local government out and fileted it, exposing its rotten guts for all to see.

Mayor Nagin apparently didn't read his own city's disaster plan, didn't take the weather reports seriously, and instead of dealing with the situation in a timely manner, he apparently decided to hide under his desk. When he should've been calling up bus drivers, he was calling tv networks to arrange face time.

The feds can't really invade a state until invited by the Governor. That's sort of like Mina, in "Dracula," had to invite the Count into her room in order that he could bite her neck. Governor Kathleen Blanco was so busy protecting her fiefdom that that she would not make the state Guard available to the President until everyone in New Orleans was dead. My guess: Her last name makes reference to her intelligence quotient.

Once the city was finally opened up to the feds, then the real violations began. While the poor people still remaining in the city are wading around in ultra contaminated water and being robbed and raped by gangs with stolen guns, the feds are systematically rendering the victims unable to defend themselves by means of wholesale violations of Amendments the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 9th and 10th.

Were there ever a high-magnitude disaster in a Western state (other than California, Oregon or Washington) and the feds pull crap like this, it just might turn into a civil war.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Nazism Rears Its Ugly Head in New Orleans

Armed thugs are going house to house in the New Orleans area--looking for victims to help? No! They're going through relatively undamaged neighborhoods looking for and confiscating firearms, including the legally owned weapons of responsible, productive individuals as described here.

As if to maximize the already overwhelming victimization of the hapless citizens of the area, evil jack-booted thugs are making sure that non-criminals in the area are unable to protect themselves against the looter gangs who have emptied out all the gun and sporting goods stores of their stock of weapons and ammunition.

Much of the actions of the several levels of government before, during and after Hurricane Katrina Vanden Heuvel seems to be aimed at maximizing casualties.

• Not allowing private individuals and charitable groups to go into the ravaged areas to offer help and effect rescues.

• Failing to utilize the cities school and transit buses to help the evacuation in the hours prior to the arrival of the storm.

• Failing to declare a state of emergency until after the situation was far beyond unmanageable.

• Not allowing the Red Cross, standing by with food, water, clothing, hygeine kits and medical supplies to go to the sports buildings, where people were crowded together in filthy, danerous, wretched conditions and many were dying.

Prior to the arrival of the military (delayed by the inaction of the governor) most rescues were effected by individual police officers and private individuals and groups acting independently of the city and state hierarchy.

While the military is continuing with its search and rescue operation, local authorities are reverting to police state tactics to forcibly move those who wish to stay in their homes (even those outside the flooded areas), render them unable to defend themselves and to keep those who had evacuated from returning to their homes and businesses.

As can be easily seen, government is acting to exacerbate the effects of the tragedy.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Where Did My Charitable Spirit Go?

Seems like every few weeks, there's another disaster, following which come pleas for donations to aid the victims.

I was in a disaster once. Mine was less overwhelming than many others--although not to those who died. I lost a lot, but not everything. FEMA helped some, though most of the help came from our own insurance. Altogethe, it covered maybe half of our loss.

Presumably, there were calls for charitable giving, though I was too busy to be aware of it. None of that charity came my way, though I didn't ask. We recovered, eventually.

My dad told me, years ago, that when he was a young man just getting started on his railroad career, that his taxes were about 10% of his gross earnings. Local, state and federal. I don't think he actually paid income tax those first years.

Thirty years ago, I earned around $6.50 an hour. I did pay state and federal income taxes, and all the normal stuff, BUTT! I was a single dad at the time. I had a nice apartment. I had a used pickup and a new motorcycle. I sent Jim to a private school (even then, I thought that government schools were bad business) and I often took time off from work to ride up and down the state to see the sights. We ate at restaurants. We went to LA often for libertarian group outings and went to an occasional movie or rock concert.

I make more than four times that now. I'm doing ok, but there's little extra. I have to think about going out to the better restaurants, running up to LA for the evening doesn't happen any more--traffic, the cost of gas and the cost of the entertainment are the main issues. No way could I afford private school tuition for a youngster. My quality of life is better, but not four times better.

The cost of the several layers of government is about half of my production. That's bogus! Most of that money is wasted, and/or goes into the pockets of politicians and their cronies. The roads and parks, etc are--well, to only say poorly maintained would be a major failure in perception. The schools' best areas of competence are in subverting parents' value systems and distorting America's founding principles--that is, substituting a state-subserviant morality for individualism. I could go on and probably will at some point.

