11:48 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Small crimes are still crimes

My friend Doug Kenline posts his response to being taken to task by his brother for lying about his family.

Doug admits it all, but justifies it:

It seems that the berating and belittling tends to provoke people to writing a little more. Maybe that's why I do it.
-and-
...I was just trying to provoke a response...

Right.

It is true that people who normally have little to say about an issue will talk back when they are misrepresented. So if all Doug wants is noise back, their correction would suffice and that could be the end of it. Of course, it wouldn't be a comment on the issue, so really, nothing happened.

But Doug wants more. He wants people to comment on the issue. To participate. His way, in his game plan. So now that he has the person communicating, he pokes futher to make them do what he wants.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Maybe they feel they don't have a choice, in that if they refuse, they know that Doug will not respect their choice, will not leave them alone, and will probably lie about them some more.

Maybe we all need to be a little less respectful to ostriches, I don't know. I certainly have had my moments of frustration when I wanted to run down the street and shake the lapels of every person out there and scream into his face, "Don't you see what's going on? WAKE UP, MAN!!!"

But I don't do it. I don't because within the Grand Illusion, where it seems that everyone but me is paying attention only to the man behind the curtain, I am the apparent odd man out. All these unconscious psychos everywhere, and I'd be the one to end up in the loony bin. And what good could I do from there? So I do understand the impulse to provoke.

Doug's method won't get him locked up, true. But my problem with Doug's method is that he lies to achieve manipulation. He may think that the end justifies the means, but he's not looking at how badly his little abuses affect the objects of his manipulation.

Doug has lied about his family. Until today I had nothing to think of his family except what he'd said about them. Now, I don't automatically believe anybody who is speaking from crybaby mode. Still, the fact remains that the only image I had of Doug's family was built on what he'd said about them. And it wasn't a pretty picture.

Worse, it was a lie. These good people, who in fact do support him, and in fact are more involved in the movement, it turns out, than 99.8 percent of the population, are in pain because Doug makes rules for people without their consent and then does whatever it takes to bludgeon them into compliance. Including outright lying about them.

God help us all if Doug ruled the world.

Beyond betraying his family, Doug has also betrayed me, and thee, and himself.

He has betrayed me and thee in giving us false realities about one another. He has made our world seem worse than it already is. He has amplified our isolation and aloneness, and thus our approach to desperation.

And he has betrayed himself because he has been exposed as a liar. Who among us will not doubt the next thing he says about anybody?

That's the real cost, Doug. And it is too high. You can't win the truth by being a liar.

We all love you. But you've shaken our respect and trust. Give us a chance, and we'd probably line you up for the spanking of your life.

Then we'd hope that you got the message:

It isn't enough to work toward the right thing. You have to do the right thing, the right way. All along the way.

Now would be an excellent time to begin.

        4:13 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

More re Full-width templates; Styles


Here's the solution for full-width templates where the template comes with embedded styles that set the widths.

This is specific to the styles in the template used by Doug Kenline.

Here's a stripped-down version of the template that Doug posted for the question.

It's a simple 2-step edit, but as always, back up your template! If you don't know how to do that inline, do it to offline: just open the template for editing, highlight the entire template code, and then paste it into a text editor on your computer (Notepad, etc.) and save it. To restore, just copy it from the text file you created with Notepad, and then paste it in over the top of everything in your edit template window.

If there's anything in these instructions that you don't understand, don't do anything. You could render your blog unreadable and not be able to recover it.

The Problem

The style sheet includes absolute positioning. As:
position:absolute; left:10px; top:20px; width:760px; height:60px; z-index:1;

Note that some of this code doesn't look like positions, but it's all part of the positioning code. The way these definitions work is that you have a name (position), a colon (:), and then one or more attributes (absolute; left:10px; top:20px; width:760px; height:60px; z-index:1;) and then another name and colon with its attributes. So everything following a name, until the next name, is attributes of the first name.

Absolute positioning forces the named elements to appear at specified position on the viewer's screen.

The Fix

To make the blog appear full-screen width, the positioning code must be removed from the style sheet, and then the body elements must be entabled.

First

Remove all four position:absolute sections from the style section near the top of the template.

In Doug's template, these are as follows:

position:absolute; left:10px; top:20px; width:760px; height:60px; z-index:1;
position:absolute; left:10px; top:100px; width:170px; height:100px; z-index:1;
position:absolute; left:200px; top:100px; width:370px; height:200px; z-index:1;
position:absolute; left:600px; top:100px; width:170px; height:100px; z-index:1;

Don't remove anything other than what I've quoted above, or you'll break the style.

Second

Edit the formatting code in the body of the template so your blog looks like this revision.

To view and save the code changes, go to the revision, use your browser's View Source or View Code function.

Sorry, but that's just a lot easier for me than trying to walk you through it step-by-step, particularly since I'd have to change the coding characters "<" and ">" to something else so the code would be visible here and not interpreted as actual code by your browser as you read this blog. And that might even make it more confusing. This way, you can just go to the revision and get it, save and or print it out, and compare it to your template so as to see what you have to change.

Note that the commented lines at the bottom of the example's source code are not necessary. I just saved them there when I deleted them from the style.

        11:02 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Dumb Democracy Dumb

Thank you Gerald Klaas for finding David P. Shreiner's opinion piece 'Democracy:' It's a threat to our republic.

This should be required reading for all political candidates, tested for comprehension. Anyone who flunks should have "Hello, I'm stupid!" tattoed on his/her forehead and made to wear a dunce cap at all campaign appearances.

        10:55 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Re Full-Width Templates

The instructions given next below won't work for templates that include a style section near the top that sets absolute locations.

You have to either edit the style or remove it and all subsequent references to it, essentially re-coding your entire template. You may not want to try that at home, and if you do, I am not the cause of whatever disaster may result. I will, however, take all the credit if it works.... :-)

        4:46 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Full-Width Templates

Doug, Gene, anybody who likes to change their blog template to adjust formatting, check this out.

You should see that (a) my blog takes up the full width of your browser window, and (b) my blog getts narrower and wider as you re-size the window you are looking at right now, with the middle column adjusting to take up or let out the difference.

This is done by changing two entires in the template (for this template, at least, it being a two-table template where the second table includes three columns).

The entries to be changed are the TABLE definitions' width statement. The pertinent part of the definition statement is right at the beginning of the line of code. In my template, that segment reads

table width="750"

I changed the "750"' to "100%" and that does the trick; each of the table-definition code segments now read in the first part,

table width="100%"

This tells the table to fill the full width of the window that is displaying it.

Each column automatically takes up either the width it is set to, or the width it needs for the widest element in it, whichever is greater, so if you set widths on the left and right columns and no width on the middle column, it is the middle column that becomes the variable.

