Nads Photoblog #2

2010-02-21T21:59:00.002-06:00

Welcome to another week of photoblog from nads.

Let's kick off the evening with a picture of a fat mexican kid i hugged. he was awesome.

Next, a mushroom. There were irrational numbers of mushrooms all around last summer.

I don't think these next three need any explanation.

Hello, Mr. Squirrel!

This reminds me a lot of the South Park intro. I didn't mean to emulate that.

What's this? I can do close up pictures? How about a quarter to test that out?

And an eye.

Sup, I'm a guppy. *wave*

Nads Photoblog #1

2010-02-15T01:58:00.004-06:00

With any luck, this will become a regular feature around here. In any case, Fora admin nads is guestposting today.

_____________________________________________________________

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first nads-photoblog! as any of you who keep up with the fora (which surely is all of you...) know, I'm an aspiring photographer. I have been since long before I had a good camera. I'm going to show you five of my favorite pictures from my old camera, as well as five pictures from my new one. Please keep in mind that the quality of my pictures should improve drastically as my skill does.

Alright! Our first stop in phototown goes right past a transformer enclosure at the darkest possible moment which my camera could take a picture.

next, we have some strange colored clouds, and a car that appears to have reached 88 miles per hour...

I've mentioned before that I want to delve into blacksmithing. While I was participating in my first-ever smithing event, I snapped this.

Christmas 2009 - heavy snow, Chadron high rise.

One very early morning at the end of august 2009. The only thing I can remember about this morning was that Krad and I decided to stay up until our local donut shop opened, and then walk around. I had an excellent peanutbutter-thing. I digress; here is your picture.

Onward to pics from my new camera. You all saw this first one. I'm a bit more proud of it than i should be.

Attempting to make use of the manual focus, I took this picture of my stove timer through the refrigerator handle. It's not amazing at all, and it's still too blurry.

NUCLEAR CAT IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE YOUR EARTHS

smiley face drawn on a finger. I did this with manual focus because the autofocus literally couldn't do it. As it was, that was very difficult to focus on.

Finally, another cat.

Fora Meme 1: Kythera Rides Again/Horseytime

2009-11-15T13:08:00.003-06:00

This is gonna be a series, I think. The Fora, in its long existence, has accumulated original memes the way plumbing systems build up shit accretions. There's actually more here than initially comes to mind, so we'll be here a while. I'll try to start old and work my way forward.

First off is these gems:

Backstory is this. An ex-admin, Kohlee03, was ~~a total slut~~ very interested in discussing sex, and demanded that I make a sex forum. Kythera is what I called it-it was a Greek island that was an ancient center of worship of the goddess Aphrodite, and therefore kept with my pretentious Greco-Roman forum naming scheme.

Anyway, threads that got really raunchy would invariably be moved to Kythera. And threads seemed to be getting raunchy all the time. So, bored one day, I cooked up "Kythera Rides Again" to make fun of the sex-obsessed maniacs populating my Fora. That got repeated ad nauseam until the ghost of MC Hammer did a take on it. The Fora itself made fun of the meme, which in turn led to this.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Periods.

2009-11-15T13:02:00.003-06:00

One of the Operators (my new name for Switchboardies, GET IT I MAEK JOEK LOLL) made a thread about ridin' the cotton pony. Initial squeamishness has turned, as always, into nos and myself revealing way too much about our personal lives. I can't even use the excuse that I was drunk this time; I only had 2 gin and tonics last night and couldn't even manage to leave the bar properly wasted.

But let's make lemonade out of these lemons (blood sausage out of this... nevermind?) and do an informal sort of survey here. I've heard both things-that a chick in a relationship will NEVER fuck a guy when she's on her period, and obviously I've experienced the other option personally. So, all you ladies on the internet, weigh in in the comments section below: do you sex on the rag or no?

Okay, let's get this shit back on track.

2009-11-03T00:47:00.002-06:00

The last post here is from back when I was in the Libertarian Party, lol.

Anyway. It's been two years, so I'm obligated to try to take the blog seriously again. If you want to blog here, set up a Blogger account and tell me so I can add you to this blog. You gotta be at least a semi-regular poster on the Fora. Don't apply if you won't do it. And give me a pic and a bio to use on the author's page.

Also, I purged some authors who aren't posting here anymore.

In any case, let's try to remember that the blog exists too, dudes.

Latest anti-war LP ad

2006-06-16T03:17:00.000-05:00

Now if only we had the money to air this...

Props.

I fucking love the Constitution Party

2006-05-20T22:08:00.000-05:00

...if only because they're so easy to pick on.

Check this shit out.

They actually believe America was founded as a Christian nation. And their "moderate" guy, who is reviled by the party because he thinks abortion to save the life of the mother is acceptable, doesn't pay income taxes. LOL! They clearly are making a fashion statement with those tinfoil hats.

The gas tax

2006-04-27T03:04:00.000-05:00

The Libertarian Party just issued a press release regarding the gas tax's part in making gasoline expensive, implying we should repeal it. While I support my party, I honestly do think that they're wrong on this issue.

First off, if you're going to tax something, you might as well tax in a way that some benefit may be derived. If you tax incomes, there will be less income... so that's not good. Tax sales, there will be less sales made... so that's not good. Generally, when you tax something, there's less demand for it... so it's best to tax things that you don't want to be overused, like land or, in this case, finite natural resources and things that pollute.

I know that there is a "purist" crowd in the LP that's all "We want no taxes whatsoever and we want them yesterday!" And, with a few minute exceptions, I generally agree with their sentiment, if not their methodology. But this is not one of those cases. Everyone is entitled to a share of the commons, and if that requires rationing through artificially high prices, with the extra money raised lowering the tax burden on everyone else, then so be it. Also, if we're going to give Kyoto the finger, we'd better have some other rational, logical way to cut down on pollution (which is a shame, because Kyoto made shitloads of sense too). There's also the matter that gas taxes go towards paying for roads, so it's a close approximation to a user fee, which is something the LP supports in lieu of taxation.

Given all of the above, if we're going to focus on a tax to cut, make it something that matters more, like the income tax or the payroll tax! Don't make it this. In fact, given that the payroll tax is already disgustingly regressive (and the gasoline tax's main flaw is its regressivity), we could have a revenue-neutral switch from the payroll tax to an expanded gasoline tax, with the gas tax's extra revenue going towards Social Security instead. You'd get to keep more of what you actually earned, and, as the rich tend to consume more fuel than the poor, the poorest among us would actually be paying a little less in taxes in total.

I don't see why we do this; everyone would win. There would be a better environment and a more progressive tax system for the liberals; there would be a simpler taxation system for the conservatives, and there would be another way to reduce one's tax burden for the libertarians (via driving more fuel-efficient cars). The Libertarian Party ought to be more pragmatic about this, and in things in general; finding ways to increase liberty that also naturally increase other values (and thus win us a broader audience).

The latest casualty of the War in Iraq...

2006-04-19T00:12:00.000-05:00

...is local Drug War funding.

Taken from the Star-Herald:

Nelson met Friday with law enforcement officers from the Scottsbluff Police Department, Gering Police Department, Alliance Police Department and Scotts Bluff County Sheriff's Department on the impact of cuts to the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants program. For the second year in a row, the program has been slated for cuts as funds continue to be diverted to the war in Iraq and Homeland security funds.
The cut in funding has meant a serious impact on law enforcement efforts to investigate drug offenses and violent crimes as methamphetamine use surges, Nelson and area law enforcement said. Nelson said he hopes to take information he has learned from regional task forces throughout the state to help other senators and national leaders understand the significance of funds in the state of Nebraska. Often times, senators from larger metropolitan areas see Byrne funds as supplemental funds, while senators from rural areas understand that the funds are vital pieces of budgets for regional task forces and police departments, he said.
"When it comes to rural issues in Washington, they don't get it," Nelson said. "They don't understand the challenges of wide open spaces.
Byrne funding to Nebraska has been declining since 2003, with the most significant cut made in this last year. In 2005, Byrne funds to the state were about $3.3 million, with more than $1.1 million directly awarded to local law enforcement agencies throughout the state. In 2006, funding to Nebraska suffered a substantial hit, with funds cut to $1.9 million and only an estimated $651,000 in direct awards to law enforcement allotted.
In 2006, funds expected to be awarded to the Western Nebraska Intelligence and Narcotics Group were zeroed out because funding cuts for the program resulted in changes in the way that funds were awarded. Under the new program, localities qualifying for $10,000 or more get a direct award.

I find it darkly ironic that Bush, staunch Drug Warrior he, may be one of the biggest aids in ending the drug war. All the laws in the world are meaningless if there is no enforcement.

Hopefully, local communities will be smart about this as well. Rural Nebraska isn't an economic powerhouse by any means, so there's little hope of making up the budget shortfall locally. So I hope they target what's left of this money on the more dangerous drugs, and leave safe drugs like marijuana alone. I also hope that the support for this program remains faded after the end of the Iraq War.

A flurry of activity

2006-04-16T22:27:00.001-05:00

As you can see, I've done a lot with the site as of late. The blog has just gotten three updates in a row, and this is the fourth. Mostly it's just cross-posts from Hammer of Truth, but I will try to give you folks more brainfood to munch on in this corner of the site.

For those of you exasperated by having to jump to the blog and THEN to the forum (because of that alphabet soup InvisionPlus calls a URL), worry not-you can go straight to the forum by going to http://forums.foraaugusta.com. I'm in the midst of facelifting our Fora-just minor changes, I assure you-but by the end of it we will have a better site to play with.

In case you haven't heard, we're currently raising funds for the Fora Ad Campaign. This will, hopefully, bring in tons of traffic to the site, and for a minimal cost-a single ad capable of reaching 300,000 people costs as little as $35. So, if you've got extra money and a civic spirit, we can make beautiful things happen.

That's all for now, folks.

New poll numbers for Bush impeachment

2006-04-16T22:27:00.000-05:00

It seems that 86% of voters think Bush should be impeached. Admittedly this isn't a scientific poll, but nonetheless there is likely to be a nearly-random cross-section of American society on a major unbiased news site. As the last poll figures, back in January, said only 52% of Americans wanted to impeach Bush... perhaps it's time to re-poll this question?

The Healthcare Issue - How To Move A Failed System Towards Liberty

2006-04-16T22:23:00.000-05:00

The healthcare issue has been coming up a lot recently. The nomination of Kevin Zeese by the LPMD sparked a controversy over Zeese's views on socialist healthcare. Tim West, over on Liberty For Sale, has seen firsthand the sad state of our healthcare system and offered some initial opinions on it.

While I still hold my own ideals regarding healthcare, it's becoming more and more obvious to me that the LP needs a coherent plan for healthcare that we can offer up in the short term, that's more libertarian than the current system yet clearly addresses the worries of the uninsured.

Tim West had the following to offer up on his own site:

We got a bill from the people that did my MRI scans on my brainium , of which there were 2 - one on 3/07, shortly after I woke up when I was still in ICU pre op, the other on 3/22 post op. It says I owe them $1667.40. I went and looked up online my claim information from my insurance company, which showed that both claims by the MRI company had been approved, and that my responsibility for each MRI was $167.40. :D Notice a extra “6″ in the figure from the MRI place? They simply added a extra 6 and sent out the bill to me, even though my insurance had already approved and paid the bills. This is fraud.

This stuff is commonplace, and multiply this by about 30,000 a day, and you can see how screwed up one tiny aspect of our current system is. The reality is that every single bit player in the health care industry has set up a adversarial relationship with every other part. The doctors are always scared the patients are going to sue them, and frequently they do, becuase the legal system only works for the lawyers. The insurance companies are the middle men. Becuase they frequently dont pay all the bill, the providers jack up their cost sometime double of what they really are becuase they know that the insurance will then pay half that new amount. It’s a shell game. Medicare does this as well.

Some facts from my favorite source of facts, The Grandfathers Economic Report ( please note I have been given permission by Mr. Hodges to quote and use his material as long as a link is given and he is credited)

Note the U.S. spent 14.2% of its economy on healthcare at the date of this chart. The above update reports 2003 spending significantly higher, at 15.3% of GDP. Spending much more than nations covering all citizens via national health insurance.

April 15, 2005 – The New York Times (Paul Krugman): “In 2002, the latest year for which comparable data are available, the United States spent $5,267 on health care for each man, woman and child in the population. Of this, $2,364, or 45 percent, was government spending, mainly on Medicare and Medicaid. Canada spent $2,931 per person, of which $2,048 came from the government. France spent $2,736 per person, of which $2,080 was government spending. Amazing, isn’t it? U.S. health care is so expensive that our government spends more on health care than the governments of other advanced countries, even though the private sector pays a far higher share of the bills than anywhere else.”

