In late 2000, as the close election for President came and went, there were a lot of people who said “George Bush isn’t my President!” That would piss me off to no end. I would get into quite a number of heated discussions about this. I mean, I didn’t vote for him, but I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Since none of the people that I talked to about this were professional psychics or fortune tellers, we had to go on the information we had in 2000.This evening, Mr. Bush (the one who is called President by some) gave a speech. There’s been a lot of discussion about the illegal immigrant situation lately. During this evening’s speech he announced that troops would now be placed on the United State’s southern border with Mexico in order to stem the rising tide of illegal Mexican immigrants. At one point, I might have thought that this was a good idea. But now I am officially screaming HELL NO!

As a libertarian the issue should roughly boil down to immigration and border security. Should people be allowed to immigrate? Most certainly. Should borders be protected? Definitely. This is not an either-or situation. We live in a day where people think that there are two choices: freedom or security, liberal or conservative, red or blue. In this case, you can have both immigration and border security. I stated that this issue “should” boil down to two issues.

Because of the excesses of this administration in terms of unconstitutional and illegal behavior, there is a third issue at work here. Mr. Bush has made it perfectly clear that he has violated the Fourth Amendment by illegally searching my communication records (and has strongly encouraged companies that I do business with to do the same). By declaring that American citizens can be whisked away and detained indefinitely without trial is in clear violation of the Sixth Amendment. The First Amendment has been violated by the creation of Free Speech Zones — specific places where the right to speak against the government apply. This is clearly an abridgement of free speech. And it’s not new that the Second Amendment — an amendment to protect citizens against kings, emperors and despots — has been eroded not just under this administration, but under those of Mr. Bush’s predecessors.

In light of these aggregious abuses of power, all decisions made by George W. Bush and his administration must be thouroughly reviewed with regard for their future potential of turning America into a police state. This is why I wholeheartedly oppose any attempt to station the US military anyway within the borders of this country. It starts with protecting the border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California and then turns into a strong military presence in the streets of Topeka, Kansas squelching the entirety of the American citizen’s Constitutional rights. That’s similar to when Mr. Bush said that only foreign terrorist’s communications records would be searched. Somehow it magically turned into American citizen’s communication records. Just like putting a frog in a boiling pot of water.

So, for all the sore loser liberals from late 2000 and early 2001, you were right. Unfortunately, you were right. He’s not our President. Having shit on the Constitution of the United States (the same document that says what a President is, what a President does and most importantly, what a President doesn’t do), he is no longer President. Thinking that he can make up laws on the fly and that the current laws do not apply to him makes him, in effect, a dictator.

In a strange way, I’m looking forward to the latter portion of 2006. Hopefully, people will realize that the Republican party has sold out the Constitution and all the freedoms that it offers. Maybe after the mid-term elections, the personnel in Congress will change. That’s not any sort of endorsement for the Democratic Party. They’re as big a bunch of sell-outs as the Republicans. For being as liberal as they supposedly are, you would think there would be more Congressional dissent in regard to civil liberties and privacy violations. Anyway, maybe if the personnel changes, we could see what real regime change looks like. That is, if we’re still free in November.

This weekend while flipping through the channels, I came across some C-SPAN coverage of a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin. I have a minor interest in Russia, since I took a year of Russian during my first year of college. In the early goings of his administration, I had a lot of hope for him, but that quickly faded. That’s kind of a running theme, I guess, for world “leaders” everywhere. Anyway, the speech that he was giving discussed the declining average Russian birthrates and lifespans.Now, I think that the average person wouldn’t think twice about what they were hearing. “Oh, how nice. He wants more babies and the elderly to live longer lives,” someone might think. But I know better. First, I know better because I realize that we are SPIRIT trapped in a MATERIAL existence due to the capricious and rapacious whims of a false deity called Yaldabaoth. Yaldabaoth’s servants, the Archons, constantly seek to influence earthly institutions and their “leaders” to create systems that keep SPIRIT trapped in the MATERIAL realm. Secondly, I know better because all governments push their programs in order to achieve their social and political goals. In this case, if there are fewer Russians, there are less soldiers to serve as cannon fodder for the imperialistic and expansionistic dreams of their “leaders”.