CAUTION: This doesn't quite work if the DATA table elements for the left and right columns don't have a width set. If they don't, you'll get a weird result with all three columns adjusting their sizes, if they have any free-form text in them. For example, my left-hand column has a little quote down near the bottom about people's capacities. That would cause that column to compete with the center column for space.

To prevent columns from competing for width, make sure you have widths set for the columns you don't want to be changing when the window is re-sized. In my template, the left and right columns come pre-set to...

!-- COLUMN ONE --
td valign="top" width="125"

...so there's no problem.

The basic rule is that each column automatically takes up the width it needs for the widest element in it, and no more IF there is a width statement not wider than that element, so it is the middle column that becomes the variable. Note that this IS to say that the width statement is usually ignored if there's an element in the column that's wider than the width you set. In the case of this blog, that happened a few days ago because of the length of a URL I had in the right-hand column. In that case, it pushed the right-hand column out past the right edge of the headline.

Again, make sure that the columns that you don't want to vary have width statements in their defining table-data element:

td valign="top" width="125"

-0-

        12:10 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

The Road to Hell...

...is paved with good intentions.

Before a man can do evil, he must believe that what he is doing is correct for the circumstances he perceives.

The easiest way for someone to commit such a misinformed deed is to be in fact, misinformed.

WorldNetDaily's sister publication, Whistleblower Magazine, carries a story hyped in WND under the headline, The Constitution: America's ultimate battleground WND explores whether USA's founding document is still the law of the land

Two important quotes from this promo piece illustrate the good-intentions/bad result proposition.

First:

"THE CONSTITUTION: America's ultimate battleground" (the actual name of the article) shines a bright journalistic spotlight on a critical question: Is the U.S. Constitution, as many today contend, a "living" document whose interpretation can change and evolve over the decades, so that it means whatever legislators and judges want it to mean? Or, is it still the supreme law of the land, which must govern every aspect of government according to the original intent of its framers – a document that severely restricts government, especially at the national level, while guaranteeing the "unalienable rights" of American citizens?

Let me say right here and for all time that I believe the constitution is NOT a "living document", whatever that fantasy is. A constitution, by definition, is a legal policy statement that gives form and substance to the existence, structure and legal philosophy of a country.

As such, it is the bedrock upon which its country rests, and the firmness of its existence is essential to any hope for a predictable rule of law in that country.

The farce of our constitution being a so-called living document has been foisted upon our children by our domestic enemies in the government schools, so as to lay the groundwork for rule by opinion.

So there I am, firmly on the constitution-as-supreme-law position.

It is at this point, however, that WND begins to get lost. In asking the question whether the constitution is a document that severely restricts government, especially at the national level, while guaranteeing the "unalienable rights" of American citizens? after having decried certain US Supreme Court decisions that do exactly that, WND reveals that it, like nearly eveyone else, has its own extra-constitutional agenda that it wishes to impose through law and justify under the constitution.

Bummer! But not unusual. A vast majority of the people I know in the so-called constitutionalist movement are of the same mind.

Here is the second of the quotes I promised. It actually came first in the article.

Stunning recent Supreme Court decisions validating reverse discrimination, freeing hundreds of sex abusers and arguably opening the legal door to legalized polygamy, incest and bestiality have inflamed an already growing concern among many Americans that the U.S. Constitution is deader than a doornail.

Now, I'm not saying that I agree with all of those decisions. In particular, I believe that any type of discrimination other than necessary discernment regarding the qualifications for an employment, political or marital position is wrong. And when the government does it as affirmative action to compensate the descendants of dead victims at the expense of the innocent descendants of people who weren't even involved in the crime, that's unconstitutional. It's an illegal bill of attainder working a corruption of blood.

The item complaining about freeing sex offenders is disingenuous at best. It wants us to disregard the constitution itself when it comes to certain socially-offensive illegal acts. Call someone a sex-offender, strip him of his rights. Well, it can't work that way under our constitution, unless the constitutionalists themselves want to admit that they, too, prefer the rule of opinion to the rule of law. The simple fact is, the people who are up for liberation were imprisoned under illegal (unconstitutional) ex-post-facto laws --laws that were passed after their acts were committed and then applied retroactively. You can't do that here, no matter how large the outrage you feel.

Next, we have WND's problem with the marriage and sex rulings.

The position WND takes is just plain nuts.

Constitutions don't contain laws about specific crimes, and they don't restrict citizens, they restrict governments.

So there is no basis to the opinion that same-sex marriage, or any other type of alternative individual behavior, sexual or otherwise, is repugnant to the constitution. Yet there is every reason to understand that laws making those acts illegal are in fact repugnant to the constitution.

We have rights and freedom, or we don't. Just because some religious perspective or another believes that something is wrong, that doesn't make it a proper subject of legal prohibitions.

To outlaw something because it offends your religious sensibilities is itself unconstitutional. It violates the freedom of religion of the other guy if you try to enforce your private morality upon him.

It doesn't matter whether a majority of the citizens subscribe to a religious prohibition, they do not have the power under the constitution to enforce that religious opinion against non-subscribers.

After all, this is NOT a democracy! And amazingly, the religious offenders I'm talking about tend to consider themselves republicans.

As I said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And to do evil, a man must think he is doing right.

Religious legislation fits both of those points.

And it's unconstitutional.

WorldNetDaily, and the vast majority of our socially-fascist republican/conservative friends, are woefully misinformed.

Just like the children of today who have been mis-educated by today's humanist-dominated school system, they were mis-educated by the church-dominated school system of the past.

As for spouting opinions, here's mine: conservatives and liberals are identical on one point: they agree that the constitution can be twisted to support their respective positions.

In that sense, they are all insane.

        11:14 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Hint

Doug Kenline seems to want a hint. Very well.

You are not your name, nor your face nor fingers.

What you think you are - that's just part of the illusion.

There is more to you than meets the eye....

Heaven itself couldn't help your controllers if you could see that!

        10:14 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

The Matrix

Everybody talks about it, nobody's doing anything about it.

Doug Kenline writes,

Allen Hacker talks about The New Epiphany Chapel.

It all seems to be a little bit over my head. I think if I could just get the IRS out of my life I'd be pretty darn happy.

It's over everyone's head, Doug

I see people referring to the movie The Matrix a lot. But when I get into what they're saying, I see that nobody's getting to the fundamentals of the problem. Sure, it's important to know that there's a man behind the curtain. But it's even more important to know that the curtain, and the man, are still part of the illusion.

I don't see anybody getting that.

What do I see is people saying, "...if I could just get {{whatever}} out of my life I'd be pretty darn happy.

