NFL Refuses Super Bowl Ad by Gun Company

By John P. Smith

Freelance Writer

(Watch the video introduction to this article.)

This is a simple one.  NFL won’t run an ad by a gun company.  I won’t watch the Super Bowl.  Hey, that’s ok if they want to take that stand.  The NFL has chosen a side in the gun rights controversy.

It’s also okay if I refuse to watch the game.  This really is simple:  They’re coming out in favor of taking away my right to own guns; I’m doing what I can to take money out of their pocket.

I like football.  I’m not a militant fan for any one team, but I like the game.  I rarely actively watch games, but I may be working on something else while the game is on in the room.  And I always watch the Super Bowl.  I have watched it for the past 30 years.

But it’ll be okay if I miss, too.  My refusal to watch may be the equivalent of throwing pebbles in the grand canyon, but it’s what I can do along with asking others to join me.  If you read the above article, you’ll see that the company, Daniel Defense, made certain their ad met all the NFL criteria.  They even offered to remove their logo at the end.  The NFL refused.  They chose a side.

Let’s look at a quote by one of our founding fathers.  I love to use these because they are so relevant to what is happening today.  The people who framed and ratified our Constitution saw the tyranny of this day coming and enacted measures to stop it, or at least slow it down.

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”  -- Benjamin Franklin.

How about another well-known quip from Ben:

“Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.”

Doesn’t giving up freedoms and liberties to be more secure sound like the mantra of Homeland Security? (And surely I’m not the only person who thinks “Homeland Security” sounds like a Soviet organization from the 1960’s?)

To make my point in this article, I was going to compare states with tight gun control laws versus states with open carry or more moderate laws and then look at the murder rates with other weapons, such as knives, blunt instruments or automobiles.  At every turn, it seems, guns and gun ownership are being criminalized and over-regulated.

They’re working hard to get laws passed and make it illegal for anyone to have firearms.  (And there’s some smartass out there right now saying, “Oh, and just who is this mysterious ‘They?’” “They” would be anyone trying to take away my Constitutionally guaranteed right to own firearms.)

For any who wish to view some statistics, some can be found here:  Gun Statistics 2010

Here’s some more data, called “Gun Control Facts,” the very name of which is biased in the direction of control of guns rather than freedom to own them.

Gun Ownership and Crime Statistics is slightly less biased.

Here’s what I think:  Screw the statistics.  The Constitution states clearly that the American people are allowed to have firearms.  Regardless of what the statistics say, that’s what it says.  Like it or not, we’re still a Constitutional Republic.  The fact that the ruling elite are unhappy with Second Amendment tells me it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: Making those bastards take a step back and say, “Whoa, wait a minute.  They still have all those guns.”

Because we still have all those guns, states, counties, districts and municipalities all over the country are falling all over themselves to pass gun control legislation.  Those people who want our weapons are really trying to get past that whole “shall not be infringed” part of the Second Amendment.  And some of them are doing it.

New York’s Gestapo Threat to Gun Owners

New York’s SAFE Act Allows Confiscation of Weapons

Colorado Sheriff's not allowed to fight gun control legislation.

Do some of these idiots actually believe that taking our guns will make them safer?  I just can’t see anybody being that short sighted and actually being able to put together a coherent sentence in English.  But it’s true; they think taking away my weapons will make them safer.

I have some news about that: Bad people will still have guns.  And so will these people. Note all the shootings of suspects by police.  These aren’t people found guilty.  These are people suspected of doing something wrong.  But they got shot anyway.  And you’re as likely to be next as I am.

Back to the main topic.  The leadership of the NFL has elected to take a stand.  In my opinion, they’ve picked the wrong side. So, until the leadership of the NFL changes their stance, I don’t watch their program. It’s what I can do. If we’re all doing what we can; we can make a difference.

Note:

AMENDMENT II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Help the NSA Read Your Mail

Search Engine Overload

Helping the NSA read your mail

By John P. Smith
Freelance Journalist

(Watch the introductory video for this article.)

We know the NSA and other government agencies are reading our mail and our social media posts. They do this in the name of the "War on Terror." The more the government tries to clamp down on everyone as a potential terrorist, the more they become part of the problem and in the end, they’ll be exactly what they’re supposed to be fighting against. Our own government has become more of a threat to us than any terrorist.

They are reading our email. Searching our Social Media posts. Highjacking our private messages. Our government appears to think that's okay, despite being a complete violation of our Constitutional right to privacy. 

