Neo-Swashbucklers: Revolution or Flight

Famous Pirate Ronald Jerky Post (archive relic)

2009-08-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

Sun Sep 30, 2007 10:31 pm Re: jerky

Jerky comes in a great variety of seasonings. There is a place here that serves quite a variety made fresh and soft and tender, but it is not true jerky as the higher moisture content also makes it require refrigeration and have a shorter shelf life and they do tell the customers that and that it is perishable.

Some of the seasoning ingredients such as salt and sugar or honey are functional in preserving the meat to last as food for trips and adventures, but even at best it is not a storage food and is still somewhat perishable. Other seasonings are for flavor and variety. Smoke is often used and it helps to preserve, but mainly it is dryness and osmotic pressure with salt and or sugar that retards the growth of microbes.

I have made various kinds of jerky. The sugar can do as much to be a preservative as the salt. It is hard to eat much if it is salted too much, so I use a lot of brown sugar. I combined sauces for flavor and the sauces also add sugar. I soaked the dried meat in teriyaki sauce and that added plenty of salt with the flavor I desired. Then I dried it again which also concentrated the salt and sugar with very little moisture content which is a combination for it to last long or as longas jerky can be trusted to last which should be just for a trip and prepared just before.

When smoke was used by Indians for drying meat, very lean meat was cut very thin and draped over a cool smoky fire. The smoke does a little and it does add the smoky flavor, but it's greatest purpose was to keep the flies away from the meat.

The most effective part of preserving the jerky meat for a time is drying. Meat should also be cooked as the drying temperatures or if smoked those temperatures are not sufficient to kill parasites. Drying is the removal of moisture and without moisture microbes of spoilageare much less active.

Jerky lasts the longest when all of the three dryness, sugar and salt are combined. Still the jerky should only be trusted to last for a trip or excursion and should be consumed and should not be storage food.

The Indians made their jerky last longer and at the same time become a more complete food and of particularly high energy for the trail or to sustain them through battles by making it into pemmican. They would dry the jerky to remove all of the moisture content and pulverize it by pounding it on a buffalo skin with rocks to make it into a powder. To that they mixed in hot melted fat and dried berries and sewed it into askin.

It rings very true to me with my studies of nutrition and my personal tests of bicycle racing foods that this would be a particularly high energy food. Carbohydrates should be consumed for bicycle racing, but the pemmican is a very sustaining food. I experimented with it by chopping up beef jerky and mixing it with dried cherries from the health food store and drizzling it with hot coconut oil. Both coconut oil and palm oil are my choice of healthful oils. They are tropical oils which we can find or trade for with the locals of tropical placeswe visit as Neo-Swashbucklers. The pemmican I made was very tasty and didn't last long before I ate it all. It was a great snack and just a little was satisfying for replacing lunch when I was very busy at work,so I can see it served the Indians well when traveling light and far under adverse and strenuous conditions.

To make meats storage food, I pressure can them in canning jars with apressure cooker. Then meats last easily for years. I have quite a variety stored this way and will use caning jars again and again and have my pressure canners with me as very important preparedness supplies.

Kingfish Beer Summit post

2009-08-15T03:39:00.000-07:00

The news has spent so much time on this contrived beer summit. No one has really gotten into the heart of the matter.

The police report clearly shows that professor Gates needed to be arrested. He was uncooperative and abusive.

The reason why Obama has taken such a huge hit in popularity is simple. Obama made prejudicial remarks about the arrest. Obama made his prejudicial remark for one of several reasons. Either he showed his dislike of police, his dislike of whites, his siding with the black guy without facts or his siding with the professor based on them being friends. Obama has sold himself through the entire presidential campaign has the one who is above partisan politics, the candidate with the moral high ground, or the great healer of all wrongs etc. His packaging himself like some "above it all" messiah has been why so many believed him andvoted him into office.

Once Obama made a prejudicial remark like he did, he revealed himself and forever pulled the foundation out from under the image he has been selling for so long. It's a 15 percent downhill grade from his speech in Cairo until this incident and the downhill grade will continue. Obama will never regain the fake adulation he once enjoyed.

The situation got worse because Obama is too arrogant to atone for the violation. A prejudicial remark coming from both a lawyer and a president requires atonement. He should have apologized and retracted immediately.

Instead he minced words like that he should have "calibrated" what he said and then he brought up racial profiling as a defense. His third attempt at avoiding atonement was to claim that emotions were high on both sides. In other words,Obama tried to muddy the waters by spreading the blame evenly on Gates and the cop. His next attempt to avoid atonement was to chuckle it off and talk about having a beer. Amazingly the poorly contrived beer summit came to pass with the honest cop sipping a beer with the two black perpetrators.

Obama took the actions that he did and revealed himself for what he truly is,angry, prejudicial, chip on his shoulder and a very small man with a lot of arrogance. This shatters the fake image the media created for him. Obama has infected a poison into his relationship with the American people. The toxin will lower but will never go away.

It would be like me coming to your house and then suddenly hauling off and slapping your dog and then leaving and explaining nothing. It would forever alter our friendship. I would have to step forward and explain that I was deathly afraid of dogs and that I overreacted, or profusely apologize and explain that I was once attacked by a similar dog, or I could say I was in areally bad mood and I thought the dog was going to bite me etc etc. As a solution I couldn't fix our relationship by volunteering a few hours a week at the local animal shelter. Without atonement, the relationship is poisoned.

Pride, arrogance, conceit and superiority will stop someone from atoning aviolation. These qualities were not supposed to be in Obama. He was sold as all-caring and sensitive.It's a downhill grade that Obama is traveling. He cannot regain what he once had. It's the same dismal feeling of the President Carter years.

Kingfish

Response to idle rich discussion on NS Island board

2009-05-18T03:36:00.000-07:00

Bill Gates has paid billions in taxes precisely because he did the work and took the risk. Bill Gates is the perfect example of the type of individual most screwed by the current system. The government asks nothing of existing wealth,it takes everything from wealth that is being built. Old wealth would apply to some future great grandchild of Bill Gates. Let's pretend that Bill Gates is not giving away all of his money to the Bill and Linda Gates foundation. Under those circumstances he would have a great grandson in 2060 who would do nothing with his life but sit around a pool sipping frozen drinks and chasing women. The great grandson would be extremely rich but would never pay taxes throughout his life because he would never have a job or create wealth.

Wayne, study the year 1913. The great entreprenuers of the 1880s were dying off. Their children and grandchildren were getting nervous about the children of all the European immigrants who came into the US in the 19th century to do the labor of the industrial revolution. The old rich were paying more and more into philanthropy to avoid problems with the children of the immigrants. They knew that they could not sustain a social welfare safety net forever (because they were slackers) and not building new wealth. They feared communist influence from thinkers like Lenin and Trotsky in Russia and the socialist influences in Europe. Plus, they were simply getting tired of being burdened by philanthropy.

Meanwhile, the rich brats were paying more and more in salaries to their plant managers, property managers and financial managers. So they hatched a plan. Instead of taxes being paid on wealth (the defacto result of philanthropy), why not have taxes on income? This way, the hard workers who were the managers of the wealth, the factories, the banks, etc. would have to pay all the costs of the masses' socialwelfare system needed for all the huddled masses that were still here after building all the cities and factories.

So what about new entreprenuers? Well,the rich kids could kill two birds with one stone. The new income tax would also be used to tax the growth of new companies and, thereby, prevent new rich from emerging to compete with the old rich! Furthermore, the old rich wanted to divide the underclasses. They knew an income tax would make the productive members of the middle class resent those that they perceived as being non-productive. The lower middle class thinks the upper middle class is greedy for not wanting to pay more taxes. The upper middle class feel weighed down by the lower middle class. Meanwhile, everyone has forgotten about the old rich because they are not really involved in the income tax system since they do not have jobs.The income tax is the result of a diabolical scheme by the idle rich.Of course, the other scheme by the idle rich was the creation of the Federal Reserve. This allowed them to make even more money without working - by charging interest on money that the US is printing and by being able to manipulate recessionary and inflationary waves. The rich knew they were in control of the Fed and could control when inflation occurred and when recessions occur. So all they have to do is buy depressed property during recessions and sell these properties during inflationary bubbles.

The country was actually destroyed between 1913 and 1917 but the US economy was so strong that it has taken until now for the problems to really be felt fully. Ironically, the swine flu of 1918 killed off many of the immigrants that constituted the huddled masses; as did WW1 and WW2. Also, the Great Depression forced many of the huddled masses into lifestyles that required less help - like dependence on extended families - but through all the trials and tribulations the idle rich have simply kept their heads low. I agree with Wayne that we need to do all we can to protect and defend the rights of the productive to create wealth. We just need to remember that wealth is not always the result of productivity.

Psyche 16 and universal health care

2009-04-18T04:54:00.000-07:00

Psyche 16 is an asteroid that contains millions of tons of nickel-iron and platinum metals. Psyche 16 has enough iron to feed the earth's steel production at 2004 levels for 1.5 million years.

Why not tether Psyche 16 and tow it to earth orbit, or even to the orbit of the moon, and mine it at our leisure? The government could do it and the government could profit from it. In addition to using the wealth for national health care,the government could also use it to pay off the national debt.

The answer to all of our problems are right here in our solar system.

1932-2008 RIP

2009-01-14T19:15:00.000-08:00

It is getting difficult for me to talk with conservatives lately. Many, probably most, of my friends are fiscal conservatives. When I give them my current assessment of the situation in the US I have tobe careful in the way that I explain my views.

The great debate started either in 1913, with the introduction of the federal income tax, or in 1932 when FDR was elected as president. The debate has been, to use an old analogy, between the "people who are pulling the wagon and the people who are riding in the wagon." Reagan used to always warn that there was an urgency to getting the government under control. There were the arguments in the 1950s against "creeping socialism." There were warnings since the 1960s that entitlement programs were growing too fast. Now its too late. The wagon has already plunged off a cliff and it matters only to historians who was pulling the wagon and who was riding in the wagon.

Fiscal conservatism is dead. Even if we added zero new spending to the federal budget, our obligations are too much to be paid by the federal income tax. The reason is not the national debt, the reason is the interest on the national debt. Taxes cannot be used for a national health care program, for example, because all of our income tax revenues will be needed to pay for the inevitable expansion of social security, the growth of costs in medicare/medicaid and interest on the national debt. The people riding in the wagon have already destroyed us. It is too late to "halt the growth of government." By the end of 2009 I predict that the federal debt will be about $13 trillion. The projected growth in SS/MC/MC will mushroom that debt to $40 trillion by 2022. We are going to be paying about $500 billion in interest on the debt by 2010. By 2025 we could be paying $2 trillionin interest on the debt every year. This is assuming that there will be no new programs like national health care. The middle class will be slaves to the interest on the debt. There will be no wagon pullers. All the wagon pullers will be paying interest on the debt.

Can Congress pass a law enabling national health care? Oh, sure. They might even pay for it for a year or two by issuing government bonds (taking on more debt). Here is the problem, though; someone has to buy the bonds. People who buy bonds know how to do math too. At some point, very soon, potential bond buyers are going to realize that the US will not be able to pay interest on the bonds and will never pay off the debt or even get the debt under control. People and governments who buy bonds are not idiots. Not only are the buyers going to dry up, the current bond holders, including the government of China, are going to start getting nervous and selling bonds. Then what we we do?

I think the die was cast on this when GHW Bush was president. The die was cast about 1991. Clinton actually staved off doom by having budget surpluses, largely due to Newt Gingrich taking over Congress -not because Clinton was smart. But then GW Bush has more than made up for any gains in the 1990s by adding $5 trillion to the national debt since 2001, first with all the GOP earmarks and now with the bailouts.

You can have whatever opinion you want about how cool national healthcare would be, but there is no way to do the math.

There is only one way out of doom. Since it is too late to stop government growth, the only hope is that the government somehow findthe money or the platinum. The government can prevent doom if it can find about 250 million tons of platinum. Shrinking the government is pointless, we need to let government be big enough that it has thewherewithall to find, mine and bring back 250 million tons of platinum.

Its simple. They either find the money/platinum or we attack them with torches, pitch forks and molotov cocktails. They could also find themoney by becoming the world's energy supplier using space based solar power. Or they could do both. Who cares? The point is that they either get the money or prepare themselves mentally for the gallows. They will wish they had listened to fiscal conservatives over the last few decades, but that time is past.

SLF Position on Secession

2009-01-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

There are about 5000 cultural, ethnic, racial and linguistic groups in the world. There are only 189 nations. Many communities and regions would secede from their assigned nation states if given the choice. Many of these sub-groups have secessionist movements (by one name or another) and they have millions of adherents. Besides cultural/ethnic/racial movements; there are also secessionist groups based on ideas. Libertarians, survivalists, communalists, radical pacifists, devolutionists, anarchists, futurists and religious groups that are geographically concentrated may wish they could secede. These groups tend to have a commitment to liberty and believe that they should be able to enjoy self determination.

Why do you belong to a nation state? Were you born into it? Were you forced to join it? Did you voluntarily select it? Your relationship to the nation state is slave-master. If you were born into it then you were born a slave. If you were forced to join then you are a captured slave. It is impossible to enter into an agreement to become a slave, so joining a nation state (without secession rights) is invalid. All nations are oppressive, by definition, if they do not recognize secession as a human right.

The modern nation state has existed for about 500 years. What has been the result? Are we not on a course that will inevitably lead to intentional or accidental nuclear war? Are we not in a situation where nation states are used to benefit certain elites at the expense of the common people? Merely having a few democratic institutions and regular elections does not prevent rule by elites.

Social Libertarian Frontierism has an inherent flaw. It is designed to fix one particular nation state – the United States. Currently, the United States government is in deep trouble. There is a huge national debt. There are entitlement program obligations that will be impossible to fulfill because the growth of the economy is not matching the growth of the program costs. Even without any additional discretionary spending, entitlements and interest on the debt could sink the US government. Yet the government views itself as an expanding entity that can grow forever; using the income tax, capital gains tax, and corporate taxes as the fuel of the expansion. It is truly insane. All government will accomplish is the slow strangulation of the private sector. The good news is that government’s successful effort to doom itself is a de facto protection of individual rights. In simple terms, the government will lack the discretionary funds necessary to take away liberty. Social Libertarian Frontierism shows government how to gain the funds to right the ship of state, so we are inadvertently giving them the resources to enslave us. Additionally, SLF allows limited socialism (albeit in a regulated form, under control of the Socio-Economic Supreme Court). Certain activities will be government owned and government controlled, which is socialist. The socialist aspects of SLF are necessary to enable the national treasury to capture profits and replenish national public wealth. Another problem is that SLF will create segmented pockets of socialist behavior, socialist thought and a socialist management structure which hopefully will confine itself to frontierist projects. These are risks of SLF and the widened risk requires additional checks and balances.