Back to the original point, my charitable spirit is lost somewhere in that 40%. I figure that if the several layers of government really need that much of my productivity, they can take care of the disaster victims, the poor, the lazy and all the unfortunates.

Except that they aren't doing that, either!

They take half of our prodictivity to "care" for the unfortunate victims and there are more of them now than ever before!

Well, that's where my charitable spirit went.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Sweet Charity

There's been a lot of criticism of FEMA and the Bush Administration for the way the rescue and relief efforts in the Gulf Coast were very slow to start and more poorly organized that outside observers might imagine. Some of this criticism is justified, but Hurricane Katrina Vanden Heuvel , like its namesake, was an epic disaster.

The degree of devastation was unimagineable. The outcome could hardly have been expected--except that it was. Both FEMA and the US Army Corps of Engineers predicted disaster in New Orleans in the event of a high-category hurricane.

After the Kkklinton administration called everything more devastating than an unusually heavy snowfall a disaster worthy of FEMA aid, GW Bush trimmed FEMA's budget and placed it under the evil and fascistic Homeland Security Dept. FEMA attention was directed more toward the "War on Terror" than toward natural disasters.

New Orleans Mayor Nagin spent more time whining about why the feds were so slow to arrive than actually using the city's own resources to provide search & rescue and to try and restore order.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco showed her utter inability to handle a natural disaster by failing to act quickly to mobilize the state's National Guard.

In the midst of all this bureaucratic fumbling, one has to ask if one-size-fits-all government management of disaster mitigation and relief is really a good idea at all. Thanks to the Wine Commonsewer, who reminds me of some of the actions taken during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, and to Samizdata, who provided me with a link chain which led me to this FEE article about the disaster relief that was implemented to recover from the 1871 Chicago Fire.

It's a pretty well-known fact that the federal government has insinuated its way into so many areas of endeavor that historically (in the US) had been private, and which can be demonstrated to be better executed in private hands, that it is unable to do anything very well.

The road, street and highway system of the United States, once unequalled by any system of roads on earth, perhaps excepting Germany's Autobahn, is crumbling from lack of maintenance. The public utilities in many cities are similarly failing. Police departments are hamstrung by mindless edicts stemming from political correctness, while the citizenry is admonished by law against defending themselves against all manner of mass murderers, child molesters and jaywalkers.

In the wake of an attack by the subhuman al queda pigs, the Bush administration put together the "War on Terror," in which he conducts yet another undeclared war on Afghanistan and Iraq, tries to fight it without "actually hurting anyone." In Afghanistan, we were dropping food to the enemy among with bombs (!?). When we had Osama bin Lama cornered, we stood down for a religious holiday of some sort to let him make his way to Pakistan.

In Iraq, when the savages were shooting from mosques, we slinked away like cowards, lest we harm a single stone on their precious witch doctors' hangouts. We had the whole of the worst pack of savages bottled up in Fallujah, and we let them go!!! We certainly wouldn't want to hurt any of the sub-neanderthal cretins!

To reiterate, government has slimed its way into so many areas of endeavor that, not only has it turned each of them, in turn, into bastions of incompetence, but it can no longer even perform its Constitutional functions. In few words, it's spread far too thin. Top down central management cannot deal with such a monster.

We are all suffering (at the very least, we're losing half of our productivity to the monster) to a larger or lesser degree as a result of the behemoth government the non-productive among us have created.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Mind Pollution

On the 31st of August, I was directed to the Huffington Post blogsite by Philip Chaston on the Samizdata blogsite. He cited a post by the crackling-voiced Robert F Kennedy, undoubtedly written between the driving lessons he's receiving from his uncle.

The name of the post is "For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind." It basically blames GW Bush and H Barbour, et al for Hurricane Katrina Vanden Heuvel because of their failure to sign the Kyoto Treaty. It was among the first of several blog articles by noted and unnoted socialists blaming GW Bush for the hurricane.

I detest the administration of GW Bush for a host of reasons, some described in other parts of this collection, but I'm even more opposed to the Luddites that comprise the Environmental Fascist Society. It's amply demonstrated that these inherited-money idle rich are threatened by the fact that, in American society, even the middle class can enjoy some of the wonderful pleasures that they feel are theirs alone, by divine right. It truly angers them to see that a working professional, or even the occasional tradesman, can scrape together the money to occasionally dine at a top restaurant or enjoy an ocean cruise.