What can we do about it?  We can do three things to limit their ability to read our correspondence:  We can stop using email and social media, text messaging and private blogs. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not even a real option.  We can deny them the information using encryption technology such as PGP.  (All governments hate PGP.)  Or, we can give them more than they can handle.  

I think search engine inundation is the way to go. Let's spam their search algorithms with key words until they can't possibly read it all. It will take some effort from everyone who’s willing to fight back.

FBI CIA ATF NSA DIA DHS TSA OBAMA BIDEN KERRY SECRET SERVICE SENATE CONGRESS TERRORIST BOMB ASSAULT KILL DESTROY BURN GUN PRESIDENT GAS ANTHRAX EXPLODE

I created the above line to put in the text of every one of my messages, emails or social media post. The idea is to overwhelm them with their own crap. Make EVERYTHING in the world flag in the search. There's no way a limited staff can sort through all that. But it won’t work that simply. For instance, the line is all CAPS. That’s easy to flag as a planted line and simply discard it.

This is not a new idea, spamming the government’s search routines.

Troll the NSA had a similar idea back in June, but they wanted everybody send out the same text.  That’s fairly easy to program around.

Motherboard.TV has a more random idea: nsa.motherboard.tv  But I clicked their random phrase generator about 20 times and hit the exact same phrase two times.  Not nearly random enough.

And there’s Scaremail which is a great idea.  But like the motherboard.tv generator, if it’s a computer program, it’s going to leave a signature of some kind and that will make it easy to filter out.

Very similar to Scaremail is Flagger.  This adds keywords to the urls visited by your browser.  It’s an addon for Google Chrome.  But, again, a computer program to place keywords is going to leave a signature.  It’s easy to filter out.

Here’s the list of words:  From Rense.com

Here’s the list of words:  From Reddit via Business Insider.

Here’s the list of words: From a site called 42X.

These lists do not exactly match. Also interesting: “Homeland Security” is not in either of the first two lists and “DHS” doesn’t show up in any of them, nor do the words “tactical” or “strategic.” The folks at 42X said the list was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. I’m not certain any of these are even authentic lists. Maybe they’re plants from the NSA to give us all something to focus on while they keep searching our mail. 

Make of that what you will. Also of note, none of the British alternative spellings are on the list. Nope. This list contains no French, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Etc., so I can logically establish that these list are for only American English speakers. We can also assume the NSA has hit lists for other languages. I see that PGP makes the list five times, once on its own and then four specific versions of it.  We know how the government hates PGP, but why would they target specific versions of it?  That kind of thing makes me suspicious.

Plenty of information is available on how the government is getting our private correspondence. And who’s letting them have it. So I won’t even go into that. The following is mostly speculation on my part, based on how I, as a programmer, would look for specific words in a gazillion intercepted messages, posts and emails.

How I think a typical search would work:

Information is collected.  First thing we need to do is strip out all the superfluous crap. A single line of text sent via email or posted on social media carries a long trail of data about servers, fonts, routes and addresses in the background.  Most of this data is useless to humans and so would be stripped (or simply skipped) so only the pertinent content data is sent on to the parsing routines.

Information is parsed, searching for keywords. This can be done one character or one word at a time, or by phrase or even by whole sentences, as required, to flag significant combinations of letters, words, etc.

Information is then scored based on the number and strength of hits when the information is compared to the database of keywords. The scoring algorithm assigns each keyword a value. The higher the score, the more likely the information is flagged as a possible threat, and the more likely the information is to be read by a real human. The value placed on a word will be based on the importance of the word itself, its placement in the text and the emphasis placed on it by the writer.

Let’s take a sample phrase: “So, I thought I’d kill some time watching the president of the Rotary Club speaking on the sex orgy tape found in the state Congress meeting room.“ The word “president” will have a high value while “sex” will have a much lower score. Once we see some of these keywords, we parse the text again for placement and emphasis. The words “kill”, “president”, “Congress” and “meeting” all being in the same block of text adds strength to the score. The word order is also important, so I would have a routine to adjust the score based on placement relative to other keywords: before or after, etc. Those words being in the same sentence, in that specific order, will probably raise a red flag somewhere in a DHS cubicle.

At this point, someone will actually read the text only to discover it’s someone speculating on how they might be looking at our correspondence and postings.  (Hello there, cubicle agent!  Is this going to get me another visit from the FBI?)