Which is to say that what I see is not people wanting to resolve the matrix, only people wanting a different version of it.

Basically, everyone's treating symptoms and saying, "I don't care about reality; it's comfort that I want."

Like I said,

Everything you know is a lie.

        2:48 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Everything you know...

...is a lie.

All social problems lie in the mindset of the people. All such problems develop from foundations of religion, philosophy, wisdom, whatever you wish to call it. What do you want from a world view? Answers? Inner peace? World peace? Transcendence? A personal relationship with whatever higher power as may be? Faith? Or don't you ache for an experiential certainty of Truth?

In fact, what you want, what you've always wanted, is a personal epiphany: a sudden self-illuminating and world-changing fundamental understanding of life and your place in it. Really: you'd like to just turn a corner one day, or wake up one morning, and Know! That's what we all want. The path to it is what we all seek.

The New Epiphany Chapel

        1:38 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Re Bob Schulz Rumor

I've been asked what I know about the allegation that Bob Schulz of We The People has received a notification letter that he's being investigated before a grand jury.

Also, it has been commented that it seems curious that I haven't commented (yet).

I don't comment just for the sake of commenting. I need a basis for saying something. Rumors do not fly on their own steam, they are parasites that suck their lifeforce from being repeated.

I have asked around, and I do not find any credible evidence or testimony that the rumor is true.

I have no reason to believe I've been lied to, so my assessment at this point is, there's nothing to it.

        11:43 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Bloggers Beware!

Software is really stupid.

Until a programmer notices or is told that there's a need for a fail-safe, a computer program will actually help you make stupid mistakes. It might even make them for you. (And then, I suspect but I can't prove it, the entire computer silently snickers at you when you get a completely unexpected and astoundingly wierd result.

My own claim to infamy...

Back in about 1989 I wrote the original version of the Effectiveness Profile self- and professional-development diagnostic software.

One of the nifty things it did was turn on the numeric keypad for the convenience of users who seemed all the time to forget to do it themselves. It also turned the numeric keypad off at the end.

Except... Just about that time, laptops were becoming popular. IBM came roaring out with the Thinkpad, at a whopping 50Mhz pf pentium speed. And slightly different programming codes for certain keyboard functions, because of the different keyboards. So, even though the program turned on the number finctions in the right section of the keyboard (u=4, i=5,o=6, etc.), it used a code for turning it off that didn't work on laptops.

So I started getting frantic calls from people with laptops who couldn't turn the Num Lock off!

Okay, so that one wasn't fair to me: I was a victim of changing technology, it wasn't my fault, don't blame me, that's my story and I'm sticking to it {{sob}}.

Now, of course, the program is actually three times larger than its essential routines alone would require, just to make sure that users can't give it bad info. What a difference a decade of complaints can make!

Now it's 'BloggerWare's' turn...

Blogger's software has a nifty feature in that little pop-up dialog that makes it so easy to insert the URL codes for a link. As in,

|a href="http://my.blog.address"|MyBlogName|/a|

(Notice that I had to use the | character instead of the < (less-than) and > (greater-than) characters, because <, and >, are the opening and closing characters of html tags and your browser would believe them and turn what I wrote into an actual link that would look like this MyBlogName instead of simply displaying what I typed to illustrate what a link's code looks like. So, when you see |, think <, or >. {please}

But there's a weird quirk. (I really like the way those two words look next to each other, neither of them even having a right to exist....)

You highlight the link name in your post text, click the litlle planet/chain-link icon, and an insertion dialog box opens for you to enter the internet address. Only look carefully. It already has some stuff in it: the "http://" part is already there. But it's highlighted.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???!

It means that the "http://" part is required!

But if you just start typing, or if you paste in something from the clipboard, that existing code goes away, because when you highlight something it is put into "overtype" mode, which is exactly what happens: you type over it, or insert over it, and wipe it out.

That's a good thing if you're pasting in a complete reference code, such as,

http://my.blog.address

After all, you'd get a failing link if the http:// code were included twice in the same link, so it's good for it to go away. (Which is probably why it's highlighted in the first place.)

But it's bad for it to go away if you're only pasting in the actual URL of a site, such as,

www.somesite.gnat

Here's why it's bad:

If you don't put the http:// part at the beginning of a link to a website, the blogger software assumes you're referring to a location within your own blog. So it publishes that link looking something like this:

|a href="http://my.blog.address/www.somesite.gnat"|MyBlogName|/a|

Which, of course, even with <'s and >'s instead of |'s, is a bad link, no such address, 404 Error: Page not found!

The user-based solution:

Pay attention.

Make sure of what you copy before you paste it into the insert link dialog. If it has the http:// included, then leave the dialog's existing http:// fragment highlighted, and the paste action will delete it. If what you copied doesn't have the http:// included, hit the [End] key before you click into the insertion dialog box. That will un-highlight the existing code segment and your paste will be placed at the end of it.

The Blogger solution:

Use a standard form-checking routine that corrects the errors automatically. The rules should be simple. Blogs don't allow for subdirectories, so if it's not an internal link to a previous post, it's not a valid link if it begins with the posting blog URL. Stuff like that.

This explains it!

Now we know why we sometime hear from each other that we put a really strange link into a blog-post, when we know for certain that we didn't do any such thing.

Of course, we actually did. With a little secret help from our friendly computer and its idiot-reinforcing software.

But that's why it's not our fault, we were framed, daemons did it....

        12:54 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Secret Societies

From Jon Rappoport:

A FEW NOTES ON SECRET SOCIETIES

JULY 13. Monday night, July 14, I will be interviewed for three full hours on Coast to Coast AM. The subject is secret societies. I urge you to email the show and let them know you support a serious discussion of these issues. Radio shows measure their success, in part, by listener response. Email George@coasttocoastam.com

Here [are] a few notes on secret societies.

Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, British Round Table, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Masons, Jesuits, Illuminati, Knights Templar, Nazis, Skull and Bones, Bohemian Grove.

The majority of these secret societies had/have a public face. That face was built to convince people that these organizations are NOT secret.

The public face is made out to be humanitarian in purpose.

Not secret. Not evil.

Called a cover story.

        12:21 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Trifecta!

Not everybody can bash Bill Gates, Rex Bush and the AIDS drug cartel in a single blast and do it well.

But then, not everyone is Greg Palast.

        10:44 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

You can lead a horse to a blog...

...but you can't make him blog: he has to want to blog!

Doug Kenline is a blog fanatic. That's a good thing.

He sets up blogs for people without asking them, and then leans on them to start blogging. That's a good and a bad thing.

It's bad for a couple of reasons. First, it's not for Doug to tell people what to do or how to do it. Imagine the trouble we'd all be in if people in the government thought in general the way Doug does about this.

