Carl Rove get’s off scott free. Not that it wasn’t expected, in the end he would have been pardoned. After all, he was working for the Imperial President. A president that puts himself above the law and those checks and balances refuse to check or balance. A president that starts a war to evoke presidential war powers and becomes the antithesis of the Constitutional Presidency.

And the most disheartening fact of all: that most likely he was not elected at all, and the elections were likely stolen in a series illegal activities by elected government officials. I feel the need to repeat that, a series of illegal activities by elected government officials. Let me translate that: corrupt government officials can get themselves re-elected. And by definition means: we may never get rid of them.

If we can not uphold free and fair elections we will become Orwell’s nightmare.

Even more so than we have experienced, so far.

At a loss, please tell; what to do?

But, somehow I don’t feel served. There is still the matter of the missing 50 billion dollars their trading schemes siphoned out of the California economy. Enron’s culture of cooked books and false reports and insider trading enabled a massive rip off of an entire economy, which was really the death knell for Silicon Valley’s dot com boom.

The conviction of Lay and Skilling is necessary and right. However, it really is just cleaning up the poop after the parade of elephants has gone bye. Is it any wonder that another popular culture phenomenon was tested in California and then spread across the nation and then to the world.

Only this time it’s not Nike’s, it’s exorbitant energy prices.

It was achieved in California by bold face lies and misrepresentations of data regarding the availability of energy supplies. Natural gas lines are full, natural gas lines are shut off, plants were taken off line for maintenance at peak usage times, reports misrepresented critical data. It’s a game, and it can be rigged, and it should always be watched carefully by dispassionate enforcers of fair practices and truthful reporting.

So, Ken and Jeffrey are going to jail. And I’m supposed to feel that “it’s all good”. But, the elephants are still marching and there seems no end in sight to the path out of here, into that new frontier. That frontier where government transparency has been removed. Which is the scariest part of the apparent change in practices that is occurring in our government and their methods of enforcement.

Historically, the dispassionate enforcement of fair practices has meted decades, if not centuries, of economic and technological advancement. Driven by America’s open markets and the worldwide competition that creates. But, that is no longer the case. The government has access to every bit of our personal and business communications. It’s not a far reach to believe those businesses that have close ties to the government also have access to competitors communications. Congressman and CIA officials’ are caught taking bribes, people are pleading guilty and going to jail; while they turn in their accomplishes to lessen their own jail time. So, the list of conspirators grows. Monopolies are forming. Monopolies that serve themselves and serve up the bribes to the congressman and CIA officials.

But it’s all good.
It’s very little and it’s very late.
A gasp of breath for a drowning nation.
A flash of light in an enclosing darkness.
But, it is all good.

And today is no different.

I am as sick of it as you are. However, we must not forget that we’ve were lied to about so many things:

The reasons we are waging war powers in a police action.
The threat of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq then, in Iran now).
The underlying truth supported by facts regarding the destruction of the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
That there were no secret meeting between “Duck” Cheney and oil company executives to rewrite regulations on how to screw us all.
The fortune made by Halliburton charging and over charging “We The People” for service related to our military outreach, has nothing to do with the fact that Cheney is still on their payroll.
That “Renditions” continue, to this day, despite full acknowledgement that the activity is illegal and we are told that were to cease.
That the electoral process is fair and free of corruption.
That the “No Child Left Behind” is really a tool to federalize the education of our children.
That the “Clean Air Act” is not a protection of polluters to evade their responsibilities.
That “Homeland Security” is not a framework to impose a police state.
That the “Patriot Act” protects our rights and freedoms.

And the single greatest lie of all by this administration:

“We are here to help.”

Perfect double speak.

This mornings impromptu speech was to rebut the USA today article that clearly states that all our communications are being monitored and collected, with the intent of data mining to collect behavior patterns to watch us. And wee are being told to believe that not one of our phone calls has been reviewed in this program without a court order.

