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The Nevada Health Department attacked a private farm and forced the destruction of a feast of friends. I can not comprehend how people can sink to this depth. I used to think much more highly of Nevada, but it appears the rot is setting in even there… Something is going to break. Americans are not going to put up with this crap much longer. February 29th, 2012 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
 here is another item from Janes:
It sort of makes me glad that I and my own computers are in an out of the cross-hairs corner of the world… February 28th, 2012 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is an item from a Jane’s email newsletter that caught my attention:
I fear the Middle East will be a self-curing problem through self-immolation in a localized Armageddon. We must not forget the hatred for Israel is secondary to the hatred of some elements of each of the major Islamic sects for each other. Once Iran has a viable stockpile of deliverable nuclear weapons, the Saudi’s will do the same. Pakistan already has them. Israel has them. It will be a nuclear free-for-all that will only stop when there is no one left standing. We can hope the Israeli’s can manage to survive with more of their society intact than the others, primarily because they are not stark raving lunatics like many of those with whom they share the region. February 28th, 2012 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Maybe we will finally catch up with Sadam Hussein’s collection of WMD, which some military guys have told me headed over the border into Syria before the shooting started… February 26th, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whilst I am working a private contractor cyber-defence job for a large financial conference, it seems apropos to summarise some recent intel from Janes. The DOD is selling two THAAD missile interceptor batteries to the United Arab Emirates, This is the first international sale. I wonder who they are defending against.. US chooses Super Tucano for Afghan Air Force The Saudi’s are buying 84 new F-15SA Eagle’s with Raytheon’s APG-63(V)3 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, a digital electronic warfare system (DEWS) and a Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS). I wonder who they are defending against… General Atomics has the contract for Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) configurations for the UK’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier programme. Mass Drivers as we call them in the space business, are a key technology for lunar industry. The US Missile Defense Agency has selected Boeing to oversee the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system in a multibillion dollar sustainment effort. This system will defend the US against a rogue state attacks. At the same time a bunch of orders were placed at the end of 2011 as noted here and above. Raytheon’s SM-3 was also in the mix. On the downside, the Boeing 747-400F carrying the YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) is being mothballed as the development has been terminated. The Indian Navy has gone nuclear with the Akula-class (Project 971) nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) now in its hands on a 10 year lease from the Russians. The 9,246 tonne (dived) INS Chakra (ex- Nerpa ) recently finished sea trials three years behind schedule. January 12th, 2012 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
A very interesting night, and a fairly inconclusive one unless you were in the bottom tier. There is no clear front runner in the Republican camp and one can essentially look at it as three candidates with roughly a quarter of the votes each… and all the rest divvying up the few leftover scraps in the remaining quarter. The fact that we have two top tier candidates in the race who are not that progressive guy from Massachusetts is perhaps the most important outcome of the night. The outcome is good in another way: with any kind of luck we could end up with a libertarian sitting in the catbird seat in a brokered convention, assuming of course that he does not surprise us all and win it. I do not think many libertarians are expecting that. The concept of winning is a thing to be slowly approached and gotten used to for most of us. So I will not make any assumptions of grandeur. I will only say we have a good shot at a situation where we have a libertarian in the GOP with substantial power at the convention. He will be able to push them our way and at the same time we have an excellent candidate in the LP itself pushing them from the outside. This should have the GOP strategists wondering how to attract voters from our ranks. The answer to that question is really simple: drop the Big Statism. Make the repeal of the entirety of Obamacare a priority; and for damn sure stop this mandate talk. If you want even a sidewise glance from us, just drop it and pretend you never even thought about it. Individual Mandate is a poison pill for the GOP and the sooner they realise it, the better off we all will be. PS: You may have noticed that I have gone MSM journalists one better: I wrote this entire Iowa article without mentioning ANY of the candidate names. Those pikers can only manage to ignore one. January 4th, 2012 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Romney may have just lost the election for the Republicans. If he is going to stand behind Individual Mandate, then why not vote for a real socialist? Why not just let someone who walks the walk drive things to their disastrous conclusion rather than allowing the left to point to a ‘conservative’ and blame the failures of socialism on him? If it is a given that Romney will be the Republican candidate, then come next fall I will vote for Republicans in the House and Senate and