These are their pastimes, not ours!

Environmental laws and work regulations, high taxes and legal restrictions all work to keep the inherited-wealth "clique" on top and to make it harder for the rest of us to build any serious wealth. By the way, both GW Bush and RFKennedy are members of the "clique."

So, I wrote a quick comment in response to Bobby Jr's blathering. It is as follows:

There is no global warming.

If there is global warming, man had nothing to do with it.

If there is global warming, man can do nothing about it. It is part of normal cyclic climate change.

Read "State of Fear," by Michael Crichton.

My studies can beat up your studies.

Not exactly worthy of any literary awards, but it expresses more good sense than any little bit of Bobby Jr's article. The comment was not added to the long list of comments to the article. I can only assume that it was threatening to them.

I spent a few minutes perusing more of the scatterbrained Ms Huffington's new blogsite. I did this at great sacrifice to my evening leisure time, and so that you, my friends, shall not have to endure the continual nonsense contained therein.

Go there if you must, but know that there is nothing there but evil. My sincere advice: stay away! There be rotted brains there in large numbers! Beware! Beware!

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Deep in the Heart of Dixie

The Deep South. Many years ago, when the South was still sort of a seperate country in just about every way but name, there was a two year part of my life in which I travelled about the area recently destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. It was a very pleasant part of the country--it will be again. Even now, some residents of the area are making plans to rebuild.

Seeing and hearing the news coverage of the ravaged areas, it seems like an impossible task, but there have been other disasters. We recover and rebuild. In a couple of years, we won't be able to tell there was a storm. New Orleans will never be the same, but it will be a wonderful city again.

Millions of people on and near the Gulf Coast have been wiped out. Their homes are gone. Their neighborhoods are gone. We don't yet know how many are dead, or who will yet die from secondary consequences of the storm.

I've found myself wondering about the fate of Julius, a Cajun man with whom I shared many a liberty in the Chicago/Waukegan/Milwaukee areas while we went to Engineman school at Great Lakes NTC. My orders sent me to Mayport, Florida to the USS Saratoga. His sent him to the West Coast to a ship, and presumably to Japan and maybe Southeast Asia. Before we left, Julius suggested that I spend part of my leave with him and his family in Lutcher, Louisiana.

It was there that I got my first taste of down home Cajun cooking, a style to which I quickly became addicted. Thus I remain, to this day. Blackened 'gator and redfish, crawfish bisque and Jambalaya poured over Cajun rice--don't get me started!

There's a brand of coffee we can still buy at most supermarkets, called Luziann. It has a little chicory mixed in. They don't advertise anymore that I know of, but when they did, they called it something like "the taste of Louisiana." The truth was, for the bayou folk, coffee was too expensive. They'd rather have had pure coffee any day of the week. They couldn't afford it. They cut it with chicory to make what they had go farther. Oh, some could acquire a taste for it, but it was ghastly, bitter stuff.

Lutcher was a small town, no one had much money. One of Julius' neighbors kept a large 'gator pit in his back yard. It looked to have about fifty 'gators sloshing around. Most of the folks fished or trapped in the bayoux back then. I think I remember seeing Po'k Salad Annie head out on a dugout canoe on one of those visits.

Oh, yeah. I went back a number of times on weekends from Mayport. Seems there was this girl..... Michelle Pernicieri, as I recall. Beautiful, but with one blemish to her nature: she was obsessed with getting away from Louisiana (to Los Angeles) and wanted someone to take her there. Well, I hope she made it. She sure tempted me.

All those times I hitchhiked across the Gulf states, from Jacksonville to the Bayoux, gave me an appreciation for that part of the country and a desire to travel through the area again. I'm deeply saddened by the events of the past few days and fervently hope that the recovery is easier and quicker than current predictions.

I find myself wondering whether Julius and Michelle, and the others whose names I've forgetten or never learned, are dealing with this disaster; if they're still there and still alive. I wish them well.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

The Year's Worst Tragedy

Hurricane Katrina is, even now, spreading destruction in the area surrounding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. A massive evacuation has taken place and the storm is having its way with the area. I certainly hope damage is less than predicted by the news media yesterday and overnight. My fervent hope is that no more lives are lost in this storm and that rebuilding will be easier than predicted.