This is a lie that defies all logic relevant to the facts. In order to search a database, you have to review the files, all the files. The files also must have been collected or subjected to seizure. Blatantly, search and seizure have already been completed. Our Bill of Rights states that should not happen without a warrant provided by a judge that has witnessed probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. Which means they really have put the cart before the horse.

In the design of the government that represents “We The People”, our elected officials are to be trusted to be one thing and one thing only:
power hungry and selfish human beings.
Every thing else is meant to put reigns on the power of elected officials and govern their interaction with “We The People”.

Our Imperial President has forgotten “We The People”, as if we were a burden in the way of his agenda.

The question for us is: What are we going to do about it?

Understandably the thought of “Controlling the Internet” appears to be a daunting task. In fact; could they do that? Isn’t there a hodgepodge of networks and technologies that is this wonderful melting pot for the whole world to share in? And it’s diversity almost impossible to control because of it’s complexity? As of now, the simple answer to that is: yes, they can control all of that.

Until recently, it would have been harder and before that almost impossible. So, to try and understand how they would do this and even scarier how Congress might write new legislation regarding this, let’s take a technical look from novice perspective at how the Telco’s supply us the Internet and how that control might work.

Now, if you recall, Al Gore invented the internet back in the 1990′s, right? Wrong, it actually was developed half a century ago at Bell labs in conjunction with the Defense Department as way to keep the Commander in Chief in touch with the nuclear arsenal during the height of the cold war. The concept is simple. Make use of the existing telephone line infrastructure and make it so the President can launch the bomb. No matter how much damage the country or the telephone infrastructure had sustained.

This led to the technology based on Internet Protocol or IP traffic. Where previously, the method of carrying voice on the phone lines was streaming, more akin to the wire between the tin cans in the experiment we all did as children. The IP method uses data in packages that have source and destination information included, and it slices those packages up in exact pieces and sends them out on the network to let them determine the path to the destination almost on their own. Technically, IP and Voice were different then. They could use the same wire. But, the equipment at the other end had to be the same protocol as the one it was talking to and the voice lines and IP traffic lines were allocated separately. They ran on different equipment. The IP equipment was expensive and rare. Back then, unless you were associated with the government and were eligible to access a .gov, .mil or .edu domain the uses were very limited.

And that’s when Al Gore invented the Internet. Or at least he cosponsored the legislation that brought us the modern registrations of .com, .org, .net, etc. The technologies developed for 40 plus years before Congress stepped up and made it widely available. The Unix operating system adopted it as a standard and high end workstations and networking gear at least were IP compatible. All this feeding the great genesis that was the dot com boom / bust.

Which is where our contemporary story only begins. All the players (Telco’s, switch manufacturers and computer makers) realize the voice and data network convergence is inevitable. Standards were developed and voice and data equipment soon became multi protocol. At the core, voice and data run on the same network. But there’s a problem. Voice still has to run in a stream and there can be no delays. After all we’ve gotten used to the voice quality of the ‘Pin Drop’. Internet phones are nowhere near that quality.

So a birth of technologies were spawned that support a concept called Quality of Service or (QOS). This relies on an ability inherent in the Multi Protocol Lable Switching (MPLS) to parse and decipher those exact pieces of IP traffic called packets. The process is called statefull packet inspection. And at the edge, when the traffic is reaching it’s dissemination, QOS determines the priority in which to proceed (usually voice first to avoid latencies) and in order to do that in needs to inspect the package for its contents.

This is where the meat of the discussion comes into play. This is where control can be implemented. This is where the NSA watches us. This is where the UN World Intellectual Property Organization wants create treaties to enforce restrictions on Creative Common License arrangements. This is where Foreign Governments impose censorship. This is where the Telco’s own all the traffic. This is where the freedom of the internet resides. And this is where “Net Neutrality” needs to be kept in place.

This was all brought into being because of the legislative break up Ma Bell. Ma Bell was broken up for a reason. If that wouldn’t have occurred we wouldn’t have the internet as we know it. Go back, before the break up, to when there is only one telephone company in America. They own all the lines and make all the equipment and determine all the direction of advancement and set all the rates. It’s their show and you have no choice.