Second, Doug is not telling these people why they should blog. He's telling them why he wants them to blog, but that's the worst sales technique on the planet: buy this because I want you to!

Yes, this is about sales. Doug is asking people to spend something: time. He needs to explain the benefits. And it can't just be a bunch of promises; today's buyers are too sophisticated for that. They check references, and in this case, that means you have to tell them something that bears fruit.

Most people on the net who have important things to say are already saying it through subscription lists and newsletters. Jon Rappoport does it though his website, possibly one of the original web-logs.

The people who have mailing lists and newsletters going out to thousands of interested proactively opted-in people are not going to see any value to a blog that just sits there waiting to be noticed by someone every couple of days. And they're not going to bother with any complicated or involved efforts to promote their blog, either. So Doug, you'll have to show them how that's not the way that it is.

The thing is, you can't just add something to someone's job description without their consent, and they're not going to add it themselves without first discovering their own interest and reasons.

That's the salesperson's job: help the person find those two things, and she'll do it.

For her own reasons, on her own initiative.

And that's a really good thing.

        1:46 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Getting IRS out of Stone Age?

Doug Kenline has begun a campaign to get the IRS to use email in communicating with "taxpayer" and other victims. He's already got a blog set up for the project, at irsemails.

Of course, there are technical challenges that the IRS could (can? does?) hide behind.

More about the internet than you'll ever need to know...

Email is sent "in the open". This means that your messages are travelling the net as simple text files, on the honor system, readable by anyone with a mail server. No need to go into the technology of how they are readable by other than the intended recipient, but they are. And anybody with an email server online can target whose email they want to intercept. Therefore, it wouldn't be that hard to set up a "sniffer" to watch for email coming FROM the IRS and read it for social security and other tax ID info, for whatever bad purpose such info can be put.

Doug asks why, if he can do web commerce, he can't have secure email. Actually, he can, but it is not because of e-commerce tech.

E-commerce is done through secure web servers, where you go to the vendor's secure site. You info is encrypted by your browser and transmitted directly to the vendor's server, where it is decrypted and then acted upon.

True, email could be done this way. In fact, it often is done in a *similar* way, but without the direct browser-to-vendor transmission of info. The way it is done still uses the old trans,mission in the open to get the email from the sender to the destination mail server, and then a web server at that end location provides an email reader page.

The really big difference between email and secure web browser sessions is in how the transmission is done. One is more like a telephone connection, and the other is more like a radio connection.

With a telephone, you dial a 10-digit number to connect across the country. International, more digits. This is because you are connecting, with each set of digits, to a particular exchange. Dial 1 and you are automatically queued for long distance. Then 650, and you are directed to the San Francisco peninsula. (64 gets you into Mountain View, and 3436 gets you my office.

Telephone is a direct connection. Even if it's done through satellites, it's still essentially a direct connection, although when the signal comes back down from the satellite it does come down all over the place, and it depends on the correct local receiver to capture the signal and the other receivers to ignore it.

Radio is what is called "broadcast", because that's what happens to the signal. It is cast out, broadly, over the entire service area. Any radio in that area can pick up that signal by being tuned to its frequency, and convert the signal into comprehensible noise: music, speech, etc.

Cell phones work (sort of) that way. To an extent. The signal control is reversed in the first part, however. It is the phone that initiates contact. As you move around, every 6 seconds or so your cell phone broadcasts a "Here I am--got anything for me" query. Every cell transceiver (tower) that detects the call reports back to its control that it has you in its area. It also reports your signal strength. That way, they know (a) which tower you are closest to, and (b) by calculating from relative signal strength, they can triangulate where you are to within less than 20 feet.

So your cell phone reaches out for calls. The local tower relays that query. If there is a call for you, it is being held in queue, and when your phone's query comes in, the control responds by telling it yes, you have an incoming call. Your phone starts ringing all by itself, to let you know to pick up. You pick up, the phone tells control you're on the line, and then the 2-way transmission begins. Very different from land-based telephones.

If you thought that was wild, you're right. Email is both stranger and simpler.

Simpler because it's passive: you don't have to make a connection when the email is being sent. You can come in later and get it like it was new.

Stranger because the internet doesn't know where its parts are! Every domain has an URL (Uniform Resource Locator) Like lawfulgov.org. That's for us human-language speakers. Behind the URL is an IP (Internet Protocol) address. That's a four-part number separated by dots (periods), each part including 1, 2, or 3 digits, like so: 209.126.224.128 If you click this link and go to that site, look at the address bar in your browser. Magic, huh?

The real magic is that the internet is so decentralized that it doesn't need to know the physical locations of anything. Well, almost.

Web browsers use that 4-part IP number much the same way that telephones use area codes and local exchange codes, narrow into a destination step-by-step until it reaches the machine with the last set of numbers. But that's going in from a single-user web browser. Until that happens, nothing else happens at all. The documents on the web are totally passive, sitting there until requested. Only when a web browser send an http (HyperText Transport Protocol) request for a specific document (like http://lawfulgov.org/proact.htm -or http://209.126.224.128/proact.htm :), is that document sent out.

Email is where it's most strange, compared to the way we normally think about communication.

Imagine you are in a room filled with people. You want to get a message to Joe, and you neither know nor care where he is in the room, because everybody has agreed to relay all messages until (apparently) Joe has it.

So you say what you want Joe to hear. Everybody next to you repeats it. Everybody next to them repeats it. Everybody repeats it once. When it comes back around to someone who has already repeated it, he ignores it. So there's a sudden short burst of noise in the room, and Joe has your message. Cool, huh?

But there are obvious things to consider. This means that every person in the room has to repeat every statement made by every other person in the room, except for those that he's already repeated. So that burst of noise we just discussed is not a one-time or isolated thing, it's a tiny piece of an incredible amount of noise that is always happening. In an ideal world, dying repetitions would make way for new ones,but people like the deal so there are always increasing numbers of new messages. The room can get so busy that nobody has time to repeat everything they receive.

A curiosity in this system is that in most cases, Joe will already have the message before all of the repetitions are done. He's already reading it, and some other people are still repeating it, just to make sure he gets it, and there's no way from them to know when he does. Better yet, he'll get it twice, too.... A quirk: he'll be the only one to pass the message on, of course.

In our example of people doing verbal repeating, messages would get lost as they forgot the ones that came in after the ones they still haven't repeated yet.. In the electronic world, where the message is a series of bits (zeros and ones, or on-off signals) that translate into text pages, and other types of documents, a different problem develops. Machines can remember for a long time, so messages don't get forgotten. Instead, the flow slows down as more and more items are put into queue. If this progresses too far, the "pipeline" clogs, and transmissions cease. Because of a fail-safe mechanism that prevents internet servers from consuming their entire memories with undelivered messages, messages can only be held in queue fro just so long, and then they are returned. If not returnable, dropped. As with people, effectively forgotten.