Some of this is misleading, becuase the taxes required to pay for the universal health care are higher than ours - but they cover ALL their people, and the difference is usually not that much. At my workplace, it costs an additional $400.00 a month to pay for a family policy. The costs go up about 8 to 9 % a year. So when you factor all that in, I’m not sure the “private” insurance companies are really providing cheaper health care, at least not to the extent everyone thinks they are. Would a government run system be better? Probably not. BUT THE SYSTEM WE HAVE NOW HAS ALL THE COST & PROBLEMS OF A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM WITH NONE OF THE BENEFITS, SUCH AS COVERING EVERY PERSON. It’s just as complex, just as costly if not more so, and the only ones getting rich are the lawyers. Thats the reality of it - and libertarians lose credibility with voters when idealogy trumps reality. The reality is our “private” health care system has around many of the problems of a government paid system with none of the benefits. What we have now is socialized medicine with insurance companies taking the place of government. It costs the company I work for a lot of money, and costs the employees a lot of money. I dont really see what the difference is - either the insurance companies rape you or the government rapes you. Should’nt we care more about what will actaully decrease the burden on the individual person rather than who’s on first?

I looked at those figures, and I did a little digging, and here's a basic rough draft of an idea of mine that could please the socialists but still move America in a more libertarian direction with less government expenditures, lower taxes, yet enough coverage for everyone:

I think that the idea of national emergency procedure insurance isn’t a horrible one as far as socialism goes. Basically, everyone would be insured by the government for necessary procedures going over $1000 (or $2000, or $500, the line’s placement doesn’t so much matter so long as there IS a line). This plan would be free to everyone under 18 and over 70 or so, and to the disabled unable to work, and free to everyone else so long as they’re paying taxes (typically by working). Emergency insurance is nowhere near as costly as comprehensive insurance, and provides a solution to the worst problems inherent in the current system.

Everything else would be covered by the market, small injuries and checkups and the like. There’s no need for the government to pay for that, but it’s here, in the small stuff, that MSAs could play a huge role. The critics of MSAs argue that they would only help the rich, that the poor couldn’t put enough money into them to do any good. Well, if you only have to put a few thousand in in case you break a leg or something, it’s not that big of a problem, even if you’re poor.

Companies could also rework their medical benefits by putting, say, $1000 in their worker’s MSA every year or something. In fact, that would be preferable to the current system, because then it’s a fixed cost to the corporations instead of the current system. The current system, where employers offer health insurance to their workers, means that employers are an unnecessary third party and consequently end up paying more money than necessary for worker healthcare that’s not always necessary. Our tax system shouldn’t encourage the separation of consumer of goods and purchaser of goods. But if the companies put a fixed amount of cash in worker MSAs every year, they help provide for employee health while limiting costs much better and encouraging workers to be wiser consumers because that money is fully the worker’s now-he’s entitled to it whether he’s sick or whether he’s healthy. And since employer-funded MSAs don’t separate consumer and purchaser, I do think that companies should be able to deduct their MSA donations from their taxes.

Now, regarding Medicare and Medicaid… Medicare would be largely redundant, since the old and disabled would be automatically covered by the new system. The only gap left would be for small-scale healthcare (including medicine). There are about 30 million disabled people in America right now. We could organize their disabilities into categories of severity, where disabled people who can still work (the largest category) get $1000 of MSA money every year, the disabled who can work a little bit part-time get about $3000 of MSA money, and the fully disabled get $6,000 a year of MSA money. It sounds like a lot, but most of the 30 million disabled are also senior citizens. Since I’m not certain what the breakdown of disability categories is, we’ll assume as conservatively as possible and say that everyone’s fully disabled, in which case the cost is $180 billion to cover the disabled. (Really, it’d probably be like half of that.)

Senior citizens, on the other hand, are a different case. There’s 45 million senior citizens in the USA right now, and if we gave them $3000 a year of automatic free MSA money, that’d cost us $135 billion a year. Which is a huge sum, but less than the $260 billion we currently pay for Medicare and the $156 billion we pay for Medicaid. So instead of the $416 billion we pay annually to take care of senior citizens and the disabled, we’d be paying $336 billion (in reality, far less because we assumed high on the disabled). And we can trim that even more… not all seniors NEED this free money, in fact most of them don’t. Seniors would have to apply for MSA help, and would qualify on the basis of need. Basically, they’d have to have less than a certain amount in savings and MSAs, and have a regular need for an expensive drug. Looking at the amount of seniors under the poverty line, we see there’s only 3.3 million of them… so double that figure (again, being conservative) and if we only give THEM the senior MSA aid, it only costs $19.8 billion.

If we do this, Medicare and Medicaid can be scrapped, and that $416 billion a year that they consume would probably be under $150 billion a year instead. Not only that, but we could keep the amount of coverage at about the same level, and keep a free market in the principal segments of the healthcare industry. So long as this publicly-funded healthcare is privately delivered, the inefficiencies of socialism should only account for a fraction of a percent.

The only question left is the cost of the emergency healthcare insurance. It shouldn’t be terribly large… and it could be as large as $250-300 billion without costing us more than just the government-funded half of our current system, and that would work out to about the same cost as other industrialized countries with some sort of healthcare system in place.

Not a perfect system by any means, but I’d say that it would be better than the current one from a libertarian perspective and also from the perspective of the average voter. And, one day, after we’ve repealed taxes and regulations in the other parts of society that end up holding back the poor, elderly, disabled and the charities that help them, we can propose our ideal libertarian solution without having it sound unrealistic.

Thoughts? Clearly we can't realistically keep advocating a fully privatized system as a practical solution for the short-term, so this moves us to the place where we can, say, twenty years from now.

BATF afraid of ninja's real ultimate power

2006-04-16T22:20:00.000-05:00

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is lame sometimes, and by lame I mean totally stupid.

Facts:

1) The BATF are mammals.
2) They're idiots ALL the time.
3) The purpose of the BATF is to flip out and arrest people.

Okay, seriously, though... there's the link above for anyone who wants to go register, but I'll just repost the article.

Federal agents at the University of Georgia for a training exercise Tuesday mistook a ninja-costumed college student as an armed threat, chased him and pinned the sophomore to the ground.

Now, Jeremiah Ransom and his parents are considering filing a complaint against the agents or the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives.

"We're going to talk to a lawyer and see what they recommend," said Ransom, who was cleared of suspicion shortly after the incident.

Ransom was jogging in a ninja costume to meet some friends at Snelling Dining Hall after attending a "spirit week" event at the Wesley Foundation, the campus Methodist organization, where students were encouraged to dress as pirates or ninjas, he said.

ATF officers claimed Ransom was concealing his identity - dressed in black sweatpants, a black T-shirt, a red headband and a red bandanna across the lower half of his face, said UGA Police Chief Jimmy Williamson.

State law bans people from hiding their identity to commit a crime, but wearing party masks in public is not illegal.

ATF agents were at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Monday and Tuesday training university and county police officers about weapon detection including recognizing different types of weapons, how to trace firearms and how they are hidden, Williamson said.

During a lunch break, plainclothes ATF and Athens-Clarke police officers saw Ransom, thought he might be carrying a gun and after hearing nearby police sirens, chased Ransom down in front of the dining hall, according to a UGA police report.

UGA police then were called to the scene to find Ransom "face down on the sidewalk" - pinned to the ground by ATF and Athens-Clarke police officers, according to the report.

Vanessa McLemore, special agent in charge at the Atlanta Field Division of the ATF, said the agents had seen Ransom "doing quick peeks" from behind a pole and after the sirens sounded, "took off running at an accelerated speed."

ATF officers then pursued Ransom, shouting "police stop, police stop," McLemore said.

Ransom said he wasn't running fast or from the sirens, he didn't hear anyone shouting "police" and only stopped when he saw about four people pointing guns at him.

"They told me to freeze, but I thought it was one of my friends messing with me," Ransom said.

Yeah... so anyway, I'm glad that our fine young BATF officers are protecting us from all those dangerous ninjas lurking in the shadows, waiting to flip out and kill people.

Props.

Yarr matey!

2006-03-07T15:08:00.000-06:00

So pirates are still alive and kickin'. That's right... I figured we got rid of them like 200 years ago, but I guess not. With the complete dysfunction of most of Africa, and the absolute anarchy that now prevails in Somalia, it looks like the East African coast is now prime retail for some swashbucklin'.

Let's not forget about Indonesian pirates, either. Once again, Indonesia is an artificial nation-state that's barely making ends meet, and consequently it kind of frays at the edges.

My opinion? After the initial "sweet dude, pirates!" that any Westerner would begin with, it kinda sucks for those who get involved. But, eh, maybe there's more to the picture that we don't know yet. Politics abhors a vacuum, so the pirates are obviously some sort of attempt to fill that vacuum. The difference between pirates and privateers is minimal; one has state sanction to steal and one doesn't. Perhaps the pirates are a manifestation of new, unofficial states forming at the edges of a largely anarchic area? Or perhaps they're some natural sort of nationalistic assertion of territorial rights by a territory that doesn't have a government? For those anarchists out in the audience, this could be interesting to watch. And for the rest of us... fuck it, they're PIRATES! :D

WTF, dude.

2006-02-12T02:30:00.000-06:00

Just... just look for yourself. Words fail me.

Congress tries to kill off third parties

2006-02-10T17:55:00.000-06:00

From LP headquarters, this is just in:

On February 1, congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Obey of Wisconsin, introduced a bill, H.R. 4694, that would end viable, third-party competition in races for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill, ironically named the "Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act," would mandate public funds (taken from the U.S. Treasury) to candidates for the House of Representatives and forbid candidates from taking private funds such as contributions from individual donors.

The ambiguously-written bill provides funds for candidates of the "two major parties" but essentially scuttles any campaign efforts of third-party or independent candidates.

For third-party candidates to be eligible for the same funds that Republicans and Democrats would receive, they would have to obtain enough signatures to exceed 20% of votes cast in the last election within their district.

The catch under the proposed legislation is that third-party or independent candidates cannot pay petitioners to collect any signatures, making it impossible to fund their campaigns.

The Congresscritters are running scared. Not scared so much that we'll get elected, but scared that we can throw them out of power by spoiling an election, like we did to drug warrior Bob Barr and all-around statist asshole Tom Daschle. They're hoping that this will shut us up for good... pray this doesn't pass, or we lose one of the chief ways we currently possess to keep the bastards accountable to the people.

Last Level Gaming has finally arrived!

2006-01-14T20:20:00.000-06:00

...and with it, my free time has departed. But that's okay.

So this dude Alex runs a shop that sells munchies and Magic cards; he makes his money selling both to a regular clientele of college and highschool kids. He let me set up shop there for a song and a dance, and I'm currently in the middle of setting up my video games there. It's gonna be great. I already "hired" my first employee and I spent yesterday setting up shop.

Right now I just have NES, Dreamcast and PS1 games. If you're interested, I can sell you some online as well. But I'll be getting some next-generation games in there soon. It will rule.

But if I'm not on much for, say, the next week or so, that's why.

When did we become illiterate bastards?

2006-01-10T02:26:00.000-06:00

Today is the start of the new semester down at ~~the Gulag Archipelago~~ Chadron State College. Since I've got ~~$200~~ ~~$100~~ ~~$50~~ dick for funds, I'm not buying any textbooks. I mean, I love books, don't get me wrong... but I can't afford them, especially since they're raising the prices so damn much and charging less for the same books overseas. And I'm not asking for the government to "fix" their price-gouging, either-when nobody's buying new editions and Adam Smith's invisible hand donkeypunches them, they'll make books cheaper. But yeah... at least for this semester, when I'm handling subjects I have a firm grasp on (American Government, the Civil War, History of Political Thought), I can do without buying them. I borrow them instead.

But this leads me to my next point... and the question asked by the title of this post: WHEN DID WE BECOME ILLITERATE BASTARDS? Seriously, kids. That complete and total piece off to your right is my American Government textbook this semester. I've read two-and-a-half chapters into it and it blows. For one thing, it doesn't even pretend to be neutral-aren't textbooks supposed to be neutral? No, this one is all about "weh weh weh weh democracy is teh r0xx0rz fuck liberty majority r00lz ur ass y0." I mean, democracy is great and all but a good textbook presents the facts-and that's it. Textbooks aren't supposed to take sides, they're not supposed to indoctrinate people. The fact that this can go on-and my tax dollars via the public education system can indirectly support it-is preposterous.