The three major checks against tyranny follow. Note that the Constitution is not included, because determined tyrants could bypass the Constitution much like current politicians do when it suits their beliefs:

Voting. Voting can be an important check, but only if the real will of the people is represented by the majority of voters and people are not being massively manipulated by false advertising, a biased media and an elite that can spend more on media than other constituents. Without campaign finance reform, voting is a very weak check on tyranny. The two party system undermines the effectiveness of voting as a check on government. SLF requires actions to enhance the degree to which voting can protect our liberty while also adding demands for better outcomes of government activity. This may include campaign spending limits and public financing.

Guns. Each and every home in the United States should be heavily armed. This is a key guarantee of liberty. The government must fear the people. The government must realize that there are strict limits on the use of police power. The second amendment should be reformed to guarantee that the citizen is free to arm himself or herself to the same degree that an infantry soldier is armed. Automatic weapons should be legal. Grenades should be legal. Maybe there should be restrictions or a line drawn with weapons capable of shooting down commercial passenger aircraft, but citizens must have the weapons to resist oppression and should not be technologically disadvantaged.

Secession. Remember, SLF will dramatically strengthen the US as a nation state. We must ensure that this nation state does not tend toward tyranny and the ultimate check against tyranny is the legal right to orderly, non-violent secession. A secession right will create tremendous pressure to be placed on the nation state and force the nation state to treat citizens as customers. If customers are displeased then they will shop at other stores or open their own stores. Secession should probably be made slightly difficult to prevent the secession option from being used in the heat of the moment over a single dispute. Perhaps a supermajority should be required. Certainly, the correct mechanism for secession is the referendum and the referendum should pass with 67%, lets say.

Space Based Solar Power

2009-01-02T05:41:00.000-08:00

Find a need and fill it. This is what the federal government should be doing to replenish the national treasury. Well, the world needs clean, renewable energy.

The straightforward concept is to place solar panels in space and beam down the energy from space. The most likely way of beaming the energy back down is by using microwave technology. Another possibility is laser beaming. One small solar power generator could transmit one gigawatt of energy to Earth, which is about the output of a single nuclear power plant, but it is scalable! Simply build more generators/panels or build larger generators/panels until energy needs are met.

In space, solar irradiance is about eight times stronger than on Earth. Solar energy, in space, can be collected 24/7 since there is no night, and weather is not a problem because there is no weather. 1.3 Gigawatts of energy travel through every square kilometer of space around earth. There would be no pollution generated by the system. There would be no waste. It would be safe. The receptors would be out in the Gulf of Mexico, but even if people were accidentally exposed to microwaves it would not be more damaging than exposure to a microwave oven in your home kitchen. What if SBSP technology falls into the hands of terrorists? This is a major concern with nuclear power. If SBSP ever falls into the hands of terrorists then terrorists will be able to power toaster ovens, refrigerators and electric cars. Proliferation is not an issue. The physics and engineering know how are already in place.

SBSP can result in an exportable product. Either energy can be directly exported from the power grid or it can be exported as hydrogen. Screw Saudi Arabia, why not make the United States be the largest exporter of energy. There is no good reason why this is not underway. There are a couple of bad reasons. First, we have a useless bunch of punks in government. The Department of Energy and NASA have been passing management responsibility to NASA and NASA has been pushing it back to the Department of Energy. This is one of the greatest opportunities in human history and we have government agencies are basically saying, “This is hard, you do it.” Well, this is what citizens should say to NASA and DOE: “You are relieved of all management responsibility. In terms of the SBSP project you are underlings of the Department of Defense.”

This is fundamentally a defense project anyway. Energy security is extremely important and potentially a killer for our civilization. Our war making capability depends on energy. Fossil fuels threaten the planet and, therefore, threaten our defense. Our ability to grow our economy and afford national defense and homeland security depends on energy availability. With Space Based Solar Power the military would have the option of bypassing supply lines and beaming the energy directly to the conflict theater. This is a Department of Defense project and DOD should tell NASA and DOE exactly when to jump and how high.

The second bad reason that SBSP is not underway already is that we need better and cheaper space faring. Frontierism requires that space vehicles be constructed on assembly lines using the skills and even the facilities of the auto and heavy equipment industries. We cannot be content to build one vehicle at a time. This is another justification for making this a DOD function. DOD needs to be heavily involved in the construction of space vehicles in any case, for national security reasons, so why not just put them in charge of design and development?

Because the biggest obstacle to SBSP is the cost of access to space, there will be temptations to make deals with the private sector to gain funding. While this would reduce the initial costs of the project, this would make it useless as a Social Libertarian Frontierism. The end is not the development of SBSP, the end is the use of SBSP as a profit center to eliminate the national debt and help in the elimination of the income tax and the capital gains tax. Shared risk means shared profits. The objection that this might be done more efficiently by the private sector is offset by the government need for wealth and by the fact that any private involvement would essentially be making the profits international. Legally, there could not be a provision that prevents foreign ownership of stock in private sector entities. International involvement decreases the security advantages of SBSP such as the economic and battlefield advantages. This argument also holds with cooperation with other governments on this project. SBSP should be a socialist project. The means of production and the control of the project need to be public.

Asteroid Mining (tampico)

2008-12-23T07:20:00.000-08:00

NOTE: I am currently working on a new political philosophy called "Social Libertarian Frontierism." There will be much more about this later, but here is an example of a frontierist activity which is intended to reduce national debt, eliminate or reduce dependence on the federal income tax and provide funds for increased federal discretionary spending. 12/23/08

A.1. One example of a frontierist activity would be for the US Government to develop and deploy a space tow vehicle which would be tasked with moving an asteroid of small/moderate size to either earth’s orbit or the orbit of the moon. The asteroid should be selected based on its composition and should be relatively high in platinum, gold, nickel iron and low in rock and ice. The asteroid should be mined with public funds and the profits should be for the enrichment of the US Treasury. Mining should be accomplished with the aid of the most advanced government robots (6.D.). Precious metals should be mined first and the precious metals (platinum and gold) should be fully extracted before any consideration is given to leasing to private sector mining entities. Once the asteroid is reduced to nickel iron and debris then it may be more profitable to lease the asteroid in part or whole, but this should be done only when the asteroid has been largely exploited and another asteroid is either being towed to earth or moon orbit.

Precious metals are particularly suited economically for strengthening the value of the US Dollar and paying down the national debt; which would in turn reduce the payment of interest on US bond debt and increase the percentage of the US budget available for discretionary spending and reduce the need to tax the productive segments of the economy.

More on latino Unification (URT)

2008-10-18T06:26:00.000-07:00

The nationalism that is being promoted by the national media by the likes of Lou Dobbs really misses the point with Mexico. Mexicans do not want to be led around by the nose by Mexico City and certainly do not want expansion of Mexico into the Southwest US. To the contrary,if the true Texas economy were unleashed by being freed by secession then the Republic would soon become a world economic hub that is so powerful that Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Chihuahua would be clamoring to join Texas. This is particularly true if the Brownsville,Matamoras, Harlingen, South Padre area gets back on track on what seemed to be creating the 21st century Hong Kong before 9/11.

Mexico would be trying to keep citizens from migrating to Texas because they would have such fear of Texas political/social influence that could lead to a brain drain (if they are lucky) or a libertarian revolution in Mexico (if they are not lucky).

What kind of Mexicans would come to the Republic of Texas if it were a true libertarian nation? The welfare slackers would have no interest because there would be no freebies. The drug cartels thrive only because drugs are illegal. A libertarian Republic of Texas would be of no interest to drug cartels because there would be no black market. The only Mexicans with any interest in the Republic would be entreprenuers or people who want to work for entreprenuers.

Unification with Latinos (URT Post)

2008-10-18T06:19:00.001-07:00

I remember reading a post in here by Tracy (I believe) which seems to support the idea of unifying with the hispanics. He was right on the money. We need such an alliance or there will never be hope for true progress.

This is not to say that we need to be friendly to Mexico City. In fact, by offering the lure of a free, bilingual Republic to the north we could attract thousands of Mexican entreprenuers, build a powerful economy and be a thorn in the side of the corrupt Mexican government. Mexican influence in Texas is a big part of what makes us Texans and what differentiates us from the slackers in the other 49 states. Mexican influence will be a part of our national identity once we have a nation.

Post in United Republic of Texas Group (Tampico)

2008-10-18T06:03:00.001-07:00

What would work by Tampico

I think what would work is this: Forget about all the factions with their shadow governments. Make this group an instrument for recruiting state rep candidates and then supporting a slate of candidates every two years. Let the candidates choose what party they register with.

I live in the Myra Crownover district which is mostly in Denton County. Crownover is a GOPer and did not have a Dem opponent in her first three campaigns. Someone on the secessionist slate could have simply registered as a Democrat and opposed her any of the previous three elections. This year she has a young, liberal opponent who is a Dem. I will be voting libertarian,of course. But, in 2010, will the Dem run again or will Myra be unopposed? Also, what about the option of opposing Crownover in the primary?The two party system in Texas is just a mimic of the system they have on the national level. It would be brash and dynamic to completely disrespect the system by doing anything we feel like doing in terms of crossing party lines. The important thing is the secessionist slate, not the party.

It is also important not to try to trick anyone. Just run a a Dem, Goper or Libertarian; but make no attempt to try to fit in. When I say secessionist, I assume that you know that I mean running on the 'slate platform' that we want the option of secession kept open and made simpler (see previous posts). Texas is famous for having unopposed districts. Where there is an unopposed district then we run as Libertarians.

In the early 1990's I moved briefly to Missouri to support a libertarian for governor. He was a brilliant old gentleman named Ogden Scoville. He ran as a Libertarian and got zero press coverage,was excluded from the debates and could not get his message across. Had he been allowed to debate he would have dominated the major party candidates. I always thought he would have been better served by running in the GOP primaries.

All these Republic factions should mean only one thing to us. They are potential databases for rep candidates. In fact, we should contact these other factions, explain the state rep slate plan and ask them for suggestions/candidates. The only restriction on this is that I would want Gned to screen potential slate candidates to ensure that they have views that respect liberty, for Gned to create a platform for the slate and for this group to have the authority to issue communiques to the media on behalf of the slate. The first thing we could do is to find a first slate for 2008 if there are libertarians out there who are open to keeping the secession option open and under active consideration and who are on the 2008 ballot. There is at least one. Then, we could begin actions to support Roger Gary and then start an intense search for 2010 rep candidates and campaign managers.Campaign managers could be potential 2012 candidates. Eventually Texicans will come to expect that they will have the option of voting for secessionsist libertarians. This expectation is important because this Wall Street bailout is not the last we will hear from socialists and fascists. The US is going collectivist and we need to establish ourselves now as a viable alternative. If we don't have success in 2010 or 2012, then maybe we will in 2014. The US Government is our greatest ally because there is no end to their shenanigans and no bottom to the depths of the collapse that they are leading us towards. Please, lets consider a weekend meeting somewhere to hash all this out.

Diversity (Orion Blastar)

2008-09-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah I know that the elite media and most liberal Internet forums like The Daily Kos, Kuro5hin, IWETHEY, etc use racist slurs and personal attacks against women and people of difference races (non-white like Arabic, African-American, Asian, Native American, etc.) and I have friends of difference races, religions, national origins, etc. My grandfather taught me not to be a bigot like most people in the world. Diversity is a good thing, and sometimes someone who is different in a way can help out as part of a team because they know something I don't or a different viewpoint and we can both learn from each other.

Most of the racist stuff are done by liberals because they are either Karl Marx Communists (anyone not European in origin is seen as inferior to them unless they are not of European origin Communists) or Nazis, Aryan nation members, or KKK members who are racist to all non-white races. There are also the secular humanists like Saddam Hussein that are liberals that are racist towards Kurds and Jewish people and Christians and in a way it is bigoted as well. Then there are Liberal Christians like Hugo Chavez that are Anti-American and Anti-Christian to any Christians that don't believe in Liberal Christianity (which is a secular version of Christianity).George W. Bush's administration hired a lot of women and people of many races, unlike the Clinton Administration that was almost all white and mostly male, and women like Monica Lewinsky got sexually harassed and made to perform sex acts like oral sex.

Envy

2008-09-14T05:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the compliment, Wry; and thanks for the question,Blackhearted Pirate Lee.

I think that envy is not genetic, but I think it is deeply ingrained in human culture/experience and dates back to hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution in a tribal context. In a primitive tribe there were three classes. Two of the classes had only one member. These two classes were leader and shaman. The shaman might have one assistant because the tribe does not want to be without a shaman.

I believe in natural psychic ability in some humans. I believe that we have lost this ability because it is no longer life and death to have it. If a tribe lost a cave and the tribal leader needed to find another one he would go to the shaman to get a general sense of direction. The shaman could sense where to go at least in a general sense. The shaman could also sense perils along the way. People could not fake being a shaman. If you made too many mistakes as a shaman you would get your skull crushed by large rocks.

The vast majority of tribal members were hunters and gatherers. There was really no reward for being very good as a hunter or very good as a gatherer. If you were the best hunter and played a huge role in downing a mammoth then maybe your nuclear family would get a good organ from the mammoth to eat. There was not any lasting rewardf or being good, though.The only way out of the hunter gatherer class, if you were not psychic, would be to defeat the leader.

Females had no chance to be leader. The only chance at upward mobility for a female was to hope you were psychic. The best gatherer did not become leader. The best hunter did not become leader. The best assassin of the existing leader became leader. The leader would have the greatest combination of size, strength,meanness, brutality and enough intelligence to keep an eye on possible rivals. The leader would also have a high sex drive. The sex drive is important because the only perk of being leader is that you could have sex with any unattached female in the group. Probably in some groups the leader would be entitled to have sex with any female in the group. Females would be required to comply with this because it was essential to the structure of the tribe. Without the incentive of sex there would be no takers for the leadership job.

So, by destroying the leader the destroyer gains the perks of the leader. Many tribes apparently believed that eating the brain ofyour enemy gave you power. This was probably just myth. But there is no doubt that killing the leader gave you the power and perks of the leader. So dragging the leader down actually elevated you.