I would also think it possible, but not prudent, to score for grammatical emphasis. For instance, “President” versus “president” to distinguish exactly who is being talked about. This kinda assumes a potential terrorist would also be an English grammar jerk and is probably unlikely. I believe the same would be true of other emphasis, such as quotes, bold, italic and underline; they could be used, but would probably add more confusion than they’d clear up.  If I was writing these search routines, I’d strip the formatting to make the raw text easier to search.

But, there’s going to be some problems.  And what programmers do is make computers solve problems.  They can't possibly look at everything that flags due to keywords.  Their next logical step is to stop flagging, just ignoring, those SPECIFIC strings known to be planted. They can be skipped just like formatting.. This is where most of the plans and programs noted above ran into problems.  We have to break the strings up into non-uniform snippets.  There's nothing more random than several million people putting a string of data in whatever random order they prefer.  Still, some programming techniques employ fuzzy logic routines to look at something that's almost the same and say, yeah, that's close enough, we'll call it a non-hit.  It’s really a matter of playing the percentages.

Here's where anybody can get involved and help.

We humans have to be more random.  And isn’t that what we do best?  At the end of your email, post or message, add a line or two of keyword text from 2 to 2000 characters.  Copy and paste from the lists in the links or write your own.  Next time you post or mail, use the same text but add a period or comma, add another acronym, remove one, chance some capitalization.  Next week, use another random keyword string. Anything to make the strings of text dissimilar enough that a fuzzy logic routine won’t see it as part of a specific class of planted data.

We can also get a little more creative and use some of these words in our main body text.  Tell your friends that the “movie was a bomb,” or that you had a “blast at the lake.”  We all need to do whatever we can make it harder for them to read our mail.

For some more fun with NSA keywords, there’s the NSA Haiku Generator.

And if you need a laugh: This NSA list is kinda funny.

The Affordable Care Act: Some Thoughts

What is the ACA aka Obamacare?

Watch the video complement to this article.

We’ve all heard about the Affordable Care Act. Most people will know it as Obamacare.

Major media outlets are telling us it’s the best thing since sliced bread. But we know those talking heads are nothing more than sock puppets for the current administration. Political pundits, the opposition and doomsayers are telling us it’s another tax and is, of course, a harbinger of the apocalypse. Then again, those folks tend to think everything that happens is a sign of the end.




My opinion is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of all that. But where? How can we know? For one thing, the legislation is entirely too big (11,000 pages) to tackle in a single-sitting, quick read article. Anyone who wishes to read the full text of the act may do so. The PDF Compilation of the “Health Related” portions of the act is 974 pages. (I have not read all of this and I have no plan to do so.)

Let’s take a “Five W” approach and just look at some of the facts.
What is the Affordable Care Act? How about the official line: The following comes from Medicaid.gov.

The Affordable Care Act provides Americans with better health security by putting in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that will:

• Expand coverage,
• Hold insurance companies accountable,
• Lower health care costs,
• Guarantee more choice, and
• Enhance the quality of care for all Americans.

Who is affected? The above says “all Americans.”  And, the above list really sounds like a great idea. But let’s put some questions at the end of those bullets:

Expand coverage, for whom? And what exactly does that mean, anyway? The government offers the Healthcare.gov website to answer those questions. And we’re all aware of the problems associated with with the rollout of the website. The $394 million website doesn’t work. Oh, they’re working on it, they’ve dragged in experts from some of the biggest names in networking to get the site up and running properly. And, as a bonus, Obama became the first president to hold a press conference because his website was down. They’re also offering online live chat, phone and mail-in sign up.



Hold insurance companies accountable, to whom? Insurance companies are in business to make money. If they’re not held accountable by their customers, then they shouldn't be in business very long.  Having the government prop them up isn't the answer to poor customer service.

Lower health care costs, for whom? Here’s something interesting; I’ve done a lot of research on this subject and nowhere do I see reductions in the actual cost of healthcare. There will be those who want to argue the semantics of this statement, but it does say exactly that: Lower Health Care Costs. That’s not happening. Healthcare costs are growing and there’s nothing in the works to lower them. The ACA solution is to help people pay for insurance. That doesn’t do anything to actually lower the cost of care; only to reduce what some people will have to pay. And, logically, if the government is picking up the tab for lowered payments, then we all know where the money is coming from. We who work and pay taxes are picking up the bill. It’s really a no-brainer. No, it’s not socialized medicine. In my opinion, socialized medicine would be much better.