Even now, nations around the world are setting up agencies to collect donations of needed supplies and money to aid the victims in the path of the storm.

Undersecretary Jan Egeland of the United Nations is personally involved in the coordinating efforts to effectively bring the disaster aid from all the nations in the world to the disaster area.

Ethiopia has already pledged $15 million dollars in aid, Iran $10 million and France a whopping $35 million. More countries are expected to announce their pledges in the coming hours.

Oh, wait! Someone just handed me....Mr Egeland is actually asking that the United States send these amounts to these countries? Are you sure?

Well then.....


Never mind.



Remember, Vote for No Incumbent!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

A Standing Army

The job of the Army is to protect the United States from foreign attack. Prior to the end of WWII, the US didn't keep much of an army, except during wartime. The army was just enough to keep the bases up and the brass polished. When it was decided to send American troops to Europe to fight in WWI, we had to first get an army recruited and trained. They were trained by Indian fighters. Once over there, they had to be retrained to fight less effectively, to take more casualties, in the European tradition.

When FDR was finally able to get us into WWII, we again had to scramble to get an army together. After that war, I guess Truman decided we'd better keep an army ready just in case.

Well, just in case has happened many times since the end of WWII which, during the Viet Nam undeclared war, prompted many to observe correctly that, "if the government has a large standing army, the government will find uses for it."

There was Korea, the Cuban Blockade, Viet Nam, Grenada, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again. Tell me if I've forgotten any. The earlier wars in this group were fought within the envelope of what Generals wistfully refer to as The Cold War. I'll have to remember to ask some of my biker buds how cold they thought it was during the battles at Pork Chop Hill and Tet.

Every one of these were undeclared wars. Seems that when we have a huge standing army with nothing to do but train to kill people and break things, declaring war somehow went out of fashion. When we want a war now, we just send the troops in and they start shooting.

L Neil Smith, my favorite sci-fi writer and world-class libertarian thinker, wrote an article that proposes a solution. He recognizes that it'll be hard to get Americans to decide to implement his idea, as do I, but we'll strive for it. Anything less will, at best, slow our motion in the direction toward totalitarianism.

I've long thought that, if the Roman Catholic church can squeek by with 10% titheing (we know how impoverished they are), the US federal government is getting way too much of our hard earned cash. That, of course, is not hot news to anybody.

My proposal, which falls in line with Neil's, is that government not be allowed to forcibly tax anyone. A radical proposal? Read the US Constitution. Prior to the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, the US government was not allowed to tax individuals. Scholars disagree as to whether or not the Sixteenth was properly adopted (I rather think corners were cut), and we all know that government was far more respectful of the rights of individuals before it started snooping into our finances and our professional lives.

The federal government even conducted the evil and very expensive War between the States without compulsory taxation of individuals.

Needless to say though, in the absence of compulsory taxation, there are many things the feds would have to stop doing. Most of the general population might be willing to tithe five or ten percent to government, but not much more than that.

One of the things government would have to do away with is the big standing army. One of the few proper functions of government, according to the Constitution, is to protect the country from foreign invasion. A small army with a well-thought-out set of state reserve militiae, would satisfy that function.

Doing away with the thousands of unConstitutional gun control laws, that every individual has the full right to defend himself against attackers, foreign and domestic, would help even more. Even the most severely self-deluded invaders will recognize the difficulty of seizing territory, a few square feet at a time, from millions of armed individuals.

There is one Amendment to the Constitution I'd like to see. It'd take away all the incentive for the intergovernment discussions that lead to war: The federal government must be barred from any diplomatic relations with other nations. The federal government should restrict itself to maintaining a skeleton military, a system of courts and police. While I have no quarrel with the military sending agents out to gather intelligence from potential foes, the word should be defense.

Diplomatic relations can and should be initiated and maintained by international buyers and sellers of commodities. Who better? I'd bet my savings, could the truth be shown, that Shell, Standard, BP and other oil companies would not have made such a mess of American-Arab relations had government not been involved. And when I say not involved, I mean that each entire transaction is initiated, negotiated and consummated entirely by the oil company reps and the Arabs in control of oil sales. No government.

No government! What a concept!

