Amazon.com is getting a little too clever. I received an e-mail message
promoting the "Encyclopedia of Digital Government," based on my past
activity.
At the bottom of the message, under "More to Explore," Amazon suggested:
- Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages
- Giving The Love That Heals
- Couples Companion: Meditations & Exercises for Getting the Love You
Want:
A
Workbook for Couples
It was kind enough not to come right out and say, "We've noticed that
customers
who purchase 1,600 page encyclopedias on e-government also have partners
who
say they need some work on relation****p skills."
*.*
Oneliners
Due to intense mind fog, all my thoughts have been grounded.
They say it is better to give than to receive. I say it depends on the
gift.
Everyone who hates speeding tickets, raise your right foot.
I bought a new boomerang but I can't seem to throw the old one away.
If you do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always
gotten.
Excuse me for driving so closely in front of you.
I clean my house every other day. Today is the other day.
The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop
me?
It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you lay the blame.
I was a bank teller. That was a great job. I was bringing home $450,000
a week.
A golf course is a site to be holed
Ever notice that 'What the hell' is always the right decision?
If I ever had twins, I'd use one for parts.
*.*
If I could find a way to fax my kids to daycare,
I'd save 45 minutes a day.
This season is tied with the hurricane season of 1933.
My grandfather says he doesn't remember global warming back then.
Bush drove three companies into bankruptcy and now,
he's doing it to us and our country.
Never run from your fears because
when they catch up to you, you're too tired to fight.
*.*
The New Version of the Birds and Bees
Little boy goes to his father and asks "Daddy, how was I born?"
The father answers: "Well, son,
I guess you'll have to find out sooner or later.
Your Mom and I first got together in a chat room on Yahoo.
Then I set up a date with your Mom,
via e-mail, and we met at a cyber-cafe.
We sneaked into a secluded room where your mother
agreed to a Download from my hard drive.
As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that
neither one of us had used a firewall,
and since it was too late to hit the delete button,
nine months later
a blessed little Pop-Up appeared and said,
"You've Got Male".
*.*
The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that
all who are laughed at are geniuses.
They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton,
they laughed at the Wright Brothers but
they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
I moved from Southern California up to a rural area
of the Pacific Northwest recently.
While the scenery up here is beautiful, the women-folk
do leave a little to be desired in the areas of vanity and appeal.
I won't be the one to say they're NOT attractive,
but they held a beauty-pageant here last summer... and nobody won.
Issue of the Times;
The Revolutionary Candidate by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
No one quite knows what to do about Congressman Ron Paul, Republican
candidate for president.
He refuses to play by the rules. He's a bigger sup****ter of the free
market
than anyone in Congress, but he's also the most consistent opponent of
war.
(That the conjunction of these positions - which amount to classical
liberalism in a nutshell - should actually seem surprising or odd goes to
show how perverse our political system has become.)
Other than Dennis Kucinich, he is the only authentic antiwar candidate in
either party. He has won so many awards from the National Taxpayers Union
that he's probably lost count. CNET rated him the best out of all 435
congressmen in the House of Representatives on issues relating to the
Internet. There is no more reliable civil libertarian in Congress than Ron
Paul.
His conduct, moreover, is beyond reproach. Lobbyists don't even bother
going
to his office. If their scheme doesn't fall among the federal government's
enumerated powers under the Constitution, they know perfectly well that
there is no chance Ron Paul will sup****t it.
Paul's new book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom, calls for the abandonment of
hyper-interventionism and the restoration of a foreign policy of commerce
and peace. Although more and more Americans polled agree that their
government should mind its own business and try to scale back its
impossible
commitments - Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes of Columbia and Harvard,
respectively, now say that their initial estimate of $2 trillion as the
long-term cost of the Iraq war is too low - no one in politics other than
Ron Paul will actually say such a thing, much less write a book about it.
At
last we have a choice, not an echo, as Phyllis Schlafly used to put it.
