Category: Touchy Subjects

The things that should never be discussed much less published by non-professionals.

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The Return Of Habeas Corpus!

Senator Chris Dodd has introduced a bill to bring back Habeas Corpus and compliance with the Geneva Conventions! Didn’t know Habeas Corpus died? Read these.

The Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act:

  • Restores Habeas Corpus protections to detainees
  • Narrows the definition of unlawful enemy combatant to individuals who directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not lawful combatants
  • Bars information gained through coercion from being introduced as evidence in trials
  • Empowers military judges to exclude hearsay evidence they deem to be unreliable
  • Authorizes the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to review decisions by the Military commissions
  • Limits the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and makes that authority subject to congressional and judicial oversight
  • Provides for expedited judicial review of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to determine the constitutionally of its provisions

Source

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I Didn’t Get The Gay Marriage Ban Until Now

I voted against the constitutional amendment to declare marriage between a man and a woman. Now that I have read the Top 10 Reasons Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal I understand so much better.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children. [Source]

Update: Critz and my wife both agree that I was a might unclear in this post. I realize that posting only one of the 10 reasons doesn’t convey the author’s sarcasm as well. Here are a couple more (number two is my favorite):

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
…
05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
…
07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
…

StopGeek has updated their post to point to the original source which was 12 reasons:

I was emailed the source by a reader which you can find here. Its similar, but not the same version i got in my email. [Source, StopGeek]

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So, you think YOU voted these people into office

The US government is so inbred that the same people have been running out country since the 70s…sort of. The Times Online UK edition explains.

Last week George W Bush was forced back — once again — to the protective arms of his father. They call the first President Bush “Poppy” in the family, and it captures both the authority and the slight daffiness of the 41st president. His first son always lived in his shadow — both deeply admiring him and deeply resenting him, the way dauphins often do their monarchs.
…
BY nominating Robert Gates to the Pentagon, Bush Jr was reduced to asking one of his father’s closest friends to clean up the mess. What was Gates’s last job? As president of Texas A&M University, Gates hosted Poppy’s own presidential library. What was his previous claim to fame? Poppy had appointed him CIA director. Poppy himself had been CIA director — manoeuvred into the shell-shocked institution after Vietnam by a wily young Donald Rumsfeld in the Ford administration. Gates was a CIA director’s CIA director. He was Poppy’s Poppy.
[Source]

"Jeb, his younger brother, was always going to be president" so…think we will see Jeb in 2008? A Democrat controlled Congress cannot clean up W’s mess 6 years in the making in only 2 years but can the Repulicans spin those two years as "ineffective" and get the public to vote for another Republican president and Republican controlled Congress?

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Human speed limit signs in Denmark

I bet this would work in Knoxville! Denmark now has topless women holding speed limit signs in areas where speeding is bad.

There is a video as part of a viral campaign by the Danish Road Safety Council.

This movie was made by the Danish Road Safety Council and aims to draw attention to speed signs and speed limits in Denmark. Despite a decrease in speed violations, 7 out of 10 Danes still exceed the speed limit on a regular basis. Respecting the speed limits is the simplest way to save lives. [Source]

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Giving hope and prayers

Newscoma mentions "It seems we are all sending each other hope these days." It does feel like everyone is going through something. Maybe it is our smaller world. Twenty-five years ago, the world would not be following a family’s fight for life in Oak Ridge. Maybe it would get a brief mention on local news but certainly not the world wide attention it has received.

I need hope now it ways that I cannot/will not discuss. But my troubles are put is such proportion by GAC’s battle between life and death. I feel selfish even thinking of myself.

Last night I had to put gas in the van to get Tommy to STAR. The lady on the other side of the pump swiped her card repeatedly until finally a booming voice came across the speaker declaring, "pump one still says declined." She speaks out to the air to cover the embarassment of the announcement to the world, "I’ll try my debt card." A wrinkled hand lifts a different piece of plastic. I wanted to swipe mine and say, "filler ‘er up on me" but I had to say a prayer that I didn’t get declined as I swiped for my own gas. The poverty trap sucks badly. Once you get in it is very hard to get out. As I move away from consulting and back into regular work, my budget (money and time) is going to include something to help save a family from poverty. Our economy is rotten.