But why is this happening? Does the government want to turn college students into ~~flag-waving muppets~~ patriotic citizens supporting "democracy" and not liberty? The paranoid tinfoil hat-wearing part of me says "yes" but there's more to it all. Apparently the textbook industry, in its rush to bribe education czars, just got really fucking lazy about "facts" and "objectivity". Not only that, but in their quest to dominate the market they've dumbed shit down. They want books that look "cool" and "hip" to the average college student, not books that actually, you know, HAVE ANYTHING TO FUCKING DO WITH FUCKING LEARNING A FUCKING SINGLE THING. FUCK. If college "bores" you puerile little shits, save your money and make me a motherfucking Big Mac.

College is where people who want to learn go to do so. We don't need fun little interactive CDs, or special little tests of our knowledge, or online writing assignments, or all that other flashy hand-holding shit that coddles the stupid and justifies a higher cost of textbooks. Give me a book with a lot of big words in it, a Blue Book and a pen and shut the fuck up, underachiever. When I write your paychecks in ten years, you'll wish you'd done the same.

So here's a fun fact for you, kiddos: The Japanese are gonna eat you dumbfucks alive. Fuck.

We can now arrest you for writing the words "suicide bomber" in a book.

2006-01-04T22:07:00.000-06:00

The FBI never ceases to appall me. An airline passenger who was writing the words "suicide bomber" in his journal was reported by his fellow American subjects. We no longer have the right to either free speech or privacy, apparently-not only was the guy merely expressing himself, but he was expressing himself in a way where he would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

They then arrested him on charges of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Don't you think that if this man had been a threat, they could have easily used terrorism as an excuse? But then again, using drugs or alcohol as an excuse is a police tactic as old as drug laws themselves... like the Dave Chappelle bit goes, "Just sprinkle some crack on him and call it good."

I seriously hope that whatever judge tries this case laughs this out of court, but then again with the way the justice system is going it wouldn't surprise me if they threw this guy's ass in Guantanamo out of spite.

^_^

2006-01-04T22:02:00.000-06:00

I'm now a blog author at Hammer Of Truth, one of the most active libertarian blogs on teh intarweb. Go on over and check it out; they rule.

They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast

2006-01-02T03:20:00.000-06:00

The beast I'm talking about here is the USA PATRIOT Act.

So how can it possibly be legal for one man alone to be able to represent a meeting of Congress? Ask John Warner (R-VA), the scumbag who pulled it off.

After a successful Senate filibuster of the USA PATRIOT Act led by Senate Democrats, the provisions of the act were set to expire yesterday. Well, Warner pulled a fast one-he showed up at the Senate on December 23, while his colleagues were at home for Christmas break. He then managed to achieve a unanimous decision to renew the act... not hard to do when you're the only one there. A few minutes later, all one members of the Senate adjourned.

A similar incident happened in the House only four hours earlier-except there were a few others present, and the initial plan was a six-month extension. Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a nobler representative of the Republicans, managed to stonewall the nearly-empty House into a mere one-month extension. Since the forms of the bill presented by the House and Senate have to match, this one man managed to secure the one-month renewal concession won earlier by Hagel and Feingold. Otherwise, the earlier six-month renewal passed by the House would have been re-passed, and Warner would have easily overturned the one-month extension earlier agreed upon, and we'd have six more months of police-statey goodness upon us.

This act needs to die like none other, yet it's despicable to see the dirty tricks the supporters of big government will pull to save their flagging police state. Thankfully there's a few decent apples yet in Congress with the fortitude to stand up to these cowards. Virginia, you should be ashamed of Senator Warner. Wisconsin, be proud that two of your sons have risen above party politics and secured our liberties.

Happy New Year (Fora Style)

2006-01-01T01:44:00.000-06:00

Nostalgia says:
WOW
Princeps says:
?
Nostalgia says:
you know how we live in a loft downtown
Princeps says:
Yeah...
Nostalgia says:
it is ridiculous how many people are outside
Nostalgia says:
fireworks being set off by the city on the two buildings next to ours
Nostalgia says:
seriously they are all drunk and screaming
Princeps says:
Huh.
Princeps says:
Have fun with that!
Nostalgia says:
thousands
Princeps says:
Damn.
Nostalgia says:
seriously i am upstairs
Nostalgia says:
and can hardly hear my keyboard pecking noises
Princeps says:
Jesus.
Nostalgia says:
i actually went down there because i had to get somnething out of my car
Princeps says:
Yeah?
Nostalgia says:
which, naturally, is underground in a parking garage a couple blocks over
Nostalgia says:
so many stoners and crazy drunks
Nostalgia says:
some girl pointed at me and said WOW that is hot
Nostalgia says:
HAPPY NEW YEAR MAN
Princeps says:
HAPPY NEW YEAR MAN
Princeps says:
That is fucking HILARIOUS.
Nostalgia says:
no that is what she said to me
Princeps says:
Was the chick hot?
Nostalgia says:
no
Nostalgia says:
lol
Princeps says:
Too bad.
Nostalgia says:
yes i love this chant
Nostalgia says:
they have been doing it over and over
Nostalgia says:
oh six oh six oh six
Princeps says:
What chant?
Princeps says:
Oh brilliant.
Nostalgia says:
yeah
Nostalgia says:
it is sweet
Princeps says:
Yay some time passed! Rock the FUCK ON!
Princeps says:
WOOOOO!
Nostalgia says:
seriously man if i took a picture you would see
Nostalgia says:
it looks like a riot
Princeps says:
Take a picture.
Nostalgia says:
yeah lol!!!
Princeps says:
PLZ.
Nostalgia says:
some time passed
Nostalgia says:
ok
Nostalgia says:
brb
Nostalgia says:
holy holy
Nostalgia says:
crap
Nostalgia says:
dude
Princeps says:
?
Nostalgia says:
i went to take the pics
Nostalgia says:
and there is this car driving into the alley
Nostalgia says:
people stopped it
Nostalgia says:
and are jumping ontop of it about to flip it
Princeps says:
WTF?
Nostalgia says:
opening the doors, jumping in the seats
Nostalgia says:
on top of the car
Princeps says:
Holy fuck, man!
Nostalgia says:
seriously dude
Nostalgia says:
straight up riots
Princeps says:
TAKE PICS!
Nostalgia says:
loooool
Nostalgia says:
man he finally got out and drove away
Nostalgia says:
i got some pics
Princeps says:
That's good... SWEET.
Nostalgia says:
man
Nostalgia says:
i can't find the cable for this camera
Princeps says:
What is it... firewire?
Nostalgia says:
nah i can't find it
Nostalgia says:
forget it
Princeps says:
Okay.
Nostalgia says:
when i get back from houston i can send them to you
Nostalgia says:
oh man loool
Princeps says:
Okay, that works.
Nostalgia says:
that was so funny
Nostalgia says:
because i was just comparing it to a riot
Nostalgia says:
i was in and out because my mom kept sayign OH NO THEY ARE FLIPPING THE CAR
Nostalgia says:
i need to go to sleep
Princeps says:
Good night, and happy new period of time! Don't get looted. :|
Nostalgia says:
yeah i will try
Nostalgia says:
latezzz
Princeps says:
Later.
Nostalgia says:
omg how can i sleep with this screaming

New blog authors

2006-01-01T01:28:00.000-06:00

So... we've got three new blog authors I'd like to personally ~~inflict upon you~~ introduce you to.

Justin Sharp is Nostalgia from the boards; he'll be providing us with a Christian anarchist's perspective on things in between bouts of looking for new music and crying over crappy threads. I met him on the old Pillar boards back in the day... but he's cool despite that.

TheKwas, aka Daniel Kwasnicki, is Username from the boards. He'll be giving us highly inappropriate jokes together with anarcho-syndicalist philosophy in his spare time, which is about as good as you can expect from any Metro refugee. What a Commie. But he does like the Gorillaz, so that makes up for it and then some.

Vasilius Konstantinos, aka Charles Oberg, is a recovering Republican with some libertarian leanings but no stated affiliation as of yet. I met him on the old NGMB, so he'll be providing a lot of insight on gothic culture as well as Orthodox Christianity.

Let the blogging commence!

Does this look laughable to anyone else?

2005-12-31T22:33:00.000-06:00

The Democrats seem to have lost their fire. Not that the Republicans are any better, but it used to be that the Democrats at least had some capacity for rabble-rousing. But this recent speech by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sounds just as vague and limp as Bush's calls to "stay the course" in Iraq. Just look at this crap.

"Today as Americans are making New Year's resolutions, our Democratic New Year's resolution is to renew America's promise," the California congresswoman said.

WTF does "renew America's promise" even mean? Does anyone know? It can mean whateverthefuck you want it to mean.

"The federal budget should be a statement of our national values," Pelosi said. "Sadly, the Republican budget fails that test."

National values? What national values would you be referring to?

The budget proposed by the Democrats protects the middle class, reduces the deficit and reflects our American values, Pelosi said.

With this plan, she said, the government could wisely invest in issues that are important to Americans, such as education, health care and keeping energy costs down. Proposed spending cuts for these programs has drawn fiery debate in Congress in recent weeks.

So American values are education, health care and keeping energy costs down. Yep, we won our independence from Britain so we could pay less than a buck for gas. Thank you, Nancy Pelosi, for being an uninspired party hack.

Pelosi drew on several religious references during her address. She also mentioned a December rally of religious leaders who traveled to Washington to protest the proposed budget.

"Religious leaders told Congress that they are drawing a moral line in the sand against the Republican budget's misplaced priorities."

It's obvious that the Democrats have been salivating over the masses of idiots that have been voting GOP "becuz Bush is a Christian OMGWTF" and trying to figure out a way to get all the idiots to vote for them instead. But please... could you guys be a little less blatant? Seriously... and while I myself am a liberal Christian, let's be honest here-liberal Christians lack the capacity to fire up ~~stupid~~ fundamentalist Christians. Really. Let's just admit it, guys-until we can somehow find it in ourselves to be ~~fucking idiots~~ morally outraged because two guys kissed each other or that they're not teaching creationism in schools, we can't touch the fundie vote and it's useless for Democrats to use us to try.

Because if you ask Joe Bible Thumper what he gives more of a damn about, chances are he'll say some dude's meat in another dude's ass gives him far more chills at night than the makeup of the budget. And besides, Democrats, didn't you listen to them? Liberal Christians are going to Hell.

"We must draw a fiscal line in the sand. And we must join the religious community in drawing a moral line in the sand," Pelosi said. "Nothing less is at stake than the well-being of America's children, the strength and soundness of our economy, and the respect that America commands in the world."

I hate, hate, hate the phrase "America's children" being used in conjunction with politics. It's as bad as the Republicans labelling anyone who doesn't agree with the war or the USA PATRIOT Act as "unpatriotic." It's just some shitty little emotional appeal that you can slap on anything. Vote for this tax increase or you hate children. Vote for these spy initiatives or you hate America. What a crock of uninspired bullshit.

Nancy Pelosi, someone needs to replace your ass with the next Howard Dean, and but soon. At least Dean made interesting reading material, and I understood exactly what the man thought. You're nothing but emotionalism, buzzwords, and pathetic pleas to the fundies to come back.

NSA "accidentally" spied on us

2005-12-29T20:51:00.000-06:00

So yeah, I'm not entirely sure how the world's most powerful spy agency accidentally manages to spy on its own citizens.

Apparently the NSA installed permanent cookies on the computers of those people who visited their website. These cookies monitored what sites were subsequently visited. What's the NSA's first excuse?

"Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on.

"After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," he said."

So first, they ask us to believe that the spy masterminds responsible for protecting our nation got confused by some pre-packaged software. Who the hell would inadvertently slip those kinds of cookies into NSA's software anyway? So basically we're supposed to either believe that:

-The NSA is a pack of idiots
-Our government thinks we're sheep

Either way... yeah, America's safe.

But it's not done! After offering that explanation, Mr. Don Weber then gives a different explanation to the incident, saying:

it was strictly to improve the surfing experience "and not to collect personal user data."

So... this cookie that you spooks didn't know you were giving everyone was actually intended by you same, unaware spooks for benign purposes. And, you know, spam is just letting us know about Viagra and breast enlargement, just in case we weren't yet aware.