That's why spam is so bad. When you send a single email to a single person, it spins around the entire globe and registers twice at every "node". That could be thousands of places, twice each, for just one message. But wait, it's worse than that, even with just the one message. Emails are broken up into "packets" of information. The longer the email, the more packets. The more and bigger the attachments, the more packets. So a single email might have a thousand packets. Each email is assigned an ID number, and each packet carries that email-ID plus a packet ID. As the packets come in from all over the place to the destination server, they are re-assembled and deposited into a mail folder to wait for a user to pull up and read. Get this: a thousand packets a day from you to me, bouncing around through a thousands nodes until they all find me, times two arrivals at each node (one to be repeated, the second one ignored but only after being registered and checked for previous forwarding), and you have two million transactions on the internet just to get your fat email with attachments to me. And that doesn't even consider the computing actions taken at each node to do the registering, handling, and repeating or dropping of packets.

So when a spammer send out 10 million messages in a day....

And hundreds of thousands of irate spam victims respond with their malcontent....

It's a wonder the thing doesn't choke to death. Oh, wait, it is choking to death, and that's why there's so much concern about spam.

Back to why email, transmitted "in-the-open", is not secure.

Your message goes all around the world twice, to every node. People can "sample-in" at the nodes if they know how (not difficult, really), and read email as it goes by. Lots of hacker tricks for doing that in lots of different ways, not my job to teach them.

That's why you don't do e-commerce by email. You can do secure-connection web transactions in near-real time, but not email. And email is open text, not encrypted.

Ah, but...

That's not a problem. Email CAN be encrypted. It just takes a little more work than most lazy affluent computer-riding people are willing to do. You have to set it up in your email program.

The first problem after simple laziness is that you do have to use an email program. That means learning a program rather than just going to a website to read your email. Oops, that closes the door on half of us!

The next problem is setting up the encryption/decryption functions in your email program Oh, I forgot to mention, you have to use an email program that supports those plug-ins. There goes half of those who remain....

And then the biggest problem of all, you have to get the next guy to work through all those problems too, just so you have someone with whom you can exchange secure email. Of course, this is more trouble than it's worth to anyone but the CIA and other terrorist orgs.

And of course, the government has massive computing power and Carnivore, so they can crack your restricted-encryption (the wimpy level allowed to the public) emails almost as fast as you can change your encryption key, so there's no incentive to the non-big-corporate private sector to bother with encryption.

But it can be done, has been available for a few years now.

So badger the IRS to do it, Doug! But realize that you'll have to learn a few things, and use them, too.

And be prepared to argue that it IS worth the cost, because that will be the next objection now that you know they can do email securely if they want to.

        6:13 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

New Blog

Greg Palast has started a blog on his home page.

Palast is the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the truth about corporate cons, globalization, and high-finance fraudsters.

Although he's an American, he's a journalist for British outlets BBC Television and The Guardian's Observer, because the American controlled press won't publish his stuff.

So, he has started blogging to side-step the censorship.

Go Greg, GO!

        11:09 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

The Spoof is Mightier than the Scam...

Nobody in the real world has failed to receive at least one version of the Nigerian Scam spam. You know the one, where some widow or son of a dead African criminal has millions to share with you as a trusted and unrealistically recommended partner?

You know, the one where you have to open a bank account to receive the multi-millions they have stashed away over there in cash-rich Africa, only you have to make several increasingly large deposits into that account to cover transfer fees and to make the account look active and substantial enough that the banks won't ask any stupid questions, like, Whose money is this anyway, and why is it being transferred into an American nobody-schmuk's brand-new checking account?

Oh yes, and let's not forget the kicker: you make your Nigerian partner co-signatory on the account so s/he can withdraw the funds as needed to cover the fees, bribes and hookers.

Then one day the money has all been withdrawn and you get no more replies to your emails. This usually happens right after you start asking serious sensible questions, like, "Why is this taking so long and how come I gotta keep putting in more and more money --I'm starting to run out, you know...."

Well, here it is! The spoof-revenge we all wanted:

The 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference

From the site:

This is an excellent opportunity to meet your distinguished colleagues, learn new marketing techniques, and spend your hard-earned money.
...and...
Breakfast Kickoff Session:
Your choice: A hard boiled egg, or two slices of white bread and a cricket.

Don't miss the electrifying presentation,

Practical Discussion:
Mallam Mahmud Abacah answers the question, "Are 10 million emails a day too many?"

...and many more, listed right there on the site.

I particularly enjoyed the praises for the hotel amenities.

        11:35 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Isn't this rich?!!!

An email I just got privately from a researcher starts off with the following statement:

The IRS states "Some tax shelters are legal while others exploit ambiguities in tax laws."

Huh! "ambiguities in tax laws" -huh!

Anyone ever heard of "void for vagueness"?

Seems to me that people who are being charged in this manner have a perfect defense.

If the tax shelter exploits ambiguity in the tax laws, then those tax laws are admittedly ambiguous, and that is an ipso facto prima facie case of void for vagueness.

Somebody ought to do something about it.

Like maybe, everyone charged with abusive tax shelter should use that statement as a bully club to demand that IRS defend, prove and substantiate the laws they are using.

What we need is the source of this statement. Make sure it was actually said. And then start swinging.

ambiguous: 1. Open to more than one interpretation: an ambiguous reply. 2.
Doubtful or uncertain

void for vagueness: a doctrine requiring that a penal statute define a criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement
Note: Under the void-for-vagueness doctrine, a vague law is a violation of due process because the law does not provide fair warning of a prohibition and fails to set standards for enforcement that would govern the exercise of the police power.

        7:37 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Anybody Out There?

Does anybody out there know anything about this?

I Googled it and nothing came up. Ditto at ask.com (Ask Jeeves).

The source, Tom Flocco has retracted it on his website.

-0-

From: TomFlocco@cs.com
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 03:10:54 EDT
Subject: Florida Rep. Katherine Harris Dead in Plane Crash
CC: TomFlocco@cs.com
X-Mailer: 7.0 for Windows sub 8000

FLORIDA REP. KATHERINE HARRIS DEAD IN PLANE CRASH
Read Story at: TOM FLOCCO.Com [ http://www.tomflocco.com ]

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2003 (TomFlocco.com) -- According to a source who refused to be named in this story, Florida Congresswoman Katherine Harris (R-FL) died this morning in a light plane crash in foggy conditions near Toronto's island airport around 10:00 AM. The Toronto Islands are located on Lake Ontario, adjacent to Canada's mainland.

