Saturday, January 7, 2012

Al Gore, Gaming For Good, and a game suggestion for Climategate fans

From some random radio station's website:

Former Presidential candidate Al Gore is known for everything from inventing the Internet to alerting the world to the harsh realities (sic) of global warming. Now he’s collaborating with the creatives of PSFK on "Gaming For Good", challenging companies to create new games that address the same issues facing his Climate Reality Project – and also being fun to play.



After receiving 60 game proposals from around the world, the entries have been narrowed down to the 10 top finalists, which was then whittled down to four by Gore himself. Among the finalists are Greensquare, “a gaming platform that gives you and your friends a new, greener way to explore local retail stores, restaurants and businesses”. Gore was particularly taken with REALiTREE, “a digital representation of our local environment and the role we are playing in sustaining its wellbeing.”

You can go here to see some screen shots from a few of the games, most of which make me want to purchase and drive a new gas-guzzling Ford F-350 for the sole purpose of driving it from Fort Worth to Dallas to purchase a cheeseburger made from Polar Bear flesh.  Lord have mercy, what a bunch of sanctimonious crap. 

This one - Reality Drop - got my attention.  It was developed by an outfit called Arnold Worldwide. 
Climate change deniers show up anywhere. Finding them and fighting them requires easy access to complex arguments. This site makes it simple to spread science and destroy doubt. Climate news is prioritized by ‘heat:’ hostility, reach, sentiment and timeliness. Players can earn points by grabbing related scientific articles, videos, and data points, and pasting them into hot articles to blast climate denial into oblivion.


That sounds boring as hell.  I have a few twists to make the Reality Drop game more interesting. 



Make it into a board game like the one shown above. 

Then add some more media.  Here goes....

Someone named Tom Nelson has been slogging through the latest batch of ClimateGate emails (the treasure trove of embarrassing correspondence between the East Anglia University scientists who are doing their best to prove that the planet is warming and that it is all your fault.) 

Mr. Nelson has provided us with links to 250 of the most interesting, horrible, criminal, fraudulent, and in a few cases, pretty damn funny of the bunch.  Let's tie these in to Mr. Gore's game.

Here are the improved rules for "Reality Drop" the game for the whole family !!!!

The goal of "Reality Drop" is to move your token from "Gullible" to "Dumbass" to "Sheep" to "Victim" before any of the other players. 

Hit one of Tom Nelson's links below and read a Climategate email to all the other players. 

Any player who can still claim that Anthropogenic Global Warming is not a con job gets to move his token one step closer to the goal of "Victim". 

Younger children may need help with the concepts of "Lying", "Subsidies", "Grants", "Bullshit" and "Fraud". 

Here are the emails that will give you and your family hours and hours of Climate Change enjoyment !!!!  Have fun, gang !!!
For players who intend to play this game for the rest of their lives, the ClimateGate search engines are located here and here.


And for more pure, undiluted greatness, you can go here: All in one place, all ClimateGate I and II files, along with source code files, HARRY_READ_ME files, email attachments, documents, etc.

We can only hope that the generous hackers who gave us Climategate I and Climategate II will drop another batch of emails into our laps before the current goldmine of gaming material is exhausted. 

Friday, January 6, 2012

I'm gonna hold the tail while you hit it in the head for a while

Let's beat this dead horse a little longer. 
We'll all get some exercise, it'll make us feel better, and it doesn't hurt the horse. 


This is from John Stossel's site.  You may have seen it in a chain email.  I've posted it before.


There's a catch, though. 

After all the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth that went on a year ago, THEY DIDN'T EVEN CUT THE 38.5 BILLION. 

THEY STILL SPENT 362 BILLION MORE THAN THEY DID THE YEAR BEFORE !!!!

If you have time, here is where Stossel would start cutting.  It seems extreme, but it isn't enough. 

The demotivational poster of the Victorian dude sitting on the dead horse and not beating it, that picture came from here. 

What if Blockbuster Video or Barnes & Noble were run by the government?

Go here for an interesting tale from The Libertarian Book Club (of Canada, thank God). 


The picture of the dreaded knock on the door in the middle of the night came from here. 

The d'Anconia Copper T-Shirt

I know what I'm getting my friend Mike Coyne for Christmas this year !!  (Inside joke)


Go here for the text of the famous d'Anconia money speech from "Atlas Shrugged". 
Go here to purchase the shirt. 
For devotees of Big Government who have difficulty reading, here's a recording. 



"When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry on which way to walk

Here are some recent Tweets from Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry (who I first heard perfom in 1977, BTW.  Memphis, Tennessee.  Great show.) 

@AdmiralPerry
All the kids I talk to are into Ron Paul . They like his voting record. He's not a smiling grinning talking head spewing party BS.