Obama for President in hopes that libertarian, tea party and conservative types can dominate the Legislative Branch and fight the Executive Branch every step of the way. If Romney were in, they would have to at least give a show of support for ‘their’ President. Let us shoot for total war between the branches of government as our best option for preserving liberty. The government which governs least is best… even if it is because they are too busy fighting amongst themselves to govern at all. January 1st, 2012 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was struck by the tone of an article I recently read by a conservative journalist who simply could not understand why libertarians have not abandoned Ron Paul now that the supposedly deadly leftist power word has been uttered against him along with great waggling of magic wands. My answer to him and others is that we are a tough lot and I laugh in the face of the PC power words. Unlike Conservative journalists I do not wet my knickers at the thought of someone attempting to tar me with it. Since I know I am not a racist, I simply do not care what anyone says or writes. I am immune, and that is perhaps one of the things which makes people like me and other libertarians even more frightening to the powers that be. We lack proper fear. Anyone who like myself has been on the front lines of libertarianism for years, for decades even, understands. We have been fighting our battle against hopeless odds with pretty much everyone against us except when it was to their advantage and they felt they had nothing to lose. We are used to losing and then dusting ourselves off and going off to the next battle, and the next battle. Like a horde of Don Quixote’s we have continued to attack the blades of the windmill, but unlike him we are having an effect. Every strike of the lance vibrates the blade, every vibration wears on the bearings, and the wear is starting to make the axle wobble. One day the entire Statist enterprise will tear itself apart and send blades cartwheeling over the countryside and it will be in no small thanks to us. This is not to say we do not hunger for personal tastes of victory, even if in small ways. The Ron Paul candidacy is one of those. No matter what happens now, we have won hugely. Millions of people have been introduced to ideas that will resonate long after they forget where they heard them. The libertarian genie is well and truly out of the bottle. We win with every day that goes by with us in the race. We win with every million dollars the Ron Paul campaign pours into broadcasting our message, a message of freedom and individualism the media has long ignored, filtered, twisted or blocked. Should he take Iowa and New Hampshire the old boys network of the Republican Party will be out in even more force with their friends in the Democratic Party to stop him. The two may be very different in what they want to do, but they both share a common love of power and your money. Some made the mistake of thinking the Conservatives were our friends. I knew that was not true. They were only interested in us so long as they thought they could use us to their advantage. Has anyone noticed how the Conservative media turned against us as soon as it looked like we might actually have a real effect on the election? Even Pajamas Media has taken a decidly anti-libertarian turn. I must admit that one surprised me a bit, but as to the rest, I fully expected it. I still do not expect Ron Paul will win, but God Almighty, I do intend to let those Sons of Bitches know we libertarians were there. If you are Conservative and you still do not understand why we fight after reading this missive… you are really rather dense. It is simple. After thirty-five years, we have finally tasted blood in the political scene and for once it is not our own. December 28th, 2011 | 135 comments - (Comments are closed)
A musical mood struck me on the way to the coffee shop this afternoon and upon my return I recorded this song for friends and any one who finds it interesting. I am more than a couple years away from gigging and touring and sitting about studios and given how busy I am with other things I decided to skip the guitar backup since it would take a day to get it up to performance quality. This is not to say that recording a song in three takes from the printout of the lyrics to ‘final’ on a telephone headset is anything like what I’d do in a professional studio setting. But it will serve and I do not think Judy Garland will come back and haunt me for it. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. Dale Amon vocals Merry Christmas to all! December 27th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Taylor Dinerman has written a piece for the Hudson Institute on what may be coming in North Korea. I am of two minds. So long as the existing leadership keep up the facade for the rest of the world, the level of palace intrigue can become Roman in its proportions with little effect on the countryside. The key for the North Korean Aristocracy is to do one of the things it does best: keep the majority of the population outside of the Imperial City in as deep of a dark as possible. Should their infighting erupt in a way that allows rumours to spread into the countryside, however, the entire edifice is going to come crashing down in a matter of weeks if not days. December 26th, 2011 | Comments are closed
This is not good… according to the BBC there may have been 69 Patriot missiles caught in a cargo ship in Finland. This is bad. Really, really bad. December 25th, 2011 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Yuletide Cheer to the sound of jigs and reels well played. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved December 24th, 2011 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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