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This Big Small World

Six years ago Cathy and I walked through West Town Mall. We had a wonderful store called The World of Knowledge. Outside an employee was playing with devil sticks. I borrowed them, showed off, and gave some advice. Apparently she remembered, because six years later we met again at Atomic Tumor’s party and she pointed saying, "ow ow ow! I know you!". It was a good moment. Now she is in the hospital and holding onto life by a thread.

nurses are telling me that her vitals can’t support life for long, that I told my 9 year old son as lightly as I could that his mother might die, that, despite HOW HARD I TRY NOT TO I can’t help figureing out how I’d word her obiturary on this stupid web page because I might just need to, I start to break down. [Source]

Head over to AtomicTumor, give a shout in the chat box found in the sidebar, leave some supportive comments, and say some prayers, send some positive energy, and think good thoughts.

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Trapped in the United States

Homeland Security is working on rules to go into effect January 14, 2007 that would require anyone entering or leaving the country to have Homeland Security’s permission.

The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized there is a constitutional right to travel internationally. Indeed, it has declared that the right to travel is "a virtually unconditional personal right." The United States has also signed treaties guaranteeing "freedom of travel." So if these regulations do go into effect, you can expect a lengthy court battle, both nationally and internationally. … Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are two countries in recent history
that didn’t allow their citizens to travel abroad without permission.
If these regulations go into effect, you can add the United States to
this list. [Source]

On September 11, 2001, terrorists made an effort to change the United States. With unnecessary, controlling policies like what Homeland Security is proposing, we do nothing to increase security while removing our liberties (liberty being the ability to exercise our freedoms). The terrorists won. While considering this, take a look at the future of air travel.

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Bush More Dangerous Than Kim Jong-il

Bush in the Axis of Evil

We related Bush to Hitler. With the rigged elections and the shredding of our Constitution and rights people have called for his impeachment. Now a survey of US allies (Britain, Israel, Canada, and Mexico) shows a belief that the United States is a threat to world peace.

In Britain, 69% of those questioned say they believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001…The finding is mirrored in America’s immediate northern and southern neighbours, Canada and Mexico, with 62% of Canadians and 57% of Mexicans saying the world has become more dangerous because of US policy. [Source]

I find it both sad and interesting that the common view is finally coming around to what the evil liberals have been saying for years. GW should have never taken 2004. He should have never had 2000 for that matter. But evil gets what evil wants. I can call him evil since he is now ranked the same as those he once labeled "the axis of evil." It is a crime that so much damage had to be done for people to take notice. I only hope that on Tuesday the couch potato voters find their way to the polls, that Diebold doesn’t screw us, and that the religious zombies turn on their brains long enough to vote for themselves instead of voting for their preacher.

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Wow! A little bit of costume!

So last night I’m taking Minnie Mouse’s picture with a nice person giving out candy and suddenly I have the urge to take a picture for Cathy and BusyMom. Supergirl and the Slut Friends came running up as I was taking Minnie Mouse’s picture. The buxom superhero was having trouble slowing down because her secret weapon, bulbus breasts, obviously kept her off balance. Her identity is kept secret by the glaring cleavage protruding from her plasticized costume; not a mortal man can possibly make eye contact with her!

Suddenly a battle of good versus evil rages within me. My finger is on the shutter button of the camera. It is ready to fire. I merely need to raise the lense a few inches and push the button. Supergirl and the Slut Friends are moving like coke fiends at an 80s party hosted by a Columbian drug lord. They move almost in a blur in their mission to pillage as much chocolate and sugar as possible to fuel their teen metabolisms. The decent people of this nice, upper-middle class neighborhood laugh and talk with their friends in lawn chairs on their porches surrounded by professionally landscaped yards. How will they judge me if I take the picture! I visualize the light merriment of the neighborhood changing to anger as clouds billow over, the houses take sharp angled Tim Burtonesque shapes as thunder roars and beers are dropped for pitchforks and torches, and the adults chant "pervert! pedophile!" I might get away with taking the picture; afterall, I am showing my horns.

Supergirl is first to reach the candy bucket at the porch. As she leans forward to grab some treats right in front of me I am sudden aware that it is colder outside than I originally assessed. Happy doesn’t appropriately describe the jolly superteen. "Perky" would be far more apropos. Snap the picture! As a parent, I am thinking a plasticized, hard shell of a costume probably was not her best choice. Perhaps something more form fitting. And a bra. Or two.

In the end I could not bring myself to take the picture. I would not want to give the FBI anything that could be construed as child porn. Of course, as we approach the next house, one woman and five or six beer guzzling men are guffawing and talking about Supergirl’s boobs.

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Saddam Hussein Has The Keys To Detroit!

So he had the gas and the cars!

Saddam Hussein donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Detroit church and received a key to the city more than two decades ago, soon after he became president of Iraq.
…
“He was very kind person, very generous, very cooperative with the West. Lately, what’s happened, I don’t know,” [Rev. Jacob Yasso of Chaldean Sacred Heart ], 70, said Wednesday.
[Source]

In all fairness, Time Magazine named Adolf Hilter 1938’s Man of the Year. See also. Wikipedia shows all Persons of the Year with George W Bush taking 2000 and 2004.

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Ebooks for Halloween

Oh, I’m sorry. You call that Harvest Festival now don’t you. The thought of encouraging your children to partake of a Pagan celebration is a little a scary I suppose. Wait. Isn’t Halloween supposed to be scary?

The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Pope Gregory III moved the old Christian feast of All Saints Day to November 1 to give Halloween a Christian interpretation. [Source]

Wasn’t another holiday rooted in Pagan tradition?

…winter festivals that are believed by some to have influenced Christmas include the pre-Christian festivals of Yule [1] and Saturnalia, and many of the traditions associated with the holiday have origins in these pagan winter celebrations. [Source]

Regardless, even if you are trying hard to use non-scary costumes and take your children only to the funny haunted houses, this is a time of year for scary stories. Google has made several available as ebooks. Enjoy!

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y’awl’s neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse’s shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller
[audio:http://blog.siliconholler.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/vprice.wav]
[Source]

[Vincent Price] had a choice between taking a percentage of the album sales or $20.000. Price was well along in his career, so he took the $20,000. He was good-natured about it when Carson told him he could have made millions off of the royalties due to the vast number of copies sold even at that time. Price laughed heartily and said: "How well I know!"
[Source]

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Oct 24 is Take Back Your Time Day

TAKE BACK YOUR TIME is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment. [Source]

I have always envisioned building a better work place for my staff. I’ve dreamed of staffing a business and ironing out the kinks such as the wasted time at the water cooler or the hours blown away playing solitaire when the boss isn’t looking. Don’t get me wrong. Downtime is important and I admire companies that require a block of time toward personal improvement along the lines of “this time is to be spent at the office working on your own project.” The concept is that you get your mind off your project enough to refresh, while doing something that interests you, and betters your skillset. This is not time to play Doom. I believe many of the Google Labs projects originated with this method of management.

Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. [Source]

Ok. So the projects are for Google and still have to be approved.

I think through commited staff that a company can survive on a 4 day work week. I think there will be times the staff has to work 5, 6 or 7 days and overtime but for the most part, I think we easily waste away 8 hours a week on non-essentials and that if we moved all of that to Friday, the staff wouldn’t even have to come in. Ah! I also think that same company can do most of its work from the employees homes and not require more than a few days a month at the office. Maybe Monday of each week is required at the office with regular video conferencing on other days and some meetings throughout the month scheduled in the office but not necessarily for the whole day.

Naturally, this model will not fit all business models. But one day, I will demonstrate just such a company! Something has to change. Look at the Time Poverty Fact Sheet to understand why.