Reports and sources are as yet unable to confirm why the Florida congresswoman and former Secretary of State during Florida's 2000 presidential election controversy had flown from Chicago to Toronto; however, the source also said that Governor Jeb Bush was reportedly at the accident scene shortly after the crash.

Our internet search confirmed that there was a crash this morning in the Toronto Islands at about 9:57 AM, and that there is currently a search and recovery effort being conducted, according to a Toronto Globe and Mail report a 4:51 this afternoon. However, we also confirmed that there was activity in Harris' Washington, DC congressional office at least until midnight tonight -- on the Monday of a long Fourth of July holiday weekend when Congress is not even in session. READ MORE

        10:25 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

And Next...

Gottsta hand it to my friend Doug Kenline --he takes a beating like a man.

Sorry about that, Doug, let's be done with it.

I propose a more positive course for both of us. Maybe we can accomplish what you're after if we work together in a more constructive manner.

Maybe you could find different, more encouraging and supportive ways to prod people into action.

Maybe I could solve your problem with the IRS and with it, everyone's problems with the entire government monster.

I'm not being sarcastic. We're already two hearbeats away from terminating the personal driver's licence being mandatory. We just don't talk about it much because we're not going to hand loaded guns to people who don't know how to use them.

Maybe we could switch our efforts over somewhat and put some attention on applying the same principles to the individual income tax thing. Because, make no mistake about it, both the driver's licence and the individual income tax are single-point issues: jurisdiction.

And, jurisdiction is the crux of the response of the belligerent claimant in person anyway, so it all fits into what we do here at LawfulGov.org.

Now, for many of our friends, like Doug, the issue is pressing and immediate, and there's a good chance that we won't get there in time to prevent further damage. That's not okay, and I do feel for everyone in such straits, but I can't cry about what I can't prevent.

I'll just make it a super-high follow-up priority to come right back with some enemy-devastating legal retribution and recovery thingie.

Meanwhile? I know some people are going to hate me for this, but I just don't believe in sending unarmed untrained soldiers into battle against a powerful enemy. And even though I am a WTP coordinator, and would be National Coordinator right now if I had been a little more obedient, I fear that this is exactly what WTP is doing: pushing people to file anti-withholding papers with their employers, and pushing emlpoyers to stop withholding, without having put a fully-developed and tested legal strategy together. I see even more people jumping off cliffs without a safety net.

Therefore, I would not condemn anyone who backed off, who made an under-duress deal to save himself from sacrifice by the IRS. So long as he kept it clear that he was only surrendering and not agreeing, he could consider himself a financial prisoner of war, as would I.

We don't expect our official military to stand up and get themselves killed when their positions are hopeless; we expect them to surrender when it's hopeless, and live to maybe get free and fight again another day. The proof in this is in our pushing the Geneva Convention: we demand that prisoners of war be treated humanely. If we didn't expect there to be prisoners, we wouldn't have bothered with the treaty.

So: anybody who backs off because they don't know what to do, in order to avoid bankruptcy and homelessness because they truly don't know what to do, loses no standing with me. It would be hypocritical of me to hold otherwise, since I am so busy yelling at people not to jump off cliffs without parachutes.

As for the solution I mentioned above, I'll set to work on it. But you'll all have to give it time, don't be pounding on me about it.

Meanwhile, you might pound on the people who are encouraging you to jump off the cliff. If anybody, they are the ones who should already have done this.

And they are probably the ones I should be expressing the most frustration with.

And if you're looking for someone to support toward the demise of the individual income tax, I suspect that might be Larken Rose. He seems pretty confident that he's got them by the throat.

So let's blog for Freedom! Not against each other.

        12:39 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Bummer

Berating and belittling didn't work. Manipulation won't work. Nothing will "work". I will do what I will do.

Ich wolle macht.

My friend is looking a little too much like an enemy just now to continue the conversation. Being trouble, making trouble, not really helping.

Too bad.

I was starting to have high hopes for this blog thingie, too.

Well, I can always just make a filthy amount of money and spend it buying unemployed patriots' time, fulfilling their paycheck mentality, "saving" them from desperation and telling them how to fight this one through.

Nah. Probably have to fire a lot of them who think they already know how, what with all the successes they've had, and all. Might serve a purpose, though: give 'em one more thing to bitch about while they're fiding the next cliff to jump off without a parachute.

Certainly can't get much cooperation from people who are so wrapped up in their self-made troubles that they won't remember who their friends are.

Reminds me of an injured cat I found one night. Hit by a car, back broken, terrible situation, yowling in pain, fear and desperation. But no one could help the cat. It wouldn't let anyone close enough to get it into a box to ride to the vet. Finally a neighbor came out with a shotgun and settled the issue.

Bummer.

Do I sound frustrated, or is it just me?

        8:33 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

By the way...

Larken Rose is not complaining.

Unlike everyone else, Larken has a plan.

        8:17 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Bad Doug

My friend Doug Kenline thinks it's okay to berate and belittle people into doing what he wants. Thinks it's more manly or something than just asking. Heaven forbid he should be revealed as the choosy beggar.

Never mind that he doesn't want what they offer, even if it will get him what he is asking for.

Why is this guy my friend?

I've been in this movement for 40 years. Spent all that time either broke or giving it all away. I've got a lot of dead and broke friends who played it badly with the best of intentions. One thing I know for sure. If I try to rescue every well-meaning fool who jumps off a bridge without a plan, I'll be consumed in a day. I've wasted way too much in learning that, don't need to spend another dime or minute on that lesson.

Dick Simkanin had years to salt away a defense fund. I am astounded to hear that he needs help.

Gene Chapman is in his glory, and the worse off he gets materially, the more glorified he will be in his own eyes.

All of the oh-so-righteous (but misguided) Christians who think that material wealth is somehow the antithesis to spirituality (you can't have both, can't serve God and Mammon both) are getting exactly what they want: stripped of material possessions and martyred. So what the hell are they complaining about?

I could go on, but the point is obvious.

You guys go ahead on out there and play sacrificial lambs. Blame everyone else for the messes you're in because of your impatience and impulsiveness.

Hey, I've got a great idea --I know a guy in New York who's got a bunch of papers you can file on your way off the bridge. No safety net in place just yet, but maybe if you fall slowly enough you won't hit the rocks too hard.

So far, the patriot movement is a big stinking failure. And I'm not one to hand a pistol to a child, so if you don't like going through hoops, pin your hopes elsewhere.

Note that Doug complained that I seemed to be withholding something. Never occurred to him to just ask for it and see what happened.

I'm busy at work building a future world in liberty, and a multi-track path to get there. If it's not coming together the way you want, do it yourself.

