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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 12:19:30 GMT
Last night, I watched "The Green Mile" on a video. It's the story of Paul Edgecomb, played by Tom Hanks, and John Coffey, played by Michael Clarke Duncan. Paul is a guard on death row, the green mile, in a prison in Lousiana during the depression. John is a giant of a black man who is discovered by a search posse holding the dead and bloody bodies of two young girls. John is taken to the green mile. The movie tells us Paul and John's story there. It lasts 188 minutes. You won't want to get up. If you're like me, you'll cry, hard. Beautiful tears from way down deep. The movie is based on a novel by Stephen King. Though it contains violent scenes that will not appeal to some, this is NOT a horror story. It is a blessing story.

 

Damn Thirsty

First
The fish needs to say,

"Something ain't right about this
Camel Ride--

And I'm
Feeling so damn

Thirsty."

The Gift, Poems by Hafiz, p. 198

I collected these before I watched the movie. They seem very petty right now.

Devvy Kidd - A List of Strange Deaths of Individuals Who All Had Verifiable Ties with Bill Clinton: This has been around for a long time, but it's good to be reminded now and then of how bad Komrade Klinton really is. [grabbe]

PJ's Comix contains political commentary in comic form. Hehe. PJ also writes for Laissez Faire City Times.

Nateman in the year 2000 is an interesting web site. It's part of the Politically Incorrect Webring.

These are this morning's news. I'm not as high as I was right after the movie, so it's likely back to the usual low-brow stuff... Well, judge for yourself.

Frank Shostak at the Ludwig von Mises Institute - The Electronic Money Myth: Claims that electronic money can never replace government-issued fiat money. While I agree that electronic money must always stand for something else, the something else could just as easily be gold as federal reserve notes (frn), and I see no reason why such money could not eventually displace frn. Then again, I would really like this to happen, so my mind may be clouded by that desire. [lew]

Eric Garris at LewRockwell.com - Irv Rubin and the Libertarian Party: Amidst apparenly much pomp and circumstance by the LP leadership, the leader of the Jewish Defense League has joined the Libertarian Party. Mr. Garris claims that the JDL's rhetoric is fundamentally at odds with the non-agression principle, the centeral tenet of the LP. I agree. [lew]

Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com - Wild about Harry: Why I Am Not Voting Libertarian this Year: Mr. Garris referenced this article in his article above. Mr. Raimondo likes Harry Browne, but will not be voting libertarian because of the entrance of Irv Rubin into the party, and other reasons.

After all, is it really all that great to have the "international chairman" of a terrorist organization that openly and proudly advocates violence, and has a long history of thuggery, suddenly proclaim that he is a capital-'L' Libertarian and join the party? Who's next -- Osama bin Laden?

At this point, I'll insert L. Neil Smith's definition of a libertarian. I found this via an alltheweb search for the exact phrase, "A libertarian is a person". It is on the Who is a libertarian? page at The Libertarian Enterprise.

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim.

Like Mr. Rubin, L. Neil Smith is an uncompromising proponent of the individual right to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed by the second amendment. Unlike Mr. Rubin, Mr. Smith believes that this right is to be used for purely defensive purposes. I concur with Mr. Smith. I do not remember the LP News article that welcomed Mr. Rubin to the party, but I forget lots of things. If they have indeed welcomed him, and he does indeed advocate the initiation of force, then the Libertarian Party is well on its way to no longer being a libertarian organization. This to me is one more reason not to vote. Politics corrupts.

William L. Anderson at LewRockwell.com - Injustice and the State: Why state-run justice will never be just. [lew]

The problems that plague the systems of justice in this country are the same problems that trouble all socialist entities. A lack of a system of economic calculation means that the dispositions of cases are decided upon political merits, rather than how they might have affected the victims. And because the rewards are mainly political, cases are tried and decided on the basis of the political benefits to the prosecution and the judges. The rights of the victims and of the defendants usually are pushed aside.

Mary Fagan at the electronic Telegraph - Sheikh Yamani predicts price crash as age of oil ends: huge recent discoveries coupled with rising use of fuel cells will cause the price of oil to plummet, says the former Saudi oil minister. [wnd]

Daily Express - Woman strips to save her husband: frantic waving would not stop anyone to help her unconscious husband, so a woman removed her clothes. It worked! [wnd]

Kevin Tuma - Supreme Arrogance: cartoon commentary on the recent supreme court decision banning prayer at government school football games.

There's a new issue of The Libertarian Enterprise. Excerpts:

  • Vin Suprynowicz - Hi, What Is The Purpose Of Government? Vin's list of questions for political candidates. Vin published this a while back as part of The Libertarian series, but it's worth reading again.
  • John Taylor - Editor's notes: John endorses the 50 Million Round March with a concept I first read from L. Neil Smith:
    The 50 Million Round March is an important, ongoing effort to preserve and expand the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.
  • Michael Haggard - There's A Storm A'brewin': Mr. Haggard says that there are storms brewing in D.C. He recommends that you build a "safe room" in your house in case you get invaded without warning. This will allow time for you to be resuced by other freedom lovers. When I was a kid, we attempted to protect ourselves from the Ruskies by building bomb shelters. Now the threat comes from our own government. Bummer, man.

Microsoft - C# Introduction and Overview: some high-level market-speak about the new language. Contains pointers to word files giving actual details about the language. My take: C# as a language is a small improvement on Java. Boxing and unboxing are automatic, as Java should have been, so you no longer have to say "new Integer(5)", to get a representation of the number 5 that you can store in a Vector. It has an explicit enumerated type. There is a delegate concept for creating anonymous functions. There is built-in support for versioning. Also, every object is automatically a COM object. There is no new C# class library. It uses the existing Windows C++ and Visual Basic libraries. Other than that, it looks like Java with some things renamed. No info here about the nature of the run-time: native compiled, virtual machine, or something else. [script]

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