Democratic capitalism flies in the face of tribalism. Democratic capitalism is designed to reward the best hunters and the best gatherers, not with sex but with more food, clothing and shelter. It is also worth noting that if you go to the richest sections of any metropolitan areas you will see the hottest women (so there still maybe some sexual rewards). It does no good to kill them. If you kill a great gatherer it will not improve your gathering skills one iota unless you torture them first to make them tell you the ten best habits of successful gathering. In fact, if you kill the great hunters and gatherers you actually hurt your own prospects to eat well because typically surpluses would be shared. Envy exists because there has been so little time in human history when the person who dragged someone down did not gain the powers of the defeated individual.

Envy will only be eliminated when we re-wire ourselves during many generations to realize that greatness should inspire, be copied, be analyzed but should never be punished. Punishing success hurts everyone and the people who get hurt the most are the weakest (poorest) who rely on surpluses for survival.

RNC and Poor People

2008-09-14T04:54:00.000-07:00

I respectfully disagree with Blackhearted Pirate Lee about the GOP being enemies of the poor.

It is true that the GOP would like to get rid of the poor. Poor people are not part of their base and they can never get much support from the poor. But as far as I can tell, the GOP does not kill poor people. They get rid of them by dragging them into the middle class. The worst thing that could happen to the GOP is for the middle class to fall apart and swell the ranks of the poor. This would mean the end of the party.

The Dems, on the other hand, would be greatly helped by the collapse of the middle class and the growth in numbers of the poor. This is exactly why the dems favor uncontrolled immigration. Not only are immigrants poor, but the increase in laborers drag down the prevailing wages for various semi-skilled and low skill jobs, thereby moving US citizens who were lower middle class into the poverty class.

Lets talk about class. The way the economy works is that the upper middle class provides working capital to entrepreneurs in the lower middle class (who are the true workers and have all the energy). The lower middle class converts this capital into new businesses, more jobs, more tax revenue, ROI to the upper middle class and improved property values. This system works against the Dems. This is why the Dems favor the income tax. The income tax slams the upper middle class and successful entrepreneurs and closes off the escape hatch into the middle class for the poor. What about the upper class? The upper class does not pay income tax. They typically do not have incomes because they sit around pools and play tennis. They also do not invest in small business start-ups. They invest in large corporations, large start-ups and bonds. Often they invest in tax free bonds so that they do not have to pay taxes at all.

The Dems are not interested in taxing the rich. The Dems are interested in taxing the people who are trying to get rich (the upper middle class) because that way they decrease lower class start-ups and keep more people poor. An added "benefit"for the dems is that they also prevent upper middle class from making themselves rich. The rich are exclusive. They do not want a bunch of technocrats, dentists, lawyers and ball players joing their ranks. This is why the very rich are often democrats and are primary campaign contributors for the dems. This works out great for the dems and the rich. The rich keep their exclusivity because the upper middle class is taxed heavily. The poor are kept poor because the upper middle class can no longer invest in small business start-ups(which are owned by the lower middle class and managed by the poor,who soon become lower middle class) so the Dems get contributions and they get a large number of poor people.

So why do poor people vote for Dems? Poor people vote for Dems because Dems give them beer money. Its as simple as that. The poor unknowingly exchange their chance to break into the middle class for a few crumbs. The poor, who live day by day, see the beer money as a victory and do not associate it with the real cost. They often refer to things from dems as "free." They do not realize that they are paying a horrible cost as a class of people. Dems/socialists in Europe have a much easier time. In Europe people mentally trap themselves in the lower class and all the poor care about is beer money. They don't care about the source of the beer money. I think it is a continuation of European peasant culture. It is a harder sell in the US because too many peasants think of themselves as upwardly mobile or that their children are upwardly mobile. The dems in the US deal with this by bringing out their biggest weapon -- envy. Envy is a whole other subject, but let me just say that it is no coincidence that every majorspiritual/philosophical/ethical model in the history of humankind has opposed envy. Even Karl Marx and early socialists carefully kept envy out of their world views.

Fairness

2008-09-01T02:56:00.000-07:00

Tampico

The biggest flaw of the Fairness Doctrine was that it assumed therewere two sides to every story. Most issues have 38 sides. Also, it gave the government the responsibility to decide what constituted a side.

On most major issues I can identify several views:

HHH Liberal (Hubert H. Humphrey) FDR, constituent groups

Marxist Liberal (includes black liberation)

Centrist/Pragmatic Liberal (Clintons)

RF Kennedy Judicial Liberal

Anti-State Libertarian, Hippie Libertarian, Anarchist Liberatarian

Constitutional Libertarian

Neocon Libertarian

Neocon

Social/Religious Conservative

Militarist/Police Conservative

Corporate Conservative

This is ten clear, distinct points of view. There are actually many more and there are also major political figures who have elements of several of these in their views. Also, I made no reference to moderates or centrists or compromisers because I don't know how to describe them accurately. Moderates tend to not have exact philosophies but base their views on finding solutions half way between major contending views. One day they can be halfway between Marxists and Neo-Cons, the next day they can be half way between Klingons and William Shatner.

Meds

2008-08-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

Orion Blaster:

You are right at least I have a house and a wife and a son, they remain from everything else that was taken away from me. But I am not sure if we can survive the economic collapse, as I am on prescription medication and after the collapse due to lack of medicine my blood pressure and cholesterol will cause strokes and heart attacks.

Tampico:

Orion is not the only swashbucklers who will need meds after the Collapse. I will. So will Lady Drake. I'm sure there are more.

We need to seriously ponder a change in the Plan which solves this problem. Bad guys are going to attack pharmacies almost as soon as the Collapse is underway. This is the bad news. The good news is that they will be after narcotics, pain meds, sleeping pills, and other stuff with recreational value. They will not be after blood pressure medications, chloresteral inhibitors or meds for diabetics. We need to strike immediately after the hoodlums. Wayne needs a raid in Tell City. We probably need a raid in the delta south of Memphis. There will also have to be a raid by the Texas Fleet near New Orleans ors omewhere between Kemah and Lost Lake.This is but one of the ways that we will have to become real pirates. We cannot be squeamish about changing from law abiding citizens to being ruthlessly piratical. Our survival depends on it and we need to survive. Pharmacy raids will not be done while the pharmacy is open. We will hit them at night and quickly get all the meds on a list that will be pre-prepared and include all meds required by our members.

Most Neo-Swashbucklers, probably all Neo-Swashbucklers, will be leading more healthy lives after the Collapse. We will be getting great exercise, be eating freshly shot game cooked over open fire and will be consuming far fewer calories. In many cases this will cause some Neo-Swashbucklers who now need meds to become med free. Still, we cannot risk allowing anyone to run out of meds in the first few weeks after the Collapse.

Kelly:

This is a good point concerning the meds. I rely on several meds myself, and Ihave decided the best plan for me is to learn the herbal and homeopathic equivalents needed to ensure my well-being in an emergency. I am studying mass amounts of literature pertaining to homeopathic remedies, herbal remedies, and hypnosis. While the pharmacy raids will provide a short term solution, providing, of course, the raids are successful,what happens when that seized supply is diminished? Neo-swashbucklers won't be the only ones scrambling after meds, yes, even to the point of organized seizure. There are MANY organized survival groups on Yahoo alone, not counting zillions of other places,and they have the same plan to raid pharmacies. I feel that being able to have a steady supply of alternatives to pharmaceuticals would be another good plan. Dr.Mercola.comis a good source of alternative solutions, and there are countless web sites devoted to this subject. I do support the idea of pharmacueticals raids, but I feel a more long term solution is needed.

Tampico:

Excellent points, Kelly.

I think you are basically saying that the pharmacy raids will buy us some time - time that we should use to convert to homopathic and herbal remedies and even hypnosis.

Was it Nietzache or Conan the Barbarian who made famous the quote: "That which does not kill you makes you stronger?" When we have survived several months post Twinkie civilization we will be hardened and stronger. We will grow our own, healthy food and kill animals that have not been fattened in feed lots. We will not have easy access to sugar. There is some cane sugar, and raw cane, in theLost Lake area, but I doubt we will give much priority to having cane runs.

Therefore I would add survival induced fitness to the homopathic, herbal and hypnosis corrective measures. On the old route that Frank and I ran we passed a CVS warehouse. I can't remember where it was, but it makes me think that a warehouse might be a more lucrative target than retail pharmacies. We need to identify such warehouses along the Mississippi River or near the Gulf Coast. Hopefully I will be riding with Frank again soon and I will be able to locate the warehouse (I think it is in Atlanta, though,which would be of little value).

Staying in Power

2008-08-08T01:28:00.000-07:00

Government will do almost anything to stay in power.

A common action is to use the IRS as attack dogs. A second common ploy is to bust people for lying to federal agents when they can't bust people for what they originally intended. How many people have experiences similar to Orion? I'm sure there are many. Most recently in the news is the story about the scientist accused of doing the anthrax mailings killing himself. Was he really guilty or did he know too much? As bad as Orion describes the situation with government, I believe that things will get much worse.

The people in power now are corrupt and self-serving, but they tend not to be idealogues. Once the idealogues take over most government positions, which seems inevitable, then they will be corrupt without any semblence of concious. There are people who believe in their hearts that the Earth must be de-populated. There are people who believe in their hearts that the US has been a destructive influence on the planet and that economic growth is destructive to the planet.

They intend to do to our economy what was done to NASA after Apollo. They intend to intentionally stagnate our economy through regulation,taxation and destruction of the engines that run the economy (energy and entreprenuralism). They intend to use globalism to ensure world peace much like the Nazis saw a peaceful world as a result of their own world conquest and the elimination of Jews. In fact, the destruction of Israel is central to their plans. After all, Israel is just an extension of the Western Civilization that they oppose so much (even though they were created by Western Civilization). Israel is like an outpost on the frontier and the group that will soon come to power in the US believe that frontier outposts were a horrible thing.Yes, all people can be corrupted by power, but idealogues corrupted by power can justify any evil in their twisted little minds.

It is going to be a rough ride. We are not going to make it unless we are well armed, ready to fight at the slightest provocation and flee decisively when the time comes.

Nazi-like Enemies

2008-08-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

Orion Blaster:

Most of our common enemies are Nazi-like in their organizations and beliefs. Islamic Nazis are the Islamic Terrorists, Radical Fundamentalist Muslims that seek the new holocaust of anyone who does not follow their version of Islam, a religion of the sword. They are willing to kill themselves to murder everyone else. Islamic Nazi Mosques are popping up in every civilized nation, causing them ruin as they have record recruiting abilities and Nazi Islamic charities that they tithe 20% of their income to, that funds terrorist networks.

Climate Nazis are Al Gore and his global warming religion followers. They want to seek a new holocaust of anyone who doesn't follow their religion and worship the environment. They place animals and the Earth itself over people's lives and freedoms and rights. They will either seek depopulation via concentration camps or seek to sterilize human beings and heavily tax married couples who have more than one child, as China does, or force women to have abortions. They will raise taxes on anything that has carbon in it or creates CO2 in its use, including people who breathe out CO2. They will force alternative energy at 3x the cost of oil and gas on everyone by raising the price of oil and gas via fake shortages and carbon credits and carbon taxes, until the poor and middle-class cannot afford to drive cars or heat and cool their homes,causing many to die of cold or heat exposure. Plus, higher gas and oil prices will cause world-wide food shortages and starve third world nations and cause over 3 billion people to die of starvation, war,disease, or death due to something related.

They control scientists and technology, and have taken over Internet sites like CNet, Slashdot, TheDaily Kos, etc turning them into propaganda machines. Liberal Nazis like Nancy Pelosi seek to ruin the economy and mess up theUS and state governments by passing stupid bills as laws and holding up progress in Congress and any other government agency that votes on bills. They will murder people by causing a new civil war to break out once the US economy collapses and takes the world economy with it. They will do everything they can to drop the value of the US dollar and work with Climate Nazis to raise gas and oil prices by stopping oil and gas companies from drilling for more gas and oil, forcing prices to go up so it ruins the economy. They will also take away rights and freedoms of the people and extend domestic spying programs, and pass moreMarxist/Communist/Socialist spending bills to heavily tax the rich and middle-class and give the money to special interest groups that help fund their campaigns to get re-elected instead of the poor as they promise. The poor will keep getting poorer, and so will the middle-class and rich.

They sabotage Ron Paul and other libertarians who might have away to save the economy and world. Liberal Nazis are really Neo-cons who pretend to be Liberals, but are nothing of the sort. They have taken over Moveon.org, The Daily Kos, Kuro5hin, IWETHEY, and other web sites that promote their propaganda. Not sure what we can do, calling out the truth about these groups gets one attacked as not being politically correct, and these people control a majority of the Internet, newspapers, cable news stations, media companies, Hollywood, recording companies, etc. They push their propaganda on the public and get away with it and also have college professors working for them.

Tampico:

I agree with all this. Unfortunately, the threat to our freedom is not all we have to worry about. The minds of true believers, which include Nazis, do not rely on reality. In this time in which we live, it is absolutely essential for all decisions to be fact based. It is a battle between emotion and reason. If the US abandons reason then we will either be destroyed by terrorists or we will have a depression that is worse than the 1930s. The other possibility,which I believe, is that we will have a major terrorist attack AND a depression.

The climate/environment true believers are directly responsible forthe gas prices. Gas prices are responsible for inflation pressures and the economic slowdown (not recession) and the slowdown is responsible for the cheap money which also cause inflation and devaluation of the dollar. Of course, as the value of the dollar falls then the price of foreign oil goes up (since it is bought with cheapened currency).

A terror attack on two or more US cities would collapse the economy instantly and completely change our civilization. Undermining the US currency will crush the economy more slowly but just as surely. Only the use of reason can prevent one or both of the collapse scenarious.

Orion Blaster:

Aye and they run our governments with a system that is part Big Brother and part Lord of the Flies and also based on Hitler's ideas. You'll find they have Liberal Professors in college that teach that Hitler wasn't so bad and the holocaust never happened, or it was Hitler's men who ran the camps and Hitler was innocent. At bunch of brainwashing if you ask me. My sister in law was exposed to that in college, plus they encourage students to use illegal drugs, based on what they exposed her to she had a heart attack as the illegal drug she was told to use had a reaction with the prescription medication she was on. While the Neocons seem to be bad, the Liberal Nazis are even worse as they combine the worst of the Nazis with the worst of the Communists, to bring about a Nanny State.

