Freedom Is Slavery

Recently, Congress passed and President Bush signed two pieces of legislation that have become highly controversial, despite the complete or near-complete ignorance of the average American, including myself, about their details and contents. Today, we will look at the first.

The Patriot Act was a rather long document signed into law on October 26, 2001. I vaguely remember the Democrats and liberal media whining about losing freedoms, (but of course Democrats and the liberal media were always wrong, and Bush and the Republicans were always right) and I vaguely remember thinking, so what if the government can now see what library books I check out? I have nothing to hide. If it helps catch terrorists, then so be it.

There are also claims that specific provisions in the Patriot Act have resulted in the prevention of terrorist plots on American soil. Well, what greater proof could you need? Who care about what freedoms we do or do not have by this Act if it was this Act and this Act alone that prevented an attack, right?

Unfortunately, life is never that simple.

The passing of the Patriot Act was shady to begin with. Andrew Napolitano, Fox News' Senior Judicial Analyst, states that only two people read the entire Act before the vote was held in Congress, and both voted against it [1]. Napolitano says that Ron Paul and the other Congressmen were given 15 minutes to "look over" the 315-page document on the House intranet. [2]

Napolitano says that John Ashcroft claimed the Act "was so important that they didn't have time to read it before they could vote on it," [3] so Congressmen voted to pass it, even without being aware of what it said. Ron Paul was one of the few who was too suspicious to give them the benefit of the doubt, and he voted NO.

What does all of that mean for us?

First, even if there was absolutely nothing in the Patriot Act that would bother me ~ not a single line that I would have problem giving the government the power to control ~ I still feel uneasy about the fact that our representatives voted to pass it without knowing what all of those things were.

Let's go back to the library books thing. Anyone can check out any book at a library. How could the government know if there are certain books that terrorists are more likely to check out? And if there are, what if I decided to check all of those books out because I wanted to learn things? It's a public library, and I can check out whatever I want! How would that tell the government whether or not I am likely to be a terrorist?

Second, what about this fundamental notion that in a post-9/11 world we have to give up some freedoms in order to protect our freedoms of life and safety? Such a notion would seem to be legitimate, but where does it stop?

Engaging in political discussions on Facebook, I have seen someone named Jyoti Das claiming that his father was looking up stuff online about
9/11 government-caused conspiracy theories, both "for" and "against." A week later, a Secret Service agent showed up at his house and asked some questions. Another man (a white Caucasian) claims that he did "something" to get himself placed on a terrorist watch list, and has spoken with Secret Service agents. If one assumes that these independent stories are not complete lies, there are no doubt other, similar stories out there.

Do you seriously think that there will never be another terrorist attack on American soil? What further liberties will we have to give up so that the government can protect us?

After all, if knowing what library books terrorists check out helps the government identity them, shouldn't knowing what books they buy at bookstores be just as helpful? And what about those who do research online? It's not like it's hard to keep track of what IP addresses my computer requests access to every time I click on a page.

So what is the line? And, yet, if it comes down to giving up freedoms or death ~ how can we argue? Unless, of course, Big Brother only wants us to think that this is what it comes down to.

Such conspiracy-laden speculation, this stripping away of our freedoms in order to protect them, is interesting, that sort of simultaneous exercise in "fun" and "scary." It is probably exaggerated, yet certainly not entirely fabricated, and potentially both frightening and dangeorus.

But, after all, my friends, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35yhSifZ5jI, 4:55
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35yhSifZ5jI, 5:10
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35yhSifZ5jI, 4:45

There's Something Really Wrong Here....

So we used to think our national debt was *only* nine trillion dollars. Then an article on Tuesday revealed that we have a "hidden debt" of fifty-one trillion dollars, stuff like social securtiy and medicare that for various political reaons doesn't get counted in the regular national debt number.

OK, so $60 trillion in debt is ridiculous enough. But, hey, that number's been getting higher for years and we seem to be doing fine, so what does it matter, right?

I don't completely understand how money works on these large scales, but apparently, we're borrowing millions of dollars a day from China to pay for our stuff, hoping they won't ask for it back any time soon (anyone remember the post-war debts and one of the major causes of the Great Depression?).

Even if that doesn't appear to be an urgent danger, somehow our increasing debt makes the dollar worth less compared to other currencies. Again, I'm not an economics expert, but as our government keeps spending more money than it takes in, and we just keep ignoring the issue and watching the number get bigger, we're increasing our chances of economic disaster.

