evolution

at the risk of a lawsuit by the aclu, i’d like to wish all of you a merry christmas.

aw, what the hell. merry christmas to the aclu too.

if you are a purdue student just happening by, check this out (scrolling may be needed). president jischke decided to listen to his common sense - something i wish more americans would do.

you know, i had posted a long manifesto explaining my politics on this site. i’ve seen things, mostly the rise of hostile, barking leftism, that have made me angry enough to get political. i don’t like politics, and i don’t like being angry.

i used to be about life, living, and learning. what happened to me?

i’ll tell you what; i’ll cut you a deal. i know where i stand (government exists to protect me from criminals, terrorists, and the poor house, otherwise get lost), you (however enlightened or misguided you may be) know where you stand, and we’ll call it even.

i like living, thinking, and learning too much to get caught up in the rest. i know there’s a large class of people on the coasts that think that because i’m a midwesterner from “flyover country” that i’m “more given to jingoism” (reportedly from newsweek) - i.e., that i’m an idiot who’ll believe anything anyone who waves a flag says. i have a message for you - fuck off. i’m an educated man. they don’t just hand out master’s degrees in mathematics - even at kansas state.

if you’re currently in government, i have a message for you - fuck off. you’ve done nothing but raise my taxes for wasteful breaks for big business and wasteful social programs, and interfere in my life in a myriad of other ways.

fortunately there’s a piece of paper that says i get to say what i just said. unfortunately there are groups who either ignore it or want to ratchet it down on us.

so i guess if i needed a term to describe myself, it’s “independent” - i don’t depend on east coast elites, west coast elites, other midwesterners, or you. if you need to look at a set of values that i identify with (i suppose), think midwestern.

remember that if you are a person who, like me, likes living and learning, you can get yourself really pissed off by reading what’s out there on the internet. average people and nutbags alike can voice their views out there; it’s best never to take it too seriously.

you want me to suggest someone to vote for? forget it. that’s not my style. i’ve already said i’m casting for george w. you can vote for whoever you damned well please.

ah, crap. what has politics done to me?

that’s just about enough political crap for a while. i am home for the holidays. today i did a bit of christmas shopping in kansas city, where shopping was going at full bore today, being the last weekend day before christmas. i’m still not finished with my shopping; i’m going to stay in lawrence this time.

howard dean and the “dean fedayeen” (here’s where i got that name) on the radical left go retro.

and, i might add, not one mention of it by cnn, ap, or reuters.

i don’t have anything to say today, so here’s a bunch of little things i garnered from the yahoo! news section, which is, by the way, my least favorite news outlet.

• a lot of people, both in the blogs listed to your right and elsewhere (find your own dammit), are talking about this, and most negatively. this is a topic that unfortunately i don’t know much about.
• sorry, halliburton, you’re going to have to pay for those lunches at the strip club yourselves. notice two things - of course it’s yahoo!’s top story, and that it was a pentagon audit that found it.
• some democrats get it.
• guess which side i come down on with this.
• i like this.
• some people don’t get it.

old europe and the zeropean union are mad about george w.’s method for distributing iraq rebuilding contracts (ap - fox news).

i say good riddance - i encourage america to part ways with the zeropeans whenever possible. nato, the wto, the international court, begone with all of it. america should yank all of her troops from europe and disassociate itself from ineffective european institutions. note that canada is on the list of objectors too. canada has an infestation of hard leftists that is pushing our northern neighbors toward defenselessness and irrelevance. as soon as the people of canada (which can’t be radically different from the people of america) wake up, that’ll be old news. until then, our government should lump them in with the zeropeans.

yes, george w.’s handling of iraq contracts smack of cronyism. don’t you know - republicans waste our money by giving it to their friends in business (via contracts, corporate tax cuts, etc.) and democrats waste our money by giving it to their friends in government (through various social programs). doing something to rid the world of saddam hussein and stabilize iraq is better than doing nothing - which is what old europe has done; which is what leftists in this country would have us do.

i want to support liberals in 2004. i really do. but i can’t look myself in the eye and do it. the democratic frontrunner, howard dean, espouses the kind of leftism that i think is dangerous to america, in the same way that i think john ashcroft’s far-rightness is. do we really want america to become an old europe-style welfare state? do we want to be infected with the anti-semitism of old europe?

i don’t. all people are created equally and deserve certain fundamental rights. we uttered those words when we created america out of a handful of english colonies. we have not always put that into practice, and we need to acknowledge that. in accordance with those views, i believe in america, and that america should be the defenders of democracy wherever it may be found. when people - such as fundamentalist islamic terrorists (call the enemy by their names) - want to destroy and undermine it - these people must be crushed.

you see, i don’t believe either howard dean - or any other current democrat - or even some republicans - represents these views. they don’t believe that a certain moral responsibility to defend self-determination exists. and the party that claims my word - libertarian - are comprised at least partially of tin-foil hat wearing, george noory-calling weirdos.

i’ll be totally honest with you - george w. bush does things i don’t like. i don’t know how i feel about medicare (mostly because i don’t need it), i suspect the patriot act, and i cautiously eye “big buisness”, who i feel if they could get away with sneaking into my apartment at night and harvesting my organs to turn a profit, that they would do it. but i feel that with bush, we at least have a fighting chance against the other thing - fundamentalist islamic terrorism. so, i will be voting for george w. bush in 2004.

players of the game - really, every single k-state player who stepped onto the field saturday night played his best game. but, i have to pick someone, so here we go:

• offensive (tie): QB ell roberson - 10/17 for 227 yards and 4 TD as well as 17 carries for 72 yards. displayed all the throws: a 20-yard zinger to TE brian casey, a 63-yard bomb to WR james terry, screens, options, a fade: he did it all. RB darren sproles - 22 carries for 246 yards, 3 catches for 88 yards including a 2-yard screen that sproles and the offensive line turned into a 60-yard touchdown. honorable mention for the offensive line.
• defensive: LB teddy sims - knocked down a pass that cost the sooners a touchdown, and 2 INTs, one of which became k-state’s fifth touchdown.
• special teams: P jared brite - boomed them all night. one key play was in the first quarter. the game was tied, i believe, at 7-7. the cats were backed up in oklahoma territory, and brite boomed a 56-yard punt that swung the field position in the cats’ favor.

the defensive line terrorized oklahoma QB jason white all night, dealing out several hard hits…after running for over 1900 yards this season - the 11th best rushing season ever, tied with heisman-trophy winner tony dorsett - darren sproles deserves at least a warm meal from the new york athletic club…ell roberson proved what coach snyder always believed - if roberson puts together a mistake-free ball game, the cats can beat anyone - he has all the tools…the sooners had trailed a total of 6 minutes in their previous 12 games, but they were routed in the second quarter of this one.

this is one of the worst ideas i can possibly imagine.

this is one step toward a one-world government - a thing which america’s way of life cannot survive under.