Don't get me started on how they attack religion and call it a system to control people with, religion is not to blame, some bad people are abusing religion for their own benefits, it is not religion's fault but the mismanagement of religion. Their system is an even worse system to control people with, as people get turned into socialist zombies and lack independent thought and critical thinking and logic and use their emotions instead. They call Neo-Swashbucklers a dangerous cult, because our religion is based on piracy, but we are just people who want our rights and freedoms back and want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as was promised to us by our governments. Liberal Nazis, Climate Nazis, Islamic Nazis, are the real dangerous cults, and they all have common goals and seem to be working together in secret to ruin the economy and cause more civil wars and genocides and holocausts. All we Neo-Swashbucklers are doing is standing up to them and telling them we are not going to take their bullshit anymore, and are going to get what our founding fathers had promised to us. Damn anyone who stands in our way of freedom and liberty, damn anyone who tries to ruin the economy and cause more conflict, because we Neo-Swashbucklers won't just lie down and take this lightly, we are not sheep or socialist zombies, we fight back, for everyone who lost their rights, freedom, money, property, and dignity. That means we post the truth on our blogs and radio shows, and give people the tools they need to fight back these modern Nazis to show them that we the people are the ones our governments should serve and not some Nazi groups or special interest groups. We warned people the economy and nations will collapse, and we will escape it when it happens as we are survivors. History will remember us as the only ones who had a clue as to what was the truth and what was really happening in the world.

OFS

2008-08-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

Tampico:

The first step in OFS will be to identify a professional, creative yacht designer and contract with this individual (or school --sometimes schools will take on projects like this to challenge their students).

The specifications for the boat will be very complex. It will involve several compartments. There will be at least one "compartment" for each Neo-Swashbuckler who has contracted for the project. This does not mean one compartment per person. A compartment should be useful to a small family or group of friends attempting to escape the Collapse. A compartment will be 10' long,70 inches wide and 69 inches deep. The compartment is 70 inches wide because this will allow two rows of 55 gallon drums to be placed horizontally off the bow and stern of the compartment. Note: the drums will not use any space in each compartment. The depth of 69"matches the width of three diameters of 55 gallon drums. This means that six 55 gallon drums can be placed on each end of a compartment. Compartments will be made of various materials including ferro-cement, steel and wood. Compartments will have keels, ballasts,pumps and outriggers. The compartments will have neither a bow or stern, but will have a cable-lock system which enables each compartment to be connected to compartments to the stern and bow. An attachable stern and bow will be available to hook on the front and rear of the connected crafts.This plan will make it possible to have two or three boat conglomerations that can later be combined into a single craft. Staging areas will be here in Oak Point, in Kemah, in Anna, Illinois and possibly in Tell City, Indiana.

The compartments will be constructed at the staging location of choice. The best use of the compartments will be to load them fully with survival supplies.The "loading" will include everything that you wish to pre-place on each compartment and the contents of twelve 55 gallon drums. Single compartments will be sized to fit easily on 15' trailers to be moved to launch locations when the Collapse is underway. Construction of the compartments will be done in Oak Point and in Anna according to the yacht design specs.

A fair price will be charged for each compartment and there will be 100% financing for members of this group. OFS compartments will be advertised nationally and participants who are not members of this group will be financed with 20% down. The compartments will be connected by cables, cable locks and a steel rod. The 55 gallon drums will be the buffer between compartments and will add floatation to the overall craft. Each compartment will have hatches that can be completely closed so that they will not be flooded in storms and waves. They will also have pumps to discharge any water that happens to get in and will have a ballast, a keel and outriggers to prevent capsizing.

The challenge of the naval architect will be to create this complex craft with the flexibility to be pre-wave, top of wave and post wave all at the same time without the risk of pitch-poling, capsizing or bunching. Each compartment will have a single sail, but the running rigging will have to be positioned in such a way that all sails are coordinated from a single command (Blackhearted Pirate Lee) so that sails work in harmony unless we are heaved to (in which case sails would intentionally be set against each other to make the complex craft stationary).T here will be at least one "community compartment" that will house a public restroom and a shower. It is also an option that we could have a community compartment that is dedicated to gunnery. There is much more to this concept, but I want to get your reaction to just these facts first. Any comments?

Blackhearted Pirate Lee:

This is a well thought out plan for a good ship. There is a school I think called Westlawn in CT that designs boats and yachts. I sent for some information once. Back then I had forgotten most of my algebra, but I am just now getting back into it.

Tampico:

Very good suggestion. Thanks, Blackhearted Pirate Lee.

I will make an inquiry to Westlawn.

Major Announcement Soon

2008-08-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

Over the last 5 1/2 years I have had a certain appproach to the Neo-Swashbucklers that has been fairly consistent and has helped create agroup of like-minded individuals who have our own mythologies,history, plans and politics. Although we are not politically identical we have come to a point that we are politically compatible. I sense that we have arrived at a point in time that we need to proceed with certain plans.

I have never considered myself the leader of the group. I consider myself a major contributor to the group. I do not believe that anyone individual is empowered to change the direction of the Neo-Swashbucklers. The Neo-Swashbucklers is a group of loosely aligned individuals who are free men and women. What I can control and intend to control is my own direction.

My future posts and actions will be on one of four subjects:

1. Continued comment on politics, current events, merriment,lifestyle and the love of freedom.

2. Contributions to tee shirt ideas as part a money making prospectfor the Neo-Swashbucklers. Profits will go to a group fund.

3. Collection of premium posts on this Blogspot site and assembly of these posts into chapters for a general Neo-Swashbuckler book,possibly entitled 'The Neo-Swashbucklers: Merriment in the ComingDark Age'. The authorship of the book will be shared, as will royalties, in accordance with the number/percentage of lines authored. I will explain this further later. Each Saturday I will select the premium posts from Neo-Swashbuckler Island or The Neo-Swashbucklers and add them to this Blog. Also, comments on the posts will likely be added to the book, so Neo-Swashbucklers are strongly encouraged to comment at this Blog site.

4. I will research, promote, develop, plan and recruit for a new diabolical scheme I have partially constructed called Operation Freedom Snake. Operation Freedom Snake (OFS) is still being formulated in my mind and, once complete, I will announce it here. This will have the potential to be divisive to our merry band, but it need not be. Some will like and participate in OFS and some will not. Those who dislike OFS might get tired of seeing posts about the subject. I only ask that you give it due consideration and tolerate the posts of those who participate. If it gets too cumbersome for the NS Island Board then we may create a separate OFS Board. We will see how the group reacts to the plan before we come to a decision on that issue.

I am not trying to be mysterious about OFS, I just do not have all the details worked out mentally. I will introduce the subject as soon as I can.

Maternal Controlling Collectivists

2008-08-02T04:09:00.000-07:00

Orion Blaster: (from posts on 'Is there anyone on earth more stupid than Nancy Pelosi')

Hitler was a vegetarian and loved animals more than people, much like the modern liberals do.

Hitler also wanted gun control, wanted to tax the rich, wanted to remove religion from the public, and many other things that liberals want as well. Modern liberals are just following Hitler's book, doing basically the same things. Did you notice that Liberals are anti-Israel and anti-Semite as well? Much like the fundamentalist Muslims are as well. Mine Kampf means my struggle, which is another translation for Jihad and explains what the liberals believe in as well with their struggle. Nazis, Liberals, Islamic Terrorists, all follow the same beliefs and same rule books. Due to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany borrowed money from the USA to pay off war debts and rebuild itself. Under FDR, the Liberal Democrats had helped rebuild Germany by loaning it money from US banks and the federal reserve, and had many US corporations like IBM, Bayer, etc.

So the Liberal Democrats helped the Nazis build up their empire and help Hitler set up his war machine and death camps. Then they blamed everything on the conservatives and refused to admit that they and their companies helped out Hitler, and even that FDR himself helped loan Hitler money.

Tampico:

I suspect that collectivism naturally leads to totalitarianism but Ihave not fully refined the theory in my mind. It will be something like collectivism usually or always coming under the influence of controlling elitists or maternalists. Totalitarianism is a maternal impulse -- this is something we must remember. The desire to control a constituency is a mothering desire. Unfortunately, since the elites are not actually the mothers of the constituents, the maternal instincts are not based on intuitive love. Maternal collectivism becomes something very ugly and incredibly threatening to individualism. I think that Hitler, Stalin and Mao were motherly controllers. This is why collectivism always begins by "doing good things for free" for the people. This sets up the people to be reminded later that they got freebies and now owe allegiance to the do-gooder elite.

The allegiance eventually leads to compliance with a system that places some people in concentration camps for the benefit of the whole. It also leads to selective extermnations to perfect the populations. Remember, the instinct that normally trumps the mother eating her young is the instinct to perpetuate one's own genes. In maternal collectivism the elitists are not directly related to their constituents. There is no trump to eating their young. What they want to perpetuate is their vision of what the population "should be like."

Now, think of these ideas in terms of socialized medicine. It sounds good at first but the end result is that you are allowing the maternal collectivists the ability to determine what needles get pushed into your arms. You are also giving the maternal collectivists the power to ration. The UK, Canada and Australia have made themselves vulnerable to maternal collectivism and will eventually pay a horrible price if they do not reverse course. Nevermind the fact that maternal collectivists do not use their own money to give away free stuff. No, they confiscate the money from the productive individuals and then use the funds to perpetuate their power.

One last point. Why do you think that the media, education and entertainment industries have made a 30 year effort to feminize American males? Could it be that feminized males are more susceptible to maternal collectivism?

Tampico (follow-up post):

Although Hitler was an extreme maternal collectivist, he was distinct from the others because he was such an egomaniac that he regarded himself as an individual as the elite. He did not represent an elite group, like Nancy Pelosi. As such, Hitler did not find it necessary to feminize German males. Instead, he played them with primal male instincts. Males are not naturally maternal collectivists but they do have negative impulses. Males are naturally inclined to rape, territorial expansion and,consequently, war. Males want to expand their genetic range. Hitler played this by exposing German males to an idealized notion of blood and soil (blut und boden). This worked fine for Hitler because he had no desire to expand his elite (he was an elite of one) and he could accomplish his personal goals better with masculine males. Besides,what happened to most of the German masculine males in WW2? Yes,death.

Maternal controlling collectivists need death. The ability to withdraw someone from existence is the ultimate control.

The Demise of Busch

2008-07-20T04:20:00.000-07:00

Lady Drake:

Hi Orion Blaster!

Who were the idiots on the A-B Board of Directors who sold Busch for a paltry $52 billion? It's worth way more especially to us native citizens of St. Louis. They are REALLY getting rid of Busch Gardens & selling their interest in Busch Stadium? It's named for them!! I CAN'T believe it!! The old boys are probably rolling in their graves by now! What are they going to do with Grant's Farm & the Clydesdale's? How many people are going to lose their jobs? Is it really a done deal or do they have to get permission from the government for the sale to go through? If this is ALL true we need to hang some Busch Directors from the yardarms & then make them walk the plank out to some chum!!! I call for our flags to fly at half mast in honor of the death of a FINE institution such as A-B & their beers Busch & Bud!!!!!!!!!!!! Bring out the kegs as well! I raise my cup...A-B has been in St. Louis for way over a 100 years; even before the Civil War. All I heard was the Belgians were going to make St. Louis their North American Headquarters. What a rip off!!!!!! It's a SAD state of affairs for this to happen to our American beer & all it represents!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In mourning,

Lady Drake

Tampico:

The merger makes no sense. A merger makes sense when there is overlap. There is practically no overlap in products, departments or advertising by InBev and AB. So why would InBev do it?BUD (the ticker for A-B) spends a ton of money on things that do not bring an immediate return. BUD sponsors countless softball leagues. BUD spends billions on traditional advertising. Busch also has the gardens, Clydesdales, stadium, Grant's Farm and association with every major charity in St. Louis, East St. Louis, Edwardsville and even on down to Carbondale. It is clear that InBev could not justify the merger with "overlap" since there is no domestic overlap. What InBev will do is make up for the savings that they will not get on reducing overlap is they will eliminate all the money that Busch spends on being a good citizen and good neighbor.

I have a personal reason for being loyal to Busch. In the late 1950s my father was a struggling tile layer in St. Louis. I was a toddler and my brother Tim was a baby. We lived in a working class neighborhood in a small apartment in north St. Louis until my dad got the contract to lay tile in the bathrooms and kitchens of an opulent Busch mansion. I believe it was Auggie Busch's mansion. The Busch contract enabled my father to save a down payment for a home and eighty acres in southern Illinois near the small town of Vienna. This is where I grew up until we moved up by Chicago when my dad changed jobs and went to work for the Illinois Farm Bureau. I was a Busch beer drinker until they decided to reduce Busch to a non-premium beer and place their emphasis on Budweiser. Even then I would drink Busch products anytime I listened to a Cardinals game (which was most summer days until we moved out of KMOX range toTexas). International corporations don't care about being good citizens anymore than the US government cares about what the American people want. We are just peasants. The elites view us as idiots and will do anything they want to us unless we stringently object and then they will have the courts make the unpopular decisions against the will of the people. The game is rigged and we are the losers.

Adios Busch. This is why I like corporations better than the government. When I get stiffed by a corporation I can choose not to give them any more loyalty or money. When I get stiffed by the government I still have to support the government with tax dollars. Look for more foreign takeovers because of the declining dollar. Look for the dollar to decline further because the government is about ready to start printing more free money to get the slacker vote and get the financial support for their campaigns by corporations that receive corporate welfare. Slackers and corporations own Congress now.

We need to hope for a Collapse because it will save us the trouble of a violent revolution.

Nazi Liberals

2008-07-13T04:17:00.000-07:00

Nazis were socialists. Even when they left companies "private" they often dictated the direction that companies took, what they would produce and when they would produce. They would make sure that all companies were working in the national interest and even went so far as to place people within companies to watch them. FDR was fascinated with the notion of a corporate state and he believed that planned economies were an advantage that the axis powers had that we had to overcome because we were too freedom loving to accept a corporate state.

Anytime politicians talk about cooperation between the public and private sectors we need to be wary. The public sector has most of the weapons and have the power to force people to do things against their will. It cannot be an equal relationship. Right now the public sector has decided that oil companies are not really oil companies, they are energy companies. They have an obligation to create other forms of energy. What if they don't want to? Can an adult in this country just say that he or she enjoys drilling for oil and are going to stick with that? What gives the government the power to redefine the nature of a particular corporation? What if the oil companies decide they want to diversify into building golf courses or water parks? Do they have that freedom? The government will get into the business of taking away freedoms by taking away the freedom of companies that are in public disfavor first. Later they will be telling any and all companies what they can do.