So with all this bungling, I'm left to wonder only one thing: DID BUSH APPOINT BORIS FUCKING BADANOV AS THE NEW NSA CHIEF, OR WHAT? This is probably the lamest crock of bullshit put out by any level of government since the lines "they hate our freedom" and "we had to destroy the village to save it." Either way, I think that in response to this idiocy, the official LP mascot should be a moose... or a squirrel.

Howard Stern, the FCC and the First Amendment

2005-12-27T02:37:00.000-06:00

Howard Stern made his last "terrestrial radio" broadcast sometime last week. He will be bringing most of his twelve million listeners to Sirius Radio, a pay service of satellite radio. Though he will be earning a whopping $75 million more under the Sirius contract, it's not the money that motivates his move.

It's the FCC. FCC chairman Michael Powell decided that Stern's programming is indecent, and Clear Channel Communications has gotten tired of paying his fines. But why does the FCC have the right to regulate free speech on radio?

Supposedly it's because of scarcity; because there's only so many different channels that can be intelligibly broadcast upon, the government has the right to license and then regulate the airwaves. But this makes no sense; they would, according to that theory, have the right to issue licenses but not to mandate content. The courts have repeatedly declared that the government has no right to regulate content on the internet; why then can they do so on the airwaves?

Bureaucrash's Strike Against the Green Party

2005-12-26T20:46:00.000-06:00

This video is one of the greatest sources of LOL I've seen in a while.

A bunch of libertarian activists make up a phony socialist organization, the "Progressives Against Progress," and sneak into the 2004 Green Party convention and propose some truly stupid ideas, stuff like letting people vote on what sites to allow or not, how much bandwidth each person can use, ending corporate farming as to lessen the food supply in America and decrease obesity rates.

To their dismay, they found the Greens eating these ideas up. One guy even suggested they get them put on the platform. So they decided to come up with something so inane, so outlandish that surely nobody would buy it. THEY WANTED TO NOMINATE FIDEL CASTRO FOR PRESIDENT.

Yet, they still did. Hell, one woman had a letter from him in her pocket; another knew a guy that visited him every year. Holy shit, this is the best thing I've watched in a while. What's sad is that these people actually vote.

RIAA sues hapless Internet-illiterate single mom over the holidays, claims Ebenezer Scrooge as role model

2005-12-26T15:11:00.000-06:00

I'm not kidding.

Patricia Santangelo is a single mother, hasn't downloaded a song in her life, and doesn't even have the money to settle out of court with the RIAA, which named her in a lawsuit against music downloaders. Somehow in the midst of all this, she's supposed to raise four children.

The trial has cost her $24,000 so far, money she doesn't have; but even though she's representing herself she refuses to bow to the assholes at the RIAA on principle. "It's a moral issue," she says. "I can't sign something that says I agree to stop doing something I never did."

Hers could potentially be the case that proves the whole downloading matter one way or another. No downloading case has ever been brought to court in America; so far only out-of-court settlements have emerged. So it's quite possible that the RIAA's bullying extortionary tactics could be brought down by one lone single mother standing up to them and saying "Enough!"

Here's another blog standing behind you, Ms. Santangelo. Thanks for having a spine, however it turns out.

Cory Maye

2005-12-24T01:09:00.000-06:00

Everyone's been talking about Tookie Williams lately-about how he should have been pardoned, how he was writing children's books, whatever.

The real story of a justice system gone wrong lies not with Tookie, but with a lesser-known Death Row inmate named Cory Maye.

Basically what happened is that a young black man, Cory Maye, had the misfortune to live next to a drug dealer. Overzealous Drug Warriors busted into both apartments in the middle of the night without announcing that they were police. Maye, thinking a burglar had come in, grabbed his gun and shot the lead cop, Officer Jones, dead to protect the life of his daughter. After the police announced their identity, he dropped his gun and submitted peaceably to the search. Nonetheless, a majority-white jury decreed him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death by lethal injection.

You can check out the facts at MayeIsInnocent.com, the Wikipedia article about him, and Hammer of Truth. Please pray for him, and tell all your friends about this zit on the face of justice. There's still time to save Cory Maye.

Looking for a few new blog authors

2005-12-24T00:45:00.000-06:00

It's come to my attention that we need more blog authors. I asked a while back and not much came of it. Well, if you want to be a co-author on ForaAugusta.com, here's what you need to do:

-Sign up for an account on Blogger.com
-Use that account to post a comment under this post, telling me who you are and why you want to blog

I'll take pretty much anyone that's either:
-a regular member of our forums
-has previous blogging experience
-can blog regularly and coherently (this leaves out our infamous little banned commentator)

While I've been using this as a sounding board for libertarian political thought, this blog isn't *just* a libertarian blog, or even a political blog. In fact, I'd even like to branch out and have music/movie reviews on here as well.

Nebraska and "The Good Life"

2005-12-15T10:10:00.000-06:00

(The following is what I wrote for a test in my Nebraska History class. For those of you who don't know, Nebraska's motto is "The Good Life." I was supposed to write an essay on how, if at all, Nebraska was fulfilling its motto. I got a 96% on the essay.)

"The Good Life" is a highly subjective term. If referring to Nebraska's politics, there is scarcely anything for a libertarian such as myself to appreciate. (Right-to-work laws and the lowest possible minimum wage, both of which make it easier to find a job, are the only things that come to mind.) The two parties openly support big government, with the Republicans going farther left, economically, than even the Democrats. Since they're also generally under the impression that America was founded on the Bible... there's nothing to appreciate.
Statist ex-mayor of Omaha Hal Daub paid for the unnecessary Qwest Center with a bond issue; and has decided that Omaha isn't in enough debt yet and wants a light rail, a new stadium and even a lake. Current mayor Mike Fahey wants to unite Omaha's public schools under one (failing) system and wants to annex the suburbs, which are filled with people who weren't keen on paying for all this nonsense. In any other state of the Union the GOP would be lynching these two for Communists; here in Nebraska they're heroes. And the Democrats, well, on a good year they can only try to "hold the line" on spending. They've yet to succeed at sending it back from whence it came-our pocketbooks.
So politics is out... perhaps quality of life or the economy? Well, the economy is based on an inefficient activity-agriculture-that is subsidized by the American taxpayer because apparently there's some God-given right to get paid well for growing unneeded crops out of land stolen from Native Americans. When people wake up and realize how much they're getting rooked out of, and federal farm subsidies/tariffs cease, this state's economy will die. The only places that would weather such a scenario would be Omaha (which actually has a diversified economy), Lincoln (because of government jobs), Alliance (because of the Union Pacific), and maybe Scottsbluff as well as the string of motel & restaurant communities along I-80. So the economy is built upon a quagmire incapable of sustaining "The Good Life."
Environmentally, too, we're poking out our own eyeballs. You know all those crops we don't need? Well, they're grown with water we do need. Lots of it. The Ogallala Aquifer under this state is drying up slowly, and when it's dry all the subsidies in the world won't help the farmers, who might actually be required to learn self-sufficiency at long last. Since turning this place into a desert is the economic foundation of the state, there won't be a whole lot of motivation to save the environment. In fact, the only thing causing us to look at the problem at all these days is that we owe Kansas some water. So the government is trying to figure out ways to save water so that Kansas can waste it instead.
So after all that, there's only one possible way for Nebraska to deserve the moniker "The Good Life," and that's socially. We've produced actors and novelists, more than our share. God, in His infinite sense of irony, gave homophobic, fundamentalist Nebraska a lesbian, Willa Cather, for its favorite author. The University of Nebraska at Lincoln is one of the best schools in the country. The Omaha rock scene has produced national legends like the Faint, Bright Eyes and 311. But, all these smart people we're making have largely come to the same conclusion-leave before it's too late. And I somehow doubt the Qwest Center will change that; it'll take fundamental change like the downfall of agriculture in the state economy or some lowered taxes (which means axing, not holding, the line on spending) and probably a bunch of other things our fundie, populist state isn't ready for.

Why I Hate The Government, Specifically Universal Healthcare

2005-11-07T17:17:00.000-06:00

1) My father is an officer in the Air Force. Most people, when they hear that, assume that he's fairly rich. He DOES have an important job-he babysits our nuclear arsenal and writes the security protocols-he even did some fairly important things I'm not even at liberty to talk about. What's he rewarded with? Sh1t for pay (he made more as a second lieutenant in real dollars than he now does as a major), declining benefits with declining coverage, and one of the crappiest pensions in the government. They pay f!cking POSTAL SERVICE workers better than him.

2) My mother is the wife of an officer of the Air Force. Consequently, when my dad joined, she was supposed to be entitled to comprehensive health coverage by base hospitals, as were me and my brother. We got coverage, kinda.

She has literally been at death's door at least three times to my memory, all because the government doctors are morons. The first was when the doctors refused to treat her kidney stones because "kidney stones don't group together that badly." She had 126 FVCKING KIDNEY STONES because when she first complained about it, she was put through the bureaucratic runaround!

The second time was when she had a major ear infection-they wouldn't treat her, wouldn't even give her an APPOINTMENT until she literally couldn't move the right side of her face and it was swollen black and blue. The only way she got treatment was when HHS mistook the symptoms for my dad beating her! And even then she wasn't treated properly; she had to endure macho colonel Army doctors who didn't give a damn about us because we were Air Force. Only when she went to a private doctor, spending what little extra money SHE had, did she get healed-and it was such a disgustingly easy fix, too. But another week and she would have died. What happened? The Army medical facility begged her not to tell their superiors about the incident. She did and asses got discharged (military term for "fired"), but still nothing happened REALLY.

Why? Because the third time she almost died, AT THAT SAME DAMN ARMY HOSPITAL, she went in to complain about this growth on her neck, and if she could schedule a doctor's appointment. A month later, the thing is huge and the doctor tells her "it's a wart, it'll go away." Two months after that, she can barely breathe, barely function when she goes in to see another military doctor about them MAYBE doing something about this growth on her neck, and they hemm and haw and say "Aren't you that b!tch that reported us to the Inspector General?" and tell her it'll go away. Finally, ONCE AGAIN, she pays out of her own money to see a private doctor, and they remove the thing and she was literally a few days from death. The growth was slowly wrapping itself around her windpipe, essentially slowly strangling her to death. A simple surgery removed it in an afternoon. She reported this to the Inspector General as well, and more asses got discharged over this.

After two incidents where the government hospitals are mortally inept TO THE SAME DAMN PERSON and get in trouble over it, you'd think that if nothing else they'd flag her account so all the workers would know not to screw her up, if for no other reason than to save their own damn asses. But NO, she's had trouble getting her medication from the pharmacy ever since, simply because she can't take the generic version (it doesn't work) and has to take the higher-priced one instead to keep her healthy. She complained once about it, and a general that had tried to cut in front of her at the Commissary greeted her and told her to go to Hell (generals are used to being treated like gods, to the point where defying them means they can deny you a healthy life, apparently). Another complaint to the IG, but a frustrated IG can't threaten a general so now she pays out her own damn money to get the meds she needs.

3) My brother almost died in a military hospital while the incompetent government doctors struggled to figure out what was wrong with him (they first declared that there WASN'T anything wrong with him even though he was in the ER with a million hoses coming out of his chest, that was cute). Because of their incompetence, he's got arthritis in every bone of his body for life, and he was deaf for the first five years of his existence.

4) My father, as an Air Force officer, gets like two hundred dollars worth of non-taxable income from the government every month as a "housing allowance." It's not only not enough to pay for housing, it's ALSO just enough to disqualify me for any FAFSA loans, grants, and every Nebraska state scholarship out there.

So listen up, you fvcking "government can solve everything" liberals. When you tell me that the government should have universal healthcare, what you're telling me is that you wish my mother and brother were both dead. When you tell me that the government should do more for college students, what you're telling me is that you don't want me to go to college. YOUR GODDAMN POLICIES HAVE REAL-LIFE CONSEQUENCES TO REAL-LIFE PEOPLE, AND THEY'RE NOT FOR THE BETTER. Stop thinking that you can solve everyone's problems and just focus on your own, we'll be better off without you or your incompetent, murdering government.

The Great Geolibertarian Offer

2005-10-27T14:06:00.000-05:00

This is taken from a post I made on a blog of one of Jeremy's friends. He's somewhat of a modern liberal, as far as I can tell. Jeremy asked me to make a post over there to explain libertarian views on Social Security a little better, so I did. Below is my reply, and it seems to have impressed him somewhat.