Dr. Paul, an Ob/Gyn who has delivered 4,000 babies in his career, utterly
defies the view of the world shared by right-wing blogs and talk radio, in
which America is divided into "liberals" who oppose the Iraq war and
conservatives who sup****t it. (As I've shown in the past, "liberals" don't
have a particularly stellar antiwar record over the past hundred years,
and
the "liberal media," including the Wa****ngton Post, the New York Times,
and
the cable news networks, overwhelmingly sup****ted the Iraq war.) Ron
Paul's
candidacy is having the useful effect of showing people that their
ideological choices are not limited to Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh. You
can
in fact be antiwar without being a leftist.
At the same time, some on the left are giving Paul a respectful hearing,
sensing that this is no ordinary politician. A writer for The Nation
argued
that "this Constitution-wielding contender, who voted against authorizing
Bush to invade and occupy Iraq and has steadily opposed that war since its
launch four years ago, would certainly make the GOP debates worth watching
-
and perhaps applauding."
A writer for the Keene Free Press, who admits he doesn't "normally give
Republicans much of a hearing," found himself in for a "pleasant surprise"
at one of Paul's New Hamp****re speeches. "His speech, like his candidacy,
is
refre****ng. Paul seems to be genuinely authentic. He doesn't have the feel
of a politician. His arguments are substantive, and his demeanor warm."
For my part, I hope Paul decides to run. In a weak field, Paul is a true
champion. America is at a critical crossroads. Our liberties have been
trampled. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are in shambles. Our
reputation has been tarnished internationally by decades of provocative
foreign policy. Paul is the only candidate thus far who seems interested
in
reversing that trend. And for that, if he runs, he has my vote.
An antiwar Republican who is also much sounder on other issues than they
are - this is not exactly welcome news to neoconservatives. Not long ago,
the neoconservative Pajamas Media featured a presidential poll on which
Ron
Paul kept winning. That wasn't the outcome they wanted, naturally, so they
finally removed him from contention in order to make things come out
right.
Covering their tracks, Pajamas Media tried to claim that they wanted to
feature only those candidates who registered at least one percent in
national polls. When Ron Paul surpassed that figure, however, they still
refused to include him, even though they have included people like Tommy
Thompson who are at zero percent because they are not actually running for
president.
Paul did manage to make his way onto the Fox News Channel thanks to the
entreaties of hundreds of viewers who wrote to the station demanding to
know
why the "fair and balanced" network had totally neglected the Paul
candidacy. It was a short appearance on Fox News Live's "Because You
Asked"
feature, which features stories that viewers themselves have asked to be
covered.
Ron Paul has made numerous media appearances, from C-SPAN to Lou Dobbs,
since and prior to the announcement of his candidacy. Still, the strategy
thus far has been to ignore him to the extent possible. That approach
cannot
work in the long run, since for one thing the enthusiasm for Dr. Paul all
over the Internet cannot be contained forever. For another, people are
going
to become curious about him when they watch, or hear re****ts about, the
first Republican primary debate on May 3. They'll see a bunch of
establishment hacks uttering platitudes devised for them by handlers and
focus groups, and they'll see Ron Paul, who unlike his opponents is not
only
intelligent enough to write his own speeches, but who will also raise
questions the other candidates would prefer not to discuss. He can pummel
every single one of them on their lousy records on taxes, the
Constitution,
and war. Ron Paul is about to spoil the party. This will be like no other
Republican primary debate in many, many years.
Now that will get him noticed.
Think of how much less interesting, indeed how downright intolerable, this
election cycle would be without Ron Paul: a bunch of hacks and drones, not
one of whom would make a single substantial change to Wa****ngton, D.C., if
elected. Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani may as well drop the pretense
and
just run on the same ticket, for heaven's sake. And since they're part of
the same racket, they both despise Ron Paul much more than they dislike
each
other - another excellent endorsement of Dr. Paul, of course.
I've sometimes said that political discourse in America today consists of
a
three-by-five card from which no one is permitted to stray. The issues
we're
allowed to discuss are confined to whether the top tax rate should be 35
percent or 38.1 percent, for example, or whether the U.S. government
should
invade country A or country B. If you argue that the questions themselves
are faulty in that they unduly restrict our choices, you have strayed from
the three-by-five card and will not appear on Meet the Press ever again.
Ron Paul has a tremendous op****tunity to shred that three-by-five card
once
and for all.
Quote of the Times;
If you have 10,000 regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Link of the Times;
http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-new2.cfm?doc_name=inv2
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