There are two core liberal issues that fit into this nazi-like liberal scenario. First, liberals are obsessed with racial identity. This is obvious from the Dem primaries and needs no explanation. Second, liberals place more value on the environment than on humans. Is it such a stretch to think that they will someday try to reduce human population on the planet? I suspect that corn ethanol is the first step in world depopulation. Of all the crops that can be used to produce ethanol why would you choose something that uses massive amounts of prime agricultural acreage and tons of water to produce little yellow kernals? Switch grass is eight times more effecient to produce ethanol and can be grown outside the breadbasket. The use of corn instead of switch grass has the potential to starve millions - possibly hundreds of millions - of living humans.Is this just a stupid government decision or is this a deliberate attempt to depopulate sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Penisnsula? Switch grass can be grown all over the south and in much of the southwest. Why produce corn in the midwest and starve people when it is eight times more expensive to do so? Stupidity or genocide - you decide.

The only hope we have is anarchy. We have to hope that the interest on the national debt will sink the US government. The debt is currently about $9 trillion, but our long term obligations will be at least $55 trillion just from obligations and entitlements that the government has already agreed to. Obligations are growing much faster than our GDP and the debt is not the problem, the interest is the problem; and the interest will only be paid by devaluing the currency by printing money. Meanwhile, the goverment is creating the expectation with many racial and ethnic groups that they will be cared for by government. Cared for? Remember, these people are not just fascinated with racial identity, they are also fascinated with depopulation.The only hope is in the hopelessness itself. A truly patriotic American should be cheering for the Collapse of the US government because the US government is the primary enemy of the US people.

Business Overview (Tampico)

2008-06-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

Step 1: About five of us chip in money and/or labor in equal value to repair and refurbish a 35-40' Bone Yard sailboat. This sailboat is owned in five 20% shares.

Step 2: Blackhearted Pirate Lee gets her 6-pak license.

Step 3: Pirate Ronald designs and builds a torpedo-shaped underwater metal detector.

Step 4: One Neo-Swashbuckler develops a relationship with a small village in Mexico on the Gulf coast between Tampico and Veracruz. We find a safe place to dock a sailboat at this village and also find a trustworthy local that will carry out activities for us in exchange for fees. Among the activities will be that this person will find a source for Macaws and Parrots that can be purchased inexpensively.

Step 5: We offer "adventure and diving sails" for small groups in two-week sails to and from our village in Mexico from either Corpus Christi or Galveston. These trips will include stops at places where the metal detector indicates the location of metal. When getting a license for this activity we claim that we are not treasure hunters,but are supporting adventure diving and tourism. We develop a brochure for these adventure/diving/sailing expeditions and distribute the brochures to travel agents. We require bookings to be at least one month in advance.

Step 6: Customers on the adventure sail are made aware of the metal detector, diving and stop in Mexico, but are told nothing about the birds.

Step 7: The Swashbucklers who own the refurbished wooden boat create a partial false floor in the cabin which includes several shoe-box sized compartments that could house unconcious birds.

Step 8: We identify one Neo-Swashbuckler who becomes an expert on Mayan relics. We use our connection in Mexico to look for Mayan relics for sale (in addition to finding the source for birds). We provide a digital camera and internet access to the Mexican connection. He or she sends us pictures of the relics and we make business decisions based on the picture and the knowledge of the swashbuckling Mayan relic expert.

Step 9: When we start out with the group of customers we get to know them and inform them that we will not squeal if they keep anything they find along the way. Once we get them to agree we know they are corrupt so we can inform them about our bird smuggling.

Step 10: We commission Frank to create an alcohol concoction that can be used as a spray mist that will render the birds unconcious.

Revenue: Revenue from the adventure sailors will divided as follows:

Blackhearted Pirate Lee: 30%
Boat owners: 25%
Pirate Ronald (metal detector rental): 10%
Crew #1 (most experienced:(15%)
Crew #2: 10%
Crew #3: 10%

Revenue on birds will be divided fairly between the investors,sellers, the boat owners, Frank and crew of the vessel after theMexican connection is paid and the cost of the birds is subtracted. Revenue from the Mayan relics will be divided between the investors,the Mayan expert, the seller, boat owners and the crew off the vessel.

Step 11: Once a regular revenue stream is established, we will begin to take some of the profits to create a fund to be used to purchase some minor acreage near the Mexican village and build an aviary.

PLEASE GIVE ME INPUT ABOUT THIS PLAN. IT CAN AND WILL BE MODIFIED.

One piratical aspect to this devious plan is that we will secretly monitor the sites where the divers have finds. We will act uninterested when they bring up a few pieces of eight, but we will record the GPS location so that we can return later.We can take turns being crew under Blackhearted Pirate Lee as we have time or vacation.

The birds would only be rendered unconcious for the time that we arewithin a few miles of the Texas-Mexico border. Possessing the birds off the coast of Mexico is not illegal. The bird cages could be faked as "crab traps" if we are stopped while the birds are asleep.

Historic Kingfish Proposal

2008-06-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

Here is a proposal for Swashbuckler consideration:

1.) Form the Swashbucklers into a club, write tons of grants and then keep no permanent address for the rest of our lives. Be shiftless and belligerent if ever contacted by a government official.

2.) Have more discussion on firearms and more firing range practice.

3.) Keep horny toads as pets.

4.) Giving lashings to any Swashbuckler who posts under an unrelated subject heading.

5.) Learn how to make more rum drinks.

6.) Create a master list of banished words and phrases like"networking" and "think outside the box".

7.) Make it a point to laugh at socialist zombies and narcissistic people.

8.) Put nobility in the forefront as the most important character trait.

9.) Grow more vegetables.

10.) Keep geese.

History Assingment #1

2008-05-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

Tampico:

I think that one helpful activity for the Neo-Swashbucklers would be for us to engage in the study of certain events or eras in history that might relate to our own future as a group. This is important because we live in an extremely dynamic historical time. Most people live lives in uninteresting, stable times. We do not have that luxury. At any moment we could face something like the destruction of seven US cities and the evacuation of dozens of cities which would send us into a depression and essentially destroy the US as a nation-state. We could then be re-organized into something other than a nation-state because nation-states are sitting targets to unknown groups with fissionable materials.

Here is the assignment for those who choose to accept it:

Study the activities of the Vandals from 409 to 455. List two thingsthat were done by the Vandals that should be inspirational to Neo-Swashbucklers. Hint: neither inspirational act/activity had anythingto do with the sacking of Rome.

Geoff:

Interesting period. This includes the movement into the Iberian Peninsula and the later establishment of a kingdom in North Africa right up to the sack of Rome in 455CE.

Firstly, would be the building of the Vandal fleet, to plunder theMediterranean during the reign of King Geiseric. There is some reason to think he actually started doing this before he became King in 428CE, intent of getting out of Spain (Iberia) and leaving it to the Visigoths who were hostile and too numerous for them to deal with and he used his fleet to ferry some 80,000 of his people to North Africa in 429CE. The second is almost certainly the capture of Carthage in 439 by Geiseric, who made it his capital. Geiseric conquered Sicily, Sardinia, Corsicaand the Balearic Islands and made them a Vandal state before spending the next 35 years or so looting the coasts of both the Eastern and Western Roman Empires.

Tampico:

I would add to this that part if the inspiration is that the Vandals had never been exposed to open water before ending up in southern Spain (Iberia). They had lived with the Danube as a boundary before, but had never even built river boats. Of course, it helped that there were Roman boat building facilities in Iberia - and the Vandal craft were basically copies of these - but it still inspires me that they became expert boat builders despite having zero tradition in boat building. People within the same generation went from landlubbers to boat builders to people who relied on the sea for survival and evacuation. Imagine that when they first took to sea they probably had absolutely no experience fishing in the ocean, much less doing coastal raids and engaging in sea battles.

The Vandals were flexible. No sooner had they adapted to coastal living in Spain, they do a huge evacuation to Africa. There is some evidence that they eventually became the equivalent of mercenaries and this is where I think they were misled. In my opinion, they should have just carved out there own nation-state in Africa and disengaged from world politics. Maybe they should have used booty from piracy to finance a move down the west African coast in search of lightly occupied lands that they could call their own. They could have developed into a southern version of the Vikings had they found an African equivalent of fjords as a safe base. In fact, it could have easily turned out that a rivalry could have developed between the Vandals and the Vikings.

Wealth Gap Thread Excerpts

2008-04-12T05:47:00.000-07:00

Blackhearted Pirate Lee:

In addition, the decline of the labor movement has crippled the unions' ability to shape public policy that currently shifts the tax burden away from the rich resulting in shrinking revenues for health care, education and infrastructure projects that benefit the middle class.

Wayne:

Unions drove the three largest employers out of Racine with high wages and benefits demands.
Look at the UAW and what they did to Ford etc. $25+ to put on 4 bolts is insane.
The Teacher Unions only insure that those who do not care about kids keep their jobs and not allow those who do to teach. In Milwaukee less then 50% of Black kids get out of high school the teacher unions prevent change. Please do not tell me about large unions.

I also do not believe the 58% want to join unions. If that was indeed true unions would be gaining members not losing them. Also we would see more Dems elected into office.
For far too long big unions has been big business.

Blackhearted Pirate Lee:

OK. Where is Tampico? Isn’t he back YET? Lol

Orion Blaster:

A bit misleading as 401K, IRAs, and other retirement plans actually own most of the corporate stock and while managed by big banks and financial companies the stock is owned by the middle-class but they cannot touch it until retirement.Also if a poor person working in the USA for minimum wage, they are considered rich in a third world nation like Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, etc who usually earn like $100 to $300 a month, instead of $1200 a month in the USA. Over ten times the money a third world poor person earns if you consider most third world nations have poor people that earn $100 or less a month in some sweat shop making goods to be sold to the USA. I've been outside of the USA, so I know that. It is one of the main reasons why third world nations hate the USA because even our poorest citizens are considered rich in their nations. But their poor go without heat, electricity, TV, and have to beg for food most of the time, while our poor earn ten times as much and microwave food they buy or get food stamps for while watching Cable TV and driving an economy car.I think the main problem is that a lot of good paying jobs in the USA require higher education and not everyone can afford college. Plus a lot of good paying jobs get offshored to other countries and people who used to work in factories are now working minimum wage jobs in retail stores or restaurants. A lot of computer and engineering people I know, for example work for Wal-Mart now because those jobs got offshored to Asia by Clinton and when Bush took over he did nothing to fix that by raise the level of H1B Visas for people to come to the USA and work computer and engineering jobs for close to minimum wage, cheaper than a US citizen will work. It seems for every high paying job that gets eliminated, a low paying job in retail, food, or services gets created. So unless one works for a union or gets promoted to management, they are going to keep losing income unless they are lucky enough to have a job for life (like a federal government job that is almost like communism as they allow federal employees to goof off and not get fired and waste tax payers dollars until they retire and earn a pension, but not all federal employees are like that, but some of them are).

We even have a new class of homeless people now, white collar homeless, people who used to work high paying white collar jobs but got fired or got sick and lost them as a result.Due to Enron, and the Dotcom scandals they created new millionaires and billionaires, but did so by swindling a lot of people out of money by investing in a company that earns no income or cooks the books so it appears to be profitable and then people bail out by selling stock before they crash and it ruins pension funds, 401Ks, IRAs, and eventually hits banks and ruins mortgages by lowering property prices and destroying jobs so people cannot make house payments anymore. Then the government bails out banks like Bear Sterns by printing up billions thus causing inflation and raising the prices of everything. Plus now that we are fighting wars over oil, and oil supply is getting less as consumption goes up fuel prices go up as well. Not helping is the global warming movement that is putting carbon taxes on anything that uses carbon, and soon the USA will pass carbon taxes causing carbon fuel to go up and auto prices to go up.

In my area the country passed a new law that forces everyone to recycle which doubled our trash bill now, and disabled, and retired people and people living on a fixed income are discriminated against because they cannot afford the increases to the trash bill, and it cuts back their medicine, food, and house money so now some bills they cannot pay or have a hard time paying. Plus since the government supports ethanol, the price of corn went up, which increased the price of meat that are fed corn, and now some farms are defaulting on loans due to the price of feed. I'm all for fighting global warming, but not at the cost of raising the price of everything and discriminating against the poor. By the time we get a carbon tax on gas, prices should be $7 a gallon, and I don't think the poor can afford that.Sad to say but I think within the next 30 years or so, if something isn't done to fix the economy and prices, we may have a second civil war on our hands.

Blackhearted Pirate Lee:

That's why we are planning to get out. I dont know about a civil war, maybe a domestic war and 30 years is way too long I think. We will have a rebellion by the end of 8 years if the same person stays in the Presidency. A total collapse may take as much as 30 to 50 years but I think its warm right now and we are going to stand up to soaring prices soon just because we cant adjust to that swift rise prices. We know what the right price for an item should be. Most of us are shocked every time we go out of the house. Many middle class and upper people can absorb the swift changes of prices but many cant.

Nice to have you onboard. Talk like this is our mainstay. Anyway we must keep thinking to avoid being lead by richies.

Tampico:

Since FDR there has been a certain mindset about the use of government to steal money and resources from productive people and transfer these resources to the non-productive people. This is what Ayn Rand responded to and she developed the notion that FDR democrats were essentially looters. She was right at the time. A lot of people who agreed with the need to battle looters joined the GOP including such greats as Goldwater and Reagan. The unions joined the looters and the academics joined the looters. It was simple back then -- just join the GOP and oppose the looters. If you listen to talk radio you would think that these conditions still exist. Looters still exist, this is true, but things began to change when George HW Bush became president and when the GOP won Congress in 1994. It was not so bad that the GOP won Congress in 1994 until Newt was destroyed. Newt kept the GOP on the straight and narrow and would have never allowed the GOP to become a looter party too. Clinton and Gore were the first to talk about "cooperation" between the private and public sectors. Clinton basically abandoned the looters after the 1994 elections, sent Hillary to Kosovo and decided that he could expand government more easily by turning the corporations into looters. Clinton was greatly affected by losing the 1994 mid-terms and he blamed Hillary's mishandling of the universal health care issue and the attacks of Rush and the rest of talk radio. He knew that he had to corrupt the GOP to save his statist agenda. Clinton is the one who started corporate welfare. It was during the Clinton administration that government "investment"in the private sector became significant. Daddy Bush started it, but Clinton saw its corrupting potential. Corporations quickly bought into the notion that their real enemies were not looters, but were competitors from the ranks of small business. Corporations started investing heavily in politics in exchange for being allowed to help write legislation.Then came George W. Bush. For the first seven years of his presidency he has allowed and even encouraged GOP legislators to become looters. Some even say that the Iraq war is a form of corporate welfare. Many industries, like the seafood industry, are now heavily regulated by laws that were written by the corporations that dominate the industries. Draft legislation by Mrs.Paul "protects" our seafood (makes it extremely difficult for small business to become big in the seafood industry). Both parties are now the enemies of the productive person. They are both dogs trying to eat our productivity. It does not matter who eats your liver as much as it matters that your liver gets eaten. The only hope would have been for Ron Paul to win and get the country back to the constitution. This is not going to happen. The Collapse will ironically be the savior of the country because now the only way to kill the leeches is to allow the host to die.