Along a similar, but completely different vein, the WB television network will be cancelling the show “7th Heaven“. Over its run, its been a favorite of the family-oriented families who haven’t yet given up on watching TV. Hope loves the show. I hate it mainly due to the variety of annoying characters. The only one’s that I can even stand are Ruthie and Kevin. I sometimes think about people who too closely associate actors with the characters they play. They might, for example, see the actress who plays Lucy on the street and then punch her in the nose for being a crazy bitch. That’s probably what I would do, since the annoying things her character does on that show gives even crazy bitches a bad name. I had waited for this day to come for so long. I often fantasized about the Sopranos making a special guest appearance and giving everyone on that set an Italian necktie. That, of course, would have been how the last episode ended.

The other annoying thing is their constant story-lines (at least on episodes that I’ve seen) about kids having sex (babies) and unmarried people having sex (babies). Remember, while it’s not cool for kids to have sex, give them a few years and a State-sanctioned marriage, and they can have all the little soldiers they want.

While Randolph Bourne may have said “War is the health of the state,” it is quite clear that any institutions that exist in the State may become “the health of the state”, whether it be education, religion or even family.

This weekend, while flipping through the channels, I came upon the NBC Sunday morning news show Meet the Press. The host was Tim Russert. The guest was House Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

To the transcript Nancy and Tim:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to gasoline prices. This is how Tom Friedman in The New York Times wrote about it. “What would OPEC do if it wanted to keep America addicted to oil? That’s easy. OPEC would urge the U.S. Congress to deal with the current spike in gasoline prices either by adopting the Republican proposal to give American drivers $100 dollars each, so they could continue driving gas-guzzling cars and buy gasoline at the current $3.50 a gallon, or by adopting the Democrats’ proposal for a 60-day lifting of the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents a gallon. Either one would be fine with OPEC. … We now have a Congress proposing to do exactly what our worst enemies would like us to do – subsidize our addiction to gasoline by breaking into our kids’ piggy banks to make it easier for us to pay the prices demanded by our oil pushers. … There is something really disturbing about the utterly shameless, utterly over-the-top Republican pandering and Democratic point-scoring that have been masquerading as governing in response to this energy crisis.”

What you didn’t get from the transcript was the name of the article that Tim Russert was quoting from. It flashed on the screen while he was reading portions of it. It was an op-ed piece that ran in the May 3rd edition of the New York Times called “Let’s (Third) Party” by Thomas Friedman.

The most telling part, however, was that Tim Russert pulled a snippet out to discuss, while totally ignoring the central point of the piece, which was:

What to do? I’m hoping for a third party. The situation is ripe for one: America is facing a challenge as big as the cold war — how we satisfy our long-term energy needs, at reasonable prices, while decreasing our dependence on oil and the bad governments that export it — and neither major party will offer a solution, because it requires sacrifice today for gain tomorrow.

Now, that would have been the question for Nancy Pelosi to answer!!! For too long, the established parties have vehemently denied the existence of any thoughts other than their own. At the same time, they have entire teams of dirty tricks people finding ways to bury competition from Green, Libertarian, Constitution and other alternative party and independent candidates who actually have innovative ideas. I only wish that Tim Russert wouldn’t have soft-balled her. What would Nancy have said? It’s tough to tell what kind of bullshit response she could come up with were she posed such a question. Having seen a lot of Nancy Pelosi on Sunday morning talk shows, Nancy’s the best at delivering bullshit responses with a straight face. I would suspect she’d say something like:

“People in third parties are kooks. Greens want to protect the environment. Libertarians are into privacy and civil liberties. The Constitution Party? It all sounds very fringe to me.”

And all with a straight face. And this country sinks further into the shitter. Kind of makes me wish I wasn’t too stupid to be confused by more than two choices on a ballot.