        6:23 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Oh, well.

Doug Kenline wants to be saved. He doesn't want to help whoever's going to save him, he just wants to be saved. And whoever is going to save him will have to know all the tricks that lifeguards use to keep the drowning perople from taking them down too. Because the biggest obstacle to saving Doug Kenline is Doug Kenline.

Doug wants me to have a counter on my site. He put one there when he set it up, but right away it started badgering me about money. Piss off, I said to it, and killed it. I could probably find a free one, but I really just don't care enough. Doug likes to make things out about people that they are hiding things by not disclosing things. That's extremely simplistic thinking. There might be a thousand degrees of differing reasons somebody doesn't mention something, but in his tiny little narrow "the IRS is eating my lunch so I can't be competent at anything until it's over" world, Doug will never hear any of them because he's not listening.

I can understand why Mike Bodine (of WTP) thinks blogging is worthless. When you have the idly curious badgering you for details that mean absolutely nothing to anyone's survival, and accusing you of ill intent before you've even refused to "share", it's gotta be for many people to think that somebody needs a spanking and a lecture on how to mind his own business.

Especially if he's in the middle of a fall into oblivion because he ignorantly jumped off a cliff one day without a plan.

Yeah, that's definitely somebody who is entitled to tell everyone else what to do.

"Tell me how to do things, Doug, your own life working out so well and all...."

But if you listen really carefully to what Doug is actually saying, it isn't that he's interested in you or what you have to say about things in general at all. He's just hoping to God that somebody, anybody, will post his salvation from the IRS.

You're the Man, Doug. You're everyman. Metaphysically, there is only one man, the Archetype, in infinite manifestations. Each of us is him, each of us is One within many, and each of us is the One. Whatever you need done, you can do it.

But not if you won't do it. Not if you waste your life waiting for the miracle. Not if you need somebody else to save you.

You know Why?

There is no one else. You're it. You're all you've got. And you won't do it. You'll sit there in your self-imposed martyrdom and be a victim of one, just like so many so-called patriots, past and future, because you won't do what it takes.

I'm not talking about MyOwnHomeBiz here.

I could show you how to make a good living completely off the books, working within the patriot movement full-time. But I just don't see from your writings so far that you would do what it takes. You'd belittle the idea, you'd find some dirty name to call it, like "sales" or "patriot-for-profit".

Let me ask you something, buddy... Is WTP saving you? Is anyone from WTP even responding to you? Or do they just listen while you talk and then get off the phone and back to whatever they were doing?

Nobody can save you from the IRS. You have to become the belligerent claimant in person and break open a bunch of books, learn to listen rather than complain, pay attention rather than criticize, and somehow, don't ask me how, develop the discernment you appear to either be without or to have neglected for so long.

Admit it: Step One: you don't know what to do.

And if that's true, then you are not competent to judge anybody's instructions except by due diligence. Certainly not by opinion.

I am blogging for the people here, Doug, for I am not just talking to you. I'm on a blog, maybe it's read by a few people, maybe they will hear this message and be encouraged to pass it along. The message is simple.

Take responsibility for where you are and how you got there. And then for how you're going to get past it.

I can tell you this much. So long as you are feeling sorry for yourself and worrying about your silly car, I can't help you, because you just aren't ready to be helped to help yourself.

So cool it with being so critical of everybody. Nobody was born to take care of you.

Grow up.

        12:46 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Corrections to Doug

Doug Kenline is my best and worst critic.

He's the best because he stays on top of what's going on and isn't afraid to speak his mind.

He's the worst because he's rude and disrespectful, not just of me but apparently of nearly everyone. Certainly of anyone who isn't doing it the way he is.

But don't think I'm up in arms about it. I'll take him the way he is, because that's just the way it is.

Life's like that. Infinite possibilities, and it is what it is.

I don't ask Why?, I ask, Why not?!

About blogging.

If I were hosting blogs, the first thing I'd do is make sure everyone knew if there was a size limit. And if there was a size limit, I would make sure that big posts got broken into digestible parts and published anyway. And third, I'd make sure that backing up one's archives, etc., to one's own hard drive was easy.

Come to think of it, I will be hosting blogs before too long. But only for the LawfulGov.org facilitators, and for the WTPcongress coordinators who choose to have me host a Neticulum site for them. Because blogs, before I even knew what they were by name, have always been a part of the Neticulum. Look at the WTP demo Neticulum at wtpcongress.us and watch the center (white) column as you change locations.

Note that WTP is already providing websites for corrdinators, and that those sites do include a newsposting function. The two problems are that (1) most coordinators are not that computer savvy yet and no one's babysitting them through getting there, and (2), WTP can remove anything a coordinator posts, keeping the news the way they want it.

That's why I'll be going ahead to offer the Neticulum sites to the coordinators who want them; the WTP-provided sites are something, but they're not a lot, and the'll never match the Neticulum. So the coordinators will have a choice: adequate for free, or Cadillac for fee.

Ain't freedom wonderful?

For more info on these two projects, email me: allen@lawfulgov.org or allen.hacker@us.wtpcongress.us

About MyOwnHomeBiz:

Doug, you just haven't comprehended the thing yet.

Maybe you need to read more carefully, or more completely, or maybe you just need to be less distracted.

Your comment about spamming was completely out of line and misrepresentiative. The business includes a service that finds people who are proactively looking for a way to make a living through an internet or home-based business. It passes them on to us, and we email them an invitation following very tight restrictions. The invitations are expected, they are respectful, they are appreciated, and therefore they are not spam.

If you haven't read the entire site, and studied all three vendor-affiliate sites, then you don't know what it is yet.

It's NOT "health food"

I can't make promises about anybody getting any results. In this gloriously free slave-state, that would be illegal. But I can tell you about my own experience with the nutraceutical products.

I lost a little weight, my endurance went up (important at 54 with a part-time contracting business), I need less sleep, and my appetite went down. My net food bill only increased about $50, the other $128 being absorbed into the decreased spending on bulk food. Oh, and I have begun to lose my taste for sweets, junk- and fast-food, and caffeine.

I just put a few drops from a bottle into my water at each meal, and take a few plant-sourced capsules (not indigestible gelatin) with my meals and sometimes in between, and that's it. Couldn't be easier, no taste-offenses, not a big financial deal once the adjustment was made in my diet, which only took about two weeks.

Sorry about messing up your link in my last post, Doug.

Are you sorry about not paying attention to what I've been trying to tell you?

One last point about dealing with government.

Yes, you do have to file an SS4 with the IRS to get an EIN for a business. But it's not an SSN, at least. It's not personal. It's not slavery, it's business.