Orion Blaster:

Sadly that is how capitalism and communism work, non-productive people steal wealth from the productive people. Be it Executive management, the Communist party, political leaders, or just team members who pass on their work to co-workers. While a majority of us are productive and actually get work done, we move the economy and help create jobs while everyone else just sits around and collects money and figures out ways to get us to work harder and work longer for no extra pay while they either take credit for our work or profit from it. In communism, the non-productive people are in the communist party and get all the perks and wealth while those who aren't in the communist party do most of the work. I have to say I used to be a computer programmer, and all I ever did was make others rich. I fixed the problems that incompetent coworkers had with their programs, I wrote programs for insane speculations that managers had and everyone else said couldn't be done. The software I wrote was worth millions, held patents, and saved the companies millions of dollars in saved expenses as before they had waste and mistakes that cost them clients and extra work. Though I innovated and invented a lot of the software, by employment contract the company got all rights and I had almost nothing to show for it. But when it all comes down to it the non-productive people play politics to keep their jobs and find new ways to blame others for their own mistakes. Getting tired of me showing them up, they figured that they could do what they could to force me to quit and failing that stress me out enough to get sick. When that didn't work they did what they could to make up stuff about me to get management to fire me. But that was a mistake as once I was gone, there was nobody left to fix their mistakes and eventually their software became buggy, bloated, and crashed a lot. I read on the Microsoft newsgroups the problems they had and they begged people to help them fix them. I couldn't be there when the fireworks went off, and the crap hit the fan, but I imagine the same thing will happen to the USA when most of the productive people are out of work and only the non-productive people remain. Offworking work to India or hiring H1B Visa workers don't help either, and I highly doubt that executive managers can learn how to fix computers or write good software when there is nobody else left to fire to save their companies. I'm glad that I don't work for anybody or any company any more.

That is about the way it is now in the US workplace. Young people are getting in having learned almost nothing from college and thinking that they know everything and not learning from their mistakes and bad actions and decisions just like most managers do now. I feel sorry for the people that are actually productive and carrying the companies they work for, because they are over worked, getting health issues, and only making non-productive people rich. It isn't only the government now with non-productive people doing the looting. It is corporations as well. Remember Enron, all of the productive people suffered while the non-productive people looted it and went to live on some island while pension plans and stock turned to dust and shareholders got shafted. Not like the Pirate way where everyone gets their own fair share of the profits based on the work they do and their position as well as carry their own fair share of the work. It almost makes me want to write up a new form of business management called pirate management in which everyone is productive and carries their own weight from bottom to top.

Tampico:

I have grappled with these types of issues too, Orion; but I have come to believe that there will always be inequities in all activities. Companies are only as good as their shareholders and managers are basically leeches in many cases. I think most libertarians and anarchists just accept this part of human nature and concentrate on the issue of inequities pertaining to violence. All taxation is done with violence or implied violence. If I work for a company or patronize a company where I am screwed in one way or another then at least I know I am doing so voluntarily. Nobody has ever forced me through a drive-thru by waving me off a street with automatic weapons in hand. If I consistently get incorrect change or incorrect orders at a McDonalds then I can choose not to deal with the McDonalds. I do not have choice when it comes to taxes. If agri-business gets $50 billion next year from the government then agribusiness is basically having the government take money from me with weapons and the money is being given to them. Leeches are everywhere. We cannot hope to get rid of them. All we can hope to do is disarm them by not letting them take advantage of the police power of the state.FDR trashed our system by looting on behalf of poor people. Perhaps his intentions were good, but the real damage might just now be showing up as the corporations figure out that they can loot too. The more people study the depression, though, the more people realize that none of FDRs programs helped us get out of the depression. Only WW2 did that. If anything, the increased taxation of the era probably kept the depression going fromn 1934-1940. Without all the socialist nonsense the depression would likely have ended naturally by 1935. As annoying as socialist zombies are, they are not the biggest threat to our civilization. Fascists are. Fascists will use the police power of the state to seize taxes and then just use them to increase their own wealth. Well meaning socialists always lead to failure but the worst failures occur when they are coopted by people trying to make an unearned profit or people trying to promote a particular oligarchy. Often the socialist themselves just become corrupted and switch to being fascists. Libertarian civilizations work best, but when a civilization becomes totally infected with looters then it is a waste of time to be a libertarian. The good citizen must switch to becoming an anarchist and the civilization must be destroyed in order to kill the infection. When the GOP chose McCain it was a signal that the looters now control both parties. Ron Paul was dismissed as the crazy uncle. Reagan conservatives/Goldwater conservatives have been dismissed along with their impure but still powerful libertarian instincts. You saw this in the defeat of Duncan Hunter. Romney had some libertarian instincts but, sadly, his globalism would have eventually undermined our freedoms anyway. One thing I think we are seeing in this group is the difference between my views and those of Pirate Ronald. I greatly admire PirateRonald and, until recently, I have felt like we were always in agreement on basic political issues. Now I am coming to believe thatPirate Ronald is too optimistic about the possibility of salvaging the US. I am not asking Pirate Ronald to change because I think the difference in our views are interesting, but I naturally think that my views are correct. My view is that it is now too late for the US. Both parties and the media are now statists. So Pirate Ronald iss truggling to prevent the collapse of the system by using his influence within the GOP while I say it is now necessary to have a Collapse to kill the looter infection and begin the rebuilding process.

Orion Blaster:

Yes life isn't fair and some people got it easier than others. I'm glad that I am out of the workforce and working for myself. Less stress that way and much healthier as well. As I said most of our problems in the USA are caused by people not learning from their mistakes and making the same bad actions and behaviors over and over again. It will get to the point where the government won't be able to bail most people out anymore and not be able to save banks or companies from going under either. I think it can be fixed but only if a majority of the population decides to start taking responsibility for their own actions and behaviors and learn from their mistakes and learn to live within their means and choose spiritual things like freedom, love, hope, change, compassion, mercy, forgiveness instead of material things like money, wealth, power, songs, movies, bling, designer clothing, etc and getting so deep into debt that they cannot afford to make house or auto payments. They also need to learn that they cannot count on the government to bail them out every time and learn to become independent and learn how to survive on their own. But as psychology says you cannot change a person unless they want to change.Yeah I know vote for Ron Paul so we can get freedom back and save the country even if it means we have to be poorer and some of us have to fail and so do banks and business fail and people have to go without jobs for a while so we can finally fix what is wrong with our nation. Because we cannot save everyone in order that we save the country. But as I said most people make bad actions and bad decisions and will choose material things over spiritual ones, because over the past hundred years or so most people vote for the politicians that will put more money in their own pockets and do so to put wealth over freedom or security over freedom. There is no need to become an anarchist, because people making bad decisions and having bad behavior and not learning from their mistakes are what is causing the anarchy in our economy and government. I don't really think that we have a choice in the matter it is not a matter of if the economy and government will fail, it is more the matter of when. The USA has become the modern version of the Roman Empire and is headed for a fall because it has gotten too big, its population avoids responsibility and depends on the government too much, it waged too many wars that drained the economy, and like the Roman Empire the USA is being overrun with barbarians (the Romans considered anyone who wasn't a Roman citizen as a barbarian but the USA term is illegal alien or undocumented worker or whatever) that use up more resources and take away more jobs from the citizens and also don't pay taxes either.Like the US comedian and philosopher Ron White is known to say "You can't fix stupid." Most US citizens have been, to say the least, stupid in their lifestyle and decisions and actions and been very narcissistic only thinking of themselves as individuals, when they should be thinking about the group as a whole and what benefits the whole nation and not just themselves. Sadly when the US economy finally tanks, so will the global economy as well. Most things are tagged to the value of the US Dollar, once that goes under you will have ruined economies almost everywhere.

Pirate Ronald:

Responding specifically to:"One thing I think we are seeing in this group is the difference between my views and those of Pirate Ronald. I greatly admire Pirate Ronald and, until recently, I have felt like we were always inagreement on basic political issues. Now I am coming to believe that Pirate Ronald is too optimistic about the possibility of salvaging the US. I am not asking Pirate Ronald to change because I think the difference in our views are interesting, but I naturally think that my views are correct. My view is that it is now too late for the US. Both parties and the media are now statists. So Pirate Ronald is struggling to prevent the collapse of the system by using his influence within the GOP while I say it is now necessary to have a Collapse to kill the looter infection and begin the rebuilding process." -- Tampico Jack

The collapse will create a void where it is theoretically possible to rebuild as the knowledge and skills will still exist and be unhindered by parasitic schemes. But, there exists another problem which would tend to deny the rugged individualist type from the opportunity to rebuild.This is what I wrote in previous posts:"We need sound economic policies or an economic collapse will not only be devastating in itself, but it will create conditions where our government fails in it's role to protect our sovereignty and our Nation from foreign aggression. Just as the Russian military overnight went from superpower status to widely considered (not by me) irrelevant, so can our military might. Then we won't have a chance to recover from our mistakes because the nature of the world,contrary to the belief of many, is quite hostile and nations conquer nations just as has been for all of history until our influence has only appeared to make the world nicer and even with our superpower influence, there has still been plenty of war and invasions of nations." -- Sun Nov 21, 2004 5:48 pm Pirate Ronald

"It is ironic and funny though sad that the alien invasion and minorities who are exploiting our "tolerance" to get things instead of participating in creating prosperity will be displaced by the Chinese who have the numbers to outvote them or otherwise take over once traditional successful ways of our heritage of our United Statesof America is outvoted." -- Sat Feb 10, 2007 4:04 pm Pirate Ronald

"In civil discussion and in our polite society we give the other the benefit of the doubt that they don't have an hostile agenda, but let's not forget world history of thousands of years of hundreds of Nations. The reality is that the world is quite hostile. We all would be experiencing that personally except for our present strength as a Nation. Try to imagine what life would be like under a conquering Nation. We have been blessed to live our lives greatly isolated from the hostilities of the world. The world is hostile." -- Sat Sep 27,2003 3:51 pm Pirate Ronald

Key Excerpts from a Pirate Ronald post

2008-03-24T05:31:00.000-07:00

Inland wilderness locations accessible by sailboat appeal to me. This opens up lots of choices without needing to own the land or anyone being there to even know which also attracts me particularly because I choose alternatives to perils and compromises of principles of fighting what would soon cease to exist anyway. There will be a time for me to step aside from society as it does what it will on a scale that would dwarf my efforts to change it. I do have a sense of moral obligation and I devote my energies and resources to prevention of what is to come by political activism and supporting the Ron Paul movement including helping to get Ron Paul supporters elected to be our public servants.

One of the puzzles that sea based mobility solves for me is the ability to participate in society when beneficial yet disappear from it when prudent. With sailboats, a group can visit a town and trade or even settle in for a time yet have the option of disappearing.

That solves a troublesome flaw in a long ago since abandoned previous desire to have a secret underground dwelling not too far from society. The problem is that once discovered it is no longer secret. In sharp contrast, the location of a fleet of sailboats can be discovered one day and hostile visitors can come the next only to find it gone.

One of my favorite capabilities of sea based mobility is the ability to rendezvous with proven freedom lovers who fight the fight of prevention of what we are about to experience. We are among them and in many places and we would help escape from what becomes an undesirable area and move to areas of advantage. In the dynamics of future changes, it will be impossible for us to predict which places will have the worst of problems and which areas are great opportunities.

Having the capability to help my fellow Ron Paul supporters be among the survivors matters greatly to me. Those who love our Constitutional republic form of representative self-government and work to keep it are very important as they will work to restore it at whatever strongholds of freedom exist after what comes next fails.

In moving people and supplies, I particularly like that sailboats have cargo capability and can take many passengers. It is a great feature that the route over water isn't confined like the road routes over land and that there is almost zero population at sea.

Some remarks about #1

2008-03-23T06:07:00.000-07:00

Blackhearted Pirate Lee (regarding my dropping to one major post):

OK, if it is time constraints, then that is fair enough.

Blackhearted Pirate Lee (regarding the kite dogfight directions):

Lady Drake, there is that SANGER word again. There is more to this word than just a name. There is a significance that is related to shipping for some reason or other.

Blackhearted Pirate Lee (regarding possible Neo-Swashbuckler riots in Denver):

Do we still have the word Democracy as a working word? I ran into a Canadian who thinks we are going to turn more into what the Roman Empire looked like. Well, if that didn't work and Democracy doesn't work, then someone better get thinking of a better way.

Orion Blaster:

Aye I agree, the US economy is doomed. We have gone deep in debt for over eight years now, owe most of it to China. Plus people in the USA are spending more than they earn and driving up debt. After they can't make house payments the government bails them out. Apple and iTunes rake in billions each year and give some of it to the RIAA and MPAA for song and movie sales, and people keep buying more songs and movies and don't have money left over to pay bills and get their car repoed and their house foreclosed. There be no such thing as personal responsibility any more either, and this harms the economy as well. Rather than let people face the consequences of their bad actions and behaviors and let them suffer for making bad choices, our government instead subsidies them through deficit spending and bailing out banks that are doing stupid things live giving countless loans to people with bad credit who always default on payments anyway. When even our banks do stupid stuff, you know the economy is going to tumble. All the fed is trying to do is lower interest rates and bail out banks so that they can pump up the stock market to avoid another great depression. FDR's New Deal actually made the depression worse because they had funded social programs by printing up more money and causing inflation like Bush and Company are doing right now. I warned people about this before and they laughed at me. I told them the price of food and fuel will go up and the housing market will burst and banks will start failing. It is no laughing matter, and unless something is done by 2012 to 2017 when a majority of baby boomers retire we will have more people retired than are working jobs, and the US economy will get even worse then, unless they can bring in more immigrants to work jobs and pay taxes. Because we aren't having enough babies born to replace the baby boomers when they retire since the 1960's thanks to birth control and abortion lowering our population growth.

Plus people are living longer thanks to advanced medicine.I'd suggest buying gold and silver, but gold prices went down recently. It might be smarter to buy weapons, make a bunker with food and water in it and fight off looters when the US economy finally busts and a majority of the people either throw a revolution (ala 1917's Russia Communist Revolution) or become looters trying to steal your things.Democrats and Republicans are puppets for their masters in Europe, and do everything they can to ruin the US economy to build up the EU and replace the dollar with the Euro. It is a Secular Humanist Cabal located in the Netherlands or Belgium that some people call the New World Order or Illuminati. They already control the EU and soon the US. This is just a theory, mind you, but it seems to make sense.