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Kurt, you shot the wrong Cobain

Not that I'd wish ill on anyone, but here we are in a world where coarseness and profanity are hip and fat women can wear spandex pants with impunity.

Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain's widow and the alleged singer of the alleged rock band "Hole" was in court again today, for the 934th time for drug abuse and probation violations. She was also accused of assault for hitting a guy with a mike stand but, well, girls just wanna have fun.

I try not to know too much about this woman: I put her in the same class with Anna Nicole Smith and Michael Jackson--not worth even a moment of my time.

The judge ordered Mrs Cobain back into drug rehab for the 933rd time, admonishing her that if she appeared in his court for the 935th time, he will really throw the book at her.

In spite of (or because of) all this, Mrs Cobain--I have a hard time associating the word "love" with this unmitigated slut--is regaled with tv guest appearances and celeb magazine writeups, all of which pay well and for all of which she's every bit as coarse and uncouth as those who watch that sort of thing expect. Somewhere in the suburbs of Seattle, there's an empty mobile home with her name on it.

The coarse shall inherit the earth.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

A Night in Vienna

Debbie's currently studying violin under the tutelage of a woman who is a member of the Orange County Pacific Symphony. Turns out she was able to give Debbie a couple of comps to a concert they held Saturday evening at Irvine Meadows, now unfortunately called the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.

We arrived early, according to local convention, to have a picnic on the grass before the concert. We brought dinners from Boston Market and spread out a picnic blanket. There were a lot of people there picnicking. Many elderly couples and middle aged couples. A number of middle aged guys with their daughters.....or maybe someone else's daughters. Relatively few young couples. After the picnic, we put our picnic stuff back in the car and went to the seats.

We got our aerobics for the day covered getting from the parking lot to the Terrace Level. I had no idea how far it was, and how far uphill it was to the seats. Reminded me of walking to school up in North Dakota, when I was a kid. Except for the snow. And, except that in North Dakota, it's uphill both ways.

The concert started right on time (unlike most rock concerts) and was quite good. The selections were by Viennese composers and concluded with two Strauss, Jr works: The Blue Danube, Thunder and Lightning Polka and Strauss, Sr's The Radetsky March. All three of these are among my favorites.

At the end, during the polka and the march, there was a pretty good fireworks accompaniment.

I liked the concert and everything else there, but there are a couple of reasons that make the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater less than desireable, compared to other venues. I've already mentioned the very long hike up to the seating area. There are a few golf carts available to carry the less physically ept individuals up the hill. Sadly, they are very few.

At the Terrace level, there are very few aisles, with a lot of seats between them. You might have to bump your way past upwards of fifty pairs of knees to get to your seat.

That far away from the stage, it's actually kind of hard to hear the quieter passages.

When the concert was over, the rush down that same path came to a crawl as everyone headed for the very narrow pathway at the same time. One can only imagine the kind of chaos that would follow if there were some kind of emergency. Oh, the humanity!

The half-hour it took to get from our seats to the car was dwarfed by the amount of time it took to get from the parking lot to the freeway. It was over twenty minutes before the car in front of us in the driveway was even able to move. We were in the car for over thirty minutes before I decided it was worthwhile to start the engine.

Now, after once spending over an hour trying to get out of the Del Mar Fairgrounds parking lot during the San Diego County Fair, and vowing to never go to the Fair again (I never have) you can only imagine what I think about a return to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.

Oh, yeah....Expose....Expose!!

I don't know how it ends up that I'm the first with this one.

There are wires all over the place at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater! The whole place is built on a lie! Where is the Truth?

They've killed Freedom! Those Bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Doing Hillery's Work Before Her Coronation

Now that GWB has become a Lame Duck, he's decided to kiss up to the next President by anticipating some of the things she'll want enacted, and doing them for her. Maybe he wants a job at the UN, so he can work alongside his new ol' buddy, Bill.

Today, in another step down the path toward the Fourth Reich, Bush signed a bill into law that will set up a nationwide monitoring system for prescription drugs. Read the whole sordid story here.

As more than one attentive libertarian observer has noted: GWB is on a path to enact all of HilleryCare before Hillery gets another chance. He's getting pretty close.