Which gives them no choice but to beat us like the red headed step children we are. It’s human nature; greedy people tend to where their greed will be most rewarded. Greed is obsessive and will blind the greedy from other altruistic pursuits and in the end “We the People” are at the wrong end of the whipping stick. In the days when Congress worked for the People, they took the whipping stick back and broke the monopoly into a competitive marketplace that continues to develop.

It comes as no surprise that at this time of great advantage of the big business over the consumer that the greedy telco monsters would jump in and try to rewrite the rules to their own favor. And as the technologies become manageable to the point where control can be imposed, those with the will to take advantage will impose their own will. The question becomes: will “We the People” step up and impose our will, that we make be able to take full advantage of this market place of burgeoning advancement? Or will we let our voice, our freredom and our sacred choice: be lost.

It was a just a small gaggle of coders and the MTV pioneer VJ, Adam Curry, that first saw the link between a blog tool and it’s inherent Really Simple Syndication (RSS) , which had previously been used almost exclusively for text, and capabilities regarding audio files handled by iTunes. People in the open source community had already created, as freeware, blog tools that would make available files, including audio enclosures, for download over the internet. It was the group behind iPodder.org that built the link from the blog enclosures to iTunes and by association the iPod; and with it the birth of the term “Podcasting”. It must be pointed out at this point that those that associated with the freeware community will tell us that free software is more akin to “free speech” than it is to “free beer”. Podcasting is a perfect example of that. In the short history of the computer before Microsoft and before IBM, there was Bell Labs and the University of California at Berkeley; where all those interested, business men, scientist and academics gathered and built the foundation of what has evolved into highly sophisticated machine code that supports virtually all of our internet activities. All software was free until Bill Gates stood up and said, ‘I own mine and you can not use it without paying me a fee’. That was accompanied by the advent of the personal computer. Everyone knows the rest of that story. But, the freeware consortium never quit and we have them to thank for the revolution behind Podcasting. It’s a beautiful and elegant balance between capitalistic pursuits that chase market capitol and the creative genius involved in blending existing ideas and technologies into new ways of doing things. Free distribution of new material allows for diversity of what we, as a community, have available to observe and participate. And that is the real beauty of Podcasting. Any lunatic, myself included, can hatch an idea for a show and pull down ones pants for all to see. And that’s literally what’s happened.

Podcasting’s march out of obscurity was done double time. And it was done with, you guessed it: a sex scene. In the beginning there was Adam Curry and his Daily Source Code. In the iPodder.org experiment Adam diligently posted a week day audio blog for everyone to share in and provided a place for the community to develop their methods. Among the early adaptors, were a married couple in a Wisconsin suburb, Dawn Maceli and Drew Domkus and their podcast The Dawn and Drew Show. Under their monikers of “SOMETIMES WE’RE DRUNK” or “PUT AWAY THE DOGS AND TURN ON THE MICROPHONE”, along with many other podcasters, Dawn and Drew brought to broadcast audio what the FCC would never allow. Freedom to do and say what ever you want for anybody and everybody to listen. Somewhat like, shock and awe for the sake of humor. Early on a podcast directory associated with Adam Curry and iPodder.org, known as Podcast Alley, was having ratings contests and listeners would vote for their favorite podshow then Podcast Alley posted the results and updated them periodically. Dawn and Drew eagerly wanted to make a splash and get top ratings. So what else: they had sex and the air. Not the tawdry, lewd and lascivious XXX sex that’s so prevalent on the internet. No, I have to admit, I shed tears laughing so hard at their proclivities the first time I heard it. And I wasn’t the only one. The viral dissemination was impressive enough to put Podcast Alley on the map and was partially responsible for the current successes of enterprises like Podshow.com. Now with the availability of the Video iPod, they’ve integrated motion pictures with their regular blather. You can get a great example of early DNDS in their 100th show, it’s a ‘best of’ that includes that original encounter with their own commentary regarding the first 100 shows. They weren’t the only ones there at the beginning. The Daily Download, a daily recording of the producers bowel movement (no longer in production), is quite memorable and Madge Weinstein “Yeast Radio” stand out in my recollection. Soon after this, the Apple Music Store included a Podcast Directory where all comers can post to make their podshow available on iTunes. And the field became so crowded that it’s truly hard to see the forest for the trees.