Not all Libertarians are against the government doing some things beyond defense and justice. Lockean libertarians and anarcho-capitalists are against all forms of welfare, but geolibertarians (of which I am one) are not. However, there is a specific way it should be done.

First off, let's establish a couple philosophical starting points. (If you've debated with libertarians, you've probably heard them before but just bear with me, it'll go in a way you're not expecting.) Assume two things-you exist in time, and you own yourself. Because you own yourself, you own your past, present and future. If I kill you, I steal your future from you, and therefore murder would violate your natural rights. If I enslave you or somehow violate your liberty, I steal your present. If I take your money, which you worked for in the past, I steal your past. Therefore, you have natural, inherent rights to life, liberty and property.

There is a twist to this. Most libertarians would stop there, but there is more. You have one more right besides life, liberty and property-you have the right to an equal share of natural resources. You therefore have 1/280 millionth right to the natural resources (including land) of the United States of America, assuming you're an American citizen. However, since you most likely have no means to extract or process about any of those resources (including trees, oil, metals, gems, etc.) you are entitled to compensation for your share of these resources. This basically means that you have the natural right to a welfare check, paid by corporations that extract our natural resources.

Because nobody worked to create the wealth of natural resources, this means that property and resource extraction taxes are the only philosophically-sound taxes that can be levied. Taking the money collected from those taxes, one could pay for defense and the courts, and give the rest out as welfare checks, an equal share of the leftovers to every American citizen.

This money would be enough to provide for the basic material needs of every citizen, and do so primarily on the backs of the rich (who tend to be the main owners of stock in mining, oil, lumber and agricultural corporations), and so be one of the most progressive reforms ever undertaken by this country. It would also be eminently libertarian, as it calls for a free market unhindered by government and would do away with all other taxes.

With this system in place, the government wouldn't rob workers of their wages with an income tax. Personal privacy would be greatly increased with the repeal of an income tax as well, and since we already need deed registers in place to record who owns what property where, we could reduce the bureaucratic costs of tax collection to almost nothing compared to what it is now. And since you can't exactly hide a piece of land or an oil derrick, the rate of collection would spike.

Also, we wouldn't need a payroll tax to fund Social Security. We could actually do away with Social Security entirely-the old would be just as entitled to this money as everyone else, and they'd probably even be getting more money out of the deal anyway.

Just an example of how effective this would be-the state of Alaska has a system in place wherein taxes collected from oil companies operating in the state are distributed equally to every man, woman and child in that state. With JUST oil revenues being counted, each Alaskan citizen gets about $6000 a year from their government. Spread it nationwide and add in the lumber and mining industries as well as a flat-rate property tax on all land, and you could probably give each American $12,000 a year. The poverty line has recently been defined at about $19,000 a year, so without working every American would have their essential needs met without any frills. But those are only essential needs-meaning they'd still have plenty of incentive to work and add to the economy.

So if someone worked, they'd be able to afford a decent living, with enough money to save for a decent retirement as well.

I fucking hate spammers

2005-10-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

And I swear to my brother's Happy Place that the next piece of spam I see will get royally fucked to the fullest extent of my capability.

I swear, within MOMENTS of me putting up the post about the Copts, this motherfucker was trying to get me to come to his site. This shit has got to be highly automated.

Coptic Egypt and 1960's Birmingham... how the times don't change

2005-10-23T20:52:00.000-05:00

Severe rioting took place Saturday at St. George's Church in the Coptic Christian districts of Alexandria. Hardline Muslims rioted outside of the church to protest the supposed release of an anti-Muslim play on DVD. 1 person died, 90 were injured, and 53 people arrested during the course of the riot. 1 car was destroyed and 8 others were damaged, not to speak of the damage to an ancient structure, a historical landmark for all Egyptians with pride in their history.

The whole incident was provoked by a play made two years ago by a smaller Coptic church in the neighborhood, titled "I Was Blind But Now I See," about a Coptic Christian who converted to Islam and became disillusioned with his choice. The main protagonist in the play had his life saved by a Muslim towards the end of the play. The incident began when a homemade copy of the play was put on DVD and distributed by unknown peoples. Extremist Muslims came out in force to protest these people's rights of self-expression.

The whole event reminds me, more than anything, of the Birmingham race riots in the 1960's. A white majority in Birmingham oppressed their black minority simply because they weren't like them. Civil libertarians staged marches down the city's center, protesting for black rights, and were driven away by a white majority who wished to maintain their privileged, bigotry-rooted status. Over time the federal government, playing good-guy for a change, stepped in and upheld the rights of the blacks.

It looks like things are playing out that way in Egypt-their national government, corrupt as it is, has stepped in and supported the Copts, stationing policemen at Coptic churches and staring down the bigoted fanatics who would seek to deny people their fundamental rights.

'We trust the drug traffickers more than the police'

2005-10-22T18:59:00.000-05:00

So Brazil's having a referendum on whether to ban the sale of guns or not. In what's been perceived as a fairly corrupt, fairly statist nation, people are coming out in droves to support their right to own a gun. In several communities, there is no protection from the police available, and people are protected by drug pushers and gangsters. In a nation where the police are notoriously corrupt, it seems that nobody really thinks that the police can protect them from harm.

The pro-ban lobby has even launched sophisticated publicity stunts meant to secure their former lead. The Viva Rio thinktank orchestrated a demonstration on Rodrigo de Freitas Lake wherein around 36,000 crosses were set afloat on the water-one each for every person that was supposedly killed by a gun (not the guy pulling the trigger) in the past year. Add in celebrities coming out for the ban, and you'd think it would be decided. But no... one single TV appearance by the pro-gun side stating their case honestly, and the situation reversed.

A Washington Post article dated from the 1st said the gun ban would sail through the referendum without a problem. A New York Times article dated from the 20th says that the debate was neck-and-neck. A CNN article dated from today says that 52% oppose the ban while 34% support it. So in the matter of three weeks support for the gun ban went from ecstatic to neutral, and in the past two it's all but dissipated.

Fora Address: 9/8/05

2005-09-08T14:37:00.000-05:00

There's several things that need to be said, so I figured I'd just lump them all into one entry.

First off, there's been some behind-the-scenes altercations. One of the Fora's associated boards, the Pillar boards, have essentially chucked the gauntlet at us and have continually betrayed Forites. Conversations with people up to and including the band have gotten us nowhere; promises that have been made have not been kept and as a result, you can see every Mods Only thread that the Fora had access to and judge for yourself. Those Pillarites who are interested in the truth ought to be appraised of the Pillar archives' existence when they're completed.

However, that's not the most important thing I have to say. The Pillar boards are a sad, sorry little incident of Forite history, and after the completion of the archives I hope they remain that way. No, the most important thing I have to speak about is Hurricane Katrina. One of our own, a poster named Ashley, is down in Louisiana, right outside the city limits. She has no internet access or phone coverage except for text messages, but we do have her email address for when she returns to the 'net. Those of you who were on the Pillar boards in times past would know her as "Echelon Ashley", and her email is lapillarechelon at hotmail.com. If you know her, send her an email of encouragement, and if you know anyone else down in the New Orleans area, Forite or not, post their email address here so we can send them emails to encourage them.

BTW, if you wish to help more substantially, you can donate to the Red Cross here.

Hagel Comes Out Against Iraq; GIVE THIS MAN THE I.E.S.

2005-08-21T20:25:00.000-05:00

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, largely a paleoconservative from my home state of Nebraska, finally said something smart about Iraq. Love him or hate him, Hagel is the consummate politician, guarding his ass and maintaining his political viability. It's kept him in office, representing this state in Congress; it's also made him a potential candidate for the GOP nomination.

And that's what it comes down to-Hagel, in his political wisdom, has realized that Iraq is going to backfire on the GOP. In order to be electable in 2008, he knows he has to come out against the war, to support removing American troops from Iraq NOW. This will allow him to build up a record of supporting homecoming, while other Republican Presidential hopefuls will founder and die on the coming unpopularity of the war. Granted, it's an "interesting" position to take for one of the biggest hawks at the outset of the war, to say the least-but it's a purely political one that should pay off for him in the long run.

While we're talking about people playing hardball politics concerning Iraq... has anyone given Hagel a copy of the Libertarian Exit Strategy? It doesn't matter if the guy's a political sleazeball jumping in front of the crowd; while he's there he might as well bring our ideas with him. He'd have no reason to say no; it's the gist of what he'll be campaigning on, but with more concrete plans laid out. He could issue a press release saying that he's signed onto the Libertarian Exit Strategy, and encourages all Nebraskans who support the troops and want a sensible exit from Iraq to sign as well. It'd play really well with him in 2008; he'd get support from the Nebraska conservatives as well as the anti-war crowd. And it'd, of course, get us some major press.

The Fora's Back Up

2005-08-21T02:16:00.000-05:00

Just check out the sidebars. Invisionplus checked out the situation and saw rather swiftly that Acamas was full of shit and we're good to go.

Still doing the lawsuit, though. Bastard deserves to suffer for what he did.

Conversations with Acamas

2005-08-20T15:21:00.000-05:00

You didn't tell me about this... so guess what? When the Invisionplus guys find out you're lying and restore our forum, you will be banned.

Lol!! Yes I did!! ON A THREAD IN OFF-TOPIC DISCUSSION!!! Of course, you didin't even bother to look. Plus, I did not lie and even if I did you cant do anything about it!!!! biggrin.gif

Guess what? WE'RE SUING YOUR ASS IN FEDERAL COURT. We're suing you for lying, defamation of character, and sexual harassment against our female members. AND I'm getting the Fora restored as we speak, dipshit! So this means one thing: YOU LOSE. Since you won't have the money to pay damages, this pretty much means your parents will get to pay for you. And I intend to collect quite a bit... so you may actually be homeless, you stupid fuck! HAIL KERRY, ASSJACK!

Lol. Whatever sue me if you want you will never win. My family already went through a court case and won, we know a lot about it.

Why The Fora Is Down

2005-08-19T23:32:00.000-05:00

One of our boardies, lessthanjake, provided us with the following information:

Ill tell you what that douche bag did. He reported the fact that you guys had part of the forum that you said didnt have rules and then lied and said that there "may have been pictures of naked women" and crap like that. He sent me what he wrote to the people and it was total fuking crap. He claims he pleaded with you guys to put a stop to the no rules thing and stuff.

When fora gets back that funker needs banning in my opinion for being a traitor to the forum.

Acamas, when the Fora is reactivated when the Invisionplus people discover that you're lying, you will be banned. We gave you the ability to keep in touch with us and you have abused it. Any comments you make on the blog will be deleted, and we will forever be rid of you. We've endured your bullshit for the last time, from now on you are persona non grata around these parts.

Revert back to old boards

2005-08-19T22:43:00.000-05:00

Hey guys, while the regular Fora is down we will be posting on our old forums at http://foraaugusta.ezforum.org/ I hope to see you all there.

Christianity and Libertarianism

2005-08-17T20:23:00.000-05:00

My political and religious beliefs often seem to be in contradiction to many. I support legalizing drugs, prostitution, polygamy, gay marriage, pornography, suicide, and a whole lot of other things that most Christians would flinch at. But why do I think this? How can I be a Christian and support the legalization of these things?

Because this is what the Word of God demonstrates is most effective, and most right.

God Himself, Who alone has the right to do anything He wishes to people, set the perfect example in the Garden of Eden. Instead of controlling men and keeping them from sin by force, He placed a tree in the Garden from which we were not supposed to eat. He gave mankind a way out of its simple, happy life; even when men were unable to comprehend evil they had free will.

And likewise, when men were trapped in sin, God gave them a way out through Christ. He again did not force them to come unto Him, they had to accept it of their own free will. Revelation 3:20 says "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in with him and dine with him, and he with Me." Christ knocks, but we must hear Him and open the door.

God gave man free will, and He, Who alone has the right to violate our free will (He made us and thus we are His property), did not. If God did not violate our free will, mankind has no right whatsoever to violate someone's free will.

What is it to exercise free will, though? Does this mean that humans have no right to defend themselves if someone else's free will involves murder, for example? No. It means that all men are to be allowed to exercise their free will so long as they do not harm someone else in doing so. This is why all men everywhere recognize murder, rape and theft to be immoral. If someone wants to bed a consenting prostitute, it does not harm me or anyone who doesn't wish to be harmed.