Tampico:

Orion, I agree that individuals have foolishly gone in debt and that the US has been wreckless with debt the last few years. These two things have happened before in US history for various reasons butt his seems different. My point about these people being smart and well educated was that I think this is not all accidents of a stupid government. I think that the wrecking of the dollar is intentional and that Blackhearted Pirate Lee might be right by implying that what they really want is for American people to suffer so much that they start clamoring for the Amero as an alternative. Such a conspiracy meets my criteria for a plausable conspiracy because it would involve a dozen people or fewer.Individuals should pay off credit cards and car loans. Individuals should also plant gardens and get milk producing goats. People should not buy real estate yet and, intead of investing directly in gold or other metals, I think investments in gold and silver mining will be one of the few winners.

Wayne:

I love this group and the wide range of thought.

Blackhearted Pirate Lee:

The Amero is already planned, drawn up, molded and ready for disbursement. Love your green backs. The next money is bland and doesn't work for you. Everything is light compared to the dark that is to beset us.

Wayne:

I am in agreement that as many of us that can should plant Victory Gardens and take other steps to become self-reliant as possible. If the powers that be want to see a civil war the North American Union would do it.

Blackhearted Pirate Lee:

Could this also be called the coming of a once and future Revolutionary war?

Weekly Post #1

2008-03-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Since my computer is jacked up and since I need to free up time for other activities; I have decided to make one major post a week and then try to have a "response post" just before going back on the road to respond to any comments about my main post. I think a single post can suffice in monitoring the Collapse Condition and will be helpful by not "pushing down" the posts of others so that others can start topics and get good discussions going.The three big things on my mind this week include: 1) The Easter KiteDogfight 2) The idiotic behavior of the Federal Reserve and George Bush and whether they are intentionally wrecking the dollar 3) The next Neo-Swashbuckler broadcast.

The kite dogfight will be at Elm Fork Park near Pilot Point. I know I had promised to hold it in Fort Worth, but none of the parks we saw there were suited for the event. From Sanger (I-35) you just go east on 455. 455 is the road that crosses the Lake Ray Roberts Dam. As soon as you pass the dam you will make a right turn (opposite the lake) and follow a winding road down to the parking lot. We will be the group with all the kites. I will be the guy wearing the pith helmet. We will have tons of picnic food and will start the dogfight once everone is finished eating. My best guess is that we will get the kites in the air between 1:15 and 1:30. The food will be ready at noon and there will be traditional and vegetarian foods. By the way, I have already committed to having the 2009 dogfight back in Austin. Everyone is welcome even if you are not a real Neo-Swashbuckler and are actually a Vookuranian spy. In 2007 I actually sent an invitation to Vookuray since we had that event in Houston. Evil kites would only add suspense to the outcome. Of course Vookuray chickened out in 2007, claiming that her car was too unreliable to go from New Orleans to Houston. Iwonder how reliable it will be after I put a footlong tube of sweet tarts in her gas tank?

The US is doomed. I am certain of this now. Most of my economics training is from the early 1970s from Southern Illinois University. I also took one graduate econ class at the University of Missippi and a couple of classes that involved economics at the University of Texas at Arlington. I have never taken classes at Yale or Harvard or Princeton like all of these guys who are currently in charge of the economy. So why can I see that what they are doing is idiotic? Are they just making a series of blunders? Or do they know full well what they are doing and have some secret plan? If I were trying to undermine the US Dollar I could not think of more ways to go about it than Bush. Obama is absolutely right about the Iraq War having a huge impact on the decline of the dollar. We cannot continue throwing away a billion dollars every 2 1/2 days in Iraq. We cannot afford the tax rebates. We cannot afford to bail out Bear Stearnes. We cannot afford to have low prime interest rates and continue to pump money into the economy to avoid a recession. Nobody wants a recession, but as bad as recessions are they are nothing compared to a currency collapse.The dollar has fallen in relation to other currencies before and we have weathered the storm. But, ask yourself this, has the dollar ever been used to buy so many foreign goods? The declining dollar drives up the price of all foreign goods. Go into Wal-Mart and look around for goods made in the US and then consider that even those goods that still are made in the US are often made with materials or components that are foreign. Also, the energy used to make goods in the US is mostly coming from foreign oil. This is the first time that the dollar has tanked in relation to foreign currencies since this whole "global economy" thing started. The Federal Reserve has forgotten its job. It is not the job of the Federal Reserve to keep the economy out of recession. Its their job to protect the dollar's value. They are now giving the economy a dose of cancer to avoid a cold. Gas prices should have never gone up this high during this last bump. There is no strain on supply. Gas prices are not up relative to the Euro or other currencies. Do you know that eggs cost 27% more this Easter than last Easter? Eggs are mostly produced here in the US, but their cost has gone up because of increased energy prices and high feed prices. Why are feed prices high? Feed prices are largely set by energy prices. If the only effect of the declining dollars was on energy prices then that would be enough to cause great problems. If you could just stimulate an economy by printing lots of cheap currency then the countries in South America would all be economicpowerhouses by now.

IMPORTANT: I need callers for the Neo-Swashbuckler broadcast on Easter Sunday at 4:00 PM. I intend the coming broadcast to be a little more goofy than the first two, so callers could call in on a lighthearted topic and not be out of place. Any topic is welcome though. I will suggest topics for callers during the broadcast. I will also discuss the situation with Vookuray's new hackers, plans and ideas for the new site, discuss my new policy of one big post a week and finish discussing the Plan from the perspective of the Drake/Sitton/WayneParty. Naturally, there will be an announcement regarding the outcomeof the kite dogfight.

OTHER THOUGHTS:Any opinions on the flying stingray death in Florida? Stingrays are definately enemies of the Neo-Swashbucklers, but I doubt that getting hit in the face by a 75 pound stingray would be fatal at sailboat speeds. Can you eat stingrays? I'm hearing that there are places off the Keys where the water surface is just covered with stingrays.

I have had two different white guys tell me that if they were black they would riot in Denver if Hillary uses treachery to steal the nomination from Obama if Obama goes into the convention with more elected delegates and a greater popular vote total in the primaries. Idon't see why this is a racial issue. All people should be upset when democracy is thwarted. Maybe there should be a Neo-Swashbuckler riot team in Denver. It would be warm even in Denver in August, but we could sleep in tents and not bake too much up at those altitudes. We could even set up a higher altitude encampment near Denver so we could sleep in comfort during the nights after a hard day of rioting and swilling rum.

The same moderators in the old group will be converted to moderators in this group today as soon as I get a chance. I am slightly reducing the powers of the moderators in case a Vookuranian hacker gets your identity. If she gets mine then we are screwed because I have the "delete group" option.Please also check the Blogspot site on occasion. I will continue to post there and will put my weekly posts there so that people who are not Neo-Swashbucklers can comment. I'm thinking about informing Vookuray about the site so she can get all her hostility out of her system without hijacking people's screennames. My intent of shutting her out of all things Neo-Swashbuckler was that it might eventually lead her to forget about us, but that strategy does not seem to be working. I think she is obsessed for life. I may not stick to my "one post and one reply" policy this weekend because it is a long weekend, we have the broadcast coming up on Sunday and we will have the kite dogfight results to announce. Besides, Ihave not started the novel project yet.

VooDoo Announcement

2008-03-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

Every organization of our size should have at least one VooDoo Priestor Priestess.

After much deliberation and hearing voices, I am pleased to announce that Wayne will be the official VooDoo Priest of the Neo-Swashbucklers as long as he lives. Should Wayne be tragically killed during theDrake/Sitton/Wayne Party evacuation then we will expect that Wayne has named a replacement and that person will assume command as Priest or Priestess upon his death. If the Drake/Sitton/Wayne Party is attackedby Vookuranians at Cairo or Memphis or by socialist zombies in Memphis and the results of the battle are unknown then we will assume that Wayne is merely MIA for seven years. If Wayne is not heard from in seven years then we will determine that he was killed and eaten and replace him.The naming of an official VooDoo Priest does not preclude other religious or spiritual leaders from being named official Neo-Swashbuckler representatives of their spiritual systems.

Pirate Ronald o Free State/Ron Paul

2008-02-29T14:57:00.000-08:00

Tampico:
"By the way, Pirate Ronald, how is the Free State project coming? Ihave not been keeping up with news on that lately."

Pirate Ronald:
Me, too. I've been very busy and got behind on our group posts.That is temporary. I always catch back up. Answering this gives me the opportunity to put it with many other things into perspective as it concerns us.It's a great concept! It is working and it could achieve the goals,but I expected New Hampshire to demonstrate that the Free State Project would have done very well by getting much more votes for Ron Paul because I can see the influence just one of me has on local Utah elections and I had expected exponential improvement with greater numbers instead of diminishing returns. Maybe when there are few, the political forces don't organize well to counter. Perhaps a few can convince those who can be convinced and more don't make that much more of a difference other than to concentrate more votes in an area. There are other factors. Perhaps it is an exponential rate that society becomes dumbed down and trusts government and media to tell them what to not think, but what to believe.I imagined that it would be much more powerful than demonstrated with all of the like minded political activists concentrated into one state. It is a great concept and will in time work except we are rapidly running out of time for anything to work except for the average people trusting of media and government to wake up and not be zombies in that sense of the word for them and most of the rest of the population to not become zombies in the other sense of the word that I more often use to describe the desperate seeking to take essentials of life from the prepared as we can only imagine* at this point.

I have a plan of political activism in the works that will greatly empower the Ron Paul supporters that are now in great numbers in every state to become highly effective. It isn't over. With Ron Paul as President, we would still have to win Congress in the same November general election by electing Ron Paul supporters to be our public servants. We will still do that. All is not as it seems nor will it remain the same. There will be problems with the media so called top tier candidates who even lie that Ron Paul is no longer in the race when it is all he and his supporters can do to insist that they will never give up. Add to the mix the start of The Great Collapse and the ordinary people who tell me not to bother them with politics will then become very interested and ask: "Why don't I have a job or food to eat?!" OR worse: "Why doI have three jobs and that is insufficient to be able to buy enough food to not see my family starve before my eyes!?"Then they will learn that Ron Paul had it right all along. For those who are new among us,* become proficient at resolving zombie ambiguity of the two different uses of the word by visualizing the zombie movies where the zombies move rather clumsy and slow, yet persistently after healthy people. It will be similar amidst The Great Collapse as starvation, injury and disease impede the physical and mental effectiveness of those who are otherwise productive members of society as normal capable and loving people, yet when motivated out of love and guilt in their continued desire to provide for their loved ones they see miserably perishing in their care, then they would be similarly dangerous and numerous and pervasive as in the zombie movies except for being real people presenting moral issues defending from them because like in the zombie movies, reason wouldn't stop them as they are dying anyway. No, not just similar,but the collapse behaviour of people will be exactly like in the zombie movies except that you can't just turn it off, so study them well.For moral reasons, it would be best to in advance, if possible, just sail away, as zombies don't swim well and will not be having a good time of it enough to master longer range strategy other than brief acts of desperation instead of sailing and longer range plans that fit with productivity and preparedness. There will be those few that do, but they are not zombies. Further understanding can be found *bysearching our archives for zombies and watching zombie movies. It will be sad to turn away from them as they are the people we see today in society, but they, like in the zombie movies, will be too numerous to help and so numerous they will be dangerous.

Which brings us back to the beginning of the subject of political activism and this is why I am so motivated to do my part and all that I can to prevent the tragedy they insist on bringing upon themselves with their votes and their failure to head our Founding Fathers'admonition to be ever vigilant.Though it will sadden me to sail away from them, I will do it with love in my heart for those I can help after those times when only the survivors remain in the aftermath of a destined-to-fail-overwhelmingly-powerful-at-first-global-governance. The strategy here is to be prepared to outlive it outside of society and without dependence on society to plant the seeds of freedom where freedom can thrive.This will be quite a challenge, so pray and prepare to do your part.Eat nutritiously and become as healthy as possible and become very prepared with supplies and skills and healthy living and mental attitudes.

Sling Shots and Long Bows (Discussion from June 20 and 21, 2006)

2008-02-24T07:44:00.000-08:00

Tampico:

Any thoughts on sling shots?I have sling shots on my mind this morning for reasons that I don'thave time to explain, but I would be interested in hearing any slingshot stories or thoughts.I am not thinking of sling shots as a replacement for hand made longbows, by the way.

Black Bart Moon:

Actually, If you had the materials readily available, sling shots would be the weapon of choice. Your reference to a long bow vs a sling shot is kinda like a reference to a Winchester lever action rifle vs a colt 45. It is not a matter of one vs the other but both.

The sling shot would be the weapon for small game and rapid fire defense.

Of course, in the area of defense, should your forecast ever come to fruition, modern firearms would rule for some years to come. A think a viable defense strategy would be to immediately acquire firearms and material but avoid using them. Use items such as your bow and sling shot for day to day survival.

Industrial grade bungee cord should be on your list of items to acquire.

Wayne:

Slings in the hands of a trained user can hit man size targets at 200' and with an 2 Oz stone kill. Think David. In fact the Greeks liked slinger more then bows.
Long bows will out perform a sling but takes years of training.
Check this
http://www.slinging.org/

Black Bart Moon:

Slings are definitely proven but it takes a lot less skill to use a modern day sling shot and they are effective.

Wayne:

Right about that. I have shot more then one drug dealer with a Cat's Eye at 100' which gets them going.

Tampico:

Good points and nice link, Wayne. I do think that I would have better luck getting good with a modern sling, however, and I feel like I could use it to hunt squirrels with ball bearings. I also think I could regulate the speed on a modern one better -- so as not to seriously hurt the dogs.I also have a problem with keeping my rifle out near the back door because we still have underage members of the household. Consequently,when a coyote is spotted I never have a rifle handy. I'll bet that I could bump off a coyote with a sling shot.

One thing I probably would not do is use a sling shot on a drugdealer. What were the circumstances of that Wayne? We can't afford to lose you before the Collapse.

Poppyuncut:

WHY NOT? (Use a sling shot on a drug dealer) I SURE WOULD. IT SOUNDS TO ME LIKE WAYNE IS JUST BEING A GOOD, REAL-LIVE PIRATE. KEEP IT UP WAYNE. YOU HAVE MY COMPLETE SUPPORT.

Tampico:

Wayne has my support too, because he is a brave Neo-Swashbuckler, but I contend that you should never go into a battle under-armed unless you have some element of surprise or something else that would tip the advantage in your favor. That is why I asked what the circumstances were.