That in itself is a terrific story and is a great beginning. However, it doesn’t stop there. The diversity created by free distribution of new material does not stop with machine language code or software. The Podcasting paradigm has also spawned a myriad of directories that support sharing of the works of music and video from artists around the globe. Under a freely available copy right agreement known as a Creative Commons License independent artists can make available their work as freeware. It’s basics are as follows: ‘You are free to use my art as long as you say it is my art. If you use my art to generate revenue, we have to renegotiate this agreement’. The independent music scene lost no time in embracing the concept. As well, a good way to generate interest in a podcast is to use an independent musician and notify them they’re on your podshow and let them tell their fans who in turn tune in and grow your audience as they grow their own. All of this is quickly becoming a new distribution channel that flies in the face of the traditional music business. A new distribution channel that levels the playing field among artists has begun to replace the traditional method that has so stifled new music and new media ideas. See for yourself. With communities like Pod Safe Audio or the Podsafe Music Network the shift has a beginning. And even my friends at Shure have recognized the burgeoning marketplace with tutorials available to the beginner. Complete with suggestions’ on the proper equipment to become a world class recording expert. So, don’t be afraid to hop on the band wagon. It may look full. But there is still plenty of room.

Now if that’s not the Christmas Spirit;
I don’t know what is!

Now, like some aspect of intelligent design, Mother Nature has come and dealt them a blow and exposed these underworld leaders, in their war on truth and war on science, like none of us mere mortals ever could. They have already begun mounting the lies to hide the exposed truth, revising history to make themselves hero’s. Which leads one to wonder, who among them will have failed so badly in this disaster that they receive medals from the president.

It continues to amaze me how the obvious and the studied and the highly touted facts that are available to this administration, get ignored. Let’s Start with the “Bin Laden determined to attack the United States” memo that was not considered important. Or the questionable WMD’s or the effects of an insurgency in Iraq; stem cell research or Global warming? Is there a fact or truth that has not been ignored to our detriment? This administration acts on ‘faith’ (or in it’s direct translation into modern English “lies”). The question has to become: why are they allowing these things to happen.

They are obviously not incompetent. Carl Rove, as insidious a human being that has ever ravaged our country, has done a remarkable job of understanding and manipulating or political process; unlike any politician in our history. That would lead me to believe that these facts were not ignored out of incompetence. But, a far more insidious and dishonorable intent is at play. It’s been made quite clear we were lied to by this administration into entering a war in Iraq for no reason the American people would have accepted. The Patriot Act continues to be used for proletariat control and the tactics of smear politics and character assassination have become a well know part of the American society.

We’re all aware that The Project For The New American Century discerned that we would never be able to realize control over the over Eurasia without intervention and that the world at large, and the American public in particular, would never allow our industrial military complex to move on it’s desired task with out a “Pearl Harbor Type Event”. Viola! 9/11. Not only a reason to bring out the dogs of war; but an avenue to take the transparency of or our government and cloak it in a veil of secrecy and contempt. We aren’t allowed to know the facts concerning all that is known about how it happened.

Yet, the fact remains that it was allowed to happen by this administration: complicity by omission.
Now Out of what would appear to be shear and utter incompetence the city of New Orleans was allowed to flood. Not by some foreign terrorists bomb or by even the hand of God (as some would have us believe). But, by what apparently was lack of good planning or heeding the warnings of the engineers and scietist that have predicted this was going to happen. Or more pointedly this administration repeated ignored the facts and refused to allow the upgrades required to repair the levee’s and opened up the buffering wetlands to development that would have deflected much of a hurricanes storm surge and its consequential damage.
The question now becomes: where for? Why did they allow this to happen? What is their cowardly plan?