@AdmiralPerry
Obama hasn't done anything close to what he promised he'd do.didn't get my vote and I got lotta grief. Well,my votes for Ron Paul.


@AdmiralPerry
Media is trying to crush Paul. It's so transparent. They will smear himevery chance.beware! Get your news from lot of different sources.

Here's what I hope happens....

I hope Ron Paul comes in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, and then maybe Nevada. 
Then I hope that a truly horrific Statist defeats him for the Republicrat nomination.  Romney, Gingrich, or Santorum.  Flip a coin for the BarackLite of your choice. 

Then I hope Paul comes back into the Libertarian Party fold to run as Veep or Prez with Gary Johnson, having shed any requirements to cooperate with the Demoblican establishment. 

Then we could give voters a choice between true change and more of the same.  Google some timelines of the last 50 years.  Look at government spending, debt, inflation, military spending and wars, or any other horrific metric you can think of.  Has it mattered which "party" was in charge? 

Here's Joe Perry and Aerosmith from the year I first heard them, 1977:



The voice distortion/phase shifter box that Perry is using in this vid was a big deal at the time.  Peter Frampton used one and sold a jillion records, so everyone else felt like they had to do the same. 

A Libertarian in Republican Clothing

Interesting things are happening in the Republican and Democrat party. 
Someone didn't get all the memos and emails, and it's creating some turmoil.


This raises an interesting hypothetical question....


You can apply the Ron Paul filter to almost any social or economic issue - gay marriage, ending the drug war, ending the Fed, reducing our debt, eliminating needless cabinet-level positions and departments, privatizing our disaster of a school system, legalizing gambling, bringing the troops home to defend our borders, ending aid to dictators, and on and on and on. 

You'll find a gaggle of faux opponents from both halves of the Congressional aisle on one side of the issue, and you'll see Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson on the other side.  Daddy Paul and Gary Johnson have a higher ACLU rating than anyone else running for president, and this includes the Obamessiah.  National Journal ranks Paul as one of the most economically conservative congressmen, but then declares that his votes on foreign policy (giving money to dictators, going overseas to blow shit up, etc.) aren't conservative enough for him to be considered an economic conservative !!! 

The Libertarians want to leave people alone. 

Therefore, they are extremists.  Go figure that one out. 

The pics came from Libertarian Reddit. 

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

An open letter from Rick Santorum's nephew

Here's an open letter from Rick Santorum's nephew, courtesy of The Daily Caller. 
I think the boy is a Libertarian. 

If you want another big-government politician who supports the status quo to run our country, you should vote for my uncle, Rick Santorum. America is based on a strong belief in individual liberty. My uncle’s interventionist policies, both domestic and foreign, stem from his irrational fear of freedom not working.

It is not the government’s job to dictate to individuals how they must live. The Constitution was designed to protect individual liberty. My Uncle Rick cannot fathom a society in which people cooperate and work with each other freely. When Republicans were spending so much money under President Bush, my uncle was right there along with them as a senator. The reason we have so much debt is not only because of Democrats, but also because of big-spending Republicans like my Uncle Rick.

It is because of this inability of status quo politicians to recognize the importance of our individual liberties that I have been drawn to Ron Paul. Unlike my uncle, he does not believe that the American people are incapable of forming decisions. He believes that an individual is more powerful than any group (a notion our founding fathers also believed in).

Another important reason I support Ron Paul is his position on foreign policy. He is the only candidate willing to bring our troops home, not only from the Middle East, but from around the world.

Ron Paul seems to be the only candidate trying to win the election for a reason other than simply winning the election.

This year, I’ll vote for an honest change in our government. I’ll vote for real hope. I’ll vote for a real leader. This year, I will vote for Ron Paul.

John Garver is a 19-year-old student at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. John is a strong supporter of Ron Paul despite his love for family member Rick Santorum.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Michele Leonhart and Barack Obama - Babykillers?

From The Washington Post, "Mexican Drug Cartels Now Targeting And Killing Children":

The children’s rights group estimates that 994 people younger than 18 were killed in drug-related violence between late 2006 and late 2010, based on media accounts, which are incomplete because newspapers are often too intimidated to report drug-related crimes.

[...]
Government figures include all homicides of people younger than 17, capturing victims whose murders might not have been related to drugs or organized crime. In 2009, the last year for which there is data, 1,180 children were killed, half in shootings.

From Michele Leonhart, head of the DEA:

U.S. and Mexican officials say the grotesque violence is a symptom the cartels have been wounded by police and soldiers. “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” said Michele Leonhart, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartels “are like caged animals, attacking one another,” she added.