This is actually good for the Kingdom of God, because it makes men honest. Make sin illegal and people will honor God with their lips but their hearts will be far from Him. At least when a sinner is honest, you know where they stand, and can minister accordingly. Besides, it makes standing for Christ all the more meaningful when you aren't coerced into it, and those who do have a relationship with Christ when sin is legal tend to have stronger faith for it.

This is illustrated by the experiences of Israel. In the days of the judges, Israel scarcely had a government. Once in a while, military leaders called judges would rally the tribal militias and drive out the Philistine occupiers. But the worship of God was not coerced, and free will reigned. Coincidentally, the Israelites were true worshippers of God about half the time, and they fell away half the time.

Yet when they cried out for a king, and God reluctantly gave them one, the kings forced a state religion upon them. At first, that state religion was true worship of God, but even the reign of Israel's first three kings (when that worship was most undiluted) saw an abandonment of God by Saul, who led Israel into that abandonment. Solomon led Israel into sin by worshipping idols, and after that the state religion wholly corrupted Israel and led them into perdition, both physical and spiritual. A few restorers of the faith here and there, like Josiah and Hezekiah, were not enough to save Israel from foreign captivity as a punishment for their sins. And it was their state, the overarching moralizing of government, that made that sin possible.

Also, when the Romans made Christianity the state religion, they led the people astray. They blended paganism with the true Christian faith by force of arms, and led the people into gross error that continues to this day in such institutions as Easter, Christmas, and the canonical Bible. Needless to say, the Roman Empire fell soon afterwards.

Similarly, I tremble for my nation when I hear of sin becoming illegal. People must be free to sin honestly or else their worship will be just as fraudulent. The government is force, illegitimacy, fraud, and corruption all tied up into one body... and the faith is far too important to allow it to commingle with such an immoral institution.

Iraqi-Freedom.com

2005-08-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

Due to the repeated commenting of the most frequent commentator on this blog, I checked out the site he linked me to, iraqi-freedom.com. It's your average conservative forum, with Republican supporters going off about how liberals are endeavoring to ruin the country, and how every single person who disagrees with them is one of these said liberals. In my brief duration over there so far, I've been called that AND a socialist hippie. It's fantastic observing this phenomenon in action.

John Stuart Mill once said "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." While my libertarian self disagrees with both conservative and liberal, I've found that debating those whose views are rooted in liberalism (which includes socialism and anarchism) is much more fact-based than those whose views are rooted in conservativism. When I debated with liberals on DFS, the arguments revolved around sophisticated conceptions of natural rights theory; self-ownership; the abolition of hierarchy and what, if any, forms of hierarchy are acceptable; and we then approached real-world issues based on those philosophical principles and their direct effect upon the situation given. While emotionalism is a factor in any given debate with any sane person, emotions were easily detached from the rational discourse.

If the word "stupid" can be defined as "emotionally-driven to the point of eschewing clear reason if it does not serve my argument", then the Mill quote above is true enough. My arguments on Iraqi-freedom.com revolved around reason in my first couple days there, to see how much reason-based arguments were accepted there. I found several people agreeing with my second post on the site, a no-holds-barred denunciation of the GOP employing those libertarian principles which are popular in conservative circles. I also made certain to keep anything that could be construed as "bleeding-heart liberalism" out of my posts; my reason was clear, unfeeling, and obvious.

The best example of this was a thread I started on libertarian philosophy (at the request of a moderator). Very quickly the focus turned to the War on Drugs, one of the most controversial positions of the Libertarian Party. I didn't argue the "bleeding-heart" points about breaking up families, establishing a police state, and terrorizing Colombian peasants and encouraging genocides there. I focused on points conservatives could identify with-the Constitutional protections that have been eroded by the Drug War, and most emphatically how the Drug War indirectly bankrolls al-Qaeda's actions against us. I laid out my points with clear facts and reason, presenting a very conservative case for the legalization of drugs. What was I met with?

You see, I am not a dreamer that works at Mickey D's or the hamburger hut or lives off mommy and daddy.
I live in the world you fuks try to destroy with your illogical logic.
I know that heroin is to addictive for monkey ass maggots to even care if it is legal, I know, from first hand experience, the devastation wrought from a cocaine induced fervor.
I know that legalizing some of these drugs is simply telling the mangy idiots they have it easy, they can steal off mommy and daddy or who ever to get the legal drugs and thats alright.

No, this is why I could not join the libertarians, this, and a few ridiculous other items of dreamer fantasy.

If half the idiots on this board actually worked for a living, or had other people depending on them, the dreaming would stop, the real world, the one the rest of us live in, is a hard place, doesn't matter what you care about, doesn't matter what whim of fantasy fuking situation you decide to champion. Only thing that matters is that the people depending on you will be OK tomorrow and beyond.

It was the self-same "bleeding-heart liberal" emotionalism that these people detest! So I decided the time was ripe to introduce some emotionalism of my own. Most conservative emotionalism is centered around patriotism and a hatred of France and "letting the terrorists win". So I crafted a response that was overly emotionalistic, and now I'm gauging its effect on the conservative population. Here it is:

Maybe you don't love America enough to stop giving bin Laden money. In which case, I think you ought to join the rest of the America-haters over in France. Hell son, I'll even buy you a plane ticket just to get your bleeding-heart liberal voter self out of the country.

The conservative reaction to this bit of emotionalism should be noteworthy. The rational conservatives (and there are some on the site) will likely see through it as the emotionalistic nonsense it is, although they probably agree with my points already.

Blogging a force in modern politics

2005-08-07T14:37:00.000-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/05/bloggers/index.html

I think it's incredible... a guy without a chance came close to winning a race, simply because a bunch of bloggers knew about him and supported him. Yeah, he was a Democrat (as opposed to God's chosen people) but it's still proving the viability of the concept.

The Libertarians have been doing this for years, even before blogs existed. Whenever a Libertarian candidate somewhere in the country had a chance of winning, Libertarian donors from all over would be contacted and asked to donate. It enhanced what little political power we had, and has won us a few races. Now that blogs are commonplace, the party's starting to take advantage of them more often, and my very own Libertarian Reform Caucus is beginning to organize on those principles, supporting moderate Libertarians both in real world elections and in intra-party elections in order to wrest control from the absolutists.

AFL-CIO gets neutered; Libertarian political opening in '06?

2005-07-31T13:53:00.000-05:00

Woohoo!

With the organized labor movement in America falling apart at the seams and decentralizing, Democrats won't be getting as much money as they were in previous election cycles; at least for the short-term. There is a vacuum to be filled and the Republicans won't fill all of it, or even most.

If the LP can get its shit in gear by the time the '06 elections roll around, we could fill the hole that the unions are leaving. But we have to move fast, and move intelligently. No more campaigning on "OGM NO TAXZ 4EVA" and "PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING", no more Pledge, no more "I'm more libertarian than thou" in the Party. Get a replacement for Seehusen that can continue his political pragmatism with stuff like setting up shop at CPAC and the IES. Send more realists to the LNC. Fix the platform into something that looks a little less like Ayn Rand's wet dream.

If the Libertarians can do all this, we can fit into the space left by the lack of money the Democrats will have across the board in '06.

...for guiding you home

2005-07-25T13:11:00.000-05:00

My love
If summer was a war
And you were in the field
I'd tie a ribbon 'round my tree
Until the day the troops came home
My heart would be Kent State
Where we all would demonstrate
Saying "Hell no we won't go"
But they still would carry you away
So I'd send you all my love
In the form of Oreos
And letters and CDs
With songs like these for guiding you home

I
Thought it would be neat
If I sent you this CD
To keep you company
On your long flight home to see me
So while you're munching on peanuts
To make your ears believe
In things like air pressure
I hope you like the stuff on the record sleeve
I hope it makes you smile
Hey wait it's been a while
And the flaps are out the wheels are
Touching down and guiding you home

dreamsforsale.net is going offline... :(

2005-07-22T15:42:00.000-05:00

Justin Sharp (Nostalgia) just gave us the bad news here about DFS shutting down. From his announcement:

"This site has taken up a huge part of my life, and over the three years that it's been up i have learned a lot about myself, and my beliefs. I know now that i truly know next to nothing, and the more i "learn," the less i know, and the more questions i have. I have enjoyed talking with you all, learning from you all, and testing my own ideas with you all. I think all of you can attest to the fact that when i started this forum, i was a completely different person than who i am today."

I was a blog author on DFS' main site. It was a beautiful thing. I remember the debates with everyone on there. I remember Thoth and LTJ having huge "let's tinker with socialism" threads. I remember our universal mocking of Acamas... that was funny, especially the Acamasgate scandals we cooked up. I remember the mock elections where my made-up Liberty Party couldn't quite stop LTJ's Liberal Populists (a one-man party) from taking over. I remember dialectic trying to "convert" Barfo by changing some VNV Nation lyrics, and the two of us coming together to talk about VNV's awesomeness. That place will be missed.

Justin, and the rest of you Dreamers out there, thank you for the memories.

God, one to beam up.

2005-07-20T14:56:00.000-05:00

James Doohan, the guy who played Scotty on the original Star Trek, died today of complications from pneumonia and Alzheimer's in the Seattle suburb of Redmond. His ashes will be launched into space in the same way Gene Roddenberry's were. You can read all about his life here.

A really good point about the whole Live 8-Africa bit.

2005-07-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

Politics is tied together very strongly... and oftentimes, one issue (say, farm subsidies) will have major impacts on unrelated issues (like, poverty in Africa, or the environment).

Chris Monnier made a really good point about how our agricultural subsidies are actually indirectly killing the most desperate people in Africa, and keeping us addicted to oil for no good reason. Check it out, whatever ideology you hold.

The Libertarian reform movement

2005-07-17T19:54:00.000-05:00

Not much to do with the Fora, but it's my other "baby" online: LP reform.

The Libertarian Party has been highly radical since 1983, when the moderates were kicked out of the party. We were pretty much exploding from our founding in '72 until '83, but after that we reached a plateau and have pretty much stayed there. Why? We have a highly radical segment of the LP that wants everything or nothing. We haven't campaigned on reducing taxes, for instance; we've campaigned on abolishing them entirely. Nobody outside of LP members would vote for such things, so we've consistently gotten .3-2% of any given race. That's just one example of the stupidity that's reigned in the Party in times past.

It's all begun to change, however. There are people within the LP that have agitated for the party to start playing politics for real, and not be simply a feckless debating society. They've started the ball rolling, with things like the Iraq Exit Strategy (a pragmatist document that leads public policy in a libertarian direction, but not an all-or-nothing document that has us out YESTERDAY) and the new LP blog to allow for daily punditry/activism.

It's attracted so much attention that groups outside the LP have started to take notice. Third Party Watch is covering the LP reform movement all week, with interviews and punditry galore. If you've ever thought "the LP has some good ideas but I don't like X/Y/Z issue about them and so I shouldn't join", know that the times are changing and we'd love to have you join in with the reform effort.

State of the Fora address: 7/15/05

2005-07-15T21:02:00.000-05:00

We're almost to the place where we were before the ezBoard attacks as far as daily posts go. You're doing good, guys. We've also got a bunch of old posters back, and this is also very happy. We have a few new regulars, which is good.

Basically we just need to keep on keepin' on and we'll be back where we were in no time. At the height of the Fora, we got about 200 posts a day. Right before the ezBoard attacks, we got about 100 a day. We're averaging about 50 right now, which isn't bad at all considering all that we've been through.

There was some downtime for the Fora yesterday... it was beyond my control but true to their reputation, Invision kept everything running smoothly. I've been led to believe that even those few hours of downtime is extremely rare for them; let's hope this continues to be the case.

Also, I'm looking for some additional blog authors. You have to register an account with blogger.com, and I have to add you here. Leave a comment here if you're interested. Basically, I'll take anyone with good grammar, has interesting things to say about a variety of issues, and who can blog at least four times a week. Bonus points if you comment on other blogs and leave foraaugusta.com as your personal URL.

That's all, guys.

Pax Ex,
-Stu

Even conservative Republicans support medical marijuana.

2005-07-14T23:08:00.000-05:00

Stephen Gordon, one of the higher-ups in the Libertarian Party, posts here on the Liberty For Sale blog about how he filled in as a talk radio commentator in one of the most conservative states in the Union. One of the many topics that he and his co-host came up with was medical marijuana-and their callers kept ringing in about that issue, even after they had moved on.

I was surprised to see so much support for this issue... is it just me, or have the Libertarians been right all along about the popularity of their stance on the War on Drugs?

Too many cooks in the kitchen.