The shock has not yet subsided; and the end to this debacle is nowhere in site. More than a million people are displaced and with out permanent shelter or jobs or means by which to produce in the communities in which they now take refuge. The Governor of Texas is ordering refuges to be taken to airports and removed from Texas. What is going to happen to these people when they finally land or worse when they finally give up an live on the streets in the city’s that won’t outlaw such activities. Are we headed to another depression type tent cities popping up outside urban centers?

If we are to look at who benefits from such disasters it’s not hard to see that the price of oil skyrocketed as the storm damage became clear and now Halliburton has already secured a 1/2 billion dollars to perform clean up operations.
Should I be afraid? I live in the city of San Francisco. There were three top concerns of our Federal Emergency Management Agencies thinkers as they accessed the possible worst case scenarios.

First: an attack on New York city, Second: a flood of New Orleans, Third: a major earthquake in San Francisco. Now we saw how easily planes attacked the World Trade Center, and the accused culprit behind the attacks remains at large. Was there cloud seeding in the storm clouds leading to the catastrophe Katrina. Scientist seem to agree that it wasn’t even necessary to have a storm of this magnitude. “Global warming” and the increased temperatures of the gulf waters were going to bring this on sooner than later. Apparently, we’ve known this for years. I just hope there are no secret experiments ongoing on how to trigger an earthquake.

To redact this momentarily, let us recall:

The White House mater puppeteer, Carl Rove, has no problem with bold face lying to a Grand Jury about the outing of a political opponent in the now infamous Valerie Plame case. And why not, any attempt to illuminate the actual truth behind the scenes of Rove & Co. risks complete professional and personal destructions at the hands of the minions who are this black cloud over us. (Just look at what he tried to do to Valerie.)

The director of this theatre of the absurd, Dick Cheney, doesn’t work for you and me; concerned citizens of the USA. He is still on the payroll of Halliburton. Already billing the American taxpayer $2.5 billion dollars and projected to spend in excess of $8 Billion by the conclusion of conflict in Iraq. Halliburton execs must just giggle when they consider that before they installed their employee in the White House they were billing the defense department less that $500 thousand year. I’m sure Dicky is due a bonus when he retires from the White House. Kinda like a golden parachute, but considering his stock positions and the profits he’s realizing for Halliburton, more like a golden Lear Jet.

Lest we forget the star of the charade, “W”. Chosen by the Almighty and doing His work to bring Christ’s Peace to our world.

Then a minor character in a supporting roll, John Bolton, is thrust into a leading roll. Just last week at the realization that John Bolton was being installed at the U.N. the State Department release the information that he lied to the Senate at his confirmation hearings.

It is no surprise that the truth means so little to the leaders when there are so many among us the a willing to be lied to. And among those willing to hear lies, the subset of those who require the lies: because the truth would be; oh so chilling.

Which leave me concerned greatly as to what ends John Bolton has been released unto the United Nations; for what underlying and unstated purpose? He’s a faithful liar, willing to do his part; take one for the team. But, what dastardly task is he being sent to undertake? It’s painfully obvious, to anyone who chooses not to be oblivious, that the Iraq occupation is not going well. That begs the question why there isn’t an international peace keeping force in place to give this entire endeavor a hint of legitimacy? (We’ve all know the Blue Helmets.) Because they are not invited! Before countries will come in and assist, the US forces would have to share control and the US businesses would have to share the wealth. Something neither has been willing to do so far. And why should they? They have a blank check that’s making a whole consortium of players wealthy for generations. And there is no mechanism in place to reign in the madness. The House just rolls over and the Senate reminds me of my eight grade civics class; deciding who and how and when lunch will get delivered to the class, but powerless to change things in the real world.

Which leads me here again to a call to action for all or anyone who will listen:

Call out the LIARS! I know you can’t go to the office and shout and start cussing at the bastards. Most likely half the people there will be quite offended, vested in their nebulous truth. Having a subset within, of the bullying type, that if you don’t shut up, they will shut you up!

