Letter sent to Maria Cantwell on Education Funding

As your constituent, I'm writing to urge you to make sure that the penalty that strips financial aid from college students with drug convictions is repealed through the Higher Education Act reauthorization.

While the penalty is supposed to keep young people away from drugs, it actually does the opposite by keeping at-risk students from educating themselves. This is a cruel, and in my opinion, un-American permanent punishment for youthful indiscretions.

Besides making it more difficult for young people to better themselves, blocking access to education has harmful implications for society as a whole. College graduates are much more likely to become successful taxpaying citizens, while those who are kicked out of school are more likely to abuse drugs, become costly drains on the criminal justice system, and rely on expensive government assistance programs.

Education is one of the best means to reduce crime and drug abuse.

Fortunately, this year’s HEA reauthorization process presents a great opportunity to get rid of the harmful and unfair penalty once and for all. Please help tens of thousands of hardworking and determined individuals get back into school and on the path to success by making sure that the HEA bill includes language repealing the aid elimination penalty.

Thanks for your attention to this important issue. I will follow your vote on this issue with interest.

Note sent today to Harry Reid

Dear Mr. Reid,

Thank you for your forthright words speaking the truth about the unwinnable mess in Iraq. It's about time that someone in government stood up to the Bush regime's lies.

Please continue taking a hard line against what I consider the worst administration in the history of the Republic. They are an, again in my opinion, an active danger to the Republic and enemies to the Founders' ideals. They call themselves "conservatives" but in reality they are latter-day Tories, exercising unjust dominion in their lust for power and lucre.

Please keep up the good work, Sir!

The ancient Alchemists' dictum

Do, dare, and be silent

Hard for a talker and a trumpetmouthed fool.

US Customs Service Brownshirts

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. The worst authoritarian elements in American society are in positions of unassailable power. And the folks at the Blaine Peace Arch Crossing are among the worst, in my experience, combining stupidity, ignorance, petty abuse of authority, hostility, suspicion, and sheer meanness.

The spectacle of some middle class family from Portland returning from vacation in BC being interrogated with disrespect by some jumped up brownshirt is sad, sick, and infuriating.

And foreigners are treated much much worse. This is now the public face the USA shows to the world - paranoid, hostile, unutterably ignorant, and implacable in abusing petty authority.

Eject the Tories

Where I live (Cascadia), the federal government does not represent the people, and looks more like an occupying army than a real government of the people. I don't know when exactly the federal government became a predator to the American people, but I think it's worse now than it's ever been. I'd go so far as to say that the Tories have retaken power. It took them over 200 years, but they have almost destroyed the Republic and all the ideals of the Founders. (Bush & Co. have just made it more apparent).

Jefferson (Thomas, you know, that dang liberal) said that there should be a revolution every twenty years because power tends to concentrate in the hands of interests opposed to those of the people. It's long long long overdue.

But it ain't a matter of party politics - the Tories have hijacked the Republican Party and they've hijacked the Democratic Party, too. Their very effective tactic is to divide and rule. "Conservatives" hate "liberals" because they've been trained to. "Liberals" hate "conservatives" because they've been trained, too.

The real enemy is a federal government run amuck. The Republicans claim to be the party to tame it and reduce it - but in the last 6 years, the federal government has grown more than it did under Clinton. And it's way more corrupt, mendacious, and secretive.

I don't know the solution - but hating "liberals" or "conservatives" doesn't seem to be part of it. A good start might be to get together and kick the whole bunch, Democrats and Republicans, out of office.

Globe & Mail Comment Editors Suck

Barton Lincoln Jonesboro, the second:

My post was also deleted. Apparently the editors are timid ciphers, pandering to the loud, quivering with fear of truth told with insult.

Shame! (if they are capable of it). Tepid Toronto milquetoasts.

Sapience, c'est quoi?

How does the word get associated with the image/sense of the thing sufficient to trigger an integrated action response?

And how does this association get broken when we want to retrieve the word? And come back to us only after conscious mental efforts fail?

Weird composite brain structure, relics (ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny)of successful accidents? Purposeful only in the flesh? Or deeper connected ethereal layers?