2005-07-12T23:59:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend and I aren't engaged yet, but we're already planning our wedding. Only problem with this is that everyone seems to think we need advice. We even CHANGED THE DATE OF THE WEDDING so that nobody'd be able to make it but our immediate nuclear families and one or two friends.

Well, some slightly more distant relations have basically just invited themselves to this shindig. Not only that, but they're trying to tell us about how we need to invite a whole bunch of people "or else their feelings will get hurt". I couldn't care less-it's not their wedding, and they're not even supposed to BE there. I'd tell them off right now if it was just me making the decisions.

I know this is supposed to be a semi-professional blog, but eh. I suppose this is a vaguely libertarian dispute... in the sense that I want outside interference to depart from my life, and I want to be able to decide my own fate (or in this case, we want to be able to decide our own fate).

Two weeks.

2005-07-12T15:13:00.000-05:00

It's July 12... on July 26 LaRissa comes home from Arizona.

I can't wait. :D

Project/Spoken Show in Omaha on 7/7... \m/

2005-07-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

I actually made it to the Project concert... I humbled myself and asked Aaron for a ride.

So what happened... I bought one of Project's new shirts (the brown one that looks like a propaganda poster). I missed Names Without Numbers, although I talked with their lead singer afterwards. Then Subseven came on... they were excessively arsekicking except for the little Jesus advertising plug in the middle of their set. After that was Spoken... they played "Sleep Well Tonight" which is my favorite song of theirs.

Then Project came on and was disappointed in all the Sokol Underground scene kiddies acting "cool" and just standing there so they riled them up, and I started the mosh in pretty much every single instance. Well, me and this kid Jimmy that I didn't recognize but apparently recognized me from high school. (Small world, I guess.) So we dominated the pit and pissed off the scene kids. They yelled at me on the way out, so I flipped 'em off.

What else... I have one of Subseven's broken drumsticks, signed by the band... and Schwab's two poetry books, and $47 less in my wallet than I did this time yesterday. It ruled.

The LP's Exit Strategy

2005-07-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

Everyone, check this out. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans have figured out any actual exit strategy... but the Libertarians have. Not some pie-in-the-sky "get them all out yesterday" thing, either-but a reasonable troop reduction plan that gets our troops out of harm's way, stabilizes and rebuilds Iraq, and keeps some troops in the area in case they're needed again.

Go there and sign... people from all over the political spectrum, both pro- and anti-war, Democrat and Republican, have signed this. We owe it to the troops to give them concrete goals to work towards, and to bring them home now that the job is over and we've acheived our goals in Iraq.

The Rockets' Red Glare

2005-07-04T18:16:00.000-05:00

Floating down
Through the clouds
Memories come rushing up to meet me now
But in the space between the heavens
And the corner of some foreign field
I had a dream

Goodbye Max
Goodbye Ma
After the service, when you're walking slowly to the car
And the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air
You hear the tolling bells as you touch the silk in your lapel
And as her teardrops rise to meet the comfort of the band
You take her frail hand
And hold on to the dream

A place to stay
Enough to eat
Where old heroes shuffle safely down the street
Where you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears
And what's more
No-one ever disappears, you never hear their standard issue
Kicking in your door
You can relax on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control
Where everyone has recourse to the law
And what's more, no-one kills the children anymore

Night after night, it goes round and round my brain
His dying dream is driving me insane

In a corner of some foreign field
The gunner sleeps tonight
What's done is done
We cannot just write off his final scene
So take hold of the dream
Take heed...

-Pink Floyd, "The Gunner's Dream"

I don't consider myself a very patriotic person, I pretty much detest what our government's doing in almost everything these days. But tonight, seeing Bellevue's citizens all out on the streets, putting on massive fireworks shows all over the city (since the city government didn't have any), it reminded me that for all the government's actions that you guys out there may or may not agree with, the people in this country are just as good as they always were. Our neighbors are good people (especially the ones that broke the law and fired Missouri-legal fireworks into Nebraskan skies).

And tonight, while I was over at Aaron's lighting off fireworks, I remembered that when this country was first founded, there was a major reason to celebrate, and liberty was a perceptible thing. "The Star-Spangled Banner" wasn't written in the depths of Capitol Hill or in the tip of national majesty, it was written by a guy who was looking desperately to see if Baltimore was going to fall to the enemy (and with Baltimore, Washington DC). And if that happened... there might not have been any America. So from the deck of a British warship, by the glare of a Royal Navy bombardment, he scanned the skies above Fort McHenry to see if the American flag still flew above it. Desperately he sought for the preservation of his beloved Republic, and his emotions guided the pen when he wrote our national anthem.

I guess the whole point of the 4th for me is that we can't forget the sacrifices our forefathers made for our liberty. Like the Pink Floyd song I posted above, they fought and they died for our right to be free, so we can't fritter it away over silly things like "security". As Ben Franklin said, "He who would trade away essential liberties for a little security deserves neither." I'm not going to get into one of my libertarian rants here, it'd distract from the central point of the message. Just remember-people bled and died for your liberty, so don't vote it away, don't shrug it away, don't take it for granted. If you do... your children might not have the luxury, and your forefathers bled in vain.

Have a happy 4th, and take hold of the dream.

About the authors

2005-07-04T17:54:00.004-05:00

ABOUT THE FORA AUGUSTA:

The Fora Augusta was founded by Stuart Richards on May 19, 2002 as an ezBoard forum. After a few forum changes, it was decided that the domain name foraaugusta.com would be purchased and the Fora would get a blog. The blog started out as Stu's personal blog with which to rant about the world around him and a way to keep the Forites up to date on recent happenings on the forums.

INTRODUCING THE FORA'S AUTHORS

STUART RICHARDS

Stu's the law around these parts. Don't fuck with him. Or if you're going to fuck with him, at least make it funny. He's got a bachelor's in history with a geography minor and he does land surveying for a living. He lives in Portland, OR, is a badass cook, an Orthodox Christian, a fuzzy libertarian, and looks damn fine in a leather jacket.

I'm going to work on the Invision boards now.

2005-07-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

Wish me luck.

When I'm done, I'll have screenshots and links for all your happy asses. \m/

Changes on the Fora.

2005-07-02T22:39:00.000-05:00

As you all have been able to see, a lot of crap has gone down lately. From the ezBoard attack to the latest Ezforum shit, the Fora has suffered a lot in recent times. We've had to move, re-register, lose a lot of important historical posts, and we're currently in the middle of a lawsuit against ezBoard.

I'm going to have to ask you all to move again. We have to re-register at a new forum-this time, it's Invision. I'm choosing Invision because it has both a free and a pay service, everything's hosted, it's more versatile than ezBoard, and it doesn't involve building a forum, complete with server software, from scratch like phpbb does. But this will be it-Invision is known for a solid structure, and we can make frequent backups of our forums. Hackers haven't tried to penetrate it. Our good pal Justin (Nostalgia) from DFS can help us out with technical advice.

But yeah... we'll probably start out with the free service, see what we can do with it, and then upgrade. Or if the cost isn't too bad, we'll just start out on a pay service. The community's too strong to let it die... so please, register when I provide the link to the new board, and post away.

The Fora Directory

2005-07-02T21:42:00.000-05:00

FORA SCREENNAME: PaPa RoAcH15
NAME: Landon Epp
LOCATION: Aurora, NE
EMAIL ADDRESS: Landon.Epp@gmail.com

FORA SCREENNAME: Princeps Augustus
NAME: Stuart Richards
LOCATION: Chadron, NE
EMAIL ADDRESS: princepsaugustus@hotmail.com

FORA SCREENNAME: Sarge
NAME: Timothy Myers
LOCATION: Bucyrus, OH
EMAIL ADDRESS: sarge.lt@gmail.com

FORA SCREENNAME: ShyRissa19
NAME: LaRissa Epp
LOCATION: Chadron, NE
EMAIL ADDRESS: rissa_at_college@hotmail.com

FORA SCREENNAME: Triskal777, Triskal
NAME: Jim
LOCATION: Carson City, NV
EMAIL ADDRESS: Triskal777@gmail.com

Join the Fora Directory

2005-07-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

This is so we all have a place to record contact information for one another.

This is the information desired. Please follow this form. Put no more and no less than the information requested.

YOUR SCREENNAME ON THE FORA:
YOUR NAME (at least a first name):
YOUR LOCATION:
YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS:

And that's it. Put it in a comment here and I'll copy the information to the actual Fora Directory, placing it in alphabetical order, and delete it here.

The History of the Fora Augusta

2005-07-02T20:50:00.001-05:00

1) FOUNDING (May 19, 2002)

The Fora Augusta was founded on May 19, 2002 by a 17-year-old in Maryland screennamed Princeps Augustus. The name, simply the Latin translation of "Augustus' Forums," was chosen because these were effectively his personal boards. Having been banned from Goth.net and the New Gothic Message Boards over a theology debate, he wished to keep in touch with some of his comrades from those places.

So the Fora Augusta was founded initially as a "Christian Gothic philosophy" forum, although discussion certainly wasn't limited to those topics. It was established with three forums: Areopagus, where all politics, philosophy and theology was to be discussed; Agora, a general topics forum; and Lyceum, the music/creativity forum.

At first, the main posters were Princeps Augustus, sistersandy, and some other posters from Goth.net-namely Archannus, Misantropica, and Nyarlethotep. xpacifistx, another early poster, came from the Payable On Death boards, where Princeps was then a member.

The Fora was largely peaceful, although some vitriol remained from the Goth.net/NGMB feud. While there were no active flamewars between the boards, both sides did their share of smearing the other. An incident involving Archannus' repeated banning from the NGMB provided the occasion for fences to finally be mended.

2) THE FALL OF STRUCKMUTE (2002)

The Fora was still not truly defined as such. While it was already more than just a hangout for NGMB exiles, its existence as a separate, distinct entity still hadn't been carved out for good. If the NGMB had reversed their banning, for example, it's quite possible that the Fora could have ended right then and there. However, the hostilities continued as another tragic event occurred.

Struckmute.com was a Christian-based print magazine released quarterly. It had poetry, stories, opinion pieces, you name it. It also had quite lively message boards, and one of its boardies was that same Princeps Augustus. When the magazine went under, the Struckmuters were left without a home... so Princeps volunteered the Fora. A new forum was set up, "Kyriakos", that was meant to be a direct replacement of the Struckmute boards. The forum's color and image scheme was as identical to the Struckmute boards as it could have possibly been on an Ezboard, to boot.

Nevertheless, the magic seemed to have died with the magazine-Kyriakos didn't become the savior of the community that Princeps had hoped it would. Most of the Struckmuters went away after a while... although one of them, Undragoned1, sticks around to this day while others swing by once in a blue moon. After about a year, Princeps finally reorganized the forums to recognize the reality of Struckmute's death-and Kyriakos became the new religion forum, receiving Areopagus' theology topics and retaining the prayer requests from the post-Struckmute era.

The Struckmute era was important insofar as it gave the Fora a distinct identity. It was more than an NGMB exile board, more than a Struckmute refugee camp. The two combined into something new-the Classical Fora.

3) THE CLASSIC AGE OF THE FORA (2002-early 2003)

After the Struckmuters got settled in, a new dynamic emerged. The gothic element and the Christian rock element entered a sort of dialogue-not one borne out of disrespect or anger, but of mutual curiosity. Cthulhu jokes were explained alongside the role of Satan in Christian theology. There was plenty of debate but no division to be had. The board wasn't the liveliest ever, but it had a regular, reliable post count complete with intelligent discussion and friendly relations among all. Princeps, sistersandy and Archannus were the core around which the Classical Fora developed. They drove the board, and kept it lively.

Newcomers to the Fora in those days chanced upon it for one big, accidental reason-a single post made by Princeps describing his less-than-sterling experiences with Accelerated Christian Education, Inc. brought in others who did a search for a comic book character. This happened twice-bringing in a Navy wife stationed in Italy and a highschool girl from Montana screennamed Sola Peregrina.

The only incidents of note in the Classic Age were minor porn spamming efforts and a concerted wasting of board bandwidth by a self-proclaimed Messiah with visions of covering DC and London in thermonuclear blazes. Other than that, this was one of the best times to be a member of the Fora Augusta.

4) FALL AND PILLARIZATION (2003-2004)

The Fora slowly declined in importance as Princeps spent more and more time on the Pillar boards, though-the Fora's Classic Age didn't go out with a bang, but a whimper. A lack of new posting caused boardies to move on to other forums, and check back once in a long while-including Princeps himself.