So, I humbly request you do one better. That you change your own mind. Quietly and without a spoken word, in your own mind call the LIARS out. Know that you are no longer willing to be lied to. No bullying can stop you. No one even needs to know. But we are the generation that is living with the fact that we all create our own reality, by our own actions, and that starts within our own minds. It’s becoming the only place left where free speech is really free. If we can, one by one in our own minds, no longer accept the LIARS word. Somehow, I believe if we can do that, we can affect the consciousness of those around us in a way that makes the lies less believable. Realize that we have a long way to go to have Peace be our state of mind and have Peace become what we experience. Yet, we must start somewhere.

LIAR! LIAR! Minds on fire!

Peace.

July 14, 2005

STATE OF CALIFORNIA
DEPARTMENT OF INSURANCE
CONSUMER SERVICES AND MARKET CONDUCT DIVISION
CONSUMER SERVICES DIVISION
300 SOUTH SPRING ST, SOUTH TOWER
LOS ANGELES, CA 90013

To whom it may concern:

I would like to request your help in resolving a dispute I have with Farmers insurance regarding an interruption in my coverage that resulted in a denial of claim. I am at a loss to understand how when I converted my payment option to monthly, it changed the way it my coverage was applied. I find it an act of bad faith for an insurance company to collect premium for a period stated on a billing and then when presented with a claim the insurance company can cancel the policy; retain part of the premium and then refund the remaining premium. Then determine that you can not make a claim against the refunded premium.

Here’s the facts: On April 4 2005 I mailed a check to cover premium on two policies (XXXXXX auto, YYYYYY property) for billing period 4-11-05 to 5-10-05. (see copies). They stated, by their record, the check was received and the funds collected on 4-7-05. On 5-08-05 my car was burglarized in front of my house and property was stolen. WCPD was advised and created report #05-XYZ. This event was covered under the property policy. I called Farmers on 05-08-05 to inform them of the event, I was assured coverage was in place and given a claim number #0000000000 and asked to follow up during the business week, as the 8th was a Sunday. On Tuesday the 10th when I called to determine the procedure to complete my claim, I was informed that there may be a problem and that a fact finding was beginning and I should call back. That same day I checked online and made a payment again that was accepted. On the 11th I was asked to make a recorded statement and given no status on the coverage or claim and told that an administrative decision would be forthcoming. Still on the 11th, Farmers (see post mark) sent a letter of cancellation and refund of premium back to 4-26-05 that was apparently back dated to 5-09-05. (see copies) On 5-16-05 they sent me a letter explaining my current status (see copies). During this timeline, Farmers sent me a notice of cancellation dated 4-04-05 for a cancellation date of 4-26-05. But, since on 4-05-05 I had sent a premium for a coverage period to 5-10-05 that had crossed in the mail and there had been no refund of premium, I thought the accounting would work itself out and was confident I retained coverage. Until after a claim was made, when they determined somehow by contract that my payment timeline deserved cancellation. I did not write that contract and I haven’t read it. However, I did read my billing statement that said I was paying for billing period 4-11 to 5-10 and they collected the premium on 4-07 and received premium again on 5-10. Yet, somehow I was unpaid and had an interruption in coverage even when they retain part of the premium collected and refund the remainder as if the collected money was worthless.

It amazes me that an insurance company is allowed to treat the basic principle of insurance premium collection with such disregard. It is further galling to have them back date and send documents to some how bolster their position or lessen the sting of their actions.

I am a consumer that feels I have been treated unfairly. The claim amounts to approximately two thousand dollars and nobody was hurt, there were no medical expenses. However, what if this had been an auto accident on the 8th and there were medical expenses and pain endured? It would have been a travesty! My policies have been changed back to non-monthly payments where I understand the billing principles. After almost 14 years with Farmers, and under various policies, monthly billing was started because of my personal financial difficulties. This is absolutely frightening considering that those making monthly payments are most likely to be disadvantaged and then they are abused by practices of a giant insurance company.