Guarantee more choice. Why does that even need a guarantee? Think about that… We’re being forced to buy insurance. Our choices are already limited.

Enhance the quality of care for all Americans. This is a fine example of political doublespeak to try to sell something.

When does all this happen? According to Wikipedia, which has a well-written article on the act, “The ACA includes numerous provisions that take effect between 2010 and 2020. Policies issued before 2010 are exempted by a grandfather clause from many of the changes to insurance standards, but they are affected by other provisions. Significant reforms are to take effect by January 1, 2014.” (See the listing here.)

(Yes, I know Wikipedia is often not considered a legitimate source for journalistic research. I say it depends on what you’re researching. In this case, Wikipedia had the most comprehensive, readable, understandable and concise article I could find. The Wikipedia article carries a slight leaning toward the Obama camp, but not so much it sickened me. The majority of articles out there tend to be grossly pro-ACA or vehemently anti-Obamacare.)

Why is this necessary? First, it does take care of some gaps in coverage, such as companies denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. This is good. But was a complete overhaul of the U.S. healthcare establishment actually needed? When medical bills are the cause of nearly half the bankruptcy filings in the country? Yes. Is this the right way to go about it? No. Forcing people to buy insurance isn’t the solution. Socialized medicine would be a better solution. Please don’t misunderstand: My opinion is that a government-run healthcare system would be a fiscal disaster mired in bureaucratic quicksand and fraught with incompetence, cover-ups, scandals. (And I consider myself an optimist.) But it would still be better than forcing us to buy third-party insurance. While the British and Canadian models may have their problems, those populations, on the whole, have better healthcare than we do in the U.S.

Where does this end? In more deficit. And more government control of the lives of U. S. citizens. This video from Stormcloudsgathering takes a more fatalistic approach; but not necessarily an unrealistic view.



Is there a bottom line here? Nothing concrete. The Affordable Care Act will lower healthcare premium costs for some, increase it for others and generally make healthcare more available to the general population. That’s a good thing. In the bigger picture, however, the U.S. government says: You will have insurance, you will pay for it, and if you do not, we will fine you, garnish your wages or otherwise punish you for not doing things our way. The Affordable Care Act is about control. Like any legislation created by government: It only serves to take away rights and freedoms.

Re-Think 9/11

This is worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHi_6hlUezM#t=734

Something Not Gloom and Doom

Afternoon Exercise: 2 Sept. 2013


I started with a good warm-up and stretch.
I jogged across the road and took a dozen swings.

































Then I went for a walk/jog along the trails behind the house.




Beside one of the paths, I ran into this big girl straight out of my worst nightmares.

I tried several takes at getting a close up of a bee on a flower in one of the fields, but couldn't seem to get the focus right. Moving on, I was hoping to see some other creatures, besides Shelob up there. Nash stirred up a big red squirrel, but that guy was moving just way too fast for me to catch a shot. He high-tailed it up a hickory and was out of sight before I could even get the camera turned on.

Further down the trail, I found muskadines ripening on the vine, some of them nearly ready; some not so much. And some intermixed with green persimmons.






























Finally, I was left with this not-so-gentle reminder of just who's running things around here...

The Soup Sandwich

By John P. Smith

I’ve been watching a lot of conspiracy videos, reading forums and news feeds lately. And accessing other, more informative, types of news. I rarely watch the cable or network channels -- that’s not news.  Discerning what is real and what is bullshit can be a problem.

 

I have no doubt that there’s some hinky stuff going down in the world.  Weird shit is happening all over.  From what I have gathered, most of the conspiracy theories are based on information without solid context.  Perhaps based on the truth, but not all the truth; in many cases, we just don’t have the missing link that ties it all together into a giant world government meat grinder sucking us toward inevitable global enslavement.  Not yet; not anyway.  Maybe it’s out there.

 

I try to keep in mind that I’m researching.  I’m not looking for a needle in a haystack; I want to know everything that haystack is made of...needles, pins, bullshit, cowshit, horseshit, hay, grass, weeds, vines, briars, sticks, leaves, dirt, rocks, snakes, bugs, spiders, ants, and etc.