What the bill does is open your (and my) prescription records to the scrutiny of federal snoops so they can tell if you're "doctor shopping." Nobody knew what doctor shopping was until Rush Limbaugh was caught alledgedly doing it to increase the amount of pain killer he was taking to help with the severe back pain he was experiencing a couple of years ago. I can hardly blame him: I've been trying to get my doctor to prescribe more Quaaludes for years.

This all came about after the feds started threatening and fining doctors for prescribing too many pain killers. Doctors got so gunshy that it was really hard to get pain killers at all. Individuals in severe pain would obviously become so desperate as to get pain killers any way they could. This is a federal government-manufactured problem. An unintended consequence of a previous intereference into the way some of us might choose to solve a problem.

Once again, let's look in our handy-dandy Cato pocket US Constitution. Where does it say that government can overrule a medical doctor's decision as to how to treat a patient? Where does it say that government can decide how much or what kind of treatment an individual can take for his own self-medication? Well, it sure is hard to find! It must be right next to the clause that gives government the right to decide for you what foods and recreational substances you're allowed to ingest: In the scrap-heap of really bad ideas!

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!
Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Ice is Nice

When I lived in San Diego, roughly from 1974 to 1992, one of the things I did for fun was learning how to play hockey and working at it in an attempt to become the best hockey player I could be. I played at least once, and usually twice a week for fifteen years. I've never, to this day, found a more enjoyable way to keep in shape.

I had a little experience from my childhood, but it was precious little. I wasn't interested in sports then, except for baseball. Our gang played baseball in the summer, and went to see our local minor league team, the Grand Forks Chiefs, as often as we could afford the fifty cents for a knothole gang admission. I even signed up to sell ice cream sandwiches in the stands, just to get to see more games. Selling ice cream sandwiches is a pretty good trick during night games when the temperature was in the forties and fifties.

There was an empty lot between our house and the Kranzlers'. Each winter, we banked up some snow around the edges of the lot and filled it with water from our garden hoses. Presto! an instant ice rink. We didn't have skates, but we'd get sticks and a puck and try to play in our street shoes. I always hoped I'd get some skates, but not enough, I guess, to actually save up some money for them.

My only skating experience as a kid was to occasionally go to the University fieldhouse, where the Sioux played, during public sessions and rent skates. The skates were so broken down that I had no idea what good skates would be like.

After I moved to Orange County (the first time) I took my son to a couple of LA Kings games. Somehow, we converted that into going skating ourselves.

After moving to San Diego, and getting financially stable, I started playing the game with a group of guys around my age. Since I was pretty new at the game, I was in constant learning mode for the first two or three years. Learning mode usually meant hearing "Gawdammit, get back onside!" and stuff like that many times during each game.

In time, I learned the game and actually started becoming a decent defenseman. Being a good defenseman means being good at getting in the other team's way. My dad used to say I was really good at getting in the way.

After I lost a job and subsequently moved back to LA, then Orange County, I got away from playing hockey. I kept ice skating, though not regularly.

Well, now that I have arguably the best job I've ever had, and it happens to be located not far from a very decent ice rink. I'm on skates again. Now, let's see if a way overweight old fott can get back into some kind of shape.....

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Shill Radio

True confession. *shame*

I listen to talk radio. Quite a bit, for a guy who really likes music. I have an excuse.

In the morning, they put these idiot magpies on all the music stations. Mark & Brian. Kevin & Bean. Peter & Buzz. All these guys are too stupid to take even a little bit seriously, and not funny enough to laugh at. Some of them try to be opraltruistic, jumping on various charity bandwagons, but nobody can touch the original. I'd rather they just play music.

So, on to talk radio.

Instead of listening to any of the various iterations of Heckel & Jeckel, I listen to political talk while I work.

I liked Don Imus, when he was on in LA, but while he often has interesting guests and funny skits, but he's pretty far left and he spends too much time talking about that ranch of his.

Laura Ingraham has serious issues with the human body and its sexual aspect. She might still be a virgin--I could be wrong. Very conservative. Unlistenable when she waxes religious or gets into the abortion issue. She's a mite narrow between the eyes.

Rick Roberts is a San Diego local. A conservative who mostly talks about San Diego issues. The good news: When he gets his teeth into an issue, he's like a pit bull--he won't let go. The bad news: When he gets his teeth into an issue, he's like a pit bull--he won't let go.