I request that STATE OF CALIFORNIA, DEPARTMENT OF INSURANCE review my claim and also investigate the practices of Farmers Insurance with regard to their monthly billing.

Sincerely,

cc: Garamendi

Enclosures:

Yah! Gimme some of that!
I want that.
Can I have that?

Not that I’m staid enough or cynical enough to believe such nonsense as blowing anything up, for political reasons, will achieve any greater cause. (That being my present state of intellectual evolution.)

Yet, a selfless act of purity would be welcome; indeed.

But, where and to what ends might such an act play out?

After all isn’t that what we are all after? Eternal life? Or at least the feeling that some thing we do here, in this obviously limited expression of eternity, has an aspect of eternity to it. As if we were at least part of, or at least participating in, eternal life.

Purity.

(Whatever that is?)

The fundamentalists are trying to destroy America.
They say that their God is all powerful.
They say they speak for Him.
How can they know that?
They’ll tell us it’s a matter of faith.
Without their faith we can not judge, they say.
They say: ‘you stand accused of an abuse of faith’.
They’ll hate until they take away our right to choose:
To choose to live, to choose to die.
They’ll kill us at work and on our way home.
They teach hate to children, it propagates their faith.

Faith be damned, for that is now its fate.
Faith be yours and show us all your hate.
Faith lives for fear.
Faith lives for ignorance.
Faith kills.
Just ask Osama.

Last night our fearless leader “W” invoked again one of his biggest lies: that somehow the invasion of Iraq was a response to the 9/11 attacks. (It makes me wonder if that’s why, through complete and utter incompetence, they allowed the planes to hit the World trade center in the first place. But that’s another discussion.) Which is typical for this administration whose method is to lie big and lie often. When a lie gets repudiated; tell it again, bigger and with more detail. And make sure you call into question the facts that repudiate the lie, make sure you call those facts a lie. Hide the truth; repeat the lie again. There is a very large segment of us that accept the lies on faith, without logic or truth or facts to sustain them.

George Orwell wrote in his essay In Front of Your Nose:
“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

I would add that maybe an accounting ledger would be a solid reality as well. Such as where are the billions of dollars that have gone missing from the battlefield?

What happened to the good old days when politicians would just equivocate, and just avoid talking about facts that were upsetting to people. Which grew in to a time to an accepted practice of prevarication; using unverifiable facts to deviate from or pervert the truth. Sad to say, but that has evolved into a web of deceits that would make George Orwell blush with embarrassment at its audacity. Lie big, lie often and never admit you know the truth. Avoid the truth at all costs. Any illumination of the Truth could bring down the whole house of cards.

Bring it down I say! Huff and puff and blow the house down! Or better yet, with soft spoken words of Truth, call the liars out. Have faith in the facts. Know that pathological liars will never admit a lie; they’ll just lie again to hide the old lie. Even if only in your own mind, say it to yourself: “that’s a lie, that person is a liar”.

After all, it is only in ones own mind that experience exists.

And that’s where ones own responsibility starts.

Seek Truth!

Think Peace!

Yet, maybe there’s a shred of truth to it. What is the human experience? Not withstanding our interaction with this physical dimension; the human experience takes place completely in our minds. Every sensation, every memory, every reflection, every dream of everyone of us resides only in our own minds. And there is quite a few of us now. Somewhere in my lifetime there was a point, in the growing human population, that the number of people alive had exceeded the number of people that had lived collectively for all the previous generations of human beings combined. Quite a feat, a bumper crop.

Please, hold that thought. And let’s return to the notion of a probability drive, powered by human experience and therefore human thought. Next, let’s consider that every day you and I, and all of us, create our reality with our minds. You see the sun rise, you see the sun set, you burn your hand, the physical world is experienced by the brain. From our very first breath at birth, to that cup of joe’ this morning, to the words on this page, reality is driven by brain function. What is brain function? It is a collection of variable electrical circuits that spontaneously converts electrical energy into human experience. But, where for? But, why and to what ends?