Brian Provost (modern pirate):

hmm sling shots, will let me say this not be......will thousands of years ago, but i guess whatever me myself perfers good old swords, for i got plenty of them as wella compound bow - silent but deadly…

Poppyuncut:

“right about that. I have shot more then one drug dealer with a Cat'sEye at 100' gets them goingWayne

LOL. WAY TO GO WAYNE! MY KIND OF FELLA!

Tampico:

Great to hear from you Black Bart. Hope things are going well in Arkansas and with the baby.My main motivation for getting a sling shot was not survival related. There are two dogs next door and the owner is too lazy to keep the fence in repair so the dogs come out and attack my photenias. I don't think the dogs are anti-photenia, its just that I am running a soaker hose on the new photenias (8 are new, 22 are established) and the dogs are attracted to the water. I wish I could zip a few shots off at the owner, but I'm thinking about pelting the dogs just to run them off. I would use marbles as shot and not shoot at anywhere near a lethal velocity.I tried reasoning with the guy (yelling across the fence) but he just sends one of his poor kids to recover the dogs and puts them right back in the unsecured yard.

Black Bart:

This does indeed sound like a perfect use for the sling shot.
Incidentally, someone from the University from Texas is here looking for the Ivory Bill. Apparently, I am not the only one who is seeing things.

Wayne:

About a near my home there was an old dead end (Now The Pancho Villa Victory Garden) Drug dealers and hookers would ply their trade. I would go along the woodbine to about 50' 100' and send off a few cat eyes in to the crowd of dealers. First few times some of them would talk shit and pull guns that got a 911 call to the police would who come and search the dealers most felons with firearms after about 4 months and the City letting the block watch group turn the dead end into a Garden the drug dealers moved some place else.

Note never shot at Hookers they were at least runing the worlds oldest business. The Mexicans loved calling the police on the guns Racine had a program where you got $50 for each firearm seized in a drug bust .

I love legal Mexicans

Wayne:

I would have felt bad if I had missed a hurt someone else and there was a chance (small) they would have found out who it was. I could not do it all the time or after dark with no or little moon light.

Also I needed the help of others I am very glad they are gone - the Garden is so much nicer.

Behavioral Economics

2008-02-23T22:03:00.000-08:00

It is ironic that Hillary constantly bashes Obama for being shallowand just giving good speeches because if you actually look at the thinking of the two candidates you see that Obama has some unique ideas while there is nothing that Hillary expouses that wasn't thought of sometime between January and June of 1932 by the FDR socialists. Hillary just wants to make programs mandatory, garnish wages and reduce the freedom of choice. One thing Obama's people have been discussing is the new concept of behavioral economics.

A simple example of behavioral economics just occurred tonight. Goat Girl and I have a mental checklist of grocery items and then have a written list of things that we do not purchase every week (like say coffee, which we buy in bulk infrequently). The two lists usually cost us between $85 and $100 if we shop at Krogers and $115 and $150 if we shop at Wal-Mart. Is Wal-Mart more expensive? Actually, almost every item that we routinely purchase is less expensive at Wal-Mart. Rational behavior is a basic assumption of modern economic theory,yet people do not behave rationally. If you have data on how people really behave then why not use that data rather than assume rationality? In the case of Goat Girl and myself we are obviously making more impulse buys at Wal-Mart. We can either continue to shop at Wal-Mart and vow to be more rational or we can just make the decision to shop at Krogers. We call Wal-Mart the $100 Store becausewe will spend $100 there even if we just go in for milk.

People behave irrationally when doing taxes, entering mortgage agreements, buying insurance, selecting a mate, voting, and selecting a favorite beer. The only thing more irrational than individual humans is groups of humans and human governments. Understanding the irrationality is essential to making good decisions. Assuming rational behavior assures bad decisions.

Blog Note

2008-02-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

I think I am just going to use this blog to place key posts from the Neo-Swashbuckler Yahoo Group.

Pirate Ronald re: Fuel Costs

2008-02-23T17:58:00.000-08:00

When I was bicycle racing at a time that I stopped driving and replaced driving with bicycling, I averaged hundreds of miles a week some years. To fuel this, I ate a lot of high quality and expensive food. The fuel cost per mile was rather high compared to gasoline, but the physical fitness and health benefits likely have saved me greatly in not having medical expenses and having a much more productive life.

After The Great Collapse, my transportation energy source will be the wind for sea travel and bicycling and walking for on shore where it will be important to be able to pick places away from zombie populations and otherwise outdistance zombies that might become aware of my presence. But, zombies don't swim well and the sailboat is an excellent way to travel away to a better location.

Geoff and I discuss space travel

2008-02-23T17:23:00.000-08:00

Re: [Neo-Swashbucklers CC2] Pilgrims

Tampico Jack wrote: There are some key concepts here. First, I think it will be relatively easy to get to near light speed.

Geoff: Well, that's the easiest part, but there are relativistic complications.

Tampico: Almost any source of thrust will work since thrust in space is cumulative.

Geoff: Not thrust, which is a force being utilised to change a velocity, but*velocity* is cumulative. ie the speed that you build up remains evenwhen thrust ceases according to the First Law of Motion. This is true for any speed we have been able to obtain thus far, however when you get to speeds that are up around C you run into some obstacles. According to General Relativity, mass increases as in proportion to speed and theoretically, at C, becomes infinite. So acceleration due to thrust will drop as speed approaches C as the thrust is trying to Delta V a mass that is increasing constantly at high percentages of C. There is also friction to consider. At speeds we have been able to reach,friction from interstellar hydrogen is insignificant, however as we get faster, the number of impacts per unit time will increase and will ultimately have a retarding effect (ie Drag) on the passage of the vessel through space.This also brings up the problem of meteoric and cometary material. To reach the stars requires passage through the Oort Cloud, which is believed to have a relatively high particle density and there are certainly a lot of stray objects. Now as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says, space is really, really, really, big, however at any speed approaching that of light, it wouldn't take an impact from an object much bigger than a dust mote to cause serious damage to a physical structure - punch a hole straight through it or simply destroy it utterly. Radar won't let you 'see' that far ahead, since you are travelling at close to light speed and relativity also says that can't travel faster, your radar range will progressively reduce as you approach C. Time contraction is the only favourable outcome of travelling at high percentages of C and is one of the factors of relativity that has actually been demonstrated, which suggests that therest of it is at least somewhat likely to be correct...So that's the EASY part, but having your ship SURVIVE travel at that speed for more than seconds is a much more significant problem.One solution that has been offered is to fabricate a large mass of something solid, (perhaps ice) and mount it on the front of the ship as a sort of armoured shield, to absorb impacts while shielding the actual ship from them. Whether there would be enough heat from friction with interstellar hydrogen to melt it has not been established.

Tampico: Second, getting to the brink of light speed will be worthless if there is ever a way for tyrants to travel faster than light speed. There needs to be a maximum speed and that maximum speed must be attained inexpensively so that the main cost of the travel is the time spent.

Geoff: There is presently no even theoretical way to exceed C. Short of a breakthrough into some new realm of physics, this is unlikely to change.

Tampico: If there is a habitable planet 8 light years away, and I can travel there in 9 years, I would sign up tomorrow and go.

Geoff: If there is a planet 8 light years away, it will take rather more than 9 years to reach it. Remember that even if you can accelerate to C orsome significant percentage, it will take some time to accelerate to itwith a small thrust source (assuming the mass problem I mentioned is notan issue) then you will also need to DEaccelerate so I would suggest itwould take rather longer than 9 years, perhaps as much as 20-25.

Tamico: Someone wanting to tax me or force me into their empire would also have to travel 9+ years and then they would have to defeat me and return back on another 9+ year trip. What tyrant would do that?

Goeff: Concur. I believe I made that point in my earlier response.Wars are conducted to gain something for the warmaker. If there is nothing to gain, and I believe the cost of transport over interstellar distances of war materiel and warships etc would be, literally,astronomical and such a war would doubtless cost more to wage than any possible tangible gain that might eventuate. It's been hypothesised that trying to do so would likely bankrupt said Empire and lead to its collapse.

Tampico: Besides, I would leave a note when I left saying that if I am followed that I would destroy all improved property before the arrival of my pursuer. Interstellar travel will be the end of tyranny if there is a maximum speed of travel.

Geoff: Very likely INTERSTELLAR tyranny, however there is nothing to stop some new self styled Hitler or Bonaparte from starting up on the new world.We take all our human failings with us when we go anywhere.

Tampico: I am also pretty confident that we will find habitable planets in various sized solar systems. If the star is larger than our sun, then perhaps the planet will be proportionally more distant from the star.

Geoff: There is as yet no mechanism to detect Earth like planets even around nearby stars (ie under 10LY) though it is possible to detect PLANETSaround other stars (this has been done) the only ones that have been reliably proven to exist are Jupiter type gas giants - clearly not habitable. Whether other more earthlike worlds also exist in company with them has not been demonstrated - though one could postulate that the existence of one may suggest it to be possible at worst. I concur that there are very likely to be earthlike planets 'out there' but it will be difficult to find one without actually going there to look. This will doubtless require space probes that are sufficiently long lived to reach a star system and send back real data - a mission that could easily last 50 years or more even to nearby stars. Such an undertaking would be a true 'generational' mission, with the people who began it passing the responsibility for its completion to their successors. One wonders if NASA's proposed moonbase would include an astronomical telescope of significant aperture - ie bigger than the Hubble. If it did, it *might* be possible to discover if extra-solar, earth sizedplanets exist. The problem of micro-meteorites will be solved someway possibly by being dissolved by some sort of force shield around the craft.That would be the ideal, however there is not presently any known method of producing such a phenomena - it would clearly require a breakthrough in both theoretical physics and engineering - I suspect that even if itis eventually possible, the power requirements would be staggering.

Tampico: Tyranny will suffer a blow in a less direct way also. If you look at the improvements made on the US East Coast in employment from 1800-1900 it gives a good indication of what could occur. Employers in Boston, for example, did not just become more kind hearted during that period. I think that they knew that they had to pay a livable wage and had to improve working conditions or they would risk losing employees to the frontier. The same will happen when mankind starts pioneering new planets. Even tyrants will have to soften their tyranny for those who remain or risk losing them to the frontiers in space.

Geoff: Possibly. Or you will get what Heinlein, McCaffrey et al postulated -the adventurous will migrate to new frontiers and the 'sheeple' will remain in their safe little cubby holes. Overcrowding might well bemore of an incentive to migrate than oppression (and one is frequently aproduct of the other).I don't know if you read SF at all, but 'Decision at Doona' by Anne McCaffrey postulates just such a situation. An overcrowded world that is 'dormitised' into a complete urban complex, with complex rules of behaviour and etiquette and 'Proctors' watching for any 'social crimes'being committed and punishment consisting mostly of reductions in rations.

Podcast Thread

2008-02-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

Tampico:

Does anyone have a particular accent? I think in the early pod castsit would be nice to have some distinct voices. Of course, LadyDrake, Blackhearted Pirate Lee and Bootleg have the advantage offemale voices. Ken, do you have a Texas accent? That would be goodin one of the early pod casts.I don't know my own voice that well, but I suspect that Wayne and Ihave similar voices and accents. Wayne is from the upper Midwest andI am originally Midwestern. Rev Wry is free of any detectableaccent, but I encourage him to watch Bogart movies and move to moreof a Bogart accent to match his Bogart-like persona.Obviously, Geoff will need to be in early pod casts if possible. Wewill need to do some time zone research however before scheduling him.One thing that Wayne mentioned is that the site strongly suggestsusing land lines. I will set up the pod cast on a land line.What about Bootstrap? Does he have a Boston accent or a Connecticutaccent? I know he has been in West Virginia for a while, but I doubthe has any accent from there.

Blackhearted Pirate Lee:

Bootstrap said that if he had a Kennedy accent then he wouldn’t be here, hey-ohhh... lol

But he can put on an accent if you wish it. Any accent. He does wonderful movie lines to the "T". That is his forte'. He does Hannibal Lector, Star Wars, Holy Grail Monty Python - he can talk like Hannibal if you wish. lol
Casablanca too.

Tampico:

The reason that I bring up accents is not really theatrical. I havenoticed that some pod casts are difficult to follow because of voicesthat are indistinguishable from one another. The speaker is notintroduced each time and I find myself asking which speaker isspeaking. This is why speakers with unique voice characteristicswill be at a premium in the early Neo-Swashbuckler pod casts. PirateRonald has a unique voice. Any female voice will be at a premium.Geoff, of course, is Australian. I suspect that Bootstrap's naturalvoice will be distinct form Texans and Midwesterners since he haslived in Connecticut and West Virginia. Kelly is a female with avery slight Texas accent, but she has worked in radio before and willhave a distinguishable presentation for that reason.I expect that the early pod casts will be somewhat rough and we willhave to be highly self critical for a while to get steadyimprovement. This is going to be fun. I hope I can get things readyon Friday night so that we can have our first pod cast done nextSaturday.The Neo-Swashbucklers are an institution now. We are now on thebrink of marching forward and adapting to the huge challenges thatwill be faced in the dismal era of 2008-2012.

Who are the Neo-Swashbucklers?

2008-02-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

The Neo-Swashbucklers are a group that was founded in 2002 for the purpose of stealing the tallship Elissa from the Galveston Seaport Museum in Galveston, Texas following the collapse of western civilization. The Neo-Swashbucklers developed as a Yahoo Group and has attracted survivalists, libertarians, heavy drinkers, trouble makers, edible plant enthusiasts, people who believe the long bow is a valuable asset, sailors, liveaboard wannabes, political junkies, cutlass owners, space enthusiasts, people who listen to coast-to-coast AM and outdoor adventurers.

Our natural enemies include big government liberals (socialist zombies), social conservatives, right wing militarists (fascists), moderates/centrists, coyotes (cat eaters), the US Coast Guard and mosquitoes. We have also been plagued for the last three years by a band of unhappy trolls who formed for the purpose of opposing and annoying us. All of our enemies will eventually feel the heat of the cold cutlass steel.

Our topics are generally about fighting for freedom or fleeing from tyranny.

We have adopted many piratical customs and fashions, but we also believe that the pith helmet will return to the top of the fashion world soon and we are often seen wearing pith helmets.

We are frequently accused of being a dangerous cult. We do not deny this charge, but we point out that we have no membership fees, offer free movie reviews and are not biased against individuals who release invasive animals or plants into existing ecosystems.

We are always on the lookout for new recruits and, for those who are shy about joining dangerous cults; we also just seek people who will join our discussions. Our expansion campaign includes plans to begin blogtalkradio broadcasts within the week and pressing into service people who have participated in the campaigns of Ron Paul and Barack Obama.