No, you bureaucratic twit, they're attacking children.  Civilians, old people, journalists, cops, judges and children



Here's a pic of Michele Leonhart:



Here she is with Attorney General Eric "Gunwalker" Holder:



I couldn't find a pic of Leonhart with The Teleprompter Jesus anywhere on the internet.  He's probably keeping his distance since war criminals generally avoid hanging out in the same place. 

So here's a pic of Michele Leonhart's thugs raiding a house to see if the owners have any plants inside:



Finally, here's The Toker In Chief himself.  This is an excerpt from his memoir "Dreams From My Father":


"I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though - Mickey, my potential initiator, had been just a little too eager for me to go through with that. Said he could do it blindfolded, but he was shaking like a faulty engine when he said it...

"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed; the final fatal role of the would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind. Something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory.

"I had discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in a white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids... You just might be bored or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection.

"And if the high didn't solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world's ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism. That's how it seemed to me then, anyway."

He then relates the story of Pablo, who didn't have "his driver's licence that day [when] a cop with nothing better to do check[ed] the trunk of his car... One day [my mother] marched into my room wanting to know the details of Pablo's arrest. I told her not to worry, I wouldn't do anything that stupid.

"'Don't you think you're being a little casual about your future?' she said. 'One of your friends just got arrested for drug possession. Your grades are slipping..."

"I didn't want to hear about this..."

Speaking of things that Obama doesn't want to hear about, there were 800,000 marijuana arrests in the U.S. last year. 

The Obama/Leonhart War On Drugs killed 40,000 Mexicans in the last 4 years.
 
Obama has more black men living in cages than the Confederacy did. 

There are only two people running for president who favor ending this disastrous war: Gary Johnson and Ron Paul. 

This stoner favors business as usual.
 

Monday, January 2, 2012

Ron Paul's campaign disrupted by Occupy Wall Street

You'd think that a politician who has been sounding the alarm about the relationship between Washington and Wall Street for a few decades would get a pass on this, but....

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Police arrested more than a dozen Occupy protesters Thursday in Iowa who are targeting Democrats and Republicans just days before the state's closely watched lead-off presidential caucuses.

Five protesters were arrested outside the Iowa campaign headquarters of presidential contender Ron Paul in Ankeny before the group moved on to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines, where 12 more were taken into custody. All were ticketed for trespassing and released.
The protests are part of an Occupy the Caucuses effort launched this week in Des Moines that has attracted activists from around the country. Many of them have promised to interrupt campaign activities, and organizers promised more confrontations on Friday with campaign offices of Republican presidential hopefuls.
Here, according to Patrick at Popehat, are the reasons the Occupy Kiddies could've been upset with Ron Paul's platform:

  1. Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank – oops, already on the platform
  2. End federal payouts to banks - oops, already on the platform
  3. End federal payouts to large corporations that aren’t banks - oops, already on the platform
  4. End foreign aid to Israel (and for that matter every other country) - oops, already on the platform
  5. End the war in Afghanistan - oops, already on the platform
  6. Withdraw American troops from Kuwait, South Korea, and Germany - oops, already on the platform
  7. Abolish the Transportation Security Administration, along with a number of other federal departments and agencies - oops, already on the platform
  8. End the War on Terror - oops, already on the platform
  9. End the War on Drugs - oops, already on the platform
  10. Establish a National Drum Circle on top of Mount Rushmore – not on the Ron Paul platform
Popehat.  You really should read these guys every day. 


Later on in the AP article, someone claims that Paul got occupied because of his opposition to the EPA. 
Well, there is no bigger friend to Big Business than the EPA. 
Here's one of the Popehat commenters on Paul's rationale for shutting down that gaggle of unelected Warmist kickback artists:

....the problem with the EPA is that its unclear as to how much of their protections are actually effective. You see quite frequently how well connected companies get extensions and exceptions to rules where smaller companies are held to very strict or even non-existent standards. I used to work for a soil and water testing facility, and it seemed a very random process that the agency had for going after businesses, a gas station with a minor leak could be fined heavily within a month, but an industrial facility would be far out of safety ranges for the better part of two years and not get much more than a strongly worded letter. The agency standards seemed very divorced from any reasonable threat assessment.


The concept of a federal agency, which has power at its sole discretion to shut down, fine, or harass any business without judicial oversight is pretty glaring constitutional issue. In many cases the day in court doesn’t come until after the damage has been done and the victim has lost their business and in some cases much more.

None of this is saying that environmental protections are unnecessary, just that the EPA as vehicle for fairly enforcing the laws (which themselves are pretty obtusely written, but that’s a separate issue) has been very bad at it. The fact that many of it’s powers are unconstitutional is Ron Paul’s primary concern with the agency.
Yeah.  What he said.