 

But remember, it’s the internet.  I can show you a quote on the internet by Abe Lincoln reminding you that anybody can (and anybody does) put out bullshit on the internet.  We use the term TMI often nowadays to indicate that someone is telling us more than we want to know.  That condition is also possible when researching and discovering what is available on the internet about what’s “REALLY” going on out there.  Look too much and suddenly it’s like having to put together a 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle without seeing the picture.  It’s just not easy to get all the pieces in place to see the whole thing.

I also think that maybe we all want to see a global conspiracy come to light because of the even-more-frightening alternatives.

 

It could be that we’re hurtling willy nilly through space with no one at the helm.  That is kinda scary, in a way.  Or, humans aren’t in control at all.  There’s “evidence” to support that theory. The Nibiru theory holds some water with some science to back it up.  Literally hundreds of documents, photographs, photocopies, eye witnesses, recordings, etc., are out there to back up whatever theory needs support.

 

That being said, logic dictates that we consider another alternative: Our government, the governments of the world, are so blatantly incompetent they’ve dug themselves into a pit, using the tools of greed and selfishness, that now they can’t climb out even by standing on each other.  They’ve messed it up so bad, there’s no way it can be fixed.  They didn’t do it on purpose; that would require thinking ahead and considering consequences. No, it just turned out that way because they’re a bunch of stupid, selfish, greedy dickheads who also happen to be our bosses.

 

Do we believe in an all-encompassing conspiracy with diabolical, evil geniuses plotting to enslave us?  Or, do we believe that our planet is fucked up like a soup sandwich because the people running the show are just plain stupid?

Which do you choose?

The Drones in America

By John P. Smith

This drone thing: I'm seeing a lot of fear out in the world about how the big, bad, mean old government is going to start using Drone aircraft to spy on us. Really, there are much more effective and less intrusive ways the good old government is already spying on us. But, then again, we know the government is run by retards and they are likely believe that using Drones to search and destroy U.S. Citizens is a good idea.

First: Why the fear of Drones? My opinion: It's so impersonal. War, fighting, even spying, is a time-honored and glorious pass-time where one man versus another in some form. With drones, it's not so. There's a nerd in a bunker somewhere piloting a killing machine with nothing more at stake than a reprimand for losing an expensive aircraft if something goes terribly wrong...for him. For whomever he's tracking, it's all about life for death. Very impersonal. Then again, the navies of the world have had to deal with that since the invention of the submarine and guns that could fire over the horizon.

These Drones everyone is so afraid of? Built by the lowest bidder.

The U.S. infantry has some pretty good “common sense” rules about conflict.  One of those being the first rule of gunfights:  Have a gun.  Only slightly less well-known is the rule that if the enemy is in range, so are you.

So when the big mean government sends drones after you because you have the audacity to sell milk straight from the cow or some equally heinous crime, remember the two rules above.

If you’re armed, you can fight back.  If you’re a hard-core bootlegger of wholesome, healthy, non-government-certified, raw milk, and have finally raised the ire of Big Brother to the point where he’s sending drones down on you, destruction of government property will be the least of your worries.  

The point here: These drones are aircraft.  Granted, they’re small and fast, but they can be shot down with small arms.  They will fall out of the sky.  They can be armed with missiles or rockets, but they still have to get close enough to shoot at you.  When they do; you can shoot at them, too.  (This does have some drawbacks, as some drones can actually shoot at you from as far away as 5 miles.)

But those guys only get one shot.   And, they have to find you first. Odds are, you will not be alone. Keep in mind, also, that there are a lot more of us with guns than the government can ever build drones.  

The possibility of knocking the drone down without gunfire also exists: A directed Electromagnetic Pulse might just do the trick.  The drawback of that being, your electronics will likely stop working also.  And, surely somewhere on the internet, one can find and purchase a Stinger missile or two...

At least you’ll be fighting back.

If you are not armed; that’s a problem for you.  Your government won’t care.  Sure, you’re the victim of an attack and can be righteously indignant and very angry with your government.  Of course, that won’t do you a whole lot of good when you’re a bullet-riddled corpse in a two-bedroom farmhouse on a small plot of land with a couple of outbuildings, including the infamous dairy barn.

(The government will call it a “compound” and feed the media the grisly details of your standoff with the law and how the house accidentally caught fire and burned up, destroying any evidence that you and any friends died of anything but your own stupidity.  Then they will have it bulldozed and hauled off as soon as possible.  (Surely I’m not the only one who sees this pattern...))