And please forgive me, I do not portend to know what or why or who God is or is not. For my tastes; I accept that that is beyond human comprehension and not to be understood within the human experience. I, myself, do not know what God is because I can not know, it is beyond me. (And, I look warily upon those who claim they can. But that’s another discussion.) However, I do have an inkling into a process; a hypothetical, a theory. I do not want to present this as if it were fact. But, I do want to start the discussion, the communal brain activity.

What if the reason, the answer, the “42″ of why we’re here is that we, with all our exasperated expressions and its cognitive experiences of the mind, are just a source of energy for something else. Intelligent designers maybe? Who knows, if we haven’t found out yet, then we most likely won’t or can’t or shouldn’t know, or it’s something else that we just learn later on, somewhere else in another time. But, what if it is still not our experience that’s important to our place in the universe, but it’s byproduct. What are we but beings that ingests chemical energy (food) that that converts it to mechanical and electrical energy. Most of our mechanical energy sets about keeping the machine running, things like eating and protecting our machine and don’t forget procreation; sex is a driver, progeny is an important factor in the availability of the byproduct. All the while this machine runs and produces this electrical energy that dissipates. Somewhere?

Let’s explore a metaphor: cattle give off flatulence of a methane gas . So much so, environmental groups worry about it. There a smart farmers out there that collect it and use it to produce electricity to run lights and milking machines in dairy farms. Now do cattle know they do this? Mostly likely not. Do they care, well we can’t know, so let’s assume not. Is there by-product of their machine that transfers into pure energy? Yes, there is. Now, I don’t want to reduce the entire human experience into so much flatulence. But, I hope you can discern my point. There we have it, a point to start the discussion: Is there a byproduct of human thought? Can we embrace that somehow and affect it?

Just imagine if we could.

Then, I have a request:

Just for a moment.

Consider Peace.

Please!

Just consider it.

Sad but true, this how I feel every time the fear mongers start talking about how important the Patriot Act is to the safety of Americans. It happened again this week.

But first, we had flashy arrests. It’s pre-dawn in the Central Valley of Northern California, early enough to make the morning news. Preceded with news reports of how school children’s lunches are in danger of being terrorists targets. The markets are just opening, they’ll have all day to digest this. Nobody should get hurt.

And as if nobody should be surprised by this: “W” starts an intricately planned and well coordinated stump for the Patriot Act tomorrow.

But, hold on for just a second. That’s next. Let’s look at the culprit from Lodi. Let us first not forget that Hamid Hayat is a natural born US citizen, due all the constitutional protection that everyone one of us, born in the USA, consider a natural right. Yet, it appears on the face that he was not afforded even the basic protections of counsel or against self incrimination. He is charged with lying to police authorities. Because he changed his story. How did that happen? Why would he do that? Did his lawyer, present while he was questioned, stop him and advise him he could remain silent? That changing his story now is a violation of current laws and he would be better off if he didn’t mention that. If his lawyer didn’t tell him, they could be disbarred. Or was he being questioned without a lawyer at his side?

Even so, he was born and raised in America. He must have know that he had the right to remain silent. Just clam up dummy. You’re an American. They can’t coerce you to incriminate yourself, there’s the Fifth Amendment to protect you. Oh, I forgot, he’s a Muslim. He’s heard about Gitmo. I’m sure he knows, or knows of a community member, a prisoner that’s being held there. And there’s no way that, with his lawyer present, they threatened him with endless lockup. No way!

Granted, in situations where faithful radicals intend to do harm or create mass damage we must stop them before they act. Much like the Columbine syndrome, the threat must be taken seriously and stopped whenever possible.

The question becomes how does that happen with out completely throwing out constitutional guarantees and divide our citizenry into an us and them conundrum. This is no longer a slippery slope, we have fallen into the abyss and may never return. The law now allows surveillance at the whim of law enforcement, without a judge’s oversight and constitutional protections irrelevant. Soon, we may face a rampant police state or religious prosecution or any of the other abuses history has witnessed, but we ignore at our peril.