This is crazy! I'd never heard of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul until three weeks ago, but almost every day I read news articles that confirm that we need someone like him in office to reduce government power and cut federal spending to a reasonable amount, just to get us out of debt before something drastic happens. Another longshot, Mike Huckabee, claims to want to reduce spending and balance the federal budget, but while he was governor of Arkansas he increased spending there by 60%.

By voting against his own Congressional pay raises during nine terms in Congress and never taking a free trip on taxpayer money, Ron Paul has the integrity that no other candidate has yet claimed to match.

Sometimes it is not difficult for me to understand why so many people are passionately convinced that he is the only hope for America.

Ron Paul For President?

USAToday.com posts way too many articles about the presidential candidates with 18 months to go, but I like to click on them and see what comments people leave to get an idea of how much support different candidates have (Regardless of poll results, Hillary, for instance, has virtually no support among USAToday's readers, Republican or Democrat).

Anyway, many of them have made comments to the tune of "Ron Paul is the only real candidate" or "Ron Paul is the only candidate who supports the Constitution" and other such positive statements.

Ron Paul? Who is this guy? I'd never heard of him . So I looked him up on Wikipedia. He's an interesting guy, and while it's still way too early to worry about, I might like him the most out of the candidates so far. A bit of information on the guy:

• Right now he's a Republican Congressman, listed as a Protestant, for whatever that's worth
  
• His nickname is "Dr. No" because he supposedly always votes no for bills that are against the Constitution. He has never voted to raise taxes or congressional pay. He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program and returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
• Interestingly enough, he has always voted against the War, the Patriot Act, seeming to prefer targeted strikes against individuals. Not sure if that's good, bad, or neutral, but it means he's got a shot at support for votes from the Democratic types
  
• He used to "be a specialist in obstetrics/gynecology and has delivered more than 4,000 babies. Paul didn't accept Medicare or Medicaid as a physician; instead, he would do the work for free or work out a lowered payment for needy patients."
• He's for limited government that does not pay to solve our problems with our tax money, against amnesty for immigrants and for a fence.
• He's got 17 grandchildren.

It's hard to know how to true some of that information is (coming from Wikipedia and the obviously pro-Paul official website), but he at least sounds like a guy who supports capitalism and democracy, and maybe hasn't even been corrupted by his couple decades of experience as a law-maker (returns extra money from his own budget?! Supposedly he gets 96% of his contributions from individuals, suggesting a lot of support as well as not being tied to lobbyists?!)

Although a former Libertarian candidate for president, due to his political ideals and voting record he probably has a better chance at a Republican nomination than Guiliani (unclear abortion views), Romney (unwillingness to elect a Mormon), McCain (too liberal), or Brownback (too unknown).

I'm tempted to predict Ron Paul and Obama as the future contenders at this point, but again, it's way too early. Just thought I'd let my readers know about Ron Paul, since he's an interesting guy whose been getting more attention and rising in various polls.

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/html/AboutRon_fx.html
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/html/Issues_fx.html

Cartoon Monday: Election 08 (Gary Brookins)

Chart Thursday: Spidey sets records

MOVIES (Last weekend, May 4-6)

1. Spiderman 3 ($151 mil, 1st wk)
2. Disturbia ($5.8 mil, 4th wk, $60 mil total)
3. Fracture ($3.7 mil, 3rd wk, $26.7 mil total)
4. The Invisible ($3.3 mil, 2nd wk, $12.4 mil total)
5. Next ($2.9 mil, 2nd wk, $12 mil total)

ALBUMS (5/1 - 5/7)

The top five:
1. Ne-Yo, Because of You, 251K (new)
2. Michael Buble, Call Me Irresponsible, 212K (new)
3. Rush, Snakes and Arrows, 93K (new)
4. Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing, 86K (495K in 3 weeks)
5. Tori Amos, American Doll Posse, 54K (new)
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Other interesting selections:
7. Daughtry, Daughtry, 50K (2.4 mil in 24 weeks)
10. Carrie Underwood, Some Hearts, 44K (5.3 mil in 77 weeks)
87. Elliot Yamin, 8K (180K in 7 weeks)
93. High School Musical Soundtrack, 7K (3.9 mil in 69 weeks)
114. Kellie Pickler, Small Town Girl, 6K (518K in 27 weeks)
157. Kidz Bop, Kidz Bop 11, 5K (242K in 11 weeks)

SONG DOWNLOADS (5/1 - 5/7)

The top five:
1. Maroon 5, "Makes Me Wonder," 177K (421K total)
2. Ne-Yo, "Because of You," 117K (206K total)
3. Carrie Underwood, "I'll Stand By You," 114K (238K total)
4. Avril Lavigne, "Girlfriend," 103K (1.2 mil total)
5. T-Pain, "Buy U A Drank," 89K (535K total)
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Other interesting selections:
12. Carrie Underwood, "Before He Cheats," 52K (1.17 mil total)
32. Daughtry, "It's Not Over," 23K (1.20 mil total)

COMMENTARY

Thanks to excessive popularity and ever-increasing ticket prices, Spiderman 3 broke various records as it took in five times as much money as all other movies combined last weekend. I must be the only one in the country who hasn't seen it yet.