Doug MacIntyre is sort of a conservative cum libertarian. He's kind of hard to pin down on many issues, but where he's most clear and most wrong is with respect to trade with people and firms in other countries. He cites all the problems caused by low-paid foreign workers and subsidized industry in other countries as opposed to American union labor and "unsubsidized" American industry. The fact that foreign goods are usually less expensive means nothing to him. The fact that by far, the two biggest difficulties faced by American business is confiscatory taxation (on both the corporations and the individual workers) and regulation, zings over his head like a cropduster over a corn field. And, I'm still looking for the unsubsidized American industry.

Bill Handel is an attorney. He's Jewish. I have no problem with his being Jewish, but once he took a stand (on gun control) that to Jew who's ever heard of the Holocaust should ever take. That was maybe five years ago. I haven't listened to him since.

Neal Boortz is a libertarian. He has a morning drive show out of Atlanta and isn't heard in LA. When he was on an LA station, I listened virtually without fail. There are a few areas in which I disagree with him, but he's entertaining enough that I can be tolerant. He's the only talk guy that can make me tune out Limbaugh.

Everybody knows Rush Limbaugh. The benchmark of conservatism in America, he's also one of the two or three most entertaining talk guys in America. I disagree with him a lot, but I like the way he frames his arguments.

Bill O'Reilly is the ultimate pragmatist. The Constitution be damned, whatever works is fine with him. He doesn't want people walking around in America unattended. Especially illegal aliens. While I'm not exactly sure what being attended would look like, I am sure I wouldn't like it. I'm also sure there's nothing in the Constitution calling for the government to attend people. He is somewhat entertaining, though.

I find myself liking Sean Hannity less and less as time goes by. He invites leftists in for interviews, then yells over them and won't let them talk. He's also very Catholic and, like Ms Ingraham, cannot be tolerated when he starts talking religion. His main saving grace: he occasionally interviews an interesting guest.

Larry Elder is a conservative libertarian, and is extremely articulate. When he argues a point, he always has corroberative data right at his fingertips. Recently, he moved from independent libertarian to Republican libertarian, and has been talking a more conservative line, which I find unsettling, but he carries it off. Talks a lot about race relations, and is on the nose with this stuff.

I want to listen to some leftists a little to see if there's any little bit of concern for civil liberties in that camp (there used to be), but they've gone so far off the deep end that very few of them can put a rational thought together. Larry O'Donnell once got so out of control while talking to one of the Swift Boat Vets that I thought he was going to need guys with white coats and a straight jacket. Chris Matthews did the very same thing with Michelle Malkin on one of his "Hardball" tv shows. They're a sorry lot.

Ok, the shill part. Most of the talkers mentioned above are conservatives or leaning that way. All of them have some criticisms with Republican politicians, mostly on domestic issues. They're all pretty much in lockstep with the administration regarding the "War on Terror."

There is absolutely no outcry, on talk radio, over the administration's destruction of the Bill of Rights--the fact that, to provide security against "the terrorists who shall not be named," that they're running roughshod (or roughjackbooted) over one Amendment after another. Well, they've had a lot of practice during the "War on Drugs," which is still going on, actually.

Most of these guys have argued against this stuff in the past--like throughout Bill Kkklinton's term as head dictator. But they won't argue against it now!

Electronic dossiers on all Americans? Ok.
Health records available for government inspection? Check.
Public library records available to government? Cool.
Government inspectors approving travel at airports? Yay!
Government inspectors approving commuting in subways? All right!
Government inspectors fondling female travellers? Where do I sign up?

In case GW Bush doesn't completely render America a dictatorship in the name of saving freedom, Wait'll Hillary is President. That's when these talk show guys will suddenly rediscover the Bill of Rights. By then, it very well might be too late. Americans will be escaping to Russia for a more free life.

Remember, VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Another New Word, By Golly!

I've been seeing it printed and written and hearing it spoken relentlessly on tv, radio and in the newspapers. To my knowledge, it's never been defined. We're supposed to know what it means because it's some kind of islamic term.

Fatwa. I gather from context that it means something like "sending a message," yet another not-too-clear, too-often-used buzz-phrase that's been inflicted 'pon us in the past few years.

It's usually used in an islamic sort of context, so I would think it might be a variety of arabic lingo, except that, so far, it's only been spelled one way. I guess I should be looking for other creative spellings of the word in the near future.

It's indeed wonderful, living in a global community!

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California