If you own a business and it makes a profit after all of its expenses, including after you pay yourself, then the remainer is commercial income. What's the gripe? As long as they don't come after your personal compensation, what's the bitch?

Taxes aren't going to end with the IRS getting kicked out of individuals' pockets. Business will always be taxable, and should be. That's why you set up a DBA and separate accounts in the first place; even if you're a sole proprietor you set up separate accounts.

No, that's not perfect. It's just good enough.

I can see that to make this work in the patriot community I'm going to have to do a lot of extra work, like teach proactively ignorant people why and how to use computers and software, and what the differences are between business and the paycheck mentality.

        12:58 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Re: BIG POST ERROR

Blogger screwed up.

I wrote a long involved explanation on the uniquenesses of my new business opportunity for Doug Kenline, but Blogger lost it when I published the change to my template in adding a link to MyOwnHomeBiz in the right-hand column.

I think "BIG POST ERROR" means that what I wrote was too long. Though I've seen longer.

If that's what it means, then shame on you, Bologger, (1) for setting limits, (2) not telling me [nothing in the help files I can find], and (3) for making it a fatal (unrecoverable by me) error to exceed them.

The REPORT IT note/link is directed to me; it has already been used to report it.

I've asked that they salvage the post from back-up and republish it.

We'll see. Probably won't anything happen till after the holiday weekend.

Meanwhile, Doug, some quickie answers:

I am the creator of MyOwnHomeBiz, but not a founder of the three MLM vendor companies that it combines.

It's different from what you know as MLM. That's explained on the site, and detailed in the lost post here, if they manage to recover it.

People in my uplines are making 6-and 7-figure incomes in each of the three vendors MLMs; MyOwnHomeBiz combines all three income streams into a package that promises to be even more powerful. Without the bulls--t bad practices of MLM as you know it.

It's not health food, Doug, it's supplements --drops of liquid you put into water, capsules of pwder you take with meals. I don't eat anything that tastes like the bag from Carl's Jr.

You have to look at what's being offered with new eyes, or you'll only see what you expect.

        11:17 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Drum roll... Economic Freedom (we hope)!

Okay, I've been threatening to introduce a new business opportunity. Here it is, just in time to ride the coattails of all those awful 4th of July used car sales....

MyOwnHomeBiz! myownhomebiz.info

Okay, so it's a cutesy / hokey name. It works.

Check it out.

        10:55 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

On Simkanin in jail

I've dealt with my share of off-tilt judges, state and federal. I've given over my lunch to, and eaten the lunches of, some very nasty attorneys. And I've had my moments of being amazed at the lengths to which some people will go to find enough fault in someone else that they don't have to look at themselves or their friends to see how they might have done even a little something to cause the mess they're in.

I'm not saying Simkanin is doing that. But certainly at least a few of our friends have.

One fine morning well near 20 years ago, when I was stood up in a state court (Nevada) and asked if I swore or affirmed to tell the truth, etc., I very firmly declared, "No."

The shock that spread through the courtroom was thick enough to smell.

Then I turned to the judge and told him, "I give you my word that everything I say here will be true."

Basically, I was telling the judge that I would answer questions truthfully, but also was not going to volunteer anything. The judge accepted, and we proceeded.

The prosecutor wasn't ready for that. He asked his questions poorly, and through my better understanding of the words and grammar he used, I answered the questions he asked rather than the questions he thought he was asking. One of those was crucial. He got nothing of what he expected, he got upset because he thought I was lying, and he lost his case.

As I stepped down, the judge said, "Thank you, Mr. Hacker, for the lesson."

What's my point? Be the belligerent claimant in person. Know who and what you are, and where and how you stand, and know how to operate in hostile environments. Know that you always take it to them to prove they're right.

It's been reported that the Gov't used Simkanin's Recission papers against him. (Recission is the proposition that you can opt out of an erroneously-entered or fraudulently-induced jurisdiction, standing, etc.) Presumably, Simkanin's papers included a repudiation of any claims of jurisdiction over him by any federal territorial court. Personally, I would not have included that because it's moot for obviousness, but no biggie.

The biggie is when, reportedly, Simkanin was asked about this in open court at the hearing last week and apparently reaffirmed his rejection of some form or another of jurisdiction on behalf of the court, he got locked up.

This is where my commentary goes onto thin ice: I'm a little short on specifics because instead of reporting details of what did happen, too many of the observers and commentators reported their opinions as to what happened.

The reported information is that Simkanin reaffirmed his rejection of the court's jurisdiction.

Now, if that was done as a general statement, then I cannot find any basis for surprise in the judge deciding to hold him to ensure that he appeared at the appointed time. I doubt it's about a flight risk so much as that it's simply about doubting that Simkanin would show up.

What would I have done, or tried to do? What should Simkanin do?

I would not have answered simply. I would not have said anything that appeared to be a blanket dismissal of the court's authority in toto, and I would not have allowed to go unchallenged any assertion that this is what the Recission statement meant.

When asked (if asked) if I denied the court's jurisdiction, I would have said, "No." This no doubt would raise the question of consistency. So I would have added, "Not if this court is sitting as, and guarantees to sit as, an Article Three constitutional court, and accords me all of my rights at all times, presumes the waiver of none of them, including my right to be confronted by all of the evidence and allegations against me at all times, which right among all others I do unwaveringly and forever assert, claim and demand."

I'd have looked the judge right in the eye, consciousness-to-consciousness, and said, "If you will give me your word that this is, and will happen, then I give you my word that I will cooperate fully with the court's needs and schedules in this matter, because I am even more anxious than the government to get to the truth of this matter, which is in fact a question of law rather than of fact. How say you?"

And I'd have waited for the judge to declare his venue.

Only one of two things can happen next. He agrees and we're off and running toward the death of the IRS as we know it, or he refuses and I notify him of my objection to his ruling, and that I hereby challenge the jurisdiction of the court inasmuch as it appears to be sitting as a star chamber and not a lawful court vis-a-vis my standing as a free and natural citizen.

And that would be the end of the proceedings while I appealed his position. I would refuse to participate in anything further until the jurisdictional challenge was adjudicated, at the Supreme Court if necessary.

And in any event, I would never understand the charges against me. I would be so stupid that they would have to explain every single detail of the law and my alleged duty to it.

And that's all we're after, in the end, is it not?

        10:15 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Rose Lear

Rose Lear wrote me privately in response to what I wrote just below.

People get tired, under stress, feel damaged, speak harshly sometimes, when under better circumstances, or taking a moment to consider it all, they wouldn't step out quite so brashly.

I don't need to tell you any details of what she said. I accept it. I'm not perfect either. She's up again in my esteem, for whatever that's worth.

I hope hers becomes a well-followed example.