Princeps' time on the Pillar boards led sistersandy to follow him there, and her signature and his profile linked many Pillarites back to the Fora. They didn't say much, but they helped keep things going on an otherwise quiet forum.

While the Fora was slowly decaying, the events at the Pillar boards would prove important to the future. Princeps was making friendships at those boards, as well as at the Godscare boards. He also became a prominent protestor against abuses at both places, gaining support and respect from the boardies at both places. He also helped Nostalgia (now Meliorative) set up Dreamsforsale.net, becoming one of the main posters at that site.

It would be all of these contacts that would enable what was to come next.

5) VOTING WITH THEIR FEET (early 2005)

There was already a history of Fora involvement in Pillar's protests. When a Moderators Only forum was crafted on the Pillar boards, Last Free Voices was created to counter it-and anyone who wasn't a Pillar mod could join. When Pillar decided to ban flaming on their message boards, though, that was the last straw for the bulk of the oldschoolers there. Princeps left the Pillar boards, and through IM encouraged others to do the same. His initial intended destination for the Pillarites was DFS, but one of the departees, kohlee03, decided to start things up at the Fora instead. Others followed suit, and within a week the Fora Augusta was alive again, eclipsing the Pillar boards.

At about the same time, Godscare erupted in riots against blatant discrimination. Princeps, Bloodlustgoddess, sistersandy and comingfrom decided to leave, and they came to the Fora. With them, they brought other Godscarers-Nyssa the Hobbit, Serenade7, Louder Mantra-and comingfrom generously decided to donate $30 to the Fora, enabling it to gain Gold Community status. This eased the transition of the Pillarites, and the Fora gained a significant new feature to boot-a chatroom, which became a common meeting place for the Forites, usually late at night.

Many Pillar traditions were grafted onto the Fora, such as the Pillarese-English Dictionary, but by and large it was a distinct community. Devoid of the riots they had on their old boards, fraternity blossomed. Once again, competing dynamics crafted something new. The remnants of the old Fora blended with the Pillar refugees, who blended with the Godscare refugees, who also blended with newcomers from Princeps' college.

6) THE EZFORUM FIASCO (June 2005)

Things were not to remain stable, however-a sudden crash of ezBoard's servers ruined years of historical posts, carefully archived and preserved. It also created a communication crisis for the Fora, who now had no home. From the road, Stu and Aaron managed to set up a new Fora on ezforum.org only a day after the ezBoard crash. A lot of Forites fell away, as it was in the middle of the summer, but the Fora still kept strong enough.

Alas, ezforum too had its share of problems. Downtime was frequent, and finally after three continuous days of ezforum's servers being down, the Fora had to move again. The Fora migrated to InvisionPlus, its current home, and Princeps spent two entire days designing the look of the Fora, which he personally considers to be the best out of all its incarnations.

The ezforum holdover did establish a couple things for the Fora, however. First off, one of our members actively turned against us and was banned, the Fora's first effective banning. Banning is something not done lightly; and it takes a successful supermajority poll to ban someone, so that the will of the community is respected.

Also, it established that the Fora is strong enough to survive a forum crisis; the posters will pick up and re-register.

7) LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND INVISIONPLUS (July 2005-2006)

After the move to InvisionPlus on the July 4 weekend of 2005, rebuilding was slow but it came. The Fora was down from its peak average of 200 posts a day to about 80 posts a day as posters continued to trickle in.

With the closing of DreamsForSale.com, the Fora's political section absorbed a few new posters, chiefly Username, Ethos and Acamas. Acamas quickly proved himself to be a troll and a supermajority wished him banned. He was therefore banned, but Princeps soon built a special section for banned posters, called Patmos, where those who didn't wish them to be banned could still interact with them. Acamas was resigned to that section, but soon managed to get the Fora shut down for a few days by posting child porn and ratting himself out to InvisionPlus' TOS Enforcement team. This led to his permanent emergency banning, ratified by a supermajority later.

The Fora's first banned poster, Adam, was similarly allowed to return at this time, but he only created more headaches for the forums by spamming and threatening "revolution" that only brought over people from the Otep boards. He finally threatened to do what Acamas had done, and was then emergency banned with similar post-facto ratification.

Ethos and Username, however, continue to grace us with their political views and with off-color political incorrectness. Other strong additions to the Fora in those times had been Dragonfly452, a Lakota webcartoonist, and PinkSpyder, a dormmate of Stu's.

8) PILLAR IS DONE (summer-fall 2006)

Adam decided to continue his all-out assault on Princeps after his banning, and quickly registered at every single board Princeps posted at and harassed him. The motive for this was unclear at first, and suspected to be simple trolling, but as time went on it became clearer that the leader of the Fora was basically being stalked by a bicurious troll from Florida. This led to Rule 8, arguably the most famous provision of the Fora's rules:

8) Don't be Adam Flanagan. I don't think I can stress this one enough. Adam Flanagan is a little whiny bitch whose entire life revolves around trying to irritate me because the entire Fora wanted me to ban his ass, and I did. He's a brutish little bi-curious troll, who can get away with this shit simply because he has no life outside of the internet. His little classmates hate him, no girl would date him, simply because he is an ugly person in every single respect. He will basically grow up to be a murder-suicide, I am convinced. So, basically, DO NOT BE ADAM FLANAGAN.

It became a sticking point in Adam's spamming, and he demanded its removal on many occasions. The admins laughed.

In other news, posters began to arrive from an otherkin messageboard, "Sleeping In Eternal Darkness." Princeps, who usually played the role of a person's unwelcome rude awakening, found himself trying to be nice and keep the peace on his own boards. The newcomers had annoying habits; huge signatures and avatars caused new restrictions to be drafted. A look over on SIED reveals the sort of crap that they're into. There were many problems in this uneasy relationship until Princeps and Vasilius Konstantinos, another admin, finally tired of the pretense and started a thread calling the "otherkin" out. ("We're not laughing at you, we're laughing at the half-demon wererat inside of you.")

Also, Princeps got married. To a callgirl, apparently. To put it most succinctly, his rational faculties were essentially pwnz0red by love and he is lucky that he didn't catch the HIV from his relationship with this... woman. He is now happily divorced, though, and his ex-wife doesn't post on the Fora any longer. Instead, she is evidently screwing vampire incubi and some werewolf Marines twit that she met on SIED. Yay standards!

Speaking of bad relationships that ended very humorously and dramatically, it was right before the time of the divorce that the Pillar boards again returned to the forefront of the Fora's collective mind. Adam began posting on there a while before, and began calling out Princeps, who returned there from his self-imposed exile and engaged in a mano-a-mano flamewar of epic proportions. By the end of it, Adam was banned from the Pillar boards (depriving him of the amusement of trolling fundamentalist Christian children) and the Fora had gained HollowEyes as a member. He is now an admin.

However, the good sense of the Pillar boards was not to remain, and the band eventually let Adam return. This caused the exodus of even more Pillarites to the Fora. Thereupon, he used the Pillar boards as a base from which to pornspam the Fora for a while, until the Pillar boards shut down without warning one day.

9) CHADRON STATE AWESOME (fall 2006-December2008)

Stu/Princeps went to college in this tiny town in Nebraska called Chadron. In the course of his collegiate years he brought several of his real-life friends onto the forum: pierdellevigne (who he had lost an election to in the Campus Historical Forum), Dragonfly452 (who had gotten into racism fights with Ethos), PinkSpyder, Rhob Cayer, etc. But the five most lasting members were still to come.

RunningDuck was a pre-law major and a part of the CSC Anime Club, along with CanNinjaGetSly. Hestya/Anne was Stu's fiancee for a year. Krad Elos and nads were both players in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with Stu and Stu's brother Logan (tamago on the Fora for all three times he's ever posted).

Duck was a major player. He got into serious climate debates with Username, and an epic 2008 primary debate saw Duck making sock puppets to explain basic principles of the Constitution to Acamas. A thread where Duck debunked Acamas' claims about Obama's birth certificate has gone down in Forite history as the definitive word on the subject, and even prompted the admins to censor all terms relevant to the debate as it never needs to be argued again. (If you really really want to, just th.row a pe.riod som.ewhere in the w.ord, we'll make fun of you but we won't care.)

Nate/nads was the other main poster to come out of Stu's time in Chadron. Stu got bored one day and added a word to the (then-small) wordfilter list, and offered keys to the first person to guess it. Seven pages later, nads guessed it and became the Fora's third active admin. (Sarge and SWOCOOM are just sleeping, and the other "admins" are puppet accounts.) Together with his real-life friend Krad Elos, they're all that's left of Chadron on the Fora now that Stu's graduated.

10) 4.0RA (summer 2008-summer 2009)

InvisionPlus' servers stopped working for about three months. About a week into the difficulties, Stu decided to set up yet another incarnation of the Fora, and everyone moved yet again. Not much to tell, except that probably the last chapter of the Adam saga finally played itself out, and an exodus of sorts began among most of the board's Orthodox Christians.

Stu and his friend Vasilius Konstantinos' wife Tatiana Kryanna had a falling out. This resulted in the estrangement of Stu and VK, which eventually resulted in everyone from the old NGMB but sistersandy leaving, as well as Nyssa the Hobbit and her husband Mind Cutter, who had become close real-life friends with VK and Kyra. Around the same time, amos, the board's loudest Pentecostal, decided he couldn't take the forum's "un-Christian" atmosphere any longer, and that long-running Republican troll Acamas also finally got bored of trolling us, and left too.

That meant that the forum became a bit of an echo chamber. There was still plenty of disagreement and debate, but with the exodus of most of the Christians the forum became largely composed of leftists of one stripe or another and secularists, with the number of believers of any kind countable on one's fingers. Everyone more or less understood that their disagreements were trivial compared to the disagreements they had had with those who had just left.

Finally, the coup de grace of 4.0ra came with the last chapter of the Adam saga. Adam hacked the place and installed "Hello Kitty" graphics all over by taking over Stu's account. Stu, using his now ex-fiancee's account, informed everyone to move back to the third Fora, which was once again working properly.

After this, the third Fora got reorganized. avaxpia (previously Meliorative and before that Nostalgia) bitched long enough about there being too many useless forums that finally Stu did something about it. Kyriakos was finally merged into Areopagus and deleted. A forum called "Arena" was created for the spam that proliferated. A forum called "Drunk Tank" was created when most of the new posts on the Fora involved drinking; this would later become the Clubhouse. The Fora's best posts were compiled in Mnemnodromos, a forum concept revived from the old Ezboard days.

The Clubhouse was created after Username and avapxia agitated for a subforum of their own. Princeps axed the Drunk Tank and the Arena, and erected the Clubhouse in its stead, making Username and avapxia co-moderators there. After a tussle between User and nads, I created a "Time Out" forum where they were both "grounded" until they could work out their differences. Shit was so cash.

11) EAT RAIDS AND DIE: THE SHOWBOARDS AND THE SWITCHBOARDS (summer 2009-present)

However, without the rightist opposition, the Fora was going nowhere. Princeps checked out the old Pillararchives site he had made years ago, and posted it on the Fora, and everyone laughed at how stupid they sounded to themselves back then. However, it was resolved to go looking for a Christian rock board to post on.

The first candidate was the boards of the Christian rock band Showbread. The Showboards weren't terribly lenient when it came to swearing, but other than that we seemed to fit in. We got along with most of the posters on those boards, as well as the mods. Debate was spirited but largely friendly. But a significant minority was enraged by our presence and our not being evangelical Christians, a significant minority that created their own board. This led to more drama which finally led to the band themselves deciding to shut the boards down a couple weeks after banning us. Only recently did they start a new board up, but it costs $5 to join and nobody's sure if that particular experiment will succeed.

So, you can kinda say that the Fora is responsible for Showgnarok, albeit unintentionally. We did get a few members out of the deal, and originalpersonalalt is a core Forite these days. virgil, when he shows up, is cool too.

After that, we went looking for a new Christian rock board to "raid." We found one, the Switchfoot boards (or Switchboards, because Stu likes bad puns). However, by and large they proved to be more tolerant. That didn't stop a controversy from arising, of course, but it more or less boiled over. Princeps even won "Biggest Ego" in their 2009 forum awards by acting like an even more conceited jackass than he really is, and we're still over there today.

So yeah, that's the Fora up to the present day. That's who we are, what we do, how we roll. We always like newcomers, no matter who you are or what kind of fucked-up shit you may or may not think. So come kill some time with us; we've been rocking this shit for over seven years and we're still having fun.