Meanwhile, some rapper who calls himself Ne-Yo sold the most albums and came in second on downloads. I haven't bothered to look up the lyrics yet. Maroon 5's new song stays on top for a second week. I've heard it once; it's OK.

Unfortunately, pop radio keeps playing the latest country single from Carrie Underwood, pushing her album's sales well over five million and threatening to overtake Daughtry's average yet decent single in downloads.

Speaking of Idol economics, Bon Jovi's feature on American Idol put all six of his performed songs in the top 50 for last week's downloads. Regardless of the overall talent or actual interest of the show in successive seasons, it continues to generate loads of money for both performers and the performed.

Terrorists Can't Burn DVDs, or Military Forts

Sounds like we got lucky on this one.

The big headline is that they foiled a terrorist plot by six Islamic militants to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey.

The details are still unfolding, but it appears that these guys weren't in any hurry. The feds have been investigating this for fifteen months, apparently. They also say that they don't know if it's linked to al-Qaeda, although the guys were watching bin Laden videos in their free time. I suppose the government is paranoid about linking anything without undeniable evidence these days...

It also appears that the first tip came from a store clerk when a customer asked to have a DVD made of a video that "showed men in military fatigues shooting assault weapons while calling for jihad, or holy war, and shouting in Arabic, 'God is great.' "

Wait... so we caught the guys because they didn't have DVD-writeable technology? And they were dumb enough to have it done at a store?

Thank God for snooping, curious clerks. But what does that say about our official intelligence? It was only after the clerk called police that the smart boys discovered that some of them were here illegally and had illegal firearms. What if they had actually been smart enough to avoid letting incriminatory footage into the hands of an outsider?

Well, New Jersey's safe for now. Mother Nature's looking more dangerous than Father Turban these days. A tornado wiped out 90% of a small Kansas town, only killing 10, while the rest of the state as well as parts of Missouri are flooding, thanks to all the recent rainfall.

And there's thunderstorms forecasted for tomorrow.

Gas Breaks Record, Breaks From Pattern

Gas prices have risen a lot over the last three years, and there's been a lot of fluctuation. I've carefully followed the prices of both gasoline and crude oil since Katrina damages sent crude oil to a record $70 and local gasoline to a record $3.09 a gallon.

There have plenty of gas price spikes since then, and many like to accuse the big oil companies of deciding to gouge prices because they can. However, I knew there was more than that, because gas prices would typically spike whenever the price of crude oil jumped, and trickle down when it had some catching up to do. After two years, I became familiar with the relative prices (for a while, $70 meant $3 a gallon; $65 meant $2.50, and $60 meant $2) and I could guess with decent accuracy what days the price of gas would go up.



This custom graph from stlouisgasprices.com shows that in the last three years overall gas prices and crude oil have risen and fallen together, suggesting that the big oil companies aren't randomly raising prices because they can. The two red spikes in the middle are post-Katrina and post-Rita, after which crude oil dropped back to "normal" and gas prices trickled down to under $2 through the end of 2005.

Suddenly, last month, that pattern was broken. Gas jumped several times without a justified spike in crude oil. Notice the very end of the above graph, where blue drops and red rises. If we zoom in to the last six months, there is a clear and sudden disparity:



Since the beginning of April, I have not been able to predict what gas prices will do. At the end of this week, St. Louis prices shot up to a record $3.19, while crude oil dropped to $62. Last summer, crude oil in the record $70's kept us under $3 for gas.

Before, conspiracy theorists claimed that big oil companies jacked up the price just to make more money, but the data showed a different cause. But now, I don't know. For the last month the past patterns led to the prediction that gas would slowly trickle down until it had caught up with crude oil. Instead, gas has continued to spike, reaching new records.

Reading several articles across the 'net gives some insight. "Reduced output due to refinery problems" seems to mean that the crude oil bought is not being refined into gas as quickly as it usually is. If gasoline supplies have been declining for twelve consecutive weeks, a decreasing supply coupled with increasing demand (of US gas short-term, not world oil long-term) this would anticipate a rise in gas prices that was unrelated to the price of crude oil.

I still don't like that it's broken years of its pattern, though. I don't like it.