Back again...

The company we get our wireless from, came out and messed around with it yesterday... guess what! My net works! I can upload photos to flickr again, use Facebook, and actually send out email. Thank goodness for Yahoo messenger on my phone - it kept me connected at least. I started going through email yesterday, and found these few things:

The PCNAA bill (Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act) monster has come back to life. This horrendous thing was brought up last year, co-sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tom Carper (D-DE).

From IT Professional Services, we find this:

“The bill would grant President Obama unusually broad power to declare a “national cyber-emergency” at his discretion and force private companies that "rely on" the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the US "information infrastructure" including Internet service providers, search engines, and software firms to take action in response. That could include limiting or even cutting off their connections to the World Wide Web for up to 30 days. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.”

In addition to this monstrosity, the government wants ‘private business’ to start making “Trusted Identities” for the internet.
The NSTIC ("N-Stick") proposal (National Strategies for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace), which was release in draft form last June, proposes the creation of an online identity "ecosystem," which the report defines as "an online environment where individuals, organizations, services, and devices can trust each other because authoritative sources establish and authenticate their digital identities."

Uh, guess what. The internet is not *that* important. What did people do for years previously? Its not a necessity. Its a want, not a *need*. Many things we have today are wants. Sure, it’s nice to have, but as soon as the goons start tracking everyone online, it’s only another step into the police state that this country is becoming. Don’t think so? Seen what is going on with the TSA? Nothing like breaking the 4th Amendment rights that we have, NOT the 4th Amendment rights that the government allows us to have. Our rights came before government.

From The Law, by Frederick Bastiat:

The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense…(t) law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. ..(t)he nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so.

Imagine that this fatal principle has been introduced (legal plunder).: Under the pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law takes property from one person and gives it to another; the law takes the wealth of all and gives it to a few – whether farmers, manufacturers, shipowners, artists, or comedians.

HOW TO IDENTIFY LEGAL PLUNDER

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law – which may be an isolated case – is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

LEGAL PLUNDER HAS MANY NAMES

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole – with their common aim of legal plunder – constitute socialism.

Okay. So much for the US of A not being a socialist country. Perhaps not socialist with a capital S, however we are well on our way.

You know how Amazon.com has their e-reader, Kindle? I found that it is free for the PC. You can download it, and all you have to do is register. How cool is that! You can read the rest of The Law, I think the price was 99 cents. Right now I'm currently reading FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. Also New Deal or Raw Deal?. Both are very interesting. I also ponied up 19.99 for Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, 4th ed. for my Kindle.

I learned that the gas lines that were so prevalent in the 70s, and basically KILLED OFF my beloved muscle cars, was the fault of governmetn meddling in prices. There was no less gas during that time than there had been previously, or after that. Sowell's book is easier to understand for economics than F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Daniel Hannan (British MEP) has come out with a book The New Road to Serfdom. Don't know how that one is, but he has a youtube channel, and makes lots of common sense that is so lacking in today's overnments all over the world.

I also went over to Baen Books website, and got Monster Hunter International, and Monster Hunter Vendetta for my kindle. I'd read them in paperback, but I loaned those out, and still wanted to re-read them. They're books that are very hard to put down! Also to go outside in the dark afer reading them :) I was out by my car, and a cat came running up out of the dark. I almost screamed and ran to the house. They're darn good books. Larry Correia is the author, and Monster Hunter Alpha is due